Full disclosure… 67 year old Boomer… Please Stay Off My Lawn…

Family involved intimately with A&M football since days of Gene Stallings… Used to be a recruiting geek…

Know and saw many instances first-hand of "money recruiting"… Never bothered me…

One anecdote…Good friend in high school lived in small dilapidated frame house with only drapes for interior doors… Sad…. Star football player… Really good guy, good student, the whole package…

Used to come over to our house a lot and pretend to rake leaves with me so A&M could pass $100 to him… His family really needed the money…

Barry Switzer spoke at the school All-Sports Banquet that year…. DROVE down in a new car and wore a beautiful leather jacket, which appeared WAY too big for him..

The next day Barry FLEW back to Norman, and ACCIDENTALLY left the jacket… Just told my friend to bring the jacket and car back when he made his official visit…

Ended up signing with OU… First round NFL draft pick after college…

This kinda stuff went on all the time…

NIL takes away the "criminal", underhanded shame element… Which in my opinion is a great thing…

These other coaches and former coaches need to quit worrying about how much the players make…

It was definitely going on behind the scenes that's why the historical powers hate it so much. They were allowed To get away with cheating while everyone else got probation. I know for a fact players were getting
Paid in the early 70's up to brand new cars. NIL as disorganized as it is allows for the cheating to be fair because it is no longer cheating to buy players.

Sorry Not Sorry we have more money than everyone else.

I also think it is a crutch for those that don't like A&M right now...it's how they justify our class.

If you really dig into each recruitment, for many/most of them A&M was considered a player long before NIL became a thing last summer.

We absolutely locked down Houston, which happened to have some of the most natural recruiters in the country between guys like Bobby & Green.

We had personal "ins" with a lot of the more national guys like Smoke. Additionally, guys like Shemar, White and others were talked about as priority targets (who had interest in A&M) long before NIL started up.

I think that is why Jimbo was so pissed. His coaches worked their tails off, and yeah - we had a really polished NIL program, but that mostly just kept us out in front....

So while I'm not dumb enough to believe it played no role, and will even say I'm sure it was significant for some, I think the suggestions that most of our rivals are complaining about (most of which are still actually illegal, mind you) are just sour grapes so they can believe it's an outlier. When A&M is right there in the thick of things for another top 3-5 class (depending on how many we take), they're going to really struggle to come up with excuses.

JDCAG (NOT Colin) said:

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I also think it is a crutch for those that don't like A&M right now...it's how they justify our class.

If you really dig into each recruitment, for many/most of them A&M was considered a player long before NIL became a thing last summer.

We absolutely locked down Houston, which happened to have some of the most natural recruiters in the country between guys like Bobby & Green.

We had personal "ins" with a lot of the more national guys like Smoke. Additionally, guys like Shemar, White and others were talked about as priority targets (who had interest in A&M) long before NIL started up.

I think that is why Jimbo was so pissed. His coaches worked their tails off, and yeah - we had a really polished NIL program, but that mostly just kept us out in front....

So while I'm not dumb enough to believe it played no role, and will even say I'm sure it was significant for some, I think the suggestions that most of our rivals are complaining about (most of which are still actually illegal, mind you) are just sour grapes so they can believe it's an outlier. When A&M is right there in the thick of things for another top 3-5 class (depending on how many we take), they're going to really struggle to come up with excuses.

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Past 4 recruiting classes below. I think in the aggregate we rank 3 or 4 overall for the past 4 classes. It's not like we just came out of nowhere to steal the #1 class. It's not like we went 5-7 and finished with a top 5 class. We are a clearly well coached team, with a talent filled backyard, on the perfect trajectory, that just beat the #1 team at home with the best atmosphere in college football with basically every big time recruit attending the game. Saying A&M only did it by paying for their class is lazy, but people are lazy and will believe anything that fits a convenient narrative so here we are. F em.

#1 -2022
#8 -2021
#6 -2020
#4 -2019

When you piss off Saban enough to have him whine about what you are doing then you're doing something right.

F@ck the rest of the SEC.