Dave in Green

Just finished reading the whole article. Outstanding piece of investigative journalism. Lots and lots of memorable lines. But I think the following struck me the most: For more than a decade, Ohioans have viewed Tressel as a pillar of rectitude, and have disregarded or made excuses for the allegations and scandal that have quietly followed him throughout his career. His integrity was one of the great myths of college football. Like a disgraced politician who preaches probity but is caught in lies, the Senator was not the person he purported to be. Pryor is looking like the next chapter in the continuing saga. From a story today in the Columbus Dispatch: The NCAA and the Ohio State University's compliance office are conducting an independent investigation of Terrelle Pryor amid allegations that the star quarterback may have received cars and other extra benefits, sources told The Dispatch today. Pryor has been questioned by OSU compliance officials in the past, but sources said this is the most significant inquiry to date. He already has been interviewed at least once by investigators within the past few weeks, sources said. Pryor and the cars he drives have been an issue since he arrived on campus three years ago. Pryor has been connected to more than a half dozen vehicles during his time at Ohio State, according to sources. Significant inquiry by NCAA and OSU under way for Pryor, sources say

Previously mentioned in this thread were the possibility of gang members from certain Atlanta area high schools being recruited by Auburn, and also concerns among other SEC schools about the way Auburn was recruiting some HS players. Some schools were said to be wondering how Auburn was able to recruit some HS players who they didn't believe were academically qualified enough to be recruited. Now comes a stunning admission from the outgoing superintendent of Atlanta schools in her final message to school administrators that a criminal investigation by the Governor of Georgia has discovered that "educators cheated to help students pass state-mandated achievement tests," and that the findings of the criminal investigation "will be alarming” when made public. Some of the high schools involved in the cheating scandal have been primary targets of the SEC in general and Auburn in particular for recruiting top football talent. As more information on this cheating comes out, it's believed that some colleges may be pulled into the scandal. One of the Atlanta area high schools in question produced none other than Cam Newton. Atlanta superintendent acknowledges cheating

I have reported on this story. Go back and look. My tOSU posts have been scattered among several threads, while the Auburn/State of Alabama posts are all in one thread. While the Tressel/tOSU story may be huge in the State of Ohio, the Auburn/State of Alabama story still has the potential to be a much bigger national story with a bigger overall impact on college football than Tressel/tOSU.

It took a few extra months, but that blogger at Daily Chicago Sports Tab who a lot of folks laughed at turned out to be pretty smart never to retract his statement that the Sugar Bowl game against Arkansas would be the last that Tressel coached at tOSU: Original ZN.O Post Blogger's Original Prediction Blogger's Reaction to Official Announcement

I'm as much against government spending waste as anyone. But there's one sentence in that link that really caught my attention: The $30 million Rep. Betty Sutton, D-Ohio, set aside for corrosion prevention could go far to help tackle the Defense Department's corrosion problem, estimated to cost the military more than $15 billion a year. The one type of government spending I always support is intelligent investment in processes to reduce government spending in other areas. If the military spends $15 billion per year due to corrosion damage, that's a heck of a good area to invest tens of millions to potentially save billions. I'd be in favor of this even if it weren't being done at UA.

Linhart finished the season with slightly less impressive stats than he had earlier in the season, but still pretty good. The Erie BayHawks won a franchise-best 32 games this season with Linhart averaging 33.3 minutes per game, so he was obviously making a good contribution to team results or he wouldn't have gotten so much PT. Linhart Stats

Forward of the year, indeed. Pretty amazing league averages per game: #1 in rebounds #2 in steals #3 in points #5 in assists #8 in blocks

Build a winning team and they will come still works, always has, always will. Everything else is window dressing. I'm fine with a non-socializing coach who wins. No socializing + no winning = no support. The clock is ticking.

No question about it. As always, Zipmeister is being a Zipmeister. And ZN.O would be a little less interesting without someone volunteering to play that role.

Man, I thought ZN.O was the one place I could escape chain e-mails. I sure hope this doesn't start a chain reaction on this forum. After all, most of us already get way too many of these things in our e-mail boxes, and they all say to "pass it on." I delete them all. I want it said on my gravestone: He never passed on a chain e-mail. I'd rather pass gas.

GoZips, I agree that there is no easy fix. Part of the fix is having a team full of players who are capable of playing at a higher level in the closing minutes of close games with higher-ranked teams, which is when the Zips often stumble. It's not easy to get more talented players, and it takes time to make it happen. But I think that KD has been making a major effort to accomplish this over the past few years. It's possible that this season's group of players may be the most talented overall of any Zips team. We won't know for sure just how good they are until we see how they play together in tough games. As for raising SOS, one obvious move would be to try to drop the 2 or 3 lowest-ranked teams from the OOC schedule and replace them with teams ranked closer to the Zips RPI. I like the idea of early season tournaments. Most are played on neutral courts, which offers a better chance of winning than on a stronger team's home court, plus you don't have to pay those stronger teams big bucks to play at the JAR. Because I think the overall talent level of this season's Zips team may be improved, the timing may be right to be thinking this season of toughening up the schedule rather than waiting for the players to first prove themselves on court. We've been talking for the last couple of years that Zeke's junior and senior seasons would offer the greatest opportunity for the Zips to upset highly ranked teams. If we're ever going to gamble that a Zips team might be up the challenge of a tougher schedule, this season and next would be the time to roll the dice.

I absolutely do not fail to see what just a couple of big wins can do for a program. I want to see the Zips get those big wins. I think the best way to do it is to build up to it, not to try to find a shortcut by simply adding more teams of the caliber that you've already demonstrated you can't beat. Give me just one season with more than one win against a highly ranked team, and I'll be an enthusiastic supporter of scheduling more highly ranked teams. Continue losing all the big ones, and I'll continue to say: Prove that you're worthy of a tougher schedule by doing better with an easier schedule.

SF, not PF. Don't know how much Harney has grown in height and weight, but he was 6-6, 195 back then, and was projected as a small or shooting forward in college. Tree was a little taller and heavier than Harney in HS, and appeared to be the more natural PF. But Tree was so far under the radar that he isn't even listed by ESPN. By the way, according to ESPN's rating system, Harney's 87 falls near the top of the following category: 83-88: Mid-major prospect. Player is a multi-year starter at the mid-major level. A couple of more points and he would have made the next level: 89-91: Mid-major plus prospect. Player is a fringe high-major recruit who contributes or a standout mid-level recruit.

"Just winning games" is the one and only answer to proving how good a team really is. The obvious corollary is that the weaker the schedule, the more games you have to win to prove you're a really good team, and the stronger the schedule, the fewer games you have to win to prove you're a really good team. The obvious Zips connection to the above is that they have not yet won enough games with a weaker schedule to prove that they are a really good team. Over the last 6 seasons, the Zips have won enough regular season games against modest competition to prove that they are a fairly good team. By reaching the MAC championship game 6 years in a row and winning 2 of the last 3 for NCAA tournament invitations, they've shown that they tend to be an even better MAC tournament team than they are in the regular season. What the Zips have not done over the last 6 seasons is prove that they are a really good team while playing a modest regular season SOS. They can't reliably beat weaker teams, and they almost never beat tougher teams. If they can't perform well against modest regular season competition, odds are they would do even worse playing against tougher regular season competition. I also want the Zips to put themselves in a position to have a chance at an at-large bid. The best way to start down that path is to focus on winning more regular season games with the current SOS.

More Important Question: Take yourselves back to 2006, when we just won 26 games, and the post-season tournaments gave us the snub. Would you be happy if I told you that 5 years from now we'd have played in 6 straight MAC tournament championship games, made it to the NCAA tournament 2 of the last 3 years, and also been invited to the NIT and CBI? Skip, here's the way I look at it. What if the Zips raised their SOS from the high 100s all the way up to the top 75 in the country and ended the season with an RPI in the top 25 instead of the low 100s? Would you think that would be enough to get an at-large bid to the NCAA tournament? It didn't help Missouri State in the 2005-2006 season, as they were rejected by the NCAA selection committee despite a #66 SOS and #20 RPI: statsheet.com Realistically, all MAC teams are a long way from having a remote chance of an NCAA tournament at-large bid. To offset the weakness of the conference games that make up half of the schedule, a MAC team would need to have a killer Miami-type OOC schedule to get close to a #66 SOS. Anything less is not going to get any MAC team close to a #66 SOS. And, as Missouri State proved, even a #66 SOS and #20 RPI wouldn't be enough to get a MAC team an NCAA tournament at-large bid. I honestly believe it's not productive to put such a high priority on a stronger OOC schedule now. To me it's a distraction to focus on trying to improve SOS before proving you are worthy of a tougher SOS by consistently winning against a weaker SOS. I'm perfectly content with gradually building up SOS as the Zips prove they are worthy of playing stronger opponents. If the Zips continue to get stronger, win more regular season games, and prove that winning 2 of the last 3 MAC tournaments was not a fluke, the importance of a tougher OOC schedule would take on increasing significance to me. Right now it's more important to be focused on winning than on scheduling.

Skip, the concept of "having more opportunities" to knock off a top 25 or top 50 team begs the question of how few is too few, how many is too many, how many is just right? The extreme view would be that if you're just playing a statistical odds game that if you play an infinite number of top 25 or top 50 teams you'll eventually win one, then why bother to schedule anything but top 25 and top 50 teams? Another scenario would be to schedule more games with teams in the 50-100 range, and prove that you can consistently win those games before trying to take on too many tougher opponents. Personally, I prefer a balanced approach where you try to have an increasingly tougher OOC schedule each season at the same time that you're building up the quality of your team. I think this is what KD is currently trying to do with the Zips OOC schedule. There's plenty of room to debate whether or not we think KD is moving fast enough in toughening up the OOC schedule. Putting it into specifics makes it easier to understand where everyone is coming from. Do you have any specific numbers in mind about how many top 25, top 50, top 100 teams you'd like to see the Zips play this season? Do you just want to replicate Miami's typical OOC schedule, or do you have something else in mind? Last season, for example, the Zips played 8 teams in the top 100 RPI. But one was an NCAA tournament game and 2 were against a MAC team. So the Zips scheduled only 5 OOC games last season against top 100 teams. I agree that needs to go up if the Zips have any aspirations of becoming a nationally ranked team. RPI -- OPPONENT 1-25 -- Notre Dame (NCAA tournament) 26-50 -- Temple, Cleveland State 51-75 -- Miami (FL), Can't (2 conference games) 76-100 -- Dayton, Minnesota I wouldn't mind seeing the Zips schedule a few more top 100 teams and drop some of the really low-ranked teams. But we have to keep in mind that the Zips won only 1 of the 8 games they played against top 100 teams last season. So they have yet to prove that they have the ability to regularly win these types of games. By the way, you can check out the RPI of all of last season's Zips opponents at the following link: statsheet.com

Doubtful that any car dealers in Columbus are interested in helping out Auburn players.

Yes, you could get higher RPI numbers by playing more away games. However, that means fewer home games for fans to attend. That's a tough tradeoff for fans who like to attend as many Zips games as possible.

Some of those in Alabama who are celebrating on sports forums about finally getting rid of Lowder from the Auburn board of trustees are also expressing a little caution. They're saying that several other board members are beholden to Lowder, and that he could continue to influence board decisions on Auburn sports through his surrogates on the board if they end up being reappointed. Then again, some are expressing the belief that Lowder will soon be too busy in court to have time to micromanage Auburn sports. With the Taylor Bean & Whitaker trial over, it's likely that Lowder's now-defunct Colonial Bank will be next up for trial on bank fraud. Also, the judge in the Alabama gambling corruption trial has ruled against the defense's motion to suppress FBI wiretaps. Some believe that Lowder will show up in the gambling corruption wiretaps and also be drawn into that trial. In Auburn football player news, the 4 players accused of armed robbery have now been formally indicted. Also, another Auburn football player was caught by police driving a car without license plates or registration, and without a valid driver's license. One person responding to this story suggests that perhaps the Auburn player was driving a "loaner car" from Columbus, OH. Auburn's McCalebb arrested on vehicle charges

If there was ever a reason needed not to have to quote a post directly above a response, the quote in the post above pretty well nails it.

Seems as if there's a new athletic facility upgrade being announced every week or two. Good news for UA student athletes and Zips sports fans.

Skip, I agree with you that the specific issue of Miami's scheduling is taking up a lot of the focus here right now. But it's one of many points that are relevant to this thread about the MAC's new basketball plan, which appears to put an emphasis on proper scheduling to raise the conference profile. So I think the Miami discussion should continue here as part of the larger discussion. Having said that, I don't think we can come to a definitive conclusion about the net effect on overall MAC RPI by talking generalities. The formula for determining RPI may appear simple on the surface. But the deeper you dig into it, the more complex it gets. For example, we haven't even mentioned here yet the fact that RPI has an additional element that awards RPI points differently for home, away and neutral court games. So a road loss only counts as only 0.6 win while a road win counts as 1.4 wins, and a home loss equals 1.4 losses while a road loss counts as 0.6. Only games on neutral courts count as 1 win or 1 loss. Last season Miami played teams that were ranked #1, 2, 3, and 4 in RPI when the games were played. This is obviously what boosted Miami's SOS so high, even though all 4 games resulted in Miami losses. That means that every MAC team that played Miami benefitted from the fact that the winning percentages of those 4 teams (Kansas, Ohio State, Duke, and San Diego State) were factored into every MAC team's RPI (opponents' opponents' winning percentage). Without crunching all the numbers in a super computer, we can't know if the MAC's overall RPI would have been raised if instead of those 4 losses to highly ranked teams Miami had played and beaten 4 SWAC teams with RPI in the 300s. So it's purely speculative to think that any 4 OOC wins are better than any 4 OOC losses in terms of raising conference RPI. Speculation abounds on college basketball conference forums around the country about the best scheduling strategy to boost a conference's overall RPI. Many point to the MVC as an example. Some years ago the MVC made a major push to get their member teams to schedule higher-ranked OOC road games to help raise the conference RPI. It worked. The MVC became the highest RPI ranked mid-major conference in the country. But another factor is that they not only scheduled tougher OOC games, they won a fair percentage. No one disputes that when one conference team beats a highly ranked opponent that it raises the RPI of the entire conference. The MVC has been accused of "gaming the system" by taking advantage of the way the NCAA calculates RPI and SOS. But the NCAA selection committee recognizes this, and a number of MVC teams with high SOS and RPI have been passed over for the NCAA tournament by the NCAA selection committee precisely because that committee looks at more than just SOS and RPI. Personally, I've been an advocate of the Zips slowly increasing their OOC SOS along with building a stronger team with higher quality players. So I do agree with the principle of trying not to over-schedule or under-schedule. I think that's the best way for the Zips to grow into more of a national power. It may also be the best way for the MAC to improve its conference standing. Getting all 12 teams to follow a strategy that's good for the overall conference can be a challenge. I think the MAC is making a smart move by using performance-based distribution of NCAA tournament money as a motivator.

Definition of the RPI formula from Wikipedia: Commonly known as the RPI, the Rating Percentage Index is a quantity used to rank sports teams based upon a team's wins and losses and its strength of schedule. It is one of the systems by which NCAA basketball teams are ranked. This system has been in use since 1981 to aid in the selecting and seeding of teams appearing in the 68-team men's playoffs (see March Madness), and for the 64-team women's tournament since its inception in 1982. In its current formulation, the index comprises a team's winning percentage (25%), its opponents' winning percentage (50%), and the winning percentage of those opponents' opponents (25%). The opponents' winning percentage and the winning percentage of those opponents' opponents both comprise the strength of schedule (SOS). Thus, the SOS accounts for 75% of the RPI calculation and is 2/3 its opponents' winning percentage and 1/3 times its opponents' opponents' winning percentage.

Remember, RPI and SOS are purely math-based and not opinion-based. Time to check out the statistical facts at statsheet.com : Miami's RPI absolutely did not drag down the MAC's overall SOS but pulled it up as Miami finished the season with the 3rd highest RPI in the MAC behind only Can't and UA, as well as the #1 SOS in the MAC. The SOS of the 9 lower-ranked MAC teams (75% of the 12-team conference) all benefitted from playing Miami with its higher RPI. And 4 of those 9 lower-ranked MAC teams had better overall won-lost records than Miami but worse RPI because they played weaker non-conference opponents than Miami did.

I give the MAC credit for putting its money where its mouth is in trying to improve the standing of MAC basketball. It sounds like the kind of effort the MVC made years ago that resulted in raising that conference to the top of the mid-major conference charts. But reading a Michigan sports columnist's take on it makes me feel like I don't have all the facts. From what this guy says, it appears that the MAC is going to require teams to both play more games at home and increase SOS. But one of the biggest problems for MAC teams is finding teams with higher RPI who will play at MAC arenas. It's a lot easier for MAC teams to schedule high-RPI opponents on the road than it is at home. What will the MAC do to help its teams overcome this obstacle? As far as RPI goes, it's nothing more than a math formula based on winning percentage and SOS to try to evaluate the relative strength of different teams. A team can achieve identical RPI by winning more games with a weaker SOS or winning fewer games with a stronger SOS.