Arkstfan

And violated a university hiring policy by hiring the woman and not disclosing the relationship. Basically the university was stuck. If they gave Petrino an all is forgiven, then how do you enforce it against a Vice-Chancellor, Dean or Department Chair who has tenure?

North Carolina may well be vacant at the end of the year, if not before. 3-9 last year. 0-2 start this year that includes a 22 point loss to ECU, the same ECU that lost to FCS North Carolina A&T the week before and hasn't won 5 in a season since 2015 and hasn't had a winning record since 2014.

Arkansas recruited to be a team that ran between the tackles. Classic old school B1G football. Morris has only his first class that was recruited to be a spread team. Like someone walking up to a rifle squad and telling them they are now artillery but it will be a year or so before the cannons arrive but just go ahead operate like an artillery unit until then. They are primed to be beaten, very, very, similar situation to when ULM beat Arkansas and when ULM beat Bama, both were transition years. The win is there for the taking.

Unless the NCAA releases the formula it will take some time to reverse engineer it. If the NCAA regularly releases the ratings the math dudes having the same data will be able to figure out the formula or closely approximate it. Ideally the NCAA would go ahead and release the formula and give the conferences an opportunity to run simulations of their own and suggest changes.

It may still be beneficial but obviously someone is going to have to do the math to figure it out.

So CUSA and Sun Belt announce new scheduling schemes to improve RPI, NCAA says uh it was time to adopt a better system. https://www.ncaa.com/news/basketball-men/article/2018-08-22/division-i-mens-basketball-committee-adopts-new-ranking

Lot of those cars you wouldn't need a loan. Just your cost of attendance check.

Over the years I have developed a vast amount of cynicism regarding coaches. You simply don't have a "normal" personality to be a major college coach. My observation is they all believe they are among the very best at what they do (and frankly they are elite) and as a result they have an abundance of ego. If you are at School Y and a kid you want goes to School X the coach believes one or more are true: the facilities caused them to go there, the uniforms caused them to go there, the shoes caused them to go there, having walnut lockers instead of fiberboard with laminate caused them to go there, it was the indoor practice facility, the player got "bought". What a coach isn't going to think is the Coach at School X out-recruited him or the kid picked Alabama over Auburn because its freaking Alabama where they win national titles regularly and players routinely get drafted after their junior year. I'm not claiming everyone is "clean" but I think most try to stay within the rules while pushing the limits. If it is a non-contact period where you can only "bump" into a kid, then the coach when he goes to visit the high school coach will mention in advance who he is interested in and the high school or juco coach will come up with some reason why the player "needs" to come to his office and golly gee the college coach "bumped into" the player. The real dirty is in hoops but happens some in football. Someone has the kid's ear and becomes "the handler" and won't let a school get access to the kid without some sort of compensation and the kid often doesn't even get a cut of what the handler pulls in.

If you sign with Alabama, the probability is that you are not only going to the NFL, you are going after your junior season. They had a guy drafted who had never started a game. You are probably playing in the national title game. Maybe Bama cheats. Just as likely, maybe even more likely, people around those kids are getting their hand stuck out now to get their piece of the action when they cash in. I'll put you in this car today, you pay me (some ridiculous figure) in three years when you get that NFL check. People used to do that with boxers back when boxing was a big deal. Rumor mill in Arkansas was that Malik Monk "owed" over $500,000 of his first year $2.9 million NBA contract to other people for services rendered and they weren't UK fans, just people willing to "loan" him money for cars, clothes, jewelry, etc., until he got drafted.

Arkansas was supposed to be the key that would unlock the door to adding UT, TAMU, maybe even OU. But with or without that, Arkansas (with South Carolina) were the key to unlock the conference title game. Beyond adding the #53 or whatever market Little Rock was at the time and the #90th or so market in Fayetteville, Arkansas coupled with South Carolina made the championship game possible. If the ten team title game had existed in 1989, maybe the Hogs don't go, but remember Arkansas had just won the last two SWC football titles and been in the Final Four just five months earlier.

The first order of business is to understand what business you are in. Google isn't a search company, it's an ad company. ABC isn't in the TV programming business they are in the advertising business. ESPN is in the carriage fee business. The economics change over time. In the 1970's NCAA controlled television and capped how many times a team could be on national TV over two years. A part of the revenue went to everyone, the rest was paid based on appearance. With appearances constrained, there was a cap on how many "TV worthy" games existed in a conference and the SWC and Pac-8 addressed that by adding Houston, Arizona and Arizona State to their line-ups. In the 80's with the CFA break up you had two factors. 1 Was market size. Data on viewership wasn't collected regularly from a decent sample so estimates were made based on what percentage of a market watches similar programming (this was arguably the pinnacle of value for a school like SMU). 2 Was a new product, the conference championship game. By 2000 we had better information about who was viewing but a new revenue stream. The carriage fee which was fueled by Dish and Direct spending less time trying to sell TV to rural customers and enter the more lucrative suburban markets. XYZ Cable Co was over a barrel. If they didn't meet ESPN's demands many of their customers would call Direct or Dish who were already targeting sports fans by offering to show anything on the regional sports nets that wasn't blacked out for $5 a month. The truly valuable school was the one who had fans who would switch TV providers if they couldn't get the game. They started getting PAID. The logical extension became the conference network and of course LHN. How many cable/sat customers live in your state became the most important metric if you wanted a conference network. Now we have a wealth of data about what people actually watch. With streaming, Facebook knows what game Harry watched and for how long. Online Stadium knows this and ESPN+ knows it too. Cerebus watched ODU-La.Tech for 32 minutes type data. The dual driving forces absent some unexpected disruption are going to be: 1 How many of their fans will shell out $X per month to see their team. 2. How many people will watch a given game and for how long? WHY DOES REALIGNMENT HAPPEN To cure a financial imbalance. Simple as that. In the post NCAA TV world, SMU, Houston, Rice, and temporarily TCU delivered far less value than the rest of the league. MWC 8 understood that they could make more dollars per school in a tighter conference than they could make as part of the WAC16. Big East figured out that adding schools like Tulane diluted the value of Big East branded basketball as a television and gate receipts product. If the disparity between who generates the revenue and who gets the revenue becomes too great, the conference becomes unstable. If a conference can increase its per team value by expanding then it will expand assuming the target is interested. Texas has two stabilizers attached right now. One is unbalanced revenue sharing. The lesser value of say Iowa State doesn't hurt Texas because Texas takes a larger share of Big XII revenue. The other is third tier television rights. By keeping that inventory Texas generates added revenue they do not share. The imbalance that tore SWC apart is prevented. Texas is stable until 2031 when LHN expires. Between today and then, one of the largest richest companies in the world owes Texas an annual rights fee and barring some wild growth in rights, Texas got a great deal, they even have protection if that inflation takes place because they get the greater of the guarantee or a percentage of profit. Nothing short of OU leaving the Big XII gives Texas any incentive to leave or renegotiate. ESPN probably would love to cut their losses and parlay their stake in LHN into an equity stake in Pac-12 Network but Texas isn't going to the west coast. The next best financial outcome for ESPN is for Texas to go ACC but ACC already has 15 hoop members and 14 football, there is precious little room to add travel buddies. They'd probably rather eat Bevo's turds than be seen following TAMU to the SEC. Big 10 creates its own issues. The Big 10 would probably gladly take KU in order to get Texas and grudgingly take OU but there is no one else the Big 10 would bother with. ESPN might give up LHN equity to equity in BTN but the Big 10 isn't giving up their 49% to get Texas unless Fox gives up some of their 51% as well. So in baseball terms, its a pickle. But its a pickle that doesn't really have to be addressed until 2031. But going forward, pay attention to who has fans who care enough to buy tickets, subscribe to pay services, and watch the games. That will dictate value.

They would have been better off waiting rather than just plowing in.The smart play would have been to take UNLV and Nevada and call it a day and let SMU, TCU, Rice, Tulsa figure out their own problems because CUSA wasn't going to take them at that point. CUSA was being formed as a hoops league that happened to have football. They wouldn't have had much to pick from. La.Tech, AState, ULL, Northern Illinois, NMSU or join the Big West.

He was selected April 20, 1994 and the expansion to 16 was announced the next day. It isn't logical to think that they debated six schools from scratch in roughly 24 hours. His own version is he was interviewed on Sunday. Later in the day they called him to inform he had been hired and was told they had voted to add the six teams. https://triblive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/sports/s_756924.html

Spot on. Arkansas went from an air raid guy to a power running guy and now to a spread option guy. In a conference loaded with fling-a-ding offenses where you aren't going to be a recruit's favorite you really want to be like the rest of the league or do you want something that calls for a different type of player and different preparation?

Commissioners get too much credit and too much blame. I saw a fawning piece talking about how league revenue per team went up 2000% or some such number under Benson. Yeah Karl Benson is the reason the CFP exists and shares 10x more revenue and Benson is the reason ESPN wanted to include more games on linear TV and pay more for streaming rights. Likewise Benson is the reason that three more bowls wanted to affiliate with the league. Load of bunk. Bowl games want the warmest available body that will buy the most tickets. Television wants content and pays what they think the content is worth, they don't care if the commissioner is a silver tongued devil or stutters and mangles words. Their data tells them what they can pay and get the ROI they want and they aren't going to pay more than their data tells them because the commissioner is a good negotiator. The commissioner deserves no credit if a team advances in the NCAA Tournament earning more units, that is an accomplishment of the school and coaching staff. The only impact the conference has is on the RPI and the seeding of the team(s) making the dance and even that is still on the individual schools. Benson or Waters weren't to blame when AState had a hard time selling tickets and getting donations and deserve no credit when athletics at AState brings in $20 million in donations. Assume Jim Delany or Roy Kramer or Mike Slive had been commissioner of the WAC when the MWC 8 broke away or when the eastern schools defected to CUSA or most of the rest defected to MWC. Three of the best commissioners ever in most people's minds and they would have failed to keep those schools because they had options they considered to be better than what they had in the WAC. Did Utah make it to the Pac-12 because the MWC was a great league or did Utah make it because they took care of business, built their program, and had academics that the Pac-12 was comfortable with? Far easier to declare the commissioner sucks than face the fact the league's value to television and bowls and caliber of play in basketball isn't as a good as the Big XII's or the AAC's and things get priced accordingly. Commissioners are facilitators. They help the presidents find a path to consensus. Roy Kramer once said when he walked into an SEC meeting he knew three presidents had one opinion on an issue, three had a different opinion and six didn't have an opinion on it and his job was to help them find away to get to a 12-0 vote. Benson faced that with the last Sun Belt expansion. There was a lot of support for NMSU but not 75% support. There was even less support for Liberty and Eastern Kentucky. In the end it was suggested to talk to Coastal and they reached unanimous agreement that Coastal despite the football facilities was a good addition with their nationally prominent baseball and decent mid-major hoops. He helped the presidents find a way to an 11-0 vote. That's what a good commissioner does.

99 years ago, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes explained that free speech did not extend to the right to yell fire in a crowded theater. Alex Jones and InfoWars by yelling about the existence of numerous non-existent fires has forfeited its spot in the free press.

The general switch in funding philosophy has changed the entire business. A number of colleges had what they considered to be a "comfortable size". A top or one of the top publics in a state might take the top 5,000 (or 10,000) freshmen applicants each year because their infrastructure was such that they could handle that many freshmen without needing additional classroom space, dorm space, cafeteria space or hiring any additional instructional staff. The school generally broke ties by choosing the in-state kid because they were well supported by the state so fewer worries the in-state kid would have trouble making a tuition payment down the road or leave because of cost. Whatever your number was you took that many off the top of the applicant pool. If you had a good number and a good endowment, nearly everyone got some scholarship money. The rest of the state schools would generally just do the same except further down the food chain. Now you have Alabama and Arkansas admitting more out-of-state freshmen than in-state. They really don't want the in-state kid because the gap between in and out-of-state tuition makes the out-of-state kid more profitable. They tend to set a combination of GPA and test score for unconditional admission. If you have the infrastructure to take 10,000 freshmen and 12,000 meet unconditional admission standards, bring 'em on in. You go tell the legislature that golly gee we raised our admission standards but the number is increasing and you can usually find money for a new dorm or classroom and if you can't that's OK too because you probably have a plot of land that you aren't using and some private developer will happily take a 30-50 year ground lease to build a dorm and maybe even classroom space for you and take a piece of the action. No need to even get legislative approval, we will build private facilities. If you have enough demand, the developer will buy land next to the school to build those dorms and get a contract with the school and the school will collect the dorm fees out of the student loan check and send it to the developer. So the schools with a strong brand no longer care about keeping their admissions within the range of their infrastructure. They'll build more. The admission standards create the idea of exclusivity but those top in-state schools are actually becoming less exclusive because they promise meet these criteria and you are in where in the past the school would say meet these standards to be considered to keep up the sham of being open to all state residents but then hard capped the number.

Here is what happened to higher education. Many elected officials wanted to bring "market" concepts to higher ed. The real motivation for some was adherence to principle, others expected students would punish those loud mouth liberal professors by going elsewhere and some wanted to just find a way to funnel government money to religious institutions. So money was put in student hands with scholarships, grants and loans. Students are generally ill equipped to assess if a school offers a good education but they are able to determine if they have to walk down the hall to take a dump or get an apartment like experience in a dorm, they can determine whether is a nice workout center and what fast food they can buy at the student union, and see whether or not there is good, fast, stable wifi or a an entertaining athletic department. So schools divert resources to amenities to attract students and compete in the market. Those have to be paid for and the student is now less price sensitive thanks to the funds in hands. So tuition and fees rise to pay for things that have nothing to do with educating. The government outlay really hasn't changed in most states or grown slowly all that changed was who got the money first.

And the thing is people STILL gave Bliss shots. Allen Academy hired him and he got suspended for forging eligibility paperwork and recruiting. He gets two more jobs at church affiliated schools after two significant scandals. Southwestern Christian hired him but then when everyone got reminded thanks to the documentary he was out. Then gets hired at Calvary Chapel in Las Vegas. Through all that he was welcomes as church speaker and speaker for the Texas High School Coaches Association.

Until last year, the Salukis were AState's third most played opponent in football. Back in the 80's when SIU was being named a top party campus I remember watching the coaches show and the first half highlights were hard to see because of the smoke from all the grills, wind finally changed directions. Friends who went up there said there was easily 20,000 people outside the stadium grilling and drinking with the game on the radio and maybe 7,000 inside the stadium.

Man I know longer understand the world around me. Baylor has a player murdered and the coach tries to paint him as a drug dealer to explain all the improper benefits that will be found at his apartment. Then that coach gets a job coaching at a Christian high school. Baylor doesn't just cover up sexual assaults, the school tells the victims that if they don't tell the truth they can't do anything and if they do tell the truth and it includes breaking the honor code the victims can be punished including expulsion. The AD involved get a job as AD at Christian school. Baylor must be built on an Indian burial ground or they are experiencing the consequences of the soul sale to get in the Big XII but none of this crap makes any sense to me as to how it could even happen.

AState returns a QB who will be the school career TD pass leader sometime around the fourth or fifth game in his third season. Some nice transfers in at WR (will likely start an Arkansas transfer on one side and an Oklahoma transfer on the other). Return a defensive tackle who would have been the second fastest defensive lineman at the last combine if he had participated. Four losses by a combined 27 points and out-gained the opponent in all four, just got clobbered with turnovers. SMU was the only one that wasn't that close and our QB went out fairly early. Face only three teams that had a winning record in 2017 and only Alabama is on the road. Toss in 5 league titles in seven years, the 18th longest bowl streak in FBS at 7 consecutive years and sooner or later it adds up to someone giving you some respect.

http://www.kwtx.com/content/news/McCaw-deposition-blasts-Baylor-regents-campus-police-488909531.html

There has only been one defense raised that has any degree of plausibility and isn't just outright poor pitiful me. That came from the AD who got snatched up to be AD at Liberty. He contends that the sexual assault problems and the lack of university effort to do anything were actually campus wide and the school tried to contain it within football to head off a deeper look at the overall problem. Given that complaining witnesses were threatened with honor code violations for "causing" assaults I find it plausible that Baylor did in fact have a widespread problem and created an environment for it to flourish when word spread that filing a complaint would place you at risk of punishment.

On paper Anderson looks good. 2014 wasn't a great season but a great coaching job, had to start a true freshman on the defensive line, the next year the kid was #2 on the depth chart, going into junior year he was #3. The turmoil clobbered recruiting. But 2016 and 2017 when you drop 7 games where you out-gained your opponent or (like 2016) return four of five on the OL with several all-conference players and rushing goes down and sacks go up. Something is wrong. Anderson lost his OL coach and his OC (now OC at Florida State) and has been stumbling ever since.