3- 5 mil won't happen it's just speculation by someone who really doesn't know.
If true, Pope shouldn't expect to win the SEC with that mentality. The 1996 team that Pope always talks about had at least three guys who would have made at least $1.5 million in today's NIL world: Delk, Mercer, and Walker.
Which is funny. We had $12.5 million to offer Hurley, but we can't offer an NIL target $1.5 million plus?
UK can't be the official payee of a players NIL.
NIL… And as soon as everyone accepts this new equalizer as the standard going forward, the more sense recruiting will make!
That $12.5 million number is complete and utter BS!
BG looked the part Saturday
Looks like the same schools are still at the top of the recruiting rankings.
I disagree w/ BG needing a "major" jump to be starter material. A year in the system, another summer in the weight room, little more maturity to offset the excessive exuberance that has cost us a few T's this year, and I'm very comfortable w/ the idea of beginning the season w/ Garrison projected as the starting 5.
If he rebounds he can be great. An ideal C for Pope. But right now he rebounds at about half the rate of Amari Williams, which isn’t nearly good enough. Now, maybe he makes a moderate improvement there and you add more rebounding at the PF spot. But he needs to get better at rebounding.
The school can pay a coach. NIL cannot come straight from a school.
Garrison should be the center. He’s not able to guard PF’s on the perimeter. Moreno being his backup
If Garrison played PF then who is center because we are not starting Moreno
He is a lot like Nick Richards was as a Soph with a better 3 pt shot. Nick had WEAK hands and it affected his rebounding. Garrison gets stripped too often and opponents know he can’t grab the ball, so they try to knock it out and are successful doing it.
I know we still need to get top 10 talent to mix in with transfers and players coming back. That surplus of NIL needs to be used to buy these type of players that’s for sure!
Then we need to become more organized and strategic about how we allocate resources within the program.
At some point recruiting won't even matter. Kids will just have agents who will look for the best deals.
Then reallocate the funds to make it work. One simple way to do this is to convince the boosters to stop giving to the athletic program directly and give that money to NIL instead.
If by "top 10 talent" you mean one-and-done high school kids ranked in the top 10 of recruiting rankings, then I absolutely disagree with the premise that it's necessary if the goal is to win championships. I'm not saying you can't win with an OAD player in the starting lineup - although in some instances I think that may be true - but I not only think it's not necessary, I'm also not sure it's even advisable (depending on the cost vs budget, etc.).
No doubt the money is there.
All fair points except for your last one. If we can't just fall back on the "outbid" narrative every time a recruit goes somewhere else, then what narrative do we back on when we get out-recruited for pretty much all of our primary NBA-level targets; because that looks like the present trend outside of the Kentucky native Jasper Johnson (who wasn't even named a Mickey D).
