Dave in Green

CMU was the #1 seed in last season's MAC tournament, and they have all of their players back along with their same coaching staff. Everyone else has question marks ranging from minor to major.

The reason no one has any valid alternatives to the new stadium is because no one can prove it wasn't the right decision to make based on all the data available at the time the decision was made. Labeling something a mistake in hindsight is lazy analysis. Don't waste my time trying to tell me what didn't work out in the past due to unforeseen circumstances. Tell me what is or isn't going to work in the future based on all the available data today. That's what real leaders do. The next question no one has really thought all the way through is whether or not FBS football is worth $2 million more in prestige and intangibles to UA than FCS football. Don't try to tell me it's a smart way to save $2 million a year if it's going to end up costing UA more than $2 million a year in losses for a variety of other unforeseen reasons.

UA is far from unique in the matter of anti-athletic sentiment among a certain percentage of faculty members. It exists in every school in the country. It usually only goes public in times of distress, but it's there all the time everywhere. Sports fans may not like it, but it's the duty of faculty members to speak out whenever they believe an over-emphasis on athletics is detrimental to higher education. There will never be total agreement on the proper balance of athletics and higher education.

Maurice Ndour earns deal with Mavericks after long, strange journey

UA needs to get facts to the media before they write their erroneous stories which are erroneous because UA hasn't shared the facts with them.

I pointed out the biggest example of budding NBA superstar Kawhi Leonard being ranked a little lower than Zeke. But, looking at the overall picture, 22 of the 42 players ranked ahead of Zeke as HS seniors went undrafted, and none of those 22 undrafted players have made it to the NBA.

It's good that the NFL made that little move public, ending any remaining doubt of guilt outside of the most diehard Brady supporters.

Redshirt.

If the Zips really are going to be running the flexbone, maybe the first thing we fans should get familiar with are the flexbone myths.

Just posted today, compare the results for #43 and #48: How Accurate are Rivals.com Rankings? (Part III) Rivals Basketball Class of 2009

Good find, Zach. The following pretty much tells the story:

University of Akron's EJ Thomas Hall shuts down as staff laid off, ticket office closed

Good question. He graduated Missouri State - West Plains JC, he's not listed on the current roster (which already lists 13 scholarship players), but he recently retweeted this ZTV Sports tweet: Walk-on?

Last mention of McNeil was here.

Still shaking my head over that one. He was only offered by the following P5 schools: Alabama LSU California Clemson Florida Georgia Maryland Miami (FL) North Carolina State Notre Dame Ohio State Ole Miss South Carolina Syracuse Tennessee Virginia Wake Forest I wonder how many players in the country had more P5 offers?

The base rental rate in the ABJ story seems pretty reasonable for a facility as nice as EJT, though I'm not sure how far "other operational costs" would drive that up. It's understandable that when trying to rein in the budget that UA would want to get away from the economic risks associated with being the promoter for events that may or may not at least break even.

For whatever reason, Zeke went with an NFL-oriented agency in Canton called HOF Player (presumably for Hall of Fame) that's fronted by "advisory consultant" Joe Namath. They currently represent 23 players on 18 NFL rosters, 3 minor league baseball players and 2 basketball players -- a little-known guard by the name of Lamont Jones and Zeke, both of whom are currently not on anyone's rosters. Their basketball business is so important that it's not even mentioned on their website. But you can see it here.

Trying to look at it realistically, Zeke will be 25 years old in December, and the odds of him getting an NBA shot are pretty long right now. Not getting invited to play in the NBA Summer League after all of his overseas work may have been the kiss of death. No player on the current Zips roster is likely to get a shot at the NBA unless they show dramatic improvement in overall performance. The Zips have a lot of good players but none who've yet distinguished themselves as great. Pat has good size and moves, which will at least earn him a look if he has a great senior season. But DraftExpress hasn't written a word about Pat and only shows his barebone stats with no comments. Over Zeke's college career DraftExpress wrote several reviews and as a senior ranked him as a possible second round choice. So right now Pat's an even a longer shot than Zeke.

Keep in mind that the U.S. News & World Report ratings are based on self-reporting. That is, schools are sent a questionnaire with blanks to fill in and the ratings are calculated on a formula weighting responses by percentages of importance. So it's not a truly objective and comprehensive study of who's doing the best job of actually teaching students in a cost-effective manner. As such I didn't spend a lot of time closely examining all the results. I did look for OU's ranking as they're a fellow MAC school in Ohio that signed up with Academic Partnerships in 2008. But OU apparently didn't respond to the study as all of their rankings are marked N/A. Many other schools also apparently didn't elect to respond as many schools show N/A in all categories.

Finally had a chance to sit through this video. While the content is interesting, the person talking to Randy Best is even more so. That would be Dr. Clayton M. Christensen, currently the Kim B. Clark Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School. He bills himself on his website as "the architect of and the world's foremost authority on disruptive innovation," on which he has a series of books and lectures. He also serves as a senior adviser to Academic Partnerships. Searching for explanations of disruptive innovation produces many hits. A story in The New Yorker entitled When Giants Fail does a good job of describing Christensen's theory. The New Yorker also published a counterpoint story, ironically written by another Harvard professor -- Jill Lepore, the David Woods Kemper ’41 Professor of American History at Harvard University and Affiliated Faculty at the Harvard Law School. In her story entitled The Disruption Machine she uses her expertise in the field of history to counter some of Christensen's claims. Both stories are long but well worth a read. I found some of the following from Lepore's story to be especially interesting:

Is he in for a shock when he experiences fan support for the Tigers baseball team. In 2014 LSU led the NCAA with an average home game attendance of 10,880.

Player positions listed on the official Zips roster have been fairly accurate over the last few years as to actual game roles. For example, Kwan is the only Zips returning player listed as a pure forward (F) while Jake and Reggie are listed as pure wings (W). Before he left, BJ was listed on last season's roster as a combo wing/forward (W/F). Looking at the three Nigerian freshmen, Peter and Emmanuel are both listed as F while Daniel is identified as W/F. That tells me that if they were all playing right now Peter and Emmanuel would be more likely to play close to the paint, taking advantage of their rebounding and blocking abilities. In addition to being a good rebounder in HS, Daniel was also a 46% 3-point shooter, so he would be the most likely of the three to spend time further out at the wing. But GoZips makes a good point that they're all capable of playing the 3/4 depending on the Zips' needs and how they develop.

And Mattocks scores to lead Jamaica to a 2-1 upset of the USA. Amazing stuff.

I previously suggested that the cost and effectiveness of doing a deal with an "enabler" like Academic Partnerships be compared with doing it more in-house. Two nearby Ohio schools that are obvious candidates for benchmarking would be OU (using Academic Partnerships) and UT (in-house). However, that might be a little awkward for Dr. Scarborough as he was pushing Academic Partnerships at UT when they decided to do it in-house instead. Just looking at one small element, Academic Partnerships supplies "coaches" as part of its package, so UA would be paying for their services as part of the total cost. These coaches essentially perform the same duties as graduate assistants. I don't know how much grad assistants are paid. But since they're typically in the process of completing their post-graduate education, any funding UA grad assistants might lose from being replaced by Academic Partnerships coaches could represent an economic hardship. Does it make sense to send this money off to Texas when grad assistants right here in Akron can perform the work as well or better and can use that money to help pay for their UA degree work?

MaxPreps now has Jordan listed at 6-7, as do some other sources, so he's apparently still a growing teenager (he was listed at 6-5 as a sophomore). MaxPreps also has him listed at 250 pounds, which suggests he may have the beef to hold his own in the paint at the D-I college level. Jordan transferred to Canton from Garfield Heights, where as a sophomore he showed up in a brief profile from the Hidden Gems Spring Showcase on this site: SBNation had a better detailed review of Jordan's performance at the Hidden Gems Spring Showcase: