A little context— Anyone at 247 or VQ etc is allowed to read situations or report on sentiment based on interviews. What they can’t do is leak before they are allowed to. They make their money by playing by those rules. There’s a point where they might “know” something but can’t share, a later point where they can share “confidence” but not the facts, and a final point when they can scoop the news. There are real insiders. This is a group composed of staff, Spyre attorneys, big money boosters etc. They have the state of affairs before anyone. If you’re like me, you know some of those people. Usually someone like me is let loose for a long time then reined in periodically. I have been allowed to share a lot over the last 3-5 years. During the Rice negotiations, everyone on the real insider circle got very nervous and tight with information. Villanova got our term sheet terms, USC soon after. He got big offers designed to blow up our deal. It worked. We lost Rice. Since then, everything has been tight-lipped. In the Massamba/Abrams week, I knew we had two guards from outside the main pool that we had a good chance to sign. Midweek, Todd knew who they were. I didn’t. He is obviously connected to someone in that circle who is playing looser than instructed or hasn’t been instructed yet. If you all remember “Check my stats” guy who nailed a few predictions, he is a guy who was friends with a big money booster. He got some nuggets early, shared, got cutoff. I know who he is and watched it happen. So far Todd is batting 1000. Timing is always hard to predict on these signings. Deals can be 95% done and then an issue pops up with transcripts, family travel promises or some other trivial matter and it take another three days. Give it time. I still don’t know who he’s referring to. I don’t get my ego inflated by knowing things, but enjoy sharing information when I get it. Right now I don’t have it. Hard to overstate how painful that Rice situation was. He was in paperwork when he got scooped due to poor information control. Let’s see if something happens this week. If it doesn’t happen today, don’t burn Todd at the stake. It may still be true. Just late.
