Recruiting Forum Football Talk IX

#141,377
#141,377
Enki_Amenra said:
I thought of something similar a while back. Instead of a spring game, make it pre-season bowl games. Bowls to kick off the start of a new season. There are probably enough bowl games to do them at spring and the beginning of fall camp, 😂

Also thought it would be cool if we did a real spring game, but with an FCS or small g5 team. Help the smaller schools out with $, make the spring a little more interesting, and take the FCS games out of the reg season. I guess we could combine the 2 together and make them bowl games. Would be cool for FCS teams to get a bowl game vs a P4 team and the fans get a real spring game.
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They would still only allow the third string guys to hit.
 
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#141,379
#141,379
jave36 said:
I still say ESPN should have backed softball instead of the wnba. It's in the same level of enjoyment as baseball for me too, whereas the wnba is such a bad product.

They'd have had more success than they have had trying to force the wnba down everyone's throats.

Track and field major events are usually broadcast.
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The NBA is heavily involved in the WNBA. Probably part of the negotiations.

Edit: WNBA appears to have higher ratings as well. The softball CWS is comparable but not the regular season. I don't watch much WNBA but would only watch UT softball.
 
#141,392
#141,392
VolGee4 said:
The NBA is heavily involved in the WNBA. Probably part of the negotiations.

Edit: WNBA appears to have higher ratings as well. The softball CWS is comparable but not the regular season. I don't watch much WNBA but would only watch UT softball.
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ESPN has dumped unimaginable amounts of money into promoting the WNBA. They force feed it to anyone and everyone who tries to consume any content from them. If they did the same thing with softball, you'd see much more success than they've had with that same tactic for the WNBA. The ratings are higher because of the investment in marketing, not because the product is good. Softball is a good product, so it would soar with that kind of marketing investment.

You may be right though, it could have been part of the NBA negotiations that ESPN promote the WNBA like their lives depended on it.
 
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#141,396
#141,396

Tennessee head coach Josh Heupel's history says don't bet against him at quarterback​


As I have spent most of this week with my toes in the sand unplugging and recharging a bit, I have had plenty of time to think about a variety of things about this upcoming football season.

After all, my kids are 21 and 18 and don’t need me. So, I haven’t been building sandcastles, setting up tents or scheduling things around nap time.

But as I have people watched and seen fans of SEC schools plant their flags announcing their loyalties, I keep thinking about the
upcoming Tennessee season and I keep coming back to one Tennessee thought.

And it’s this — Josh Heupel is betting on himself this fall and I think the head coach likes it that way.

The bet — his quarterback will be successful.

Heupel was the South Dakota player of the year coming out of high school, but was no one’s quarterback choice at the Power 5 level. After tearing his ACL at Weber State, he bet on himself at Snow Junior College where Mike Leach found him and the rest is history as a player.

As a coach, Heupel has rolled the dice at the quarterback position and has won basically every time. He’s betting on the same success as a quarterback whisperer in 2026 with a first-time starter.

In his first season at Oklahoma, Heupel took inherited quarterback Paul Thompson, who had 428 career yards in his first three seasons, and guided him to a 2,267-yard, 22-touchdown season. Thompson had been playing receiver when Heupel turned him into a senior quarterback.

The following year, Sam Bradford as a redshirt freshman was Heupel’s quarterback. He threw for 3,121 yards as a first-year starter. Second-year Sooner Landry Jones took over following Bradford’s shoulder injury in 2009 and thew for 3,198 yards. Jones was a freshman who is now on Heupel’s staff mentoring quarterbacks. Joey Aguilar gave Jones plenty of praise for helping him learn the system last year.

When Heupel arrived at Missouri, he inherited freshman Drew Lock, who threw for 3,399 yards as a sophomore in is first season with his new offensive coordinator.

In 2019 at UCF, Heupel started freshman Dillon Gabriel who threw for 3,653 yards in his first year in college.
Everyone knows the history of Heupel’s quarterbacks at Tennessee starting with Hendon Hooker through last season with Joey Aguilar.

Over the course of the next nearly three months, freshman Faizon Brandon and redshirt freshman George MacIntyre will duke it out for the starting quarterback job. History is clear that Heupel is not only comfortable, but he is successful with young quarterbacks in his system.

In Heupel’s five seasons at Tennessee, only Hooker has started more than one season. And to find someone who has started more than two seasons with Heupel, you have to go back to Heupel’s Oklahoma days with Landry Jones and Sam Bradford.

So, new quarterbacks are in Heupel’s wheelhouse.

Tennessee’s schedule is hard in 2026. A road trip to Georgia Tech in week two looms large.

The Vols have plenty of questions they have to answer this fall, just as every team does. However, when you have unknowns at quarterback, the questions seem bigger.

The reality is this season was always slated to be the year for a new quarterback. The thought when Nico Iamaleava signed was that he would be in the 2026 NFL draft. It didn’t workout that way, but the projection for 2026 has always been to break in a new signal-caller.
It’s a daunting task in the eyes of many, but not for Heupel, whose history says he’s successful with new and young signal-callers.
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-Hubbs
 
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