kreed5120

Their fans deserve it. They sell out nearly every game and average over 13,000 fans per game. http://www.cleveland.com/datacentral/index.ssf/2017/03/ohio_college_basketball_attend.html

It's also possible that now that he has his degree and little to no chance of playing professionally, he'd rather just get a jump start on life instead of spending another year on a graduate degree he won't be able to complete before his eligibility runs out.

The NCAA can't restrict pay. You're probably too young to remember this, but they tried in the 90s and got hit with a hefty antitrust lawsuit. Akron or insert whatever university paying their coach 500k-$1M when they realistically should only be paying them ~$100k has nothing to do with Saban making $11 million. He makes it because he brings large amounts of revenue to the university. Alabama would cut other sports, which profits from football funds, if it had to just to keep their cash cow. http://www.cbsnews.com/news/ncaa-to-pay-coaches-545m/ In regards to the IRS it's tricky. There are currently ~20 that reportedly earn "profits". Realistically there are probably 40-50 that are capable of running a for profit athletic program. There are 351 D1 schools. That means 85+% of D1 athletic schools in the NCAA are truly non-profits. Edit: If anything his salary is inflated because Bama is paying semi-pro athletes ~25k/year when those athletes would be worth way more on the open market in a for profit league that didn't restrict pay to only room and board + COA.

The NCAA wets its beak off the NCAA tournament.where it generates 80-90% of its revenue. The P5 cartel runs FBS and the NCAA has little to no impact on what Bama or any other team for that matter decides to pay its head coach. In fact, the NCAA biggest fear is that the top 40 or so teams, the ones that are capable of running without huge subsidies and rise the tide for all the other schools, elect to leave the NCAA and form their own league.

I have to imagine if GT actually tried pitching the ABJ some interesting news pieces, they'd at least hear him out.

I'd find this appalling if it wasn't for the fact Alabamas football progrum prints money. The football program generates enough money for them that not only do they generate enough money to afford his salary, they generate enough money to cover all their non revenue sports. As long as 100k people are willing to pay $60+ per home game, not including food and parking, and millions of people are willing to watch on TV every week, I see this as a bargain. What I find concerning is the universities that pay coaches bloated salaries even though they have to use large student fees to fund them.

I personally credit Mark Few for Gonzaga's run of success. Monson had that 1 great year Gonzaga that he used to land himself that next big job, but accomplished nothing thereafter. There have been a lot of mid-majors that have went onto having their 10 minutes of fame George Mason, Davidson, Loyola Marymount, FGCU, and even Kent State just down the road just to name a few. What separates schools like Gonzaga and Wichita State from the pact is they have shown they aren't 1 hit wonders.

If the staff feels he's a significant upgrade over what we have, I have no problem with it. If not, there is no point. I wonder how many available scholarships we have?

I said eligible big with D1 experience. Kostelac doesn't have D1 experience. We also have 2 incoming PF that haven't logged a minute at the D1 level. I worded it poorly.

In regards to the bolded section isn't that a testament to how good we believed Big Dog, Kwan, and others on the team to be? We struggled even that much more anytime Big Dog was on the bench and Poke was in the game in his place. The same guy that will likely be asked to play a much larger role this season and is the only eligible big next season outside of Aaron Jackson, if you want to call him a big, that has D1 experience. Kwan was still our best defender. Kwan regressing from being a 1st team All-MAC contender to him and Antino combining for a grand total of 5 points in the MAC championship is what did the Zips in. Our supposed 2nd and 3rd best player combined for 2/12 shooting. That's hard to overcome for any team. Big Dog was the center of our offense and the opposing teams knew it. He constantly had to fight for position and work through double teams. Despite that he still managed to make >62% of his shots. That's off the chart efficiency.

Yes, Blackburn is most definitely downplaying Big Dog's importance. The Zips didn't make the tournament like we wanted, but they still set the program record for wins and beat a pretty good Houston team. We had the regular season title locked up by mid February so I'm not sure what you mean struggle to lock that up. There have been better players than Big Dog that have played for the Zips and one would certainly hope we have better ones in the future. In the long-term I'm confident we'll be fine with Groce, but in the short-term going from a front line of Kwan and Big Dog to the inexperienced and unproven frontline next year we'll be seeing a significant downgrade. I don't see what's so hard about awknowledging that a player on an underachieving team was still a pretty damn good player.

I don't think Big Dog was the best player in the MAC, but he was certainly one of the best players in the MAC and was the main reason why Akron won the MAC regular season title and made it to the MACT final. The fact you're trying to minimalize his importance to the team when it is evident he was far and away the best player on the team is comical.

I deleted after recounting Edit: I had it posted for 2 minutes before deleting and already had 2 comments. Nice to see this level of activity during the offseason.

I saw a stat that stated over 25% of the players who declared early for the draft this season went undrafted.

Look who runs Vicotry Rock Prep where both Loren and Deng played...Loren Jackson's dad. http://www.victoryrockprep.com/director

I can't remember the specifics and he deleted the tweets a few minutes after posting. It wasn't anything heinous, but it just gave me the impression he had no desire to want to be here.

Where did I comment on his talent??? His tweets rubbed me the wrong way when Dambrot announced he was leaving.

I'm actually glad to see Dalton leave. It's the first player I said that in regards to.

An earlier article stated he sat out last year for basketball unrelated reasons and spent the year at home for "personal reasons". Perhaps he's wanting to play someplace close to home. If that's the case maybe the team Akron is really battling for his services is Niagara, not Georgetown.

I just assume all heights are overstated by 1-2 inches.

I do agree that TE is a bit of a luxury pick, but we are in desperate need of play makers on the offensive side of the ball and the receiving class was pretty weak so I understand the move.

We now own both the Texans 1st and 2nd round picks next season. Hopefully they finish poorly.

They also traded up and finished with 3 1st rounders overall.

http://www.wkyc.com/news/local/akron/ua-students-tweet-earns-his-class-free-popsicles-gatorade-after-tweet/434879667