Breaking: Ricky Gibson to the portal

[SayUWantAreVOLution]

I was talking about specifically with Gibson. You made insinuations that he was offered things with a wink and nod. AKA, you are talking out of your ass.

I've no idea, nor you what a specific player was ever offered and I'd never imply that I do.

What I do know is there's a lot of people in the recruiting industry who have the ethics of jackals and we've seen that year after year after year.

I don't believe UT historically has too much moral high ground when it comes to recruiting.

 

[The_Big_Orange]

He ain’t going to play in the league. So don’t judge him for something you’d prolly do too

 

[Carp]

I've no idea, nor you what a specific player was ever offered and I'd never imply that I do.

What I do know is there's a lot of people in the recruiting industry who have the ethics of jackals and we've seen that year after year after year.

I don't believe UT historically has too much moral high ground when it comes to recruiting.

But you did imply that unethical behavior transpired when you stated "Lord knows what the kid was offered on visits with a wink and nod."


And regardless of ANY of that, the onus on still on the individual to a act in good faith in any business arrangement. Gibson quite clearly isn't interested in doing that.

 

[DaddyChad]

He ain’t going to play in the league. So don’t judge him for something you’d prolly do too

Gibson was on track to be a really good CB. I think he definitely makes it to the nfl barring an injury or set back. Kid was only a sophomore

 

[SayUWantAreVOLution]

But you did imply that unethical behavior transpired when you stated "Lord knows what the kid was offered on visits with a wink and nod."


And regardless of ANY of that, the onus on still on the individual to a act in good faith in any business arrangement. Gibson quite clearly isn't interested in doing that.

I don't believe good faith exists in college athletics except on the field or on the court between teammates. Like pros, they're all trying to make their money, not get hurt, and take care of their family. There's a brotherhood when you're practicing and playing the game but all the other negotiations are "you do what you need to do."

The talk of "hurting his team" is a little dramatic for me. I'm sure they all want to win but as it shifts toward a pro model, it's a job. A player's film and performance speaks for itself regardless of the team's ranking and success. Colorado was not a contender but Hunter is still expected to be high draft pick, if not first.

 

[Volnbeers]

bye!

 

[RockyTop140]

Why? You can negotiate every year with your job and leave for more money whenever you want.

I agree with you BTW but what I posted above is what’s always thrown in my face

As bad as it sucks, it’s hard to blame anyone for doing it. It’s easy to call players selfish for wanting more money, but id likely do the same thing every year. And he did gain leverage when McCoy got hurt. Losing your best CB is bad enough, losing your next best is an emergency. I can understand any decision the university decides to make. Don’t want to set a bad precedent by giving in, but also don’t want to lose your next best corner. Stuck between a rock and a hard place

 

[Carp]

I don't believe good faith exists in college athletics except on the field or on the court between teammates. Like pros, they're all trying to make their money, not get hurt, and take care of their family. There's a brotherhood when you're practicing and playing the game but all the other negotiations are "you do what you need to do."

The talk of "hurting his team" is a little dramatic for me. I'm sure they all want to win but as it shifts toward a pro model, it's a job. A player's film and performance speaks for itself regardless of the team's ranking and success. Colorado was not a contender but Hunter is still expected to be high draft pick, if not first.

Even in the pro's, players do not renegotiate a deal 2 months after signing a contract.

 

[SayUWantAreVOLution]

Even in the pro's, players do not renegotiate a deal 2 months after signing a contract.

There are likely union agreements about renegotiating though you sometimes see a contract terms "tweaked" for cap hit reasons or spread out for financial reasons.

I'm 100% with you if you're suggesting the high revenue schools should form a pro league, lease the logos/facilities, unionize, pay full-time officials, establish free agency rules, salary caps, etc.

Hopefully before they ruin everything for every college athlete but I'm not hopeful.

If you want to treat college athletes like pro athletes, then establish a pro league. It's pretty simple.

 

[Carp]

There are likely union agreements about renegotiating though you sometimes see a contract terms "tweaked" for cap hit reasons or spread out for financial reasons.

I'm 100% with you if you're suggesting the high revenue schools should form a pro league, lease the logos/facilities, unionize, pay full-time officials, establish free agency rules, salary caps, etc.

Hopefully before they ruin everything for every college athlete but I'm not hopeful.

If you want to treat college athletes like pro athletes, then establish a pro league. It's pretty simple.

I am not aware of any contracts getting tweaked 2 months after signing in the off-season. And the contracts that do get tweaked are done so about a year or more after signing and involve the team paying the player extra money to tweak that contract for cap reasons.

Periodically players do get asked to take less or get cut, but even then, it's never 2 months into the contract.

 

[SayUWantAreVOLution]

I am not aware of any contracts getting tweaked 2 months after signing in the off-season. And the contracts that do get tweaked are done so about a year or more after signing and involve the team paying the player extra money to tweak that contract for cap reasons.

Periodically players do get asked to take less or get cut, but even then, it's never 2 months into the contract.

Like I said, unionize the players and make them actually pros and get a Congressional Antitrust Exemption and the teams can negotiate for all the control you want.

As of now, UT has sued repeatedly to give the players all the cards and keep the NIL and transfer market a free for all.

If UT has a problem with Gibson, they can find a mirror.

 

[patrick]

The player deserves blame.

He and the other collegiate athletes with NIL deals are professionals which comes with public scrutiny and criticism.

 

[LegionnaireOfTheMiserable]

Maybe so or maybe not, but this is reality. Players will negotiate and use leverage too. Respect them for being red-blooded American capitalists. Don't sit around complaining like a bunch of jealous old hens. It's football. The guys are putting their health on the line because we like watching. They deserve to be paid.

It isn’t anti-capitalism to say hey, “Gee, I wish my favorite sports teams could keep their good players.” Hard to take anyone seriously when they try to make that argument. I’m fine with players being paid, but there is a reason why no professional sport has ever operated like college sports are operating right now.

 

[ATCVolinmn]

This all just highlights how broken UT and other schools have helped make college football. Blame Rickey Gibson all day long but I'll bet Coach Heupel was consulted when UT and the State of TN decided to join the lawsuit which forced the NCAA to create multiple transfers with no penalty.

Gibson is just using the leverage UT wanted him to have and NOW you want to complain that he is?

These young players didn't create this crap show of pro football masquerading as amateur college sports. They didn't create NIL, the portal, the transfer rules...... none of the mess that college football has become.

It's as though you left all your food just sitting in your tent in the Smokies and now you want the bear put down because he smelled it, showed up, and took it.

So if Gibson blows out his knee and can't play the season, can we use his own method and renegotiate his contract for less money, since he's no longer worth it?

 

[05_never_again]

I understand the nostalgia for the way the game used to be. Team loyalty, guys wanting to play for the schools they grew up rooting for, etc. A few thoughts that have helped me come to grips with it though:

Guys playing mostly for "the love of the game" and having a ton of loyalty to their school didn't go away with NIL. All NIL has done is taken what happened under the table and put it on top of the table. Ever since playing professionally meant a higher salary than a well-paying "normal job" (which has been the case since probably the 1950s), guys have committed to programs and coaches who they think maximize their changes of playing professionally. If that coaches leaves the program, many guys aren't interested in staying at that program. The real sea change in the game is the transfer portal, not NIL, and I'm all ears for making the portal calendar make more sense. The way it is currently set up is insane.

If you want the game to go back to essentially being an amateur sport, then you'd have to give up all the modern trappings of the sport. Which I imagine nobody wants to do. I'm talking about massively reduced TV broadcasts of games, smaller stadiums (and a worse gameday experience), less merch, etc. You'd basically have to take away everything that allows the sport to bring in tons of money.

It's just really, really hard to argue that in an endeavor that brings in billions of dollars a year, the players shouldn't be allowed anything beyond their scholarship and maybe a meal stipend.

 

[Carp]

Like I said, unionize the players and make them actually pros and get a Congressional Antitrust Exemption and the teams can negotiate for all the control you want.

As of now, UT has sued repeatedly to give the players all the cards and keep the NIL and transfer market a free for all.

If UT has a problem with Gibson, they can find a mirror.

2 things can be true.

UT is contributing to the current environment that allows for this to happen. And Gibson is acting in bad faith.

 

[SayUWantAreVOLution]

So if Gibson blows out his knee and can't play the season, can we use his own method and renegotiate his contract for less money, since he's no longer worth it?

Seems fair to me. When your value goes up, you get paid and when your value goes down, you don't.

For optics, however, you'll get negative recruited for it. "They don't care if you get hurt working for them. They'll just toss you aside. We'll take care of you."

Gibson may get "negative recruiting" if he's trying to squeeze UT for more money too, but teams take guys with weed issues, assault issues, etc so I'm doubtful it matters much if he can play.

 

[SayUWantAreVOLution]

2 things can be true.

UT is contributing to the current environment that allows for this to happen. And Gibson is acting in bad faith.

Sure, but bad faith has been part of coaches changing jobs, guys being signed then recruited over and told to leave, schools tampering with other team's players, various cheating scandals, etc, etc.

It's not like Gibson invented low class behavior in athletics.

 

[ATCVolinmn]

Seems fair to me. When your value goes up, you get paid and when your value goes down, you don't.

For optics, however, you'll get negative recruited for it. "They don't care if you get hurt working for them. They'll just toss you aside. We'll take care of you."

Gibson may get "negative recruiting" if he's trying to squeeze UT for more money too, but teams take guys with weed issues, assault issues, etc so I'm doubtful it matters much if he can play.

Good points. Other than wanting him to stay, I don't have a dog in this hunt. It's between him and the staff. I trust that calm mature negotiations or renegotions occur and it gets work out. If he doesn't return what else is there to do but next man up?

 

[SayUWantAreVOLution]

Good points. Other than wanting him to stay, I don't have a dog in this hunt. It's between him and the staff. I trust that calm mature negotiations or renegotions occur and it gets work out. If he doesn't return what else is there to do but next man up?

If someone has made him an offer and he has a place to land, he'll take that the offer unless we beat it or meet it, I guess. I suspect we will negotiate and keep him before he gets to the portal.

If he's bluffing that there's an offer (and we don't know even if he's said there is an offer from elsewhere) and we don't budge, he will likely cave and never hit the portal and this all blows over.

If he pushes it and hits the portal with no set landing spot, I'm not certain he is THAT good to find a spot in a P4 program in the Spring. He may be in a world of hurt BUT UT may be also if they don't let him come back when he gets no great offer.

If we took him back after going in the portal, reducing his new NIL deal would be completely fair game. You play money games with us, you risk your pay. I don't see bad optics with recruits from that.

 

[Dobbs 4 Heisman]

I wonder who put that out there? And why wouldn’t I assume that this isn’t some leverage play? The guy in front of him goes down in the offseason w/ an injury that moves Gibson to the top corner position and then just all of sudden, after signing a new deal he wants a new one? Come on D4H, you and everyone else on here knows why this is happening. The fact that there is so little regard for all of the resources, relationships and everything else that has been put into this is a problem. Just because he has the ability to make this play doesn’t mean he should . IMO the cons definitely outweigh the pros in terms of what he is potentially leaving on the table if he plays somewhere else next season . I might be wrong, I might be right, but you can still lookout for yourself, family and others while being a good teammate and player. For some reason, that seems like a foreign concept to you and others.

That's why I said let's assume it's true that he got a huge offer from another school. It's not exactly impossible considering how everyone admits tampering is rampant. If this is a play by Gibson's camp then they might get burned and that'll be on them. But as of now I have no reason to assume anything shady. I'm simply going by what the market has shown us thus far. Which is teams are tampering to try and get good players from other teams. My argument was assuming this is what is happening then Gibson and his family are not wrong for looking at better options than Tennessee.

If you want to engage in conspiracy theories and speculation. Go ahead. I'm simply arguing about the principle of this situation not the actual facts of which we are unaware.

 

[Blackburn]

Ricky has never played up to being the player wearing #1. He was serviceable last year but nothing outstanding. On the Swain Event today Jason said that UT doubled Ricky's NIL for this year in December and now he's asking for more money after McCoy went down with an injury. I say cut him loose if he doesn't want to be here with his already doubled NIL from just 3 months ago.

 

[Dobbs 4 Heisman]

People are demeaning him bc he has no integrity and his word isn’t worth crap. Hey at least he gets paid though right?

As they say: "It ain't personal. It's just business." Maybe you need to realize what sort of sport you follow now. The game now is about getting paid.

I'm guessing you won't be demeaning the program the next time we recruit over a player?

 

[Dobbs 4 Heisman]

No one is justified acting in bad faith. I would not be justified in signing a contract with my company then trying to renegotiate 2 months later when one of my colleagues goes out on FMLA.

How do you know this is the case? It's just as likely a team tampered and offered him a number much higher than what we gave him. If another company came after you two months after you signed a contract are you saying you would ignore this potentially huge payday? You'll probably lie and say yes but most people would take the money. Especially if all other factors are equal.

The idea this is him pushing for more money because of McCoy's injury is speculation. But let's say it's true. Okay if that's the case then Rickey would be acting immoral but who said you have to be moral in business negotiations. People lie all the time in negotiations to get the best deal possible. People will claim they have other offers out there that don't exist to gain leverage and so on. It's part of the game as they say in contract negotiations. If you have a problem with this then you shouldn't be in business.

With that said, calling a kid names based on speculation isn't right. If Gibson came out and said he was using McCoy's injury as leverage your position might be justified. But as of now you're simply speculating.

 

[Dobbs 4 Heisman]

Ricky has never played up to being the player wearing #1. He was serviceable last year but nothing outstanding.

Simply not true. He wasn't as good as McCoy (who was an All-American). But he was much better than serviceable. 247Sports just rated him the 4th best returning CB in the SEC this upcoming year based on last year's PFF grades: https://247sports.com/longformartic...ason-tennessee-oklahoma-stars-lead-246136625/

So the numbers say you're wrong. Gibson wasn't elite like McCoy (whose #1 on the list by a wide margin). But he was really good. Definitely good enough to hear his name called in the NFL draft when he decides to enter.