Cerebus

Plenty of college students have jobs, they all manage to not end up in Sing Sing, I'm sure these student athletes can as well.

Name recognition. When I graduated HS in West Texas neither I nor anyone else in my class had ever heard of UNT. A large part of that is because the school was 1aa at the time, no doubt. Just being FBS now gets our name out there more. Every single college football fan who was paying any attention to sports at the time of Peter Pan has now at least some idea of who we are. Advertising works. Paying for FBS football is advertising. Any success makes it more effective.

So let us take a look at AAC salaries:

Yes, this is based off of released contract info, or FOIA'ed contracts. State laws are different from place to place, and private schools usually have to report nothing.

That's not what you're paying for. Once you pay for one coach at that level, you are also paying his replacement at that level or above. The only time when we have backtracked on that is when Bataille demanded we go cheap on the Dodge hire, and look how that turned out. The money we are spending is building things like the IPF, building the image of NT in the minds of coaches/recruits, and elevating the head coaching positions desirability to the next coach.

I just wish Bean or Aune or somebody would get the actual offense to run during the blowouts. I don't mean "here, go hand off the ball 3 times", I mean the actual offense. We've had the chance to do that in several games and haven't. ACU was a blowout, Bean got 1 pass attempt. SMU game was out of reach in the fourth, Bean did get 6 attempts. UTSA was a blowout, Bean got 3 attempts. Houston was a blowout in the fourth, Bean had 3 attempts. My concern before this season was that we wouldn't play the backups when we needed, and at the end of the year we would lose Fine and SL. Looks like we'll keep SL now, but still need to get real experience to the QB who is going to be critical to this offense next year.

Thor states that Charlotte can score a lot of points. You point out that they did that against bad competition. I point out that we have also racked up a lot of points against bad competition. This offense isn't last years offense. We'll probably beat Charlotte, but I don't expect a blowout unless some flukey things happen. We only beat USM because their STs were awful.

I mean we racked up points against UTSA and Liberty Abilene Christian.

Funny, I always though you were old enough to see Jimmie Foxx play 🙂

Pettiness is not a good look for you. Really dims the international man of mystery vibe.

It's a road game. Home games: 3-1, average score: 38.5 - 27.5 (+11) Road Games: 0-3, average score: 23.7 - 39.0 (-15.3) Hard to trust this team on the road until they win on the road. I think they will, but it will be close.

Fun Fact: Zach Greinke has an OPS of .888 this year, which is higher than every Ranger except for Gallo and Pence.

I'll admit it is. Growing up my coaches hated the "new-fangled" DH rule. I was taught making a pitcher have to hit, and either learning to bunt or becoming a black hole, was just part of the game. It's never going away, I am just going to be curmudgeonly about it. In fact, I think sooner or later the NL will adopt it as some sort of bargaining concession to MLBPA. However, I was also brought up that umpires calling different zones was also part of the game. I was very against any sort of robo ump or instant replay for calls. I honestly don't know if umps have gotten worse, or just technology has gotten better, but what is going on now is that you can see most modern umps don't have their "own strike zone", they are just inconsistent. Bring on the Robo Umps. Since you brought up the Babe, always remember that one year Ruth not only hit more homeruns than any other player, he hit more homeruns than any other team. Besides the team he was on of course.

It shouldn't, but it's a fool who looks for logic in the chambers of the human heart.

From the FPI thread:

No idea what you are talking about, really. Altuve and Springer are the most liked Astros as far as MLB players are concerned. I get that a lot of people don't like how confident (mouthy) Bregman is, but... I am old enough that my first favorite Astro was Jose Cruz. Baseball was the sport I loved growing up and I played it year round. I grew up knowing that if you looked at a homerun too long you were going to get a fastball in the back next time, and if you tried to peak where the catcher was setup he was going to buzz your ear when he threw back to the pitcher. We lived with a ton of unwritten rules and we just accepted them, but looking back on them a lot of them were silly, and some of them were flat out harmful. Back then, even 5 years ago, I would have hated what the National's Soto does, with all the histrionics and the crotch grabbing. But the truth is baseball has a very old fanbase and if it doesn't start to capture young people's attention it will die, or at least become a minor sport like boxing and horse racing. Both of which used to be THE American sport and both of which are now just a shadow of what they used to be. If being flashy gets more people to watch, bring it on. You don't want Bautista to bat flip? Strike him out. You don't want a pitcher to fist pump and scream as he heads to the dugout? Chase him. PS: Even I, still somewhat of a traditionalist and who hates the DH, am ready for the Robo umps.

Blessing if he and his staff continues to recruit well. Mac's staff didn't recruit great at the end. Outside a couple of players (like Fine and Bussey) SL's first two classes were not good. SL's last two classes have been very good, they are just Fr and RS Fr right now, but some of them are already making impacts. More will when they become RS Sophomores. Keep feeding that talent pipeline and we will do well.

Post MTSU:

Never heard of anyone not liking George Springer.