For the uninformed....these arent the good old days of the 1980's or 1990's. Ive heard the whining about something Coach Hall said about the Kentucky game in which he referenced the athletic department getting paid for playing the game. THIS IS NOTHING NEW!!! A little reference here: Southern Miss had been scheduled to play Ohio State to begin the season and Kentucky was to begin with Akron. Kentucky apparently wanted out of the two game Akron contract. So a swap was made.... Kentucky paid Akron $1.2-mill for the buyout....paid Southern Miss $950K to play and had Ohio State pay Southern Miss $950k for the swap. The original deal for Southern Miss and Ohio State was $1.9-mil. While I would have more than likely gone to watch Southern Miss at the Horseshoe, I knew that it was going to be a good old fashioned butt whipping for the Golden Eagles!!! Foe safety sakes Kentucky was a much better fit as an opener!!!

Now to the part about how things are different with college football......Its not just about NIL, the transfer portal etc....The media money is so much different than it was 20 and 30 years ago.....and im not talking about inflation....The SEC is estimated to start distributing between $60-70-million dollars per year to each team in the conference. That figure is more than twice the athletic budget at Southern Miss which recorded a record $30-mill in revenue for the 2023-24 year...for comparison Kentucky reported an athletic budget of $176.1-million for FY 23-24. Kentucky had the 16th highest athletic budget overall and was 7th in the SEC. This is not a level playing field... its not just tilted.....its like a waterfall.....

The idea NOW that Southern Miss will go into Lexington, Starkville, Auburn, etc and come away with a victory is a less than 1% proposition. We also dont generate enough revenue to do without those money games, so lets be honest and real about it.... WE NEED THE PAYCHECK!!! Quit B@$%&*#@ about Coach Hall being honest!!! unless you want to go the route of FCS and drop down to the Southland Conference and have a home schedule of Houston Christian, Incarnate Word, Nicholls, and Lamar!!! If you think thats gonna help.... it wont, because folks will donate less and buy fewer season tickets. NIL will be less and there will be transfers out not in!

There is a path for success.... but its not gonna be the same as the glory days of beating Alabama, Auburn, Nebraska, Florida State etc. We can build a team for a playoff run...but we will have to do it all over again the next season because Kentucky, Mississippi State Florida and all the other big money teams will buy the roster out from under us. This is our existence now. It can be done.... but were not in a position yet from the train wreck of Hopson to be competitive with a power 4 team currently.