Many are feeling a sense of doom with the possible reemergence of the sips to elite status. Hopefully they lose Saturday and bounced from CFP round 1 and leave elite status to Georgia, OSU...
But if they win a few more games this year and the media crowns them the best program does that make it harder for us? Any harder for us than if Bama, Georgia or LSU is the program?
For 20 years, the sips have been mostly pathetic. We could have significantly improved the W-L record between us. But except for a couple seasons we've been underperforming.
I have no doubts we can win and be elite regardless of the sips. But could it be possible we actually benefit from an elite sip program?

They arent elite. Their defining win was against us as we are struggling in nov. They struggled against vandy, played an injured qb in Arkansas, and played a lagwayless walkon at florida. They will lose to GA again, and i'm sure the portal will hit them harder.

83Aggie said:

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After almost two decades of irrelevance , tu has a good team again. It does not have to be one or the other. They can be good and we can also be elite. We just need to focus on ourselves. The 5 star WR pickup is a great start.

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I agree. Sark and the sips will probably be exposed this weekend. I hope they stay irrelevant. Their success isn't tied to ours. But I also think that even if they surprise us its not at our expense and could even have some unintended benefits

IslanderAg04 said:

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They arent elite. Their defining win was against us as we are struggling in nov. They struggled against vandy, played an injured qb in Arkansas, and played a lagwayless walkon at florida. They will lose to GA again, and i'm sure the portal will hit them harder.

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I agree. They tried to give us the game and we refused it. They won't run on UGA and Sark will eventually screw it all up

There will never be another Saban or dynasty like bama now that NIL has taken hold.

The playing field has leveled out and we can keep up with the joneses. We just need to put together a good season then we can build on that. And we'll have our opportunity every year to play spoiler.

i don't know if it helps or hurts. but i do know that both texas and texas a&m can both be elite at the same time. look at texas and ou over the years. they had multiple top 5 matchups. during that time we were very average.

what i am uncertain of is can texas a&m, texas and ou all be elite at the same time. i am not sure about that.

Sark is in year 4. Longhorn fans wanted him gone early on in his stint. They threw NIL money around like Monopoly money. I think our rich guys understands now they have to do the same. Fisher left this program in a mess. Elko had over 40 new guys right? Elko is going to get this thing going. Love the class he put together today. Miami, Florida State, Florida we're all elite at the same time. So yes, A&M and the horns can both be elite.

In the past 19 years Texas has had the higher ranked recruiting class 13 times. In the past 19 years Texas ended the year in the final AP rankings 8 times (I'm including this year).

Those 6 times where we had the higher recruiting ranking was - surprise, surprise - in the SEC. In that same time period Texas ended the year out of the AP poll the most.

Frustratingly, even with our highest ranked recruiting classes we were never able to achieve anything. In 19 years we ended the year ranked 4 times, two of those were the JFF years.

So, while we are the quintessential underperforming team, our recruiting negatively impacted Texas's own recruiting and concomitant on field performance.

Which is why they connived to join the SEC (probably telling recruits a couple of years prior) and which is why some of us here were telling those advocating for them that it wasn't a good idea.

Now that Texas is in the SEC, winning at recruiting and winning games - maybe the most important yet, we are going to fade away unless NIL can keep our recruiting class relatively close.

Of those 13 years where Texas had the higher recruiting class 10 of the years our ranking was significantly worse.

Not necessarily but it doesn't help. A&M, horn, OU and LSU (with a few others) battle for the best players in Texas. When you end up a distant fourth in that group things don't generally work out so great. Ask RC.

rootube said:

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Not necessarily but it doesn't help. A&M, horn, OU and LSU (with a few others) battle for the best players in Texas. When you end up a distant fourth in that group things don't generally work out so great. Ask RC.

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That WAS my thought. For any national media benefits of a competitive rivalry between sips and Ags we fought over limited Texas players. So if they sucked we benefited. But both teams recruit 30% outside Texas and with LSU and Bama and Georgia taking TX HS talent does it really matter as much as 1995 if we lose players to Sips versus Bama?

83Aggie said:

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After almost two decades of irrelevance , tu has a good team again. It does not have to be one or the other. They can be good and we can also be elite. We just need to focus on ourselves. The 5 star WR pickup is a great start.

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Historically thought it always has been one or the other, with very rare exceptions.

In our 120ish year history, there have only been a handful of times (around 10 total) where both teams were ranked in the top 10 and maybe double that where both teams have been ranked.

its a zero sum game. Their success is our failure.

schmellba99 said:

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83Aggie said:

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After almost two decades of irrelevance , tu has a good team again. It does not have to be one or the other. They can be good and we can also be elite. We just need to focus on ourselves. The 5 star WR pickup is a great start.

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Historically thought it always has been one or the other, with very rare exceptions.

In our 120ish year history, there have only been a handful of times (around 10 total) where both teams were ranked in the top 10 and maybe double that where both teams have been ranked.

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I agree. And I don't want to find out if Sips doing good has benefits to us. I hope they suck. But I think with all the recent changes to college football history may not be a good indicator.

It will absolutely hurt us because our fan base will demand a new coach every three years. Can't ever build anything if you're constantly tearing it down and starting over

schmellba99 said:

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83Aggie said:

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After almost two decades of irrelevance , tu has a good team again. It does not have to be one or the other. They can be good and we can also be elite. We just need to focus on ourselves. The 5 star WR pickup is a great start.

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Historically thought it always has been one or the other, with very rare exceptions.

In our 120ish year history, there have only been a handful of times (around 10 total) where both teams were ranked in the top 10 and maybe double that where both teams have been ranked.

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Around 10? No, try 2. Only in 1941 and 1975 were both teams in the top ten on gameday.

However, I think this all depends on how OU adapts in the next few years. If they don't become strong again soon then I do think it's possible both Texas schools could regularly be really good at the same time going forward.

tu recruiting number 1 and NIL portal money, hard to argue they wont be elite. They are looking at maybe 8 draft picks this year if Quinn declares

That being said they may only return one OL starter so there will be holes, both tackles projected first round and TE another NFL draft prospect, 3 NFL players on their OL jeez...

I remember when Florida, Florida St, and Miami were all elite at the same time.

There are plenty of great football players to go around.

It may not be the BEST thing that ever happened, but its not the end of the program as we know it either.

(Especially now that A&M can pay plenty of money as well).

v1rotate92 said:

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rootube said:

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Not necessarily but it doesn't help. A&M, horn, OU and LSU (with a few others) battle for the best players in Texas. When you end up a distant fourth in that group things don't generally work out so great. Ask RC.

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That WAS my thought. For any national media benefits of a competitive rivalry between sips and Ags we fought over limited Texas players. So if they sucked we benefited. But both teams recruit 30% outside Texas and with LSU and Bama and Georgia taking TX HS talent does it really matter as much as 1995 if we lose players to Sips versus Bama?

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It matters a lot. Those four teams usually are on the same offer list for the top Texas guys. There were the outlier classes with Jimbo where he just got everyone nationally but that was an anomaly. The best Texas players still matter a lot and those four teams are where the bulk of them land historically. UGA, Bama, OSU, UF, UM, ND will usually take one or two but that is never their base.

At the end of the day it's a zero sum game there aren't enough elite players to stock all four teams.

schmellba99 said:

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IslanderAg04 said:

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They arent elite. Their defining win was against us as we are struggling in nov. They struggled against vandy, played an injured qb in Arkansas, and played a lagwayless walkon at florida. They will lose to GA again, and i'm sure the portal will hit them harder.

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And yet they are playing in the SEC championship game and ranked #2 in the country. Not bad for not being elite.

I wish we weren't elite in that manner.

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If they swapped 2 of their games to Tennessee, bama, scar, ole miss, LSU, or Misourri. They wounldnt be in the championship game. They played the bottom of the SEC, and beat a trash Michigan team. The only team they played in the top half of the sec was GA, at home, and they got dominated.

If we can get top 10 classes then no it doesn't hurt

OP: sip is already elite. Yes their being elite hurts us because we are their nearest neighbor and at a greatly increased risk of, in order for stakeholders to extract more ROI from their literal cash cow in Austin, being tagged a "bad guy" program...such as Florida State has been recently.

Elitehood in modern CFB has precious little to do with real edges in terms of coaching or athletic talent. Elitehood in modern CFB consists entirely in favorable treatment from every organization that exerts oversight and influence on the sport. This includes the NCAA, the fetid swamp of officiating bodies, media, and the baldfaced, venal committees that make summary decisions (e.g. sip making it to CFP last year).

The only way that a program with our geography can fight this in the long run is to exercise influence at every point on the spectrum, from the same corrupt backrooms of the NCAA & the ring-kissing of Disney et al., to kicking off open-source, fully-transparent programs to objectify and expose bias across the rest of said spectrum (slanted officiation is the low hanging fruit there IMO).

1626 said:

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I remember when Florida, Florida St, and Miami were all elite at the same time.

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I have always found the difference in the major Florida schools vs the dynamics between Texas and Texas A&M interesting. We are generally never ranked together by years end whereas it is entirely different for the Florida schools.

Over a 44 year period (beginning in 1980) the Canes, Noles, and Gators all ended the year ranked in the final AP poll 16 times. That's all three schools finishing the year ranked.

Two of the three schools ended the year ranked 13 times.

Of the remaining 15 years only one team ended the year ranked 14 out of 15 years (there was only one year since 1980 where none of the schools ended the year ranked). 13 of those 15 years occurred beginning in 2006.

There are two points of interest here with what happened in 2006:

1. Miami joined Florida State in the ACC Conference in 2005 and would end the year ranked 5 times (versus Florida State's 10 and Florida's 11) a very significant drop off from previous years prior to joining the ACC where they ended the year ranked every year since 1980 except for 1982 and 1997.

2. 5 of those 13 years where only 1 of the big three schools ended the year ranked in the final AP poll the University of Central Florida was also ranked.


When all three schools ended the year ranked they were in three different conferences. A significant change occurred when Miami joined FSU in the ACC. Another change, albeit to a lesser extent, occurred with the rise of UCF.

If you mean having 5 guys on the Oline that could go in the first 4 rounds of this draft means elite, then yes 2024 whorns are elite.

Elite dynasties are a thing of the past year end and year out with the SEC, NIL and portal.

Elko's got a 3 game head start on first year Sark, even in the big 12. He's building from the inside-out and doing things the right way versus throwing nil money and time on stars only like the past nimrod.

schmellba99 said:

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83Aggie said:

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After almost two decades of irrelevance , tu has a good team again. It does not have to be one or the other. They can be good and we can also be elite. We just need to focus on ourselves. The 5 star WR pickup is a great start.

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Historically thought it always has been one or the other, with very rare exceptions.

In our 120ish year history, there have only been a handful of times (around 10 total) where both teams were ranked in the top 10 and maybe double that where both teams have been ranked.

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A lot of that has to do with playing each other at the end of the year. If you lose more than a few games in during the season, you won't be ranked.

Just go look at the tu-ou series of recent history. Because of their status as programs, they always start the year ranked high. Then, they start with mostly cream puff OOC schedules before they play early in the year so that they are almost always both ranked when they play. But in the last 10-15 years, both usually weren't ranked by the end of the year.

Hell, this year's 6-6 ou team was rnaked when they played the sips. And we all knew they sucked at that time.

As usual, we're sitting here talking about Texas with 4 losses on our record. Win the other games first, build a program, then go after the big dogs.

And yes, Texas being elite hurts us because we lose head to head recruiting on the best of the best. Look at the Rivals 250. You will notice a distinct difference between the two programs.

PeekingDuck said:

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As usual, we're sitting here talking about Texas with 4 losses on our record. Win the other games first, build a program, then go after the big dogs.

And yes, Texas being elite hurts us because we lose head to head recruiting on the best of the best. Look at the Rivals 250. You will notice a distinct difference between the two programs.

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The only reason is recruiting/signing day. That has always been the case with tu/a&m.

Unless of course we're talking about a thug from North Shore not named Tiki, sips can have anyone from that school they want