Messages

1426

YSU Penguin Athletics / Re: HL news

« on: April 28, 2013, 11:55:31 AM »

Good.  Valpo lost most of their starters too.  Correct?  Agree that Green Bay and Wright State appear to be on top, but neither is much more than a shadow of what Butler used to be in this league.  Doesn't this make Perry an early frontrunner for POY?  Does anybody coming back have better credentials?  Brown at Green Bay?  For me, a seven-footer better be extraordinarily good to be considered for POY.  Brown ain't that.

1427

YSU Penguin Athletics / Re: Scalzo: FCS Mess

« on: April 24, 2013, 07:13:05 PM »

DiscMan,

You seem to operate with the assumption that MAC schools in general, and Kent State in particular, make money.  They don't.  They might have enormous athletic budgets (MAC average was reported by Scalzo at $24.2 million) but they do not produce enough revenue to pay their bills.  Each year at Kent, after they spend the high activity fee money from their students, they find themselves multi-millions of dollars short.  And each year, they take academic money to pay off their sports debts.  That information comes from a friend of mine who has taught at Kent State for many years.  And that is why the faculty at Kent, generally speaking, hates their sports teams.  Relations between the athletic department and the faculty at YSU are more cordial because YSU sports stays within budget and within our means.

1428

YSU Penguin Athletics / Re: Scalzo: FCS Mess

« on: April 24, 2013, 10:50:31 AM »

IAA Fan has been the most persistent critic of the "FCS" label ever since it was implemented.  That name never caught on and just led to confusion and poor branding for our division.  Now, with the change in nomenclature to "College Football Playoff" by the big time programs the FCS label has become somewhat ridiculous.  My guess is the NCAA will created another meaningless name that is even worse than FCS.  They won't return to "IAA" although it makes perfect sense. 

The name change by the power schools just reinforces the stupidity of the midgets who are wasting vast sums of money in a hopeless quest to be consider "big."  No football fan will ever use the words "College Football Playoff" in the same sentence with the words MAC and Sun Belt.

1429

YSU Penguin Athletics / Re: Tonight's Spring Game Schedule

« on: April 21, 2013, 09:59:05 AM »

It was too cold for me.  I suffer only during the fall when the games count.  Anyway, spring games are pointless for the fans.  What did this result tell us?  Has the defense improved dramatically?  Or is the revamped offensive line ineffective?  We will not know the answers to those questions until we line up against Michigan State.

1430

YSU Penguin Athletics / Re: Evansville Courier Press : Loyola to Missouri Valley

« on: April 15, 2013, 01:02:48 PM »

Fans at Horizon League schools want the strongest possible additions for basketball.  That is perfectly understandable; basketball is THE sport at those institutions.  At YSU, our goals should be different.  We need a stable and geographically compact conference for basketball and our Olympic sports.  That is why Oakland (who I can't stand,) Northern Kentucky, and even Fort Wayne make perfect sense for us.  Furthermore, a weaker basketball conference would be a good thing for us.  Right now, with Butler gone, we are a 12-14 RPI mid-major who gets one bid and a bad seed.  If we dropped to about 18-20 RPI we would be a one bid conference with a bad seed.  We would also have a better chance of contending on a consistent basis.

1431

YSU Penguin Athletics / Re: Evansville Courier Press : Loyola to Missouri Valley

« on: April 14, 2013, 11:34:45 AM »

If this is true, it makes some sense.  The MVC has three teams in Illinois but has no presence in the Chicago media market.  This adds Chicago to their league footprint and also makes the MVC more visible to Chicago recruits.

As Indy suggested, it is better for us since UIC plays baseball.  I guess now we will have to take the thugs from Oakland (who plays baseball and that gets us back to the required six.)  I agree with Pride and would want two new teams, as a buffer to anybody else that bolts.  I would suggest Northern Kentucky.  They play baseball and have that large, brand new arena.  Despite the name, they are located in the Cincinnati metro area, right across the river.  That would also reduce travel costs for all league teams.  You would have five logical geographical pairings: YSU and CSU, Detroit and Oakland, WSU and NKU, Valpo and UIC, and the Wisconsin schools.

1432

YSU Penguin Athletics / Re: Scalzo: FCS Mess

« on: April 14, 2013, 11:25:48 AM »

Indy,

In the print edition, there is a little box with financial figures that should inject a healthy dose of realism into all YSU fans.

Our budget for football is listed as 3.4 million with a 12.5 million overall athletic budget.  The MVFC football average is 3.1 million.  Also listed are the football budgets from Northern Iowa (3.3 million) and NDSU (3.7 million.)  Obviously, we are right where we belong.

The MAC figures are also in that box.  The MAC average budget for football is 6.9 million with an overall athletic budget of 24.2 million.  That is just the average.  Logically MAC schools with good football spend much more.  Yet some want to double our football budget and our overall athletic budget (both impossibilities) to play in that MAC and go to some meaningless bowl game.  A bowl game in which MAC schools always lose money since the number of high priced tickets that are required to purchase (and never sell enough to their fans) always exceeds the bowl payout.

The only thing wrong with FCS football is the fact that we have made the playoffs exactly once in the last twelve seasons.

1433

YSU Penguin Athletics / Re: UWGB assistant Barnes leaving for Youngstown St. coaching post

« on: April 05, 2013, 03:15:20 PM »

I guess this has now become official.  I'm happy and frankly stunned that we were able to secure a coach with this pedigree.  It is a clear message that we are serious about women's hoops and have no intention of allowing the program to erode again.  Great job by Strollo (and you know I rarely put those words together in the same sentence.)

1434

YSU Penguin Athletics / Re: New name for FCS

« on: April 05, 2013, 03:11:54 PM »

Let's Talk is an old friend of ours, but he is not Paladin.  I enjoyed our many spirited debates about women's basketball years ago.

To the topic at hand, I foresee even more drastic revisions than those outlined in this plan.  Big Time football will consist of the "chosen" 64, four conferences with 16 members each.  The playoff system will consist of the four conference championship games in December, followed by the four survivors battling in two bowl games on New Year's Day, followed by the "national championship" game a week later.  Everybody else now in FBS football will be totally irrelevant.  Any school jumping to FBS football now is spending much money for absolutely nothing.  All non-64ers will be back together with us, by default, within five to ten years.

1435

YSU Penguin Athletics / Re: YSU trying to get GB Assistant

« on: April 04, 2013, 09:16:25 AM »

Why do people continually hijack threads so that they can promote their unrelated opinions?  Sid, go to the main menu, hit "new topic" and then feel free to trash Mangino to your heart's content.  But please stay out of the thread about women's basketball.

This Green Bay assistant looks like the perfect choice.  Great record as a D2 coach and impressive experience at the DI level.  The only problem is that he is a white male.  That will not sit well with the politically correct trash that infest our campus.  Strollo should remember very well how his two affirmative action coaches turned the program into an embarrassment.  Stand your ground, Ron, and deliver the quality coach.

1436

YSU Penguin Athletics / Re: Any Scoop

« on: April 03, 2013, 10:34:40 AM »

If Strollo really conducts a national search for this position, we should attract candidates with superior credentials to those held by Boldon's assistants.  Underline the "If" in my statement.

1437

YSU Penguin Athletics / Re: Pitt freshman running back Rushel Shell is transferring

« on: April 03, 2013, 10:31:27 AM »

This sounds like precisely the type of player that we do not want.  I agree with Happy.  It is unlikely the football world will ever hear from this kid again.

1438

YSU Penguin Athletics / Re: What happened to the students?

« on: March 31, 2013, 11:12:23 PM »

We are certainly primarily a commuter school, but there is a substantial colony of about 3,000 students that now live on or next to campus in dormitories and apartments.  These students probably don't work as much as our commuters, and thus might be free to patronize university events.  But it is perfectly obvious that they have little desire to drift inside Beeghly Center.

Why?  Who really knows?  I could speculate and offer these reasons.  First, they are like so many folks in the Mahoning Valley that have little interest in basketball.  Second, except for one or two special events each year, athletic marketing makes no attempt whatsoever to lure them into the gym.  Third, we had been so bad in basketball for so long that campus groups and organizations have no history of going to basketball games as the first stop on an evening of entertainment.  A lot of that actually took place during the Covington years of the 1970s and the Rice years of the early 1980s.

1439

YSU Penguin Athletics / Re: Bob Boldon the new head coach at Ohio University

« on: March 28, 2013, 05:53:32 PM »

Why have you guys turned this thread into football finances?  I never said football made money.  I just stated the obvious: football at YSU will dominate the available money and then I suggested a way to produce more funding for basketball.  Now back to women's hoops.

To comprehend the dangers of a "politically correct" coaching appointment, you need look no further than to the Horizon League this past season.  There were four male coaches in women's basketball.  Their teams finished 1, 2, 3 and 5 in the league standings.  Obviously, the five female coaches finished 4, 6, 7, 8 and 9.  Coincidence?  I doubt it.  There are good female basketball coaches, but their numbers are small.  Affirmative action has propelled DI assistants into head coaching jobs for which they were unqualified (ex. Tisha Hill.)  It has also advanced lower division head coaches into jobs in which they were overwhelmed (ex. Cindy Martin.)   Fortunately, with Strollo's decade-long record of selecting head coaches, we have nothing to worry about.

1440

YSU Penguin Athletics / Re: Bob Boldon the new head coach at Ohio University

« on: March 28, 2013, 02:35:45 PM »

As Indy pointed out, we just lost our coach to an inferior league because our program is so underfunded.  Folks, it does not have to be this way.  Football will always be well-funded and most of our Olympic sports will struggle financially.  That is a given.  We all know this.  But in regards to the basketball programs, there are two options.  First, we can pay our basketball coaches at the top of the mid-major scale and operate with a very lean athletic administration.  Second, we can pay our basketball coaches at the bottom of the mid-major scale and operate with a bloated athletic administration.  We chose the second option.  Whether that decision came from Strollo or someone higher up, it makes me furious.  Eliminating three or four administrators and diverting the funds could do wonders for both basketball programs.

Now we must squirm while Strollo makes yet another coaching selection.  I hope that IAA Fan is wrong and that Strollo has developed the ability to avoid the "politically correct" trap.  But I fear the worst.