Thereās been pretty loud rumors about Malachi Fields getting a lot of interest from Penn State, weāll see if that actually plays out.
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Would make sense with Biscuit there.
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They donāt have an Offensive Coordinator. Biscuit might not even be there next year.
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Fields transferring would be a bummer, but at this point we canāt and shouldnāt try to outbid a football factory like Penn State. We have a limited NIL pool and we shouldnāt blow a big chunk of it on a WR. I mean, look at where well run NFL teams allocate their salary cap and draft capital. QB, OL, edge rusher, DL then WR and CB, then S and LB and TE and RB last.
WR is at least one of the positions where we have some playable depth and a transfer could come in and produce quickly. Besides Fields, I like Twitty, Harrison, Wilson and Gibson.
Glass half full perspective.
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Good point. I hadnāt considered that. Do you think Franklin is safe?
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This is whatās incredibly infuriating about the current system. There shouldnāt be āinterestā until a kid enters the portal.
Technically, thatās the way itās supposed to work.
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And unfortunately nothing will be done about it by the NCAA, at least with any form of consistency. No shot they risk getting caught up in any more litigation after constantly proving themselves to be near powerless.
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I think Franklin is safe as of now (11/29) but I think the ice is getting really thin and depending on what happens with some of the other top programs. Ryan Day and OSU comes to mind.
That said, I could see the staff getting a major overhaul including Biscuit being shown the door.
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I donāt want to come out as āpro-tamperingā (that would be big brain contrarianism, even for me) ā there should for sure be rules and time limits, yada yada. But if both parties are interested, thereās only so much tampering rules are gonna do, and interested parties can follow the letter of the rules, and still communicate.
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Iām kind of in a similar mindset nowadays. With the ways available for people to communicate, Iām hesitant to go down the rabbit hole on restricting communication from 2 interested parties. I mean sure I donāt want to see a PSU coach roaming the sidelines at a UVA game or anything crazy. But it becomes a murky and potentially dark area when you start tracking everyoneās digital footprint.
Also how do you police any of this?
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Yeah and thatās where it would get messy for the NCAA. The more they try to set and actively enforce these rules, the more theyāre gonna get pushback from opposing parties about these athletes and their status as amateurs. An argument that would eventually be the end of the NCAA as a whole or at the very least dissolve a large amount of their stake in college sports.
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The staff of a school and boosters of that school are forbidden to talk to an athlete whoās under a binding letter of intent at another school at any point until that athlete has entered the transfer portal (or been released from that NLI or scholarship).
I do realize that sometimes the athlete is going through backchannels to assess the market prior to making that decision to enter the portal. But the first sentence is the letter of the law.
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Not all tampering is equal.
I mean in my current job, I donāt have to quit it and announce Iām quitting on LinkedIn before I start job hunting. Rather, that would be moronic.
Had an old timer once call it the āmonkey law of the jungle,ā when jumping off of the vine youāre swinging on, itās suicide not to have another one youāre immediately ready to grasp on to.
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Cool ā if Iām a coach and one of my kids is actively looking around while playing for me, scholarship is gone.
College athletics isnāt a job market.
And if it is, then make them minor leagues (for football, basketball, and baseball) and get rid of the whole notion of student-athletes.
By the way ā tampering isnāt allowed in the NBA or MLB or NFL. You have to be a free agent before other teams may make contact (or players and/or their agents making contact with other teams).
I feel like the NBA tampering rule is: āJust donāt be obvious about it.ā (Which includes: āDeny youāre doing it, and donāt get caught.ā) Which actually works out fairly well. You canāt enforce this 100%, and you probably donāt even want to (itās reasonable and useful for teams and players to send out feelers), but you donāt want it getting out of hand.
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Donāt be naive, college athletics is absolutely effectively a job market at this point. And comparing them to pros is apples to oranges because pros have contracts with defined expirations whereas college athletes are effectively year-to-year from both the playersā and the coachesā perspectives.
But if you donāt want to think of it like a job, then think of it like a student. If Iām a regular joe student at JMU and I want to transfer to George Mason, Iām under no obligation to quit JMU first or even notify them, I just put in my application to Mason and wait for a response, and then if I get accepted, only then do I need to either make a decision or notify anyone.
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The NBA also has a ālegalā tampering window right before the start of free agency where deals can be negotiated but not signed until the new league year starts.
The answer to all of this tampering/enforcement that the NCAA and universities will never agree to is acknowledging that athletes are employees, not students.
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Franklinās fine. Heās owed way too much for Penn State to buy him out (PSU aināt TAMU) and if he was going to Mel Tucker himself out of a job, he wouldāve done that already.
Hell, PSU probably makes the 12 team playoff next season and Franklināll leverage that into a contract extension. His agent is good at getting his name out there for high profile openings.
I think the idea is that the new OC would pick his position coaches, but I think Franklin makes those hires himself. When Diaz came aboard, there wasnāt a wholesale change in the defensive staff.
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