Dave in Green

Now it's reality check time. The anti-Tressel forces got their wish and the anti-Tressel candidate won. But the anti-Tressel voices on ZN.o never really made a case for Scott Scarborough. It was more like a modern political election where everyone just slings mud at their opponent. In fact, some of the strongest anti-Tressel forces on ZN.o lamented how weak the candidates were, and suggested UA deliberately went after weak candidates to ensure Tressel would win -- not exactly a compelling case for generating excitement about Dr. Scarborough. When the three finalists were announced, I did a lot of internet searching to see what I could learn about the other two. I didn't find anything I would consider to be exceptional about Dr. Scarborough's accomplishments. I mentioned in a previous post that two consistent trends associated with his professional career have been cost-cutting and privatization of higher education. His sudden suspension and quick departure from DePaul University obviously raise a red flag. But the details were kept secret, so it's hard to judge exactly what went wrong there. Unlike Dr. Proenza, it's hard to find a lot of love for Dr. Scarborough at Toledo. The Arts & Sciences College Forum, "UT's officially disapproved information source" where "criticisms of administrators are commonplace" offers many negative rants about Dr. Scarborough's performance there. So while I'm hoping for the best for UA, I'd feel better if someone could come up with some positives about Dr. Scarborough's past performance that would encourage optimism about UA's near future. As I said in my last post, I'm willing to give him a chance to prove himself. But I'd add that I'm not willing to give him a free pass just because he has a doctorate and his last name isn't Tressel.

People need to be where they're appreciated, and it's evident that UA didn't appreciate Jim Tressel. YSU does, and he will feel welcome there and do a good job. If UA prefers Scott Scarborough, then I'm willing to give him a chance to prove himself. It will be interesting to track this over the coming years and see how UA does relative to YSU.

Maybe everyone here has been too busy following the Zips and thinking about a new arena to notice that the campaign to sway public opinion into supporting a sales tax increase to correct serious violations at the dangerously understaffed Summit County Jail began last year: Summit County Jail becomes headache; low staffing to blame, officials say If voters fail to pass the sales tax increase, one option would be to start releasing prisoners sooner and send them back to their neighborhoods in and around Akron and Summit County to mingle with their tax-averse neighbors.

According to the Urban Dictionary:

It's funny that there was another more balanced story in the ABJ that's being ignored. This story is more focused on other aspects of the proposed tax rather than just the arena. One of the interesting points made in the story is the following:

Now having the FCS Defensive End of the Year transferring to UA for his senior season without having to sit out would be big news in my book if it could be made to happen. I just can't buy into the concept of new uniforms being big news. With all due respect to Billy Crystal, big sports news to me is something that makes your team more likely to win games, not look better.

Apparently Don Hillenbrand has been taking shots at Jim Tressel for quite awhile. A couple of years ago he even invoked the wrath of the most prolific letter writer in the history of the Akron Beacon Journal, David T. Culp. Check out the third letter to the editor from Feb. 10, 2012.

Supporting the theory that UA is looking beyond the MAC?

I'll cut Coach Bowden some slack on this as he may have been following all the excited talk on ZN.o about new uniforms and concluded from a coach's point of view that a new assistant was bigger than that. It's also possible that this isn't the big news he was talking about. We'll see what develops over the next week or so.

I don't recall Coach Bowden ever doing something like this before. If he has, how big was the news when it was finally announced? If he hasn't, then we'll have our first opportunity to see if he's as good at evaluating what fans think will be big news about the team as he is at coaching. I'd get excited about something on the level of a home game against a surprise major opponent.

Noah has announced a date for his college decision:

Skip, sorry you didn't get a chance before making your last post to read my last one. We're all now in agreement that simple math shows that car purchases are about the only things worth driving across a county line to save a few bucks on slightly lower sales taxes. The reports you cited that a major factor in the enormous growth and success of the Belden Village area is due to a .25% lower sales tax attracting people to drive down from Summit County are likely propaganda pushed by low sales tax advocates. In the real world, we're all in agreement that you lose more in gasoline costs than you gain in sales tax savings on any purchase less than several thousand dollars. As others have already pointed out, the simple message to remember from this long discussion is that a .25% sales tax difference amounts to 25 cents per $100 purchase.

Skip, I owe you an apology. After looking back over this thread I realize I totally missed this earlier post where you explained the car tax in detail. I understand now why I couldn't make sense of your later references to it. Mea culpa. I give you credit for making a really good point about small differences in sales tax making a more significant difference in vehicle purchases than smaller items. Applying logic to your good observation, purchasing a big ticket item like an automobile is one transaction where it might be considered reasonable to at least a few customers to travel to the next county to save on sales tax. As I pointed out previously, a .25% difference in sales tax works out to a $75 difference on a $30,000 vehicle. Spending $5 worth of gas to drive to a dealership in the next county might appeal to a small percentage of people looking to save $75 (-$5 in gas) for a $30,000 car. Now, applying similar logic, spending $5 on gas to travel to the next county to buy something like a $1,000 big screen TV produces a different set of economics. In that case you'd be paying $5 for fuel to save $2.50 in sales tax on the TV for a net loss of $2.50. That would definitely not qualify as a smart TV. Take it down to the $100 level -- $100 worth of clothing, groceries, etc. -- and it gets worse. Your $5 worth of gas and the extra time to drive there gets you 25 cents in sales tax savings for a net loss of $4.75. So simple logic tells us that the only folks who are driving from the west side of Akron down to Belden Village to save money on a $100 purchase or even a $1,000 purchase are the ones who failed math. They're spending more on gas than they're saving in sales taxes.

Balsy, nice work (and good followup, LZip). That's good ballpark math even if it isn't correct to the nearest dollar. That's exactly the kind of research needed to put things in perspective. The alarmists are too busy running around like a bunch of Chicken Littles screaming "The sky is falling! The sky is falling!" to actually do the math. According to the information released so far, only about a third of that would go toward the new arena.

GP1, the CliffsNotes version of your extended essay seems to be that if the academic quality of the incoming freshmen generated by the 50% increase in applications is higher, then more students are more likely to stay enrolled longer and graduate from UA, which will help increase UA's enrollment in a positive way and also help generate more state funding. I can agree with all of that.

Skip, thanks for finally confirming an unclear point that I was politely asking you to clarify. The problem with your thinking that this is an Ohio issue due to a county sales tax advantage is that most states in the country levy sales tax on vehicle purchases in the county of registration and not in the county of purchase. In other words, Ohio merely follows what is effectively the national standard. This is why I ask questions when people on internet forums throw out "facts" that don't sound right to me. Many times these "facts" turn out to be incorrect assumptions, as this one did. Wherever you got your information was either not a good source or you just misinterpreted it.

No one is excusing Jim Tressel's well-known negatives. Some are weighing his negatives against his positives and coming up with different opinions. Not everyone sees the deck stacked as heavily against him as some claim. Everyone has prejudices and no one has exclusive ownership of logic.

Thanks for addressing this. I had really hoped that Skip would answer some of the questions about his claims. I did a little research and found that Belden Village also benefits from shoppers from adjoining rural counties (Holmes, Tuscarawas, Carroll, Columbiana) which have no similar major shopping areas. But I couldn't find any data supporting the claim that Stark County's lower sales tax was a major driver of Belden Village's success. I also searched for anything related to laws being changed due to Stark County auto dealers having a sales tax advantage, but couldn't find anything on that. Ohio law is that sales tax on cars is paid according to the rate of the county where the car is registered, not where it's purchased. In any case, a .25% sales tax difference on a $30,000 car amounts to $75. Maybe Skip had some good points to make. But if he's not open to explaining his claims a little further, they will remain a mystery to me.

The burden of proof would be on someone to prove that their claim of logic is not a manifestation of their personal prejudices.

The burden of proof is always on those who make a claim that they want to convince others to accept as fact. If someone asks you when you stopped beating your wife, the burden is not on you to prove you haven't been beating your wife. If anyone wants to convince others that Jim Tressel would be either a great or a disastrous UA President, the burden of proof is on them. Since no one can prove either of those claims, this discussion is all about the opinions of what different people think might happen based on their personal knowledge of the situation and influenced by their personal prejudices.

Absolutely amazing for Zips football to already be considered a "successful program" by a recruit.

LZip, you are absolutely correct. News reports correctly noted that only a fraction of the proposed tax would be used to finance the new arena and that Zips basketball would be only a small fraction of the arena's use. Those who interpreted it differently may not have paid attention to all the details in the story.

I'll try to give you some straight answers from my perspective: 1) Nothing. As I've documented in a number of previous posts with links to various articles on higher education, about 20% of current university presidents come from outside academia, a large percentage of them do not have doctorates and the number is growing. The biggest challenge non-traditional university presidents cite is becoming familiar with the academic culture. Presidents of universities have evolved over the years from a priority of being on campus dealing with academic matters to a priority of being off campus dealing with business and financial matters. Their top executive assistants now handle more of the on-campus academic matters. A longtime college football coach would actually have a small advantage here over other non-traditional candidates by virtue of having spent his career within the university culture. 2) Yes. As noted above, university presidents today delegate much more to senior level executive assistants than in the past. It's imperative that they be able to lead because they don't have the more dictatorial powers that university presidents enjoyed decades ago. They have to be team builders. A successful college football coach would likely draw on his previous relationships with assistant coaches in communicating his vision for various aspects of the game plan to his senior executive assistants. 3) Yes with reservations. Jim Tressel has always been considered an effective leader. A good leader should always try to push the envelope without crossing the lines. This is an area where it's fair to raise questions. We talk all the time on this forum about how all the big football programs cheat, and that you have to cheat to beat the other cheaters. College football coaches get caught on various levels of pushing the envelope too far all the time, and many more probably get away with the same or worse. Jim Tressel is one of the ones who was caught. And although his NCAA penalty was severe, there are those who believe that he voluntarily took the fall for an endemic tOSU problem. Whatever one chooses to believe, it's imperative that UA be absolutely certain that they trust Jim Tressel as a university president would not push the envelope to the same edge as he did as a college football coach. 4) This is open to question. It's possible to believe that Dr. Proenza was good as UA President but may or may not be good at selecting his successor. The business world is full of examples of hand-picked successors who succeeded or failed. There are no guarantees here. That's why it's critical that UA's Trustees not just rubber-stamp Dr. Proenza's choice, if in fact Dr. Proenza has recommended Jim Tressel over all other candidates. They must perform due diligence and dig into every nook and cranny. They need to do a hard analysis of everything touched by Jim Tressel during his two years at UA and objectively determine if things have actually been improved or if things have been glossed over by self-serving reports.

Answer: I have changed my mind on issues based on being presented with valid data that refutes beliefs I previously formed based on what turned out to be incomplete or erroneous data. I have not changed my mind on issues based on being presented with another person's opinion that is not backed up by any better data than I have access to.

A hypothetical forum member on a hypothetical forum takes a strong stance on an issue where there is honest disagreement among people with different viewpoints. As the discussion goes back and forth, the hypothetical forum member refuses to acknowledge any points made by anyone with an opposing opinion and the wording in his posts becomes increasingly emotional and strident. At what point do you give up trying to engage that hypothetical forum member in reasonable conversation?