kreed5120

I'm by no means a Calipari stan. I'm more just tired of the entitlement you see places by fans. I feel Calipari will be fine at Arkansas. The Tyson family (chicken), who are big boosters at Akransas and friends with Calipari, are paying his salary and giving him $6 million in NIL annually to play with. I don't think he's going to achieve more at Arkansas than he did Kentucky. I just feel the fans in Arkansas will appreciate it unlike Kentucky.

Thanks for sharing.

Two of those seasons were impacted by covid. One was a canceled postseason. The other a shortened and a sh**-show of a season with players missing weeks at a time from covid. It's really 1 win in 3 years, which admittedly is bad for Kentucky, but not bad enough to be fired given that he had Kentucky perennially in the Elite 8 up until covid happened. Buckeye fans are similarly delusional calling for Ryan Days job even though he consistently has the Buckeyes in the top 6-7 every year.

If I was him, I'd bolt too. Why stay where I'm not appreciated? He's made 7 Elite 8 and won 1 national title. If he does that at Arkansas, he'll get a statue and be a legend. Meanwhile, Kentucky fans want him fired.

I doubt NIL is the reason most of these players are transferring. Unless you're a first or second team all-MAC player, you're probably not going to get much, if any, NIL money.

If anyone is curious about diving into learning about NIL, I stumbled on this and skimmed the thread. From what I read in the thread there were a few key takeaways. - UMass Collective tries to have 3-4 players on NIL - Top role players sign for $20k-$30k. The borderline all-conference team types are $50k. Daron Holmes at Dayton signed for ~$175k - The collective spent $170k on this past seasons roster. They're pushing for $400k for next years, but it sounds they're not close to that total. https://www.umasshoops.com/newboard/viewtopic.php?t=16856

Seth Hubbard transferring from WMU to Toledo

I don't think he's going to go there either. I'm more saying even the Dukes make more sense than Akron if he's looking to move back to the area.

I'm very much aware. The arena will house the hockey team as well. The basketball program will play second fiddle in their own home arena. As I said before, their basketball program is a distant third in popularity behind football and hockey. That won't change.

I think the real issue is accurately measuring others as there is no easy way of determining what others spend. The UMass AD, in an interview after making the move to the MAC official, stated only a few MAC programs have collectives for men's hoops. He stated UMass collective is significantly more substantial than anything in the MAC and it should give them a competitive advantage. I don't think it's that Akron has been spending significant sums. I would imagine it's more that many of the smaller G5 have nothing in place. A school like WMU might have more in total, but basketball seems to be a pretty low priority. I imagine football and hockey eat up the vast bulk.

Does anyone really think that he's coming to Akron? I'd guess Duquesne would be well ahead of us in the pecking order as well. He'd play for a coach he knows and the A10 is leaps and bounds better than the MAC.

Yes, it appears to still be a work in progress. Even the donate link doesn't work (at least not for me). It's still nice to see something is being worked on to avoid us from falling behind.

Maybe if @clarkwgriswold wins the powerball, he can replenish his collective.

I doubt Groce forced him out. Dawson played meaningful minutes on this year's team, which in all likelihood will be far more talented on paper than whatever our roster looks like next year. Had he returned, I think it's a given he would have had a role in the rotation given the state of our current roster. It might not have been the role Dawson wanted however.

Scroll through the pictures. They just had this arena built in 2020. I don't think anyone could tell me with a straight face that the JAR is nicer than this. https://www.athleticbusiness.com/project-galleries/architectural-showcase/m1UCQrt96Q/atlantic-union-bank-center-james-madison-university#next-slide

Personally, I feel NIL would go further with basketball anyway. You really only need 8-9 contributors on a basketball team and of those you only need 2-3 of them to be All-MAC caliber players. Football you need considerably more and those players are likely fetching more as well since football is much more popular.

I agree, it's not like the NCAA was behind NIL. They had their hands forced by the courts. Any restrictions they attempt will likely just get met with more lawsuits.

I imagine it's also easier and cheaper to retain players on your current roster as they already decided to play for Akron once. If you try to go after the 'free agents', who have no connection to the area, you probably have to pay a premium to get them to come to Ohio vs Florida or a Southern Cal school.

I was going to go to the feartherootrust.com, but the website doesn't seem to work for me. Was anyone else able to give it a look?

The collective might just be made up of a dozen or so Tommy Evans Lounge types. Perhaps they will look to expand.

Honestly, I might be in the minority, but I'm not all that impressed with Coit. He's a career .416 shooter and .354 from 3. The only scoring that he does efficiently is free throws, but it's not like he gets to the line a ton. ~18 ppg on ~15 fga/gm just isn't all that good. He's a chucker on a bad team.

That's because at NIU he was the #2 scoring option. At Akron he was relegated to being a distant #3 option as he had 2 All-MAC players ahead of him in the pecking order. If you have the ball in your hands less and you take fewer shots, naturally you're going to score less. At Akron he was pretty much asked to be a 3 & D role player. That's the role he filled. I wasn't necessarily thrilled with his performance here, but we pretty much got what we recruited.

I agree it was an underwhelming hire. I do think Calhoun has done some nice things at YSU as he took a perennial bottom feeder and made them a consistent contender. I just think he's the kind of coach a MAC, MVC, or Sun Belt school would target.

The non-blue bloods are the ones plucking the talent from conferences like the MAC. Case in point, All-American Mark Sears at Alabama. I'm not saying the system was designed to intentionally screw the bottom 15 conferences. I'm saying that just happens to be the end result.

The MAC is just the AAA for the top 11-12 conferences. The system as constructed is never to even out given how far we're down in the food chain. It's turned more into just developing players for others.