kreed5120

I'm not going to pretend to know how influential he was on the recruiting trail, but it was evident OSU was consistently bringing in top 10 classes with him there and with him gone their recruiting classes have fallen off quite a bit. It may me coincidence or it may not be. The original point I was disputing was someone tried stating OSU recruiting fell off while he was there, which clearly wasn't the case. It fell off after he left.

You are trying to criticize a guy that helped bring in 4 top 10 recruiting classes during a period OSU was regularly playing into the 2nd weekend of the tournament. Why is it relevant what state the players came from? His #1 recruit at Akron Zeke Marshall who was an out of state prospect. Duke, Kentucky, and UNC didn't get to be where they are by only recruiting in state prospects. They go for the best players regardless of where they are located.

Jared Sullinger or Aaron Craft might be some Ohio kids you recognize

I'm not advocating for Boals or anyone specifically. I'm just presenting facts so people can form their own opinions. Personally, I don't see Boals coming as Akron seems like too much of a lateral move plus he is only 1 year into his current deal so his buyout is likely sizable. I do however feel it's unfair to say his recruits didn't pan out. OSU made something like 4-5 Sweet 16 with him there so clearly some quality talent went through there during his time. I don't know the story on the transfers, but no way a coach can predict which 17 year old kids will or won't transfer and who knows maybe the other 3 turn out to be studs.

I don't know how I was fooled. That was an obvious ploy.

You are alluding to the fact that the $1.1 billion medical research facilitity was built for the purpose of recruiting. Please explain how the two are remotely related when 99.9% of student athletes aren't going to OSU to get their MD-PhD? That is there single largest debt holding on their books and represents ~40% of their debt. As Zippy5 pointed out they are in a position to pay their bills. We however are not. Every time you try pointing your finger at someone, 2 fingers are pointing back at you. Let's get our own matters in order before we criticize others.

Athlete villages are at a lot of places. Akron doesn't have them. If universities such as OSU are fully funded and are transferring money to the university to pay room and board on their student athletes, the athletic department is indirectly paying for these. Things like the student union and the red center are designed to benefit the entire university. In fact, those facilities probably benefit the run of the mill students more as athletes have player lounges and weight rooms of their own that they can use.

For starters it appears we're using different rankings, but considering OSU made the tournament every year between 2010-2015 and made 4 Sweet 16 appearances during that period, I'd say it's fair to say mine are a more accurate depiction. They are also the composite rankings which averages all the top ranking sites. I only included rankings where Boals was there for the entire recruiting cycle. 2010 - #2 6 recruits 2011 - #6 5 recruits 2012 - #106 1 recruit 2013 - #36 2 recruits 2014 - #6 4 recruits 2015 - #5 5 recruits Every single recruiting class that OSU had more than 2 recruits, OSU finished top 10 in the nation in recruiting. The only class that was 'bad' was the class where they only had 1 scholarship available. http://247sports.com/Season/2015-Basketball/CompositeTeamRankings

I'm wanting to say this recent downturn in OSU success isn't recruiting related. They had a pretty talented freshman class the year we played them in the NIT (#5 rated class in the country), but they got hit by the injury bug pretty hard. Those freshman then decided to transfer at the end of the season, which hurt OSU this season. Edit: Looking further 3 out of the 5 recruits that made up that #5 rated class transferred. OSU 2016 and 2017 rankings haven't been anywhere near as good. I'm not sure how much the drop off has to do with coincidence or not that recruiting fell off when Boals left. Either way recruiting was great at OSU when he was there.

I'm still salty about the situation, but in 5-10 years when they have a banner raising ceremony to honor Dambrot I'll be at the JAR (yes, I have 0 faith we'll have a new arena by then) standing and clapping as loud as everyone else in the arena.

If Akron didn't have to subsidize the athletic program to the tune of $24 million per year, we could afford much nicer amenities around campus.

Who here wouldn't leave their job today if they could take the same job somewhere else doubling your pay? I don't have a problem with Dambrot leaving. I have a problem with how he left. Trying to poach our players is shady. He didn't even have the decency to have a team meeting to notify his players beforehand. Instead he left them in the dark and had his assistants do his dirty work afterwards. As for the players, outside of maybe Josh Williams, none of these guys grew up caring about Zips athletics. These players came to Akron because it was their best and in many cases their only option at the time. As soon as they believe Akron is no longer their best option they move onto someplace else they feel is.

Going from high school coach to college D1 head coach is an incredible leap. I do see value in putting him on staff and giving him the opportunity to work his way up, the same we did with Dambrot.

Given the number of scholarship players potentially leaving, I wouldn't be surprised if we have 1-2 unused ones next season, which wouldn't be a terrible thing. If Noah leaves we'll only have 1 scholarship senior, 2 if we give Eubanks a scholarship, which we might as well. It would be nice to set ourselves up with 3-4 scholarships available next year when our next coach would have a full cycle to recruit. An unused scholarship would also provide us an opportunity to pick up a mid-season transfer like Toledo did this year with Willie Jackson.

I don't feel Akron built the student union or rec center to attract athletes. They built those buildings to attract STUDENTS. Akron built the field house and stadium for the purpose of attracting athletes just like Ohio State built Value City Arena in the 90s for the purpose of attracting student athletes. The difference is OSU used self generated funds to pay for their athletic facilities, meanwhile, Akron is using student fees and taxpayer dollars to pay for theirs. OSU has an enrollment of 64,868 compared to Akron who has an enrollment of 26,494 so it makes sense they need more debt on their books as they require more and larger buildings. They also have a greater capacity to pay off more debt as they generate significantly more revenue from their larger enrollment size. Aside from all this they are also the flagship school of Ohio and are a land-grant school. That's why they were granted state funding to help pay for their $1.1 Billion medical center and not Akron or Kent. The reason OSU athletics is ahead of Akron's by the margin that it is has little to nothing to do with anything that you stated. It is because they managed to generate $170.8 million in real revenue, meanwhile, Akron generated $11.6 million if you exclude institutional support.

Skip, I like a lot of the stuff you post on this forum. That being said when it comes to anything OSU related you skew facts as much as you can in an attempt to get your personal agenda a crossed. You tried claiming OSU athletic department is 100% responsible for OSU $2.5 Billion debt load when it is the only athletic program in Ohio, and only 1 of maybe a dozen in the country that relies on absolutely 0 institutional support to fund its operations. If you want to turn this into an argument that OSU spent too much money on its student union, medical research building, dorms, etc. I'd actually agree with you. I'd say the same about Akron, Kent, Ohio, Miami, Bowling Green, and Toledo as well.

They are amenities that benefit the student body as a whole. They aren't solely built to advance the athletic program as you are trying to play this off as. You still haven't explained why OSU spent a $1.1 Billion on a medical facility if they don't care about advancing themselves on the academic side.

So pretty much their surplus is enough to pay the annual payment on Infocision TWICE...

That's a loser mentality. Akron's run of success should have been making other MAC programs try harder to catch up, improving the MAC as a whole. It's not like Akron was like Gonzaga and miles ahead of everyone else and uncatchable. With Akron's demise the bar is now lower in the MAC and the conference is weaker as a whole.

Ohio State's athletic department self funds its state-of-the-art training facilities and its stadium/arena renovations then at the end of the year they still cut a check to the university. As for OSU debt, a huge chunk (about 50% of what you're stating) of that can be attributed to a $1.1 billion (yes, I meant billion, not million) medical center expansion. A building that the Governor of Ohio is on record as saying the cure to cancer will be discovered in that building. Please explain to me how that is remotely related to the athletic department? The reason they have acquired the amount of the debt that they have isn't because they are trying to surpass Alabama or whoever on the football field. It's because they are trying to pass Michigan, Northwestern, and others in the academic field. http://www.daytondailynews.com/news/debt-ohio-public-universities-tops/z8K0gYeFX9rquqmdLAMzOI/

Obviously getting the right coach is the most important thing, however, the sooner we're able to determine that is and bring them on board, the better it is for us. The incoming coach will have lots of holes to fill and each passing day more and more JUCO and transfer players are committing to other schools.

To be honest I'm not surprised. I'm kind of expecting Noah to transfer too assuming he's able to grad transfer and play immediately.

A lot of it has to do with the fact the rich, the P5, have so much money to spend that they are now not only able to pay their head coaches 7 figures, but they can now also afford their assistants $250k+. There are some assistant coaches that literally take pay cuts so they can become head coaches.

I feel it's all relative to where you are at as a program. If a new coach is coming in taking over a team like Miami (Oh), who struggled to beat bad teams and doesn't have a good roster, I see no value in having them play an OOC schedule that they are destined to go 3-10 playing. Having early success can get fans excited and build players confidence. It might also trick some recruits into thinking you are better than you really are. As the program progresses and you get better players, I feel you should look to make the schedule stronger so your players are constantly challenged. You need to find the balance between not being too easy and not being too impossible. In Akron's case they didn't ramp up their scheduling enough as it wasn't as good as it should have been.

Yeah, the narrative I was fine with, but he used so many factual inaccuracies that leads me to believe he didn't do a lick of research.