I can’t imagine any other TU legends ever making these type of comments. Charles Clay, GJ Kinne, and Paul Smith would never have said anything like this.This entire piece is a gut punch.Guerin Emig: Jaxon Player reflects on his time at TU and a fast-arriving decision about OU, OSU or wherever's next
Two-time all-conference defensive lineman shares thoughts on the transfer portal, his tough decision to enter it and why it's right he did sot.co
As long as the colleges are giving one year ships and may rescind said ship every year I have a hard time faulting the kids now that the playing field has been somewhat leveled. Contractually bind the colleges to four year non-rescindable ships and my thoughts might shift.
So true ! If you are good enough to play in the NFL it doesn’t matter if you play at little old
That's what I mean. Best that Player leaves the state so we can avoid this repeated press garbage.
Zaven also didnt hang around for a non covid sanctioned season... he benefited immensely from the hardships placed on other programs...
1000% right. Athletes have one life and very short careers, I can't blame them for making the best of it.
I found his responses to be measured and mature, as I believe you did too as well. Indeed he may have paid someone to prepare him for the interview. If he did not, he has a future beyond football in a few different industries.
LOL at OU. They are just like 1994 OU, where they thought they could keep doing what they were doing in 1987 and keep winning by doing a few window dressing changes while the game radically changed around them. The program is a shambles and the internal and external message is everything will be OK because there's only one Oklahoma and as long as we do things like Bob did them, everything will be OK. LOL, umm ... no.
It's a different landscape today than it was when those guys were killing it. Given the opportunity to play a fifth season on a different stage that could allow Jaxson the opportunity to earn an opportunity in the NFL and the financial rewards of said contract then I can't blame him and am delighted that we got 4 years out of him. With NIL and the portal that may not be the norm moving forward.
+1. Players stay or go for a number of reasons, some of which we can control and some of which we cannot. I guess the first question is, have we done everything on the factors that we do control to be as attractive as possible for athletes? If we're not putting in the investment to be a the most attractive place we can be for players, then it doesn't seem to me that we have much to complain about.
So we’re just going to sit here and admit that other schools are better fits for our players? What happened to having pride in our school and competing with our in-state rivals? We shouldn’t have this inferiority complex where we view OU and OSU better than us because they’re not.
No offense to Player… but he’s not worth a few hundred thousand dollars for one season of play. I honestly can’t think of many players we’ve ever had who were worthy of that.
If that is his rational and what he feels gives him the best chance of making it to the NFL then I can't argue with that, but teams will still figure out how to game lan to double team.
It's actually going to be worse in a 4 man DL for Jaxon. He'll have guards chipping down on him from the side and then bounced by the center and if he breaks through on a passing down, he'll get hit by the back too. The chips from the side are the troublesome ones for DL who are trying to move laterally to get to a RB.
I think we have to admit that OU / OSU have more money in their pockets than we do. If the NIL version of college football comes down to incentivizing players through money and contracts, we'll always be on the losing end of that battle with pretty much every school in the country given we have the smallest student body / alumni footprint of any FBS university.
I doubt they change from 3 to 4. The personnel we can recruit to the dl and linebackers dictates it as being a better system for our program.
It will be interesting to see if the "shut down corners" get drafted, how they do, etc. My Mizzou friend was not impressed by them. Both of them would have at least gotten camp invites because of their height and speed.if they had stayed at TU.
