re: So, is it kinda true the SEC was cheating way more than anyone else pre NIL?

Yeah, lap dog was a poor choice of words. As an SEC guy you’ve never (until now) had to deal with crap that I’ve had to deal with. I’m not looking for sympathy but the SEC fans became a cult. When Clemson won back to back no one gave the ACC any credit - it was always Clemson was an outlier. Yet, a random SEC team has a decent season and the cult screams about how great the conference is. No - it’s just a school like Vandy or Kentucky finally hired a decent coach.

I look at my team - a mid level ACC team that historically averages around 7 wins which is .500 ball when you take away the patsies. We’ve done very well against SEC schools even when we sucked. Yes, UGA owns us but they own everyone but Bama. We have whipped Auburn, Miss St, Kentucky in the recent past. Ole Miss and Tennesee have also gotten us. But outside of UGA we are generally above .500 against the SEC, yet those games have never “counted”. We play Tennessee home and home the next 2 years and I expect those games to be fun and close. Sure, they’ll be pre-season ranked because they a large stadium and rabid fanbase and we’ll be “others receiving votes” but those will be good games because now we get talented players too since we can pay.

I’m a southern homer so I’m always happy when any southern team wins, except UGA. I’m looking forward to watching the Lane Train circus and if Texas can finally break thru. But, the days of dominance are over. No one is afraid of the SEC and it’s mainly due to the lack of defense. The SEC, and all conferences, have essentially become the Big 12 with all offense and no defense. That surprises me.

They weren’t paying bush to play at USC or because he was playing at USC, they were never SC boosters—they were fronting him money to get his rep fees after he was done at USC and earning money in the pros. They would have paid him no matter where he played, had nothing to do with USCs program, everything to do with future earnings.

These others were straight up paid large sums just to be at a specific school.

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The LSU booster paid the kid for the 2012, 2013, 2015 & 2016 season. Nether the player, or any of the coaches from those years was at LSU when this situation was discovered. They had to vacate 37 wins from those years.

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Vacating wins is a joke. It was clearly a systemic thing and people inside the program knew. Guys don’t pay hundreds of thousands to multiple players as fanboys. The reason you ban a program from postseason is to punish the program, not specific people. Reggie Bush was 5 years removed from USC and Pete Carrol had already left for the NFL when they were sanctioned.

If you want to believe and pretend nobody at LSU knew about that, I guess we can agree to disagree. What can be proven is another matter. That’s the old “lack of institutional control”

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More likely reason, the best players (south) just stayed home until the money was too good

This seems to be the most likely driver

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They all went North or West in the 60s and 70s for obvious reasons and then familes came back and stayed home in the 80s/90s when things had ahem, settled down.

That's the prevailing theory.

If GT had never left we’d be easily jn the top half because we traditionally were and nothing would have changed. The reason Bear Bryant and Bobby Dodd disliked each other and we left was because we actually competed with Bama and won our fair share. You didn’t see the Bear pissed at Tulane or Miss St.

Of course being successful would have come down to embracing the bagman system. I don’t know if GT would have. I do know the negative recruiting against us being in the ACC would never have taken hold. Also, admitting morons to play the lines would have been interesting.

All I know, is the portal and NIL has been the greatest tools teams like GT, Indiana, Vandy have ever been given. Half my team (exaggeration of course) is former depth pieces from the SEC which is why actually sniffed being ranked. Now we got a 5 star RB from Michigan so our offense should be solid and our defense has no where to go but up and we got a lot of portal guys in that side. I expect another 7-9 wins. I think fans just under estimate the talent on a lot of mid tier teams. When the reality is there isn’t much difference between a 4 or 3 star. Our starting QB is gonna be Mendoza”s little brother and he’s darn good. I’m not gonna say he’s the next top NFL QB but from what I hear from the closed spring practices is that our coaches love him and that he is fast and skillful which is what we need op to win a lot of ACC games, The Tennessee game will be a fun one early on after we whip Deion once again.

While its likely true to an extent, history tells us the Big 10 powers have been doing their fair share of cheating over the years as well. Until Ryan Day, name an OSU coach that hasn't had recruiting violations. Tressell and company cheated, got caught, lied about and continued to cheat and lie about it. We all know Meyers way of doing things. Cooper, Hayes etc. Then we have Michigan who have a tidy little history of paying basketball players. Add USC, Oregon etc in now and its obvious they were all cheating.

All to say, its cyclical.

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The same FSU team that got whipped something like 63-3 in their bowl game without their starting qb?

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Lol. They were missing most of their entire starting lineup. And as I am told, that’s the main reason the SEC lost all their bowl games last year—because nobody plays in them except the backups.

Like I said earlier, my analysis indicates there were probably 15-20 teams using the bagman system from all conferences. But the SEC clearly and knowingly had more doing it. That’s not a knock in them - that was good business to keep up. My team in the heart of the southeast didn’t do it and we suffered tremendously for not doing it while UGa, Bama, Auburn, FSU, Clemson all did. That’s why no 5 star outside Calvin even looked at GT. It sucked to be surrounded by sharks while you are a dolphin.

That era is over which is why everyone now has a chance. Sure, schools are still living off of past reputation for young players but in another 2-4 years the future 4 and 5 stars won’t give a rip about Saban or Bama’s past success or UGA’s back to back because those players would have been in 3rd grade when it happened. For us fans, we remember it like it was yesterday, but young people don’t have that historical perspective. All they see is Auburn has sucked, Bama is declining, UGA can’t get past the BIG, etc, etc. Heck, my team has hosted more 4 and 5 stars on visits this past year than ever in our history. And it’s all because we can pay and have shown we can coach a little. And even though we haven’t beaten UGA the whole country saw us compete toe to toe with them because their talent has fallen and our talent has risen. That’s what makes a healthy sport.

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Like I said earlier, my analysis indicates there were probably 15-20 teams using the bagman system from all conferences. But the SEC clearly and knowingly had more doing it. That’s not a knock in them - that was good business to keep up. My team in the heart of the southeast didn’t do it and we suffered tremendously for not doing it while UGa, Bama, Auburn, FSU, Clemson all did. That’s why no 5 star outside Calvin even looked at GT. It sucked to be surrounded by sharks while you are a dolphin.

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Sorry man, GT was paying players too. Not on the level that the teams you mentioned, but they were playing the game too, just on a smaller level. The biggest reason you couldn't get big time players was you had below average coaches or in Paul Johnson's case (great coach, he ran a system that big time players didn't want to play in). Now that you have a pretty damn good coach in Key, you're seeing the results of that. The only difference in Tech and other schools above them is the level that they took things to. They recruited and signed "morons". They paid players. Tech just had poor coaches and a much smaller fan base that cares about sports.

Edit: I say this a a guy who grew up a fan of both GT and UGA and has been a high school coach in metro Atlanta for close to 25 years which includes being in charge of recruiting at a couple of the largest schools in the area at times.

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The biggest recipient of his embezzlement payments happened to be a football players dad, but that dad was also well known as a shady as frick crooked businessman before his son was ever good at football.

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Of course they paid the dad. They always funnel money back through family. It creates plausible deniability like it did with newton and everyone claiming he was just a victim and had no clue about it.

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I don’t follow B1G football or basketball that closely so I don’t have individual stories at the top of my tongue but Ohio State and Penn State just happened to be top 10 every year in recruiting rankings because blue chip kids wanted to play there and ignored bagmen from SEC schools is laughable

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Those states are recruiting hotbeds and their rosters were traditionally loaded with in state talent. Especially tOSU. I have no doubt they cheated, the argument is that the SEC cheated more voluminously, and brazenly.

tOSU took a postseason ban for players trading merch for tats. LSU vacated some wins for players being the beneficiaries of hundreds of thousands of dollars that were stolen from a healthcare fund.

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Denial? You’re a conspiracy theorist Big 10 fanboy

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He’s either a nut job or trolling.

Either way, nobody should be having a serious conversation with him. He is not a serious person.