Okay, I get the feeling that stuff is coming to a head pretty soon on this Kyler Murray thing. Late tonight, Geoff Ketchum of Orangebloods released some info which is pretty definitive. Mainly, the Murray/Lodge visit went extremely well, and the word he is hearing is that "Strong knocked it out of the damn park yesterday on the visit. Knocked it out". He says "a decision has been made and that a press conference will be held next week to make the announcement" from the Murrays' side. Here are his words, "I'm not telling you tonight that it is definitely going to happen because there's a part of me that doesn't believe it and i've been digging around on this story for months, but what i am telling you is that every single person we communicated with on thursday was indicating that things are moving in a burnt orange direction."
He released the info around 10:30 pm, and the aggy sites have been going crazy asking the Mods to find out what is going on. Remember that after 30+ hours since the Murray/Lodge tweets, there has still not been a single tweet or a word/text to recruiting reporters from either recruit with an explanation, nor any attempt from Kyler Murray to calm the nerves of the whole aggy fanbase that is hyperventilating. I just don't see how the poster-boy of their class would do that to them unless he is seriously considering Texas. The time to finish any troll job on Texas and laugh about it with aggy friends is all long gone, and the aggy folks are beginning to get upset at him even if they won't say it. Then he goes and wears an orange tie to a banquet. Certainly he couldn't have thought that it would escape aggy attention. What is he up to?
I mean, ESPN spent 5 minutes discussing a potential Murray switch to Texas today. Everybody knows it, and nobody thinks it is any troll job, or that he was just having some fun on a visit.
Plus, there is utter radio silence from aggy homer recruiting gurus. None of them is able to hear any counter-evidence from any solid source near the Murrays either.
The Ketchum blast at 10:30 about an upcoming press conference was all over aggy sites within 5 minutes. Clearly texts must have reached the Murray folks and those closest the family. If Ketch was just blowing smoke, I would have expected some clear rebuttal by now somewhere. No sign of that either. [EDIT: Brian Perroni of aggy 247 did post a denial that "there is absolutely no press conference, from a source he calls "incredibly close to the situation" tonight, but I notice that Perroni was unable to pry out even an obligatory "Kyler is still an aggy" from such a source, or you can bet your life he would have posted that spin. So no real denials from "incredibly close" sources over there yet!]
Something is up, and aggy is quite worried as of now. There is no need to announce anything, let alone do a press conference, to say that he is committed to aggy, because he right now is listed as a commit. He only has to send a tweet out saying, "Gigem. All is cool". Why hasn;t he done that?
I assumed Sumlin and party would talk to Murrays to prevent this from happening, and so expected that the Murrays probably wouldn't say anything till then. But even for that, there has been enough time. So, I am beginning to think that Kyler Murray could indeed be getting close to flipping to us.
And the general feeling from multiple recruiting reporters is that as Murray goes, so goes Lodge. Probably Soso too. Soso is perhaps 45% for us and 55% for UCLA as of now, and that could go up to 60-40 in our favor after the OV that just started this evening, but since he is such a buddy to Lodge and Murray, if Murray is coming, count Soso as 90% with us too. Pretty much incredible, if it turns out that way so suddenly. And nobody is finding any indication that it isn't going that way. Everybody is kinda stunned right now, I think!
Still, we should certainly not be anymore than "cautiously optimistic" as of now. God, what a weird recruiting season....