Musings from Arledge: NCAA 'newsletter,' USC portal problems and point spreads

My Musings spy network got a copy of Charlie Baker’s top-secret NCAA monthly “newsletter.” Check it out:

There’s no reason for pleasantries today. Let’s just jump right in and address the elephant in the room. 

Yes, our organization is under immense pressure today. Yes, we are considering settling the class actions against us by offering to profit share with athletes. Yes, the Big Ten and SEC are discussing what the future of college football might look like without us. And, yes, the courts are not exactly favorable to our cause at the moment.

It is because of all this that I took a trip to visit with the boss—yes, him, the Big Boss—at the, ahem, corporate headquarters, to discuss strategy. Now before I go into the details, let me answer the questions that everybody wants to ask. No, he didn’t have a pitchfork or hooves. Yes, it was pretty hot down there. And, yes, we have many, many alumni in that facility. You’d be stunned just how many former infractions committee members I ran into. You’ll see that our alumni “Where are they now?” section at the end of today’s newsletter is particularly large today. That’s why.

So let me give you some of the details that came out of my meeting with the Big Boss. 

First, he wanted me to stress that whatever comes of our organization in the future, it’s been a tremendous success. In fact, he told me he never expected it to even get off the ground. One day he woke up after consuming twelve cases of Jack and he saw a note he had written for himself during his binger, and the note said just three words: “college athletes amateurism.” 

Now sober, the Boss worked on the project for months until he finally came up with an idea that he was willing to try but never really believed in. He thought, “How could I possibly convince the world that it’s okay for universities and coaches and broadcasters and a whole bunch of other adults to make millions of dollars from a multibillion-dollar industry and get to keep it all, not sharing any with the players, simply by chanting ‘amateurism’ every five minutes?” He didn’t think there was any way that idea could fly, and had he not been in the middle of a slow period, he never would have tried. Yet here we are. 

So the Boss wants us to understand that this silly idea has far exceeded any reasonable expectations, and whatever comes from this point forward is just icing on a patently ridiculous cake. 

And, he stressed, look at what we’ve done. How many lives have been damaged, how many young people taken advantage of, by an idea that he never thought would get off the ground? It’s amazing. And once the idea took off, human greed took it to places he never could have anticipated. At one point the money was so big, that not only were schools keeping all of the money and not sharing it with kids risking their health to generate it, but schools even started putting players on the field and on the court who could barely read, who had no business being in college, committing fraud to keep them eligible, and then denying them any share of the profits because their side of the deal was that they would “get an education.” When the Boss told me that, he couldn’t stop laughing. Literally, I stood there for half an hour waiting for him to stop, and his laugh was terrifying. It was one of the worst moments of my life.

Second, the Boss wanted me to remind all of you that you’ll be receiving tremendous rewards from corporate headquarters for your service. I asked if he could give us some details, but he said he liked to surprise people. So I guess we’ll just have to wait. 

I will say that I’m not sure exactly what the rewards system is going to look like. I ran into one of our former infractions committee chairs down there—a guy who provided invaluable service; we gave him a lifetime achievement award for a reason—and he didn’t look all that happy. I asked him if it was too hot. He said no, that where he lived it was hot and humid year round and the heat didn’t really bother him. But he said his assignment at corporate headquarters these days was to wash every lavatory in the complex with his own toothbrush. He starts at one end, gets to the other, and then repeats the process, with no rest. But before I could ask him any more, I got whisked away. But he does have an update in the alumni section! So check that out.

Anyway, so here’s the plan over the short term. The Boss said that since the amateurism idea finally died away, he decided to flood college football with money. Just give the kids tons and tons of money—more than many of them ever thought possible—and see if he can cause misery that way instead. He has a theory that overpaying kids will lead them to care less and less about their teammates and university and more about out their cars and suits. He thinks it will breed resentment in everybody and will make everybody long for the unfair days of “amateurism.” 

I asked him if he was sure it would work. He just said the early returns look promising, and he encouraged us to continue our policy of doing nothing proactive and absolutely nothing to improve the situation. He says that’s exactly what he hoped we would do and to keep it up. He says his focus right now is no funneling money into the system through an entrepreneur who made a deal with his soul some decades ago. He knows that guy will pour vast sums of money into buying players, and he feels sure that it will infuriate most of the other stakeholders in the system, mostly because they see that guy’s program as a traditional bottom feeder that succeeds only because of a huge cash infusion. They’re nouveau riche with the class that comes with it. Everybody else is furious.

He did say that wants us to remember that servants of his corrupt system come in many shapes and sizes. Remember, only one person can serve as NCAA president at a time, but many can serve in other ways. We all seem to understand that our committee volunteers can do a great deal of harm, so we should continue to look for the most corrupt and shameless volunteers for those committee positions. But he reminded us not to forget the benefit of a good patsy. A school official who cowers in the face of our organization and stands there clapping while we destroy the program he’s supposed to protect is one of the best tools we have. He wants to remind all of the fine folks in our organization to be on the lookout for targets like that.

Finally, he says that no matter what happens—even if our organization goes away, which it might—that we still have our agents in place. He pointed out that Notre Dame and the SEC are still immensely powerful and will have a hand in every decision. So don’t despair: his work will still be done, with or without us.

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This isn’t the transfer portal we all expected, is it? After seeing the effect Eric Henderson has had on high school recruits, I think we all expected USC to make a big splash in the spring transfer portal along the defensive line, especially after Lincoln Riley said out loud what we already knew: that this was a big need. Yet here we are, and USC has lost one projected starter and two big-bodied backups and have replaced them with … nothing. 

Yes, USC is still pursuing some defensive linemen, and those guys may commit and turn out to be good. I don’t know. And it’s also true that the primary targets in the transfer portal were not (at least in my mind) superstars. There’s no Aaron Donald or John Randall in that group. But there were some serviceable bigs who might, if they made a jump with good coaching, be legitimate All-Big Ten candidates. Losing out on those guys hurts, because USC needs help in the middle. 

It hurts all the more when Oregon steals guys like that away. I’m sure that Oregon did overpay for Harmon. I don’t know quite what to make of him. I know that Michigan State’s defense last year was about as bad as USC’s. But it sure would be nice to be the program that can afford to overpay, wouldn’t it? 

USC used to have major recruiting advantages over Oregon. USC has a better location, a better tradition (I mean, USC has one, so it has to be better than Oregon’s), and USC is a far superior university where the incoming students already know how to read. But in the days of pay-for-play, the university with the billionaire who cares about football has a major advantage over the university with billionaires who don’t. So USC is—for the first time—at a recruiting disadvantage to a program that has been third-rate for almost its entire existence.

That doesn’t feel great. Riley might be right that for every guy who leaves USC, 100 guys are lining up to replace him. That’s probably true. I just don’t know that many of those guys are 320 pounds and quick. 

USC has a tremendous defensive staff. It has some young, promising guys upfront. We’ll see how quickly Henderson and Nua can coach them up. That will be the difference between 7-5 on one hand and 9-3 or 10-2 on the other.

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Those early point spreads are interesting. LSU by 6? Okay, I guess. I still think USC and LSU are in a similar boat. Neither team played defense last year, and both replace all-world quarterbacks. I have my tickets, and I think USC has a fighting chance. But I don’t have an issue with the point spread.

But Michigan by 12? Twelve points? I know Michigan has been better than USC, but that Michigan team lost just about everybody, including its head coach. USC has huge question marks at defensive tackle and a lack of credibility on defense as a whole. Michigan has a couple of proven studs at defensive tackle and question marks all over the place otherwise. I could easily see Michigan winning seven games this year.

I could see that from USC, too, if Henderson doesn’t work miracles. But I have a feeling one of them might come in Ann Arbor.

And Penn State by six? That assumes Penn State will score six. They’re not Iowa offensively, but they’re not that far away. 

I think the Big Ten is going to be surprised. The Big Ten is known for defense, and that’s fine; I suspect they play pretty good defense. But it’s a lot easier to play defense in a conference where only a couple of teams can play offense. Kirk Ferentz can talk smack all he wants. But his defense looked like garbage against a mediocre Tennessee team. So he might want to be careful. I think some of these Big Ten defenses are going to get lit up by the West Coast teams this year.

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