Tye & Tommy on Gamedays on the Hill, National Dive Bar Day, Jalen Tate joins, and what’s your Beef Wed!
The Morning Rush on new NIL rules, Goode on companies’ approach
Watch The Morning Rush LIVE on YouTube as Tye Richardson and Tommy Craft talk about how name, image and likeness is changing the landscape in college sports.
HALFTIME POD PRESENTED BY EASTSIDE LIQUORE: Back from holiday
Back from a long weekend, Phil Elson, Drew Barrett and Matt Travis talk about Smackdown’s engagement, visit with callers on the Halftime Pod presented by Eastside Liquor.
Halftime is LIVE talking NIL, latest Hogs news and more!
Join Phil Elson, Drew Barrett and Matt Travis for the leading mid-day sports show talking everything in the world of sports and even some Razorback stuff from 11-1.
Bud Light Seltzer Morning Rush Podcast: Rice point spread is out
Tye and Tommy on the Rice point spread, Arkansas athletes getting endorsements, #NationalFriedChickenDay and more!
Manning could be first $10 million a year player as a freshman
Get ready because a current high school junior could raise the bar on this whole name, image and likeness arms race in a couple of years … and raise it through the roof.
How much? Try $10 million a year before he ever takes a snap in a college game. Every player should be hoping he gets that because it will raise money for everybody.
That’s the number Darren Rovell of The Action Network threw out there on The Dan Patrick Show last week and don’t think for a minute it can’t happen.
“Arch Manning I could see making $10 Million as a freshman in college.”
–@DarrenRovell joined us to discuss NCAA NIL rules
For Darren’s full appearance: https://t.co/7BcyBRTeNH pic.twitter.com/fhrEk2Ilk0
— Dan Patrick Show (@dpshow) July 1, 2021
It may be an obscene number to some. Completely ridiculous to others. None of that really matters because everybody wanted college athletes to be paid, but the schools aren’t going to do it out of their budgets which throws it into the free market place.
Sure, he’s got the marketability. A pair of uncles who won a Super Bowl, a grandfather that was legendary in college football before he was 20 years old over 50 years ago and a marketing support system around him in a close-knit family that knows how to capitalize on it.
Throw in the fact he may be the most polished high school quarterback in the last few decades (maybe ever) and all of a sudden, $10 million a year might be on the low side.
You may not like or think it’s fair but if you thought this whole deal was going to be fair and equitable for everyone you obviously don’t know how the business world of sports works.
The guess here is nothing can be done to hold down this genie that has gotten out of the bottle and nobody is going to be able to get it back into that bottle. Forget about it. That’s not going to happen and it won’t be regulated very well.
“When you say, ‘Who’s the guy who’s gonna come in and blow this thing up?’” Rovell said on the show. “That’s the guy who I think of. But he’s got two years to go.”
Don’t expect this to be the norm for players coming into college. Probably over 99% of high school players don’t have the support system or the name to pull off anything like that.
Few players project as well in terms of his skill set as Manning. He’s got to show it on the field, but one guarantee in all this is he’s told that by his grandparents and entire family because they know.
It’s the rest of us that are looking at how high he’s going to raise the bar on the NIL rules.
NIL + transfer portal + no NCAA rules will equal chaos
It wasn’t particularly surprising to see Trey Knox make the first public splash with the new name, image and likeness deal and it’s the first step into murky waters nobody knows anything about.
Oh, there are people that think they know, but they really don’t know. They are guessing.
We all are right now.
About the only thing we know for sure is the NCAA has thrown up it’s hands and completely given up. The kangaroo court that has tried to make billions off college athletics for years knows it can’t control this.
The feeling is chaos is right around the corner.
That’s why they really didn’t even try to come down from the mountain with stone tablets on this thing. Congress is watching and if nothing else, the NCAA’s real over-riding concern is figuring out a way to keep the money coming in when laws start getting passed taking away that control.
A couple of big-time agents for professional athletes have told me they have no idea what’s going to happen because about all they do know right now is this is not like pro sports where the market is sort of established and there’s a going rate for things.
In college athletics right now it doesn’t take a brilliant person to see how they get around the restrictions being put out there that have loopholes large enough to drive a couple of semi trucks through with ease.
Maybe other Razorback players have signed. Knox’s bubbly personality and ability to get that across along with a good social media presence and a dog landed the first announced deal with PetSmart. Having a dog helps in a lot of areas in this day and age. Everybody seems to have one.
Everybody is figuring it out as we go along.
And you can bet Nick Saban and Alabama are at least three years ahead of this whole thing. The select few college football teams that are the only places where you can win a national championship these days are going to have it figured out.
It will be the same thing in college basketball. I’m waiting for the first Kentucky or Louisville seven-foot basketball player on a race horse social media posting. Eric Musselman has probably had that idea at some point.
The elephant in the room, so to speak, on this whole thing is how it’s handled with legal casinos. With nobody apparently ready to step out in front, I’m not sure it would violate any rule for a college athlete to sign a million-dollar deal with the legal casinos in the state of Arkansas.
How fast could a lawyer be in front of a judge on that one if somebody said no?
What judge wants to put a cap on the limit someone can pay a college athlete?
Arkansas has a state law that goes into effect Jan. 1, 2022, but the NCAA said last week that, well, schools could go ahead and do whatever they want to until those laws take effect … and nobody knows if the laws are even going to fly through any legal challenges if they are too restrictive.
Just for fun, throw in the transfer portal where players can effectively leave once for no reason at all or maybe bounce around if they can come up with a good lawyer.
While schools can monitor athletes’ social media accounts, they can’t control private messaging in all of the various forms.
Say a player at one school talks to a buddy at another school. There may be a record of the call but nobody is going to be able to know what was discussed unless you really want to open can of privacy violations.
Don’t think it won’t happen. Especially when players find out where the most money can be made.
The best part is nobody knows for sure what they and can’t do.
And the media doesn’t even know all the questions to ask.
Burks, Catalon named to PFF’s preseason All-SEC team
Six Razorbacks have earned a spot on the ProFootballFocus preseason All-SEC team.
Treylon Burks and Jalen Catalon were both tabbed first-team members, Grant Morgan is on the second team with offensive linemen Ricky Stromberg and Ty Clary on the third team while Myron Cunningham was honorable mention at left tackle.
Burks leads the way for the Hogs as a first-team selection after being named a second-team preseason All-American by PFF earlier in the week.
Burks led Arkansas with 51 catches, 820 yards and seven touchdowns in just nine games last season. His 91.1 yards per game was the third-highest mark in the league as he earned second-team All-SEC honors.
He was also one of only two FBS receivers, joining Florida’s Kadarius Toney, to log 800+ receiving yards and 70+ rushing yards despite missing a game due to injury.
PFF: “Burks took his play to new heights in 2020 after being solely utilized as a deep threat as a true freshman in 2019. He improved his receiving grade from 70.5 to 88.9 this past season. Burks still made his fair share of deep plays, but he started to produce on the underneath and intermediate route trees, too. “Burks was a hard man to tackle with his size, physicality and speed, averaging 7.6 yards after the catch and breaking nine tackles on 50 receptions in 2020. Those traits have helped him vertically, as well. Over the past two seasons, he has been responsible for 17 receptions of 20-plus yards, the 10th-most among Power Five receivers. And he did that as an underclassman.”
Jalen Catalon was named an honorable mention preseason All-American by PFF along with Burks and was placed on the preseason All-SEC first team by PFF with Burks. Catalon was sensational in his first prolonged action in 2020, collecting 99 tackles to finish third on the team.
He was named a first-team All-SEC member by the AP, third-team All-American by Phil Steele and a Freshman All-American by the FWAA and The Athletic. Catalon was one of the best defensive backs in the nation, landing on the Thorpe Award semifinalist list.
PFF: “Catalon is a high-energy, high-effort player in this Arkansas secondary who has the chance to take his play to elite status in 2021 after a fantastic first season in a starting job in 2020. He’s a quick processor and gets going in a hurry. He made eight plays on the ball and eight passing stops last season, both of which were top-10 marks among Power Five safeties.”
2020 All-America LB Grant Morgan is a second-team preseason All-SEC selection by PFF.
Morgan produced one of the greatest seasons in Arkansas history last season, leading the nation with 12.3 tackles per game and making a team-leading 111 tackles.
He became just the 16th Razorback to be named a Walter Camp All-American, earning second-team status from the foundation and AFCA. He also became the first Arkansas player to be a Burlsworth Trophy finalist.
Stromberg was a rock for the Hogs in the middle of the line last season, playing in nine games and starting eight at center.
According to PFF, he logged 628 offensive snaps — fourth-most on the team — and totaled a 69.7 season run blocking grade, ranking second among Razorback offensive linemen.
Clary’s move to right guard last season was impactful. The Fayetteville native played in the team’s final eight games, starting the last seven at right guard (5) and center (2). PFF rated his run blocking a team-high 74.7 over 461 offensive snaps.
Cunningham’s return for the 2021 season was one of Head Coach Sam Pittman’s biggest wins of the offseason.
He logged the most offensive snaps of any Razorback (705) and was one of just two offensive linemen (Brady Latham) to start all 10 games. He allowed only two sacks while posting pass blocking grades of 80+ four times according to PFF.
Information from Arkansas Communications is included in this story.
Rogers on Mississippi State’s championship with Halftime on Friday
D1 Baseball’s Kendall Rogers talked Friday afternoon with Phil Elson, Drew Barrett and Matt Travis on Halftime on Bulldogs’ title run.
Torres on flurry of players entering portal, NIL starting, how it affects draft
Fox Sports Radio’s Aaron Torres talked on Halftime about the rush to get into the portal before the deadline and how the NIL will impact the NBA Draft.
