buddha

Notre Dame's priests are wondering what it takes to be the best team in the State of Indiana or the ACC, much less a national champion...

i remember d rose flunking his ACT three times and then mysteriously passing it IN DETROIT on his 4th attempt. he was signed and sealed to illinois until memphis came in and gave his brother a "job" for $250k per year doing nothing. so rose spends a semester at memphis and all the records and wiped out two years later because he never actually passed his act. anthony davis famously charged schools $250k just to take a VISIT to campus. of course he ended up at kentucky.

i had a casual acquaintance who played at michigan with the fab five. he said jalen had 4 independent study classes and a cpr class. got a C in cpr but A's in the independent studies. they sat around and smoked pot and played video games all day, surrounded by huge boxes of shoes and clothes Nike constantly sent to them. had other friends who knew basketball players at michigan. traylor would show up for class on the first day but never again. then there would be a strange number of asian kids who showed up to take the final exam. willie mitchell? quite possibly the dumbest person she ever met. they would all get free cab rides whenever they wanted (pre-uber) and all the free subway they could eat. another person i know knew steve smith at state. said he had a huge SUV and lived in a nice condo in a really nice apartment complex. nice guy, but when he gave $5m to msu, he was paying them back... grant hill? really nice guy at duke. laettner and thomas hill? gay as all get out and the biggest snobby ass holes on campus.

i know this is a stupid thought, and a naive thought, but how many of these guys are actually going to class? bryce underwood is getting millions of dollars to play football for michigan, is he really going to English 101? is anyone still actually checking?

but this guy isnt 99 other guys. its your best player. that said, we'll never know because were not privy to all the information, and it is just as likely that this is driven by boras as by the tigers. its equally as likely that boras told skubal "the tigers are likely to come in at $19 to get to a number like $25, so we'll come in at $32." as you pointed out, DD and others hate this process because it makes you go in and tell your player how less valuable they are than they think they are. better to resolve it out of "court" than have to publicly denounce your talent.

i think emotion and an incredible sense of competitiveness got him there as well as incredible athletic talent. if you dont think great athletes can be petty and hold grudges over "business" and minor transgressions, i direct your attention to Michael Jeffrey Jordan. sometimes minor slights drive great athletes. im not saying this is happening with skubal, but dismissing it out of hand because "well, they know its a business" is just as likely to be false.

how do we know he doesnt? again, these guys are human. youre right, they know its a business, but we all work in business. and not everyone is mature enough to let things go. i imagine boras has told him everything that you've said, and everything you've said about it being a "business" and he's not a middle schooler is correct, but that doesnt mean he wont take offense, wont hold a grudge, and wont think about it the next time he has leverage....which should be in about 10 months.

hilman and mangum too. when you want a raise, enter the portal. i think haynes will leave. michigan picked up that kid from oklahoma because i think they knew haynes wanted more money than was in the budget for rb.

as someone who manages a lot of people, if i went into an open process like arbitration and said all sorts of things about how they didnt deserve the same salary as x, y, or z, there would be hurt feelings. no matter how much money they made. i know "its a business", but its still hard to hear that your employer doesnt think youre worth what you think youre worth. baseball players arent robots.

if the arbiyrator has to choose one or the other, then why not offer something more reasonable given the circumstances? if you really dont want to pay $32, then offer $25. you can at least make the case that this would be the largest arb award for a pitcher ever and acknowledge skubal's uniqueness. instead they basically said he's worth less than david price and told the mediator to take boras' number. in the end it wont mean anything to whether he signs here, but it could engender some hurt feelings depending upon how sensitive skubal is. but in reality, it seems they have resigned themselves to boras' number.

1k for each kid!

if healthy... they still need some DTs and more DEs....and linebackers...

not a great showcase for sherwood if he was trying to get traded...

i think the people around trump in the doj and the legal community have been very smart. i understand that the twitter idiot sycophants like kash patel, and kristi noem, and (especially) stephen miller and rfk are clowns. worse, evil incompetent clowns. but the solicitor general and the legal people at the doj are very smart and very clever. as for the supreme court, the court must consider what happens post trump. thomas and alito have always been in favor of a more powerful executive (unitary executive theory) and their writings/decisions reflect that. barrett/kavanaugh/chief are more on the fence, but obviously do not appreciate the recent trend (on both sides) of going to favorable courts to get nationwide injunctions to stop any legislation and have moved to stop it. kagan is more center left and usually correct (imo). gorsuch is a libertarian wild card. sotomayor and jackson are far left, especially jackson. and both have decided to wage their twitter battles in their opinions, bringing out the worst aspects of a tradition started by scalia of being derogatory of their opponents, without scalia's flare. in other words, the demonizing of the court on the left as "doing trump's bidding" is overblown and doesnt see the big picture. unfortunately, you have a very bad actor in the white house who uses the ambiguity of the legal world to push the boundaries. but simply pushing boundaries doesnt mean he crosses boundaries, and the court recognizes that. however, imo, the court is still wrong on occasion. most recently kavanaugh's fourth amendment writings that have basically legalized racial stops and arrests. he has tried to walk that back since then, but the mistake is out there and will need more than just footnotes to correct.

my initial thought is yes, however we dont know what the feds will do this time. it feels like uncharted territory, like most of this second trump administration.