Dave in Green

Ironic that the American Athletic Conference did not want to be known as the AAC because they knew there'd be confusion with the ACC. They should have found another name because all conferences are referred to by their acronyms. I don't think GoZips believes it's more likely that UA would end up in the ACC than the AAC.

No matter how tasty and tempting the a la carte menu may appear, none of the conferences we would like to see the Zips move up to would allow UA to split its programs into multiple conferences. The only exception would be if a conference didn't offer a sport at the level the Zips are currently playing, i.e. FCS instead of FBS football. For example, West Virginia is allowed by the Big 12 to play men's soccer in the MAC only because the Big 12 doesn't field men's soccer teams.

Another fact I came across in my search for information on university presidents is that over the past 20 years their average age has risen from 52 to 61. Coincidentally, Jim Tressel happens to be 61. If he's too old to handle a schedule like that, then so are about half of all university presidents.

Nice evaluation of Josh by his coach. The Zips can certainly make use of "a settling force" who "doesn't take a lot of bad shots."

It's pretty easy to find hundreds of documents and studies relating to the changing role of university presidents. In the early 20th century they spent most of their time on campus dealing with academic issues. In recent decades more time is spent off campus dealing with issues not directly related to academics. Today, university presidents list fundraising, budgets, community relations and strategic planning as areas that occupy most of their time, so it stands to reason that these are the primary areas on which candidates are evaluated. Many of the areas more closely related to academics are now the responsibility of the provost. The president serves as CEO and the provost as COO. In one of many essays I've read, I found the following snapshot of a day in the life of a modern university president:

Yep, Marquette would be a lateral move from VCU. Unless Shaka's dream job is to be close to where he grew up, Marquette is going to get the same thanks but no thanks that others have gotten.

Brad Stevens also turned down a lot of good offers while he had a similar deal at Butler to what Shaka has at VCU. Then the Boston Celtics called ...

Dream on, Dr Z. There are no perfect candidates because there are no perfect people. If you don't like the word cons, try flaws, weaknesses or whatever you want to call those little thingies that make us all imperfect. We all just have our own different sets of pros and cons.

BUGS may have come up with a winner here: Bowling Green hires Chris Jans (Wichita State associate head coach)

It's not just football that's over-saturated with commercials on TV. Check out this estimate of the percentage of TV time devoted to commercials over the years:

The AAC would be a great conference for men's soccer. The AAC would welcome UA with open arms if our football and basketball programs had the same reputation as Zips soccer. Pieces of the puzzle fit in different places, but when you try to fit them all into one conference it starts falling apart. It all points back to first trying to do everything within reason to be best in the MAC in as many sports as possible.

@zippy5, got it now. I thought you were talking about just moving basketball, not everything. Addressing that, what level conference do you think would be interested in having UA only for football? Most of the good FBS conferences are looking for quality members in all sports. The UA football program by itself doesn't have a stellar history of performance or attendance. A few more years of Coach Bowden might start moving the needle a little.

I'll try to be clearer. I don't believe that a conference like the MAC that supports both FBS football and D-I basketball will allow a conference member like Akron to split off the basketball (or football) program and move it to another conference. That's very much different from Temple, UMass and all the other examples that keep coming up. The difference is that those schools belonged to conferences that did not support both FBS football and D-I basketball. So if one of their conference members had an FBS football program, they were allowed to play football in an FBS conference. Do you get the difference?

When Temple was in the A-10, Temple football was allowed to play in another conference only because the A-10 didn't support FBS football.

I suspect that all conferences which include both FBS football and D-I basketball, including the MAC, have contracts in place that do not allow member schools to split their FBS football and D-I basketball programs between conferences.

@LZip, I think if you looked at individual programs you'd see different scenarios. We've discussed this many times here over the years. I remember researching Gonzaga. They were slowly building their program up and started having success. But as soon as they did their coach left for another, higher-paying position. School executives met and decided the only way they could have a consistently good program was to significantly increase the budget. Part of the allocation of more resources was to pay the head coach a high enough salary that he wouldn't leave for a high-major program once he produced a consistently winning program. But it went way beyond that. The school bought a private jet for the coach to use to literally fly around the world to recruit the best players from Europe, South America, Africa and Australia. That's really when Gonzaga ceased being a true mid-major, even though they remained in the decidedly low-rent West Coast Conference, where St. Mary's was their only real challenger year after year. Butler went through a similar process to Gonzaga, where they made a huge increase in budget far beyond any other team in the Horizon League. They locked in Brad Stevens as head coach with a high-major salary and spent lots of money on all the amenities that the high-major schools have to attract high-major talent. They ended up losing Stevens to the Boston Celtics, and in their first season without him, and now playing in the much tougher Big East, they had their first losing season in years. Each story is a little different, so you'd have to research each school you're interested in.

Wow, the great 3-point shooting Creighton team is getting totally embarrassed tonight. With 6 minutes left in the game, the Bluejays have hit only 3-18 treys while Baylor has hit 10-13. Super player McDermott is totally ordinary (11 points, 0-3 treys). Score with 6 minutes left is 67-41. Bye-bye #3 seed Creighton.

I know you're a straight shooter. It's easy to miss the footnotes in small print. USA Today does the same thing every year with NCAA tournament coach salaries. I haven't been able to find a comprehensive list of all 351 D-I coaches. By the way, almost all head coaches have incentive bonuses for specified achievements. In order for Coach Dambrot to collect the maximum bonus, he needs to win NCAA tournament games. That's a pretty strong incentive to do anything he can (within the rules, of course) to make that happen. And I don't think any of us would begrudge him the max bonus for winning NCAA tournament games.

@Ada Zip, let's get this straight so as not to mislead anyone. It clearly states at the top of the story TOP NCAAB COACH SALARY next to Mike Krzyzewski's photo along with his 2013 salary of $7,233,976 +2,534,406 from 2012 Total Pay. It clearly states at the bottom (my bold): Kentucky failed to make the NCAA tournament last season, which explains why Calipari was not on the list. There are many high-major and a number of mid-major coaches who didn't make the NCAA tournament last season who make more than Coach Dambrot. He is far from the 48th highest paid college basketball coach.

The Red Claws return for their last visit of the season to Canton at 7 p.m. this Wednesday (March 26). Yesterday the Red Claws were officially eliminated from the D-League playoffs. It seems as if the Red Claws are more about developing players than winning games. Zeke and Daniel Orton had been alternating as starting centers, with neither playing really long minutes. More minutes were given to some of the team's forwards and guards. Today for the first time Zeke and Orton both played long minutes. Zeke started and played 31:40 and Orton came off the bench and played 31:23, which means they were on the floor together for quite a few minutes. Lo and behold, playing the 2 big men long minutes paid off with a rare Red Claws win. Zeke had a nice game, leading the team in rebounding with 9 and blocked shots with 6, and scoring 11 points on 3-4 from the field and 5-5 free throws. He also had a steal, an assist and just 1 turnover plus 4 personal fouls.

It's looking a lot like #11 seed Dayton is going to be the only underdog mid-major to make it to the Sweet 16 this season.

There's a tendency for those who, for whatever reason, are predisposed to dislike the idea of Jim Tressel as President of UA to think primarily of all the potential negatives and those who do like the idea to be more focused on the potential positives. It's not that simple for UA's Board of Trustees. It's their duty to weigh all the pros and cons of all the candidates and choose the one whose pros most outweigh the cons. I'm sure they've already heard all of the points being made here, and more, from various sources. The Trustees have had an opportunity to observe how he's performed in a high executive position at UA for almost two years now. He's been given increasing responsibilities and promoted from Vice President to Executive Vice President. That's a sign that the Trustees approve of his performance to date, which is a big pro in his favor. The main question left is if they believe he's capable of taking that final step to the top executive position and doing a better overall job of leading UA than any of the other candidates.

UMass is in the MAC for football because they just moved up from FCS to FBS and the A10 doesn't support FBS football. Are there any schools in both FBS football and D-I basketball that play in different conferences even though their football conference also supports D-I basketball? Is that even possible within the bylaws of the various conferences?

Haven't we eliminated all possibility of UA giving up on football with the major investment in the new stadium? It's really not even a viable option. I happen to like basketball first and football second. But I wouldn't want to give up on football just to pump more resources into basketball, even if that were an option. UA is committed to both football and basketball, but lacks adequate resources to consistently compete at the big boy level in either. Playing in a higher profile conference might help UA generate more revenue from and for both football and basketball. But any higher profile conference we could move up to is not looking for less-well-endowed schools who want to boost their revenue by being in a richer conference. They're looking for well-endowed schools who can bring more revenue into their conference.

It's always a sign of weakness when one side starts trying to pin labels like "apologist" on the other side instead of presenting valid data points to support their case. The reality of mid-major success against the big boys is that there are more than 200 mid-major teams and only a few have had success. Those few are played up in the media while the hundreds of teams that don't pull an upset or two are not publicized. The reason they're called upsets is because they happen only infrequently, which is what makes them newsworthy, i.e. dog bites man is not news; man bites dog is. Many of the mid-major teams that have been the most successful have allocated resources to their basketball teams that are closer to high-major teams than the poorest of the mid-majors. The percentage of mid-majors with modest resources that pull the occasional upset of the big boys is exceedingly small. Resources (including money) are not the only factor. I don't know anyone who claims that. But resources certainly are a factor. Is there anyone who denies that? Meanwhile, ruminate on these numbers: 3,421 = average attendance at Dayton football home games this season 12,316 = average attendance at Dayton basketball home games this season