The Purple Album

Category: Saturdays

  • THUMBS DOWN, FUCKO

    THUMBS DOWN, FUCKO

    /throws hands up in the air

    /covers face

    /lets out the loudest sigh

    I actually don’t know who I’m directly pointing at and referring to as the singular Fucko here, but whoever your guess is probably deserves the title nonetheless.

    From The Athletic:

    Former Alabama head coach Nick Saban and Texas Tech board of regents chairman Cody Campbell would co-chair the commission President Donald Trump is interested in forming to examine the long list of issues facing college sports, a source briefed on the plans told The Athletic.

    The source said Trump is expected to be “very engaged” with the commission because he sees the current state of college sports as an issue of national importance.

    Campbell, who was elected chairman of the Texas Tech board of regents last month, is a former Red Raiders football player and one of the university’s most prominent donors. He is the co-founder and co-executive of Double Eagle Energy Holdings, an upstream oil and gas company based out of Fort Worth, Texas, which operates extensively in the Permian Basin region of West Texas. Campbell is also the co-founder of the Matador Club, an NIL collective that supports Texas Tech athletics, and he recently spearheaded the new $242 million south endzone project at Tech’s Jones AT&T Stadium, which overlooks Cody Campbell Field.

    In February, Double Eagle sold a development for $4.1 billion, and in 2021, the company sold a previous development for $6.4 billion. Last month, Double Eagle announced a continued and expanded partnership with EnCap Investments, a prominent private equity company that specializes in the oil and gas industry. Campbell is a board member of Texas Public Policy Foundation and a distinguished fellow at the America First Policy Institute, the latter which has been integral to President Trump’s second-term policy agenda.

    The aforementioned Yahoo! post:

    Trump’s involvement, though not surprising, is a landmark moment in college athletics history — the country’s most powerful elected leader potentially shaping the future of the industry. Details of the commission are for now mostly being kept private, but the group is expected to feature other college sports stakeholders, prominent businesspeople with deep connections to college football and, perhaps, even another former coach and administrator.

    The commission is expected to deeply examine the unwieldy landscape of college sports, including the frequency of player movement in the transfer portal, the unregulated booster compensation paid to athletes, the debate of college athlete employment, preserving the Olympic sport structure, the application of Title IX to school revenue-share payments and, even, conference membership makeup and conference television contracts, those with knowledge of the commission told Yahoo Sports.

    Trump’s involvement was expected. Last month, during a trip where more than 100 college sports leaders traveled to DC to lobby on the Hill, they were informed of the White House’s interest and potential action, as reported in this Yahoo Sports story. Last week, Sen. Tommy Tuberville suggested that Trump was contemplating an executive order, news confirmed in reporting by the Wall Street Journal.

    Trump could announce a commission through an executive order, as the president did just this week when he established the Religious Liberty Commission.

    Now, I don’t really want to use *this story* as a way for me to get my rocks off over how much I hate the shit out of this Trump administration. I’m not going to act like I have to accept any of this term as something that’s deserved, let alone desired. Have you read the news lately? It all sucks. That’s been true basically all of my life, but holy shit this shit sucks!

    Anyways, Nick Saban built monster football teams therefore he’s qualified to fix the world alongside the world’s most hated cheeseball of all time. Maybe Deion Sanders will work for the government and coach a football game on the same calendar day too. Why the fuck not? Everything else apparently makes sense when it obviously doesn’t, let’s just make up more ways for people who have lived their entire lives in their own little worlds to lead the Department of Football Amateurism Saves Teams.

    Preaching to the choir here, I know, but our handicapped (golf word, since we’re supposed to be sports fans here) President has no idea what the fuck anybody’s talking about. Brother hasn’t done hard time like the rest of us have. He doesn’t know what it’s like to say “NLI” when he means “NIL” and everybody roasting him online saying “HEY DUMBASS” — ok maybe that part he’s gotten once or twice — “NLI IS NATIONAL LETTER OF INTENT, GET IT TOGETHER” at which point he’ll have no idea what you’re talking about and he’ll be so confused by the situation that his brain will just be so fixated on how much he wants an ice-cold Coke from McDonald’s right now because college sports is too confusing for someone like him to focus enough time and attention to.

    Leave it to Nick Saban and Bill Belichick to dominate the college football headlines in the sport’s slowest time of year. And there’s a chance neither of them even coaches a game this fall! Everything is awesome!

  • LEE CORSO WEARS HIS LAST HEADPIECE

    LEE CORSO WEARS HIS LAST HEADPIECE

    No more mascot heads for Lee Corso, who will finally be retiring after 38 long years on the College Gameday desk.

    One last show 👏Lee Corso will make his final College GameDay headgear pick on August 30th.

    — ESPN (@espn.com) 2025-04-17T14:57:09.421Z

    The TV show became church for many, and Corso was always there. For me, literally, always there. He did Gameday before I was born, and I’d be lying if I said that Corso’s long-lasting presence didn’t have an affect on me. For as buttoned-up as the sports news industry and sports newsdesk wannabes became through the 90’s and 2000’s, the old, former ball coach-turned-TV star was actually fun and honestly a breathe of fresh air, even for kids like me at the time trying to get into the sport, because there he was every Saturday morning making me wonder two things. One, which team in which game should I be considering to pull a field goal-deciding upset? (In other words, when’s he going to say ‘Ha! Not so fast, my friend!’?)

    And two, which mascot head is he going to wear for his pick of the big game?

    As years went, Corso got less young. So much so that he was, and I really want to say this as respectfully as politely as possible, just not the same as he used to be. He lost his youth, he lost his energy, he lost what it took to co-host the sport’s biggest early-morning television tailgate for hours at a time, then he lost the energy to do it for even an hour. Corso’s obvious loss in stamina for television was impossible to hide, and watchers of the show have made their notes on social media dating back to pre-Covid days. It’s been going on long enough for not only for millions of viewers to notice, but long enough for viewers to simply feel sad for Corso to even keep going out there and even trying to give us his quick-witted picks at the end of each show while Kirk Herbstreit tried to play liaison for Corso’s thoughts.

    If we, as Americans, failed Corso, it’s that we didn’t Futurama him sooner. Maybe there’s still time to make it happen, I don’t 100% know the science behind it all, but I think Corso’s one of those celebrities whose head should be preserved in a jar, that way he can be used for all future iterations of Gameday. There’s a chance this sport never dies, and neither should Corso.

    Lee Corso the greatest to ever do it

    — Chris Vannini (@chrisvannini.com) 2025-04-17T14:16:57.039Z

    From The Athletic:

    “Do you know anybody else that makes a living putting something else on his head?” Corso told The Athletic in 2018. “I’m telling you, that has been an unbelievable thing for me.”

    Originally an in-studio show, “College GameDay” hit the road in 1993. And where the show went, Corso wasn’t far behind.

    On Oct. 5, 1996, “GameDay” traveled to Columbus, Ohio — the site of Ohio State’s campus — for what would be a 38-7 Buckeyes’ demolition of Penn State. There, for the first time, Corso didn’t tell viewers his prediction. He showed them.

    “I like Ohio State, 24-13,” said Herbstreit, in his first appearance as a “GameDay” analyst.

    “Ay, good pick. I’ll tell you one thing,” Corso said. He then reached for the head of Brutus Buckeye, the Ohio State mascot, under the desk and put it on.

    “Buckeyes!”

    …

    To date, Corso has picked more than 400 games.

    Tracking Corso’s mascot picks even became a hobby. Cole Reagan, a fan whose website includes a searchable database of headgear picks, has Corso at 287-144 all time, meaning he’s been right 66.6 percent of the time.

    Corso has remained a mainstay on the show even through health issues. He had a stroke in May 2009. He sustained no permanent brain damage, though his speech was impacted, but worked his way back for the beginning of that football season. He continued week after week, developing great chemistry with Herbstreit to his left and making a habit of ribbing the weekly guest picker to his right.

    “Not so fast, my friend,” became a Corso catchphrase when he disagreed with the pick before him.

    Corso’s role on “College GameDay” has been reduced in recent years. He missed five games during the 2022 season for health reasons and is no longer featured during the full, three-hour show block. He also missed multiple games during the 2024 season.

    In the 2018 interview with The Athletic, Corso reflected on how much fun his job was — and how hard it would be to leave.

    “Let me tell you something: On Thursday morning I get up, I get on a first-class plane and fly to a place and stay in a nice hotel and get a lot of great meals,” he said. “First class! Then I go and talk football for a couple hours, I see the best game of the year and I get on a plane (in) first class and I go home.

    “And they pay me! Why the hell would you ever think about retiring? It’s like stealing. It’s like stealing. Why would you ever think about retiring? I’m gonna be like that vaudeville act — the guy’s out there talking and talking and they get a hook and they try to hook him and bring him off the stage.”

  • Nico to TBD

    Nico to TBD

    Once a five-star quarterback prospect that rode private planes and watched his then-teenaged price rise to the tune of multiple millions of US dollars per playing year, Nico Iamaleava grew up and told Tennessee that it wasn’t enough after two seasons (and a spring).

    Quarterback Nico Iamaleava‘s time with Tennessee football is over.

    On Saturday morning, coach Josh Heupel informed the team that the Vols are moving forward without Iamaleava, a source with direct knowledge of the situation told Knox News. The source requested anonymity because Heupel has not addressed the matter publicly.

    A UT football spokesperson confirmed that Iamaleava will not attend UT’s Orange and White Spring Game on Saturday (2 p.m. ET) at Neyland Stadium. Heupel will address the situation following the game.

    The transfer portal opens on April 16. Iamaleava, UT’s one-time blue-chip quarterback, is expected to enter it following what appeared to be a holdout. Iamaleava sought a renegotiation to his NIL deal, which reportedly paid him more than $2 million per year. And then he missed UT’s final practice of spring on Friday.

    It’s a shocking end to the Vols’ three-year marriage to Iamaleava that began with a blockbuster NIL deal, survived an NCAA investigation and concluded with an underwhelming debut season as the starter.

    Iamaleava, the five-star recruiting gem, signed an NIL contract in March 2022 that could’ve paid him more than $8 million by the end of his third year at UT.  ESPN’s Chris Low, citing sources, reported that Iamaleava’s representatives wanted his NIL pay increased to $4 million per year, using the possibility of him entering the portal as leverage.

    Now Iamaleava can test that market.

    Everyone’s within their rights in this market but man It seems like the worst time to have to learn a new offense and new personnel for him

    — BUM CHILLUPS AKA SPENCER HALL (@edsbs.bsky.social) 2025-04-12T14:17:05.839Z

    It’d be one thing if Iamaleava left Tennessee during the 5-day transfer window after his team was eliminated from the 12-team playoff, but all of this is happening as Tennessee, and the quarterback, wrap up their springs with question marks of what’s to come this fall. I’m sure the 20-year-old has some answers to to his future that just aren’t made public yet, but that’s still a lot of dough to all of a sudden be divorced from.

    I don’t care to say whether or not he should get the $2M to $4M per year raise that he wants because it’s only a matter of time before guys like him — very promising athletes out of high school that still have a ways to go before they’re All-SEC levels of good — end up making that kind of money whether they were the #2 recruit in the nation or not.

    No, Nico didn’t play like Vols fans probably would’ve hoped, but the team still reached a 10-3 record in 2024 with a playoff appearance as the #7 seed (lost 42-17 in Columbus). He had 2,930 pass yards, completed 63.6% of his passes, had 21 TD to 5 INT. As the full-season starter in 2024, Iamaleava had at least 20 completed passes in just three games. Against Ohio State in the playoff, he was 14 of 31 for 104 yards with no throwing scores. He did have a 2-yard rushing score right before halftime, though.

    It’s the beauty of commerce: Nico can get paid like a rockstar before ever taking part in college practices, then one day he can turn around and ask to be paid like a mid-first round draft pick. Does it matter if he has a little Dan Orlovsky in him? Not at all, because the market has already accepted that he’s always going to be able to wear that 5-star tag of his from high school, and there’s always going to be hope that there’s more 5-star in him than Dan Orlovsky.