Arkstfan

Hodge isn't a candidate at AState from what I hear so unless he's got a better paying assistant gig lined up, I'd assume he's headed your way.

I don't know what happened the last eight games but it wasn't the team that had gone 18-6 at that point, Struggled to score played generally lousy defense. If you've hired the guy who coached the first 24 games of the season you guys are going to completely love him. They guy who went 2-6 down the stretch and cancelled a meeting with boosters the last home stand, he's not so good. AState release makes mention of a family issue so maybe being back home cures whatever went wrong. Ya'll are going to like him a lot. Make sure the check clears, we sort of enjoy this business of making a profit on our coaching hires. Someone mentioned Brady, last AD hired him.

Cross was making $250,000ish but think he received a new deal. I tend to believe that if UNT came looking hard, UTA would make enough of an effort to not see him leave for money to UNT and if it isn't about money then it is about getting to where ever or whatever is his ultimate goal and I don't have the first clue what that is. He's got UTA at 40 in the RPI (MTSU is 37), driving across the metro to helm a bottom 20 RPI and start over? My instinct says that would require some really serious money. UALR hired a Texas Division II and Division III coach and in one season they become a 30 game winner and advance to the round of 32. AState hired an assistant from Baylor with Texas Division II and juco experience. Have the Arkansas schools taken all the good lower level coaches working in Texas leaving the cupboard bare? Willis Wilson and Jason Hooten would probably enjoy raises.

Coaching changes are an opportunity. Not one you WANT to have but it's omelet making. I believe there are VERY few coaches who could be successful at any school. Things have to line up. Each school has its own culture, its own natural recruiting base, its own challenges, a coach has to have the right type of support, it goes beyond recruiting budget and salaries, you just have to get the right fit for all those pieces. Now in my not worth a Starbucks grande opinion AD's mess up more searches than they get right. Sometimes a school goes into a search overvaluing the job. You see it all the time. Schools take a flier at huge names for their spot in the college universe and suddenly hire Who? because they panic when they get a string of turndowns. When Arkansas hired Bobby Petrino he had turned them down early on. The AD finally gave up and hired a search firm who brought him Bobby Petrino. The difference? First time Arkansas told Petrino what the job paid, second time Petrino told Arkansas what the job paid. It was a search nearing disaster until they coughed up a lot more than they planned. Sometimes an AD gets played by agents. The agents have a client who is happy where they are but the agent wants to get the salary up, so they play a few schools to get the guys name out in the market to get the current school to deliver a better deal. Since a raise is the goal, it gets leaked. Get played enough and the search appears to be going south and with that some potential candidates get cold feet wondering what is wrong there that these guys are bailing out. Sometimes an AD just gets sucked in by a good history. Memphis botched a football search by hiring the top recruiter at LSU because he was a great recruiter. Well recruiting to Memphis isn't recruiting to LSU. Sometimes an AD is too sucked in by a great interview to not think about fit, the potential assistants (any competent search includes who are you hiring for your staff), and management skills. Best of luck Greenies.

He's a heckuva coach. Junior College national championship, Elite Eight in Division II. Bailed out of Abilene Christian without coaching a game to be an assistant at Baylor. This isn't the first 20 win season in AState history but it's the first time we've won 20 before the conference tournament. Incredibly nice guy and hard worker. Right after he came to AState he started lifting with the team to figure out who to keep and who needed to get on the bus based on their work habits and attitude. One day when he was lifting one of the guys messed up at a station and the S&C coach called for up downs for everyone and Grant did them just like the players. They might run through walls for him but they'd be running hard when they hit the wall.

Basically making what Benford was making plus a half million to liberate him.

Huh? What UNT wants ain't really relevant to the people making the decisions. One of my best friends is on the Indy Bowl committee. At the time it all went down their selection committee voted to invite Tech and gave them a deadline. Fools ignore deadlines. Tech was of the belief they would get Liberty despite Liberty saying they would take the winner of AState and MTSU, that was what they were holding out for. This is the Einstein squad that said they would bring more people to Memphis than AState or MTSU. Tech creates their own belief system without regard to reality.

As they demonstrated when they derailed the WAC bowl plan in 2001 and screwed themselves with Indy, Tech isn't a dead on lock to do what is right for the conference nor themselves. But HOD is going to have bucket scrapings for a team unless ESPN works a deal. La.Tech wants DFW exposure there is likely to be a top G5 playing just over in Fort Worth in a better time slot that needs an opponent.

HOD and Armed Services are ESPN Events properties with a primary role of providing content to ESPN. They are less ticket driven than locally organized and managed games like Mobile and New Orleans. I was reading articles on Mobile pretty regularly and they have a deal with the city. The city provides the game with $1 million in seed money each year. Whatever the game gets in title sponsorship is paid by the bowl to the city (been running around $750,000) and each year when they go to the city council one of the first stats they whip out is the percentage of hotel rooms room occupied during the bowl game. Mobile only works if the city buys in and that means they have to deliver visitors. Likewise the Greater New Orleans Sports Foundation is tasked with bringing visitors. The Sun Belt tournament moved to New Orleans in a combo deal with the contract extension. They want to show visitors and events to keep their flow of money coming. The ESPN Events games are different because ticket sales are basically just "found" money for them. Now if I were betting, I'd bet UNT gets one of those two because 5-7 is hard to trade and a G5 to boot makes it worse. So make lemonade and get some tickets sold. My rank speculation is that ESPN will send UNT to the HOD and swap someone like Boise or MWC title game winner into the Armed Force Bowl to face Navy. They aren't going to have Navy play a 5-7 and they aren't likely to move Navy as long a McDonnell Douglas is lead sponsor of the Armed Forces Bowl unless... ESPN agrees to move Navy to another site to drive interest and replaces Navy in Fort Worth with Army. If that happens it just increases the chances that UNT goes to HOD

ESPN Events manages every one of those games except Cure. You could end up seeing some very surprising swaps as a result, for example if Navy passes Western Michigan you might see WMU headed to Vegas instead of Mobile (MAC 1) to face MWC 1 with Mobile getting someone like USM in place of the MAC and so on. All comes down to what the boys and girls in Bristol and Charlotte come up with for ESPN and ESPN Events.

Conference champion is ALWAYS eligible unless on probation or second year reclassification. CUSA has about the same number of recent move ups as Sun Belt did that year. Seems to lead to interesting outcomes.

New Orleans is going to take USM unless the CUSA office fights against it. MTSU seems unlikely to be sent to Hawaii after going to the Bahamas last year.

Reading the SMU Scout site sounds like SMU's offer to keep Morris is more than a million less than Baylor is offering. Same duties, same title, just got to know some different people.

I made a lateral move for a 6% raise. Best thing I ever did because it put me in a new circle and 6 years later make 3X more.

Baylor has already established that they can pay $4 million a year because they were paying that amount. SMU would get around $3 million from Baylor to buyout Morris and is already paying around $2 million. Simple question about lateral moves. If someone called you up and said I want you to leave the company you work for. I'm offering you the same title, the same responsibilities at our company as you have today. Our company has about the same reputation as your current employer but I'm offering to double your salary and I'm guaranteeing that salary for another year or two year more than your employer is guaranteeing. How many of you make that lateral move? Y'all may be more noble than I am but I'm going to go double my paycheck.

I think the uniform thing is a scam and that's with AState having 27 possible combinations without even considering the different helmet decals. Before Nike ever started Oregon traditionally had three pants (white, yellow, green) and three jerseys (white, yellow, green) and would mix them up. Phil Knight comes along and they spend a metric crap ton of money on facility upgrades, salaries and recruiting budgets and they use their influence to cost recover some of their investment in Oregon. If you've ever interviewed prospects you end up throwing the kids a bone to get a quote. What did you think of the weight room? What did you think of the academics? etc. etc. Oregon was working closer with recruiting services than most schools and oddly enough nearly every recruit mentioned uniforms. My assumption is Oregon was asking the sites to ask that question or they just managed to only bring in fashion oriented players to visit. Armed with player quotes and the notable success of Oregon (who really hadn't made a big change in their approach to uniforms) Nike reps spread out across the schools they work with touting how the schools needed to mix up their uniforms and logos to help recruiting. The fact that it would allow Nike to refresh their offerings to fans was of course of no interest at all to Nike, they just wanted to help the schools win. :) If you want to improve the consumer's awareness of your brand you have to be consistent in the logos you use, the logos have to be recognizable, and you need consistency in color. It is in a school's best interest in building their brand to be consistent. It is in Nike's interest (and now Under Armor and Adidas and Russell) for you to mix up the logos and colors so people who are already fans of the brand will buy additional merchandise.

Heard it's the first time a team has started 0-6 and become eligible.

Passports are no big deal if you take the approach the MAC took with the International Bowl and serious pain if you take the Big East approach to the International Bowl. The Big East schools mostly waited to the last minute to deal with it. The MAC schools generally walked players through the process in August when they reported, then each year after the first, only had to deal with newcomers and with so many Ohio and Michigan players they always had some who already had a passport or passport card for travel to Canada. Now with full cost of attendance just make it a required purchase and deduct it from COA :)

Exactly. If you spend a minute or two beefing up on the selection order of the G5 conferences you see really weird stuff like teams that are going to be close calls to be eligible being in the first two bowls a league has. C-USA has tried to accommodate the wishes of the two division champs. Louisiana Tech is almost assured to have HOD as their first choice because it's about an hour closer than going to NOLA, have a decent number of alums in Dallas and easy drive for alums in Shreveport. WKU is probably going to have Boca atop their wish list. MTSU is likely to cash in their chips from going to Bahamas last year to stay in the continental US and probably angle for New Mexico because it's a great time slot against MWC and draws a good audience (if I were their AD, I'd lobby for it). I would be surprised if MTSU were asked to go to Hawaii or back to the Bahamas. I'd also expect that MTSU would argue they shouldn't go to NOLA if AState is headed there because we hired their OC, if Troy goes to NOLA they ought to make MTSU go play for the goofy trophy they had for their series again. That leaves Hawaii, Bahamas and NOLA to sort out between ODU and I would expect UNT and UTSA and NOLA will ask for the one they think will bring the most people while praying that USM upsets Tech.

Seriously guys don't waste a lot of effort on what the national guys are saying about bowls. They've got 80 slots to fill and start tossing names like a monkey throwing crap to get the G5 spots covered. They usually are way off target.

If you are discussing television and markets, Nielsen's TV markets would be the relevant market but seriously does it matter how many people live in a metro where a team is located? We are talking about college football. Fans drive hours to go to games when they care. Auburn, Alabama and Hattiesburg, MS metro areas are about the same size as Jonesboro's metro shame neither of them have any support or interest.

Let's look at the Big East/AAC invites Round One Temple. Available immediately in football and a top hoops program. #4 TV Round Two Houston three CUSA division or league titles and two top 25's in CUSA. Not to mention SWC titles and rankings and five Final Fours pre-CUSA #10 TV UCF three CUSA or division titles before invite and a top 25 #11 TV SMU two divisional titles in CUSA #5 TV Round Three Memphis three Final Fours five bowl appearances in CUSA #50 TV Round Four Boise State nuff said (small market) #107 SDSU taken to balance Boise State travel after being turned down by other MWC schools including BYU, Colorado State, Air Force and UNLV. #28 Round Five ECU two CUSA titles and one ranking while in CUSA #99 Tulane taken primarily to appease the private school members of Big East #51 TV Round Six Navy seriously it's Navy. Round Seven Tulsa Five CUSA divisional titles and two championships. Plus a well regarded hoops program #60 (Little Rock is #57 for comparison) Seriously does anyone who bleats out the word markets even understand how the finances of TV works???? Long ago when we didn't have real time data when programs were sent out syndicated (think Raycom) they would assume the viewership based on national data for the type of audience and extrapolate the data using market size. That is long long past. There are three ways money is made on TV now. 1. Ad rates based on ratings. The network (or station) sets a rate and guarantees a minimum audience if the rating is below that, they have to rebate part of the ad charge. 2. Carriage fees. Networks get money per subscriber who can receive the channel. A network will pay more for content that would cause a subscriber to change TV providers. With conference networks they charge a two tier structure. One fee for subscribers in a state with a conference team and a lower rate in other states. 3. Subscription fees. Not to be confused with carriage fees. The consumer elects to pay the fee in order to receive the channel. Rating data is no longer guesses about viewership.extrapolated from market size. You either subscribe to Nielsen's metering serivce (supplemented by diaries) or you subscribe to a service that collects data from your cable or satellite box to see what channel is being viewed. Go to a major ad agency and tell them your program will be seen in the four largest markets and they should pay fat bucks and you will be laughed out of the room. They spend based on how many will see it and the demographics of who those viewers are. Anyone citing markets simply is ignorant of how networks price their advertising and how decisions are made to buy that advertising. A top college game will draw basically the same audience in the Birmingham market as the New York market. Birmingham has 686,000 TV homes and New York more than 7 million. Little Rock will pull in around the same audience for college football as Denver and Denver is 3X larger. Shout markets if it makes you feel smart but that's not how TV works and hasn't in a long time. Drawing 200,000 college football viewers with most in LA is worth the same as 200,000 viewers with most in Columbus, Ohio.

Even with so many grads struggling to find jobs, many are turning down jobs in public service type positions because the pay is downright awful. You can make more waiting tables at a nice restaurant. The great law jobs have shrunk dramatically. Today if you aren't going to graduate in the top third or more likely quarter of one of the better schools in your state or you aren't a grad of an elite you need to know how to do something else. If you have a STEM background there are still good jobs out there even if you aren't from an elite or a top grad because there are many legal issues and needs to be addressed by people conversant with STEM issues. Ditto medical fields and insurance. Get an RN and a JD and there are some great positions out there. Used to be true of banking, if you had any sort of banking experience you could parlay that. Guy I went to law school with worked part-time as a teller in college and most of law school, now CEO of a smaller bank. Consolidation may have dried that up. Frankly located in Dallas my emphasis would be on a four or five year part time programs and I'd by the mailing lists of every medical profession requiring at least a bachelor's degree for licensing, every insurance agent, anyone registered as an engineer, buy ads in professional association journals and direct mail them to death about part-time law degree program.

Arkansas State has won the messaging war. Each new fund-raising outreach. Each new ticket campaign whether for season tickets or bowls. Each groundbreaking for a new facility. Each grand opening for a new facility. Every single time our message is the same. 1. We need this to reach our goal of being the best program in group of five. 2. We need this to compete with our peer group and that is followed by specifically mentioning a number of AAC schools and sometimes some MWC. We have zero control and influence over whether we are ever invited by the Big XII or AAC or MWC. But the AAC and MWC have no way of stopping us from using their top programs as our measuring stick. We do not evaluate what we have done in light of what others in our conference have done. We measure everything against the elite G5 schools. Our fans understand that a coach who wins the conference but loses ground in national rankings is not performing to standards. Our goal isn't winning the Sun Belt, but we aren't going to achieve our goals if we don't. It's a vision thing.

Crab bucket thinking gets you no where man.