GP1

The highlights looked great. Since I was in bed at 10 PM, I missed the rest of it. I wonder when the ncaa is going to give the working man a break and play their national championship games on Sunday or Saturday nights so they can start at a reasonable time and the rest of us can watch the whole game. The Atlantic

I respectfully disagree. Since you brought up a clown show, I'll go that direction. TW hired a fellow clown from a clown show. There couldn't have been much thought put into hiring Ianello other than he was a friend of the AD. It's almost impossible to make any other conclusion.

It's our magic number. The administration could excuse away a lot of bad coaching for nine years back then. Since they really didn't know what to do, it was their only play. Since everyone in college athletics was flushing money down the toilet on new facilities, it all seem believable. Only now are we starting to understand what a pile of crap we were all fed and were glad to eat in the name of the "building process". Faust stuck around for nine because if we just had the right facilities, he could do something with the program. Owens...same as Faust. BTW, we have better facilities now than then and we are worse...Isn't that what someone very, very high up at UofA really needs to be explaining to the public, in addition to why that person who caused the problem is still employed at UofA. Hipsher...same as Faust and Owens. If he just had a better arena, who knows what could have happened. None of us ever know what could have happened, but we do know what happened. KD has the exact same arena as Hipsher and is more successful.

When would he have beaten either Zeke or Tree out for playing time. Andrick worked his butt off, but I don't think he was the player either Zeke was or Tree is for the Zips. Again, there were some solid first round MAC Tournament loss players on in the Hipsher years. We are now dealing with a team much more talented. I'm looking beyond the stats and trusting my eyes on this one. Maybe I'm the only one who sees how vastly improved this team is in the KD ear than the Hipsher era.?.?

I respectfully disagree here as well. Long term, McAdams will be the better player. Forced to play more, he would be more productive in terms of stats. Since he plays on such a better team than Andy did and it was hard for him to get off the bench, his early stats aren't what Andy's were. Walsh? Again, more and better players on the team now reduce a Walsh's ability to fill up the stat sheet.

Reason Too bad articles like this weren't published 20 years ago. But then again, the evils of the "building process" were not possible to measure then because everyone had not lost their minds yet. Enjoy paying for BGSU's sports programs Zips fans (who live in Ohio and pay taxes in Ohio).

Great Stuff

I respectfully disagree. Sometimes when we look back on players, we think of them being better than they really were. Andy is one of those guys for me. There wasn't enough natural talent there to produce much of an "up side". It could be he didn't improve because of the back injury. It could also be he was as good as he was ever going to be right before the back injury. It's the sort of question we never know the answer to. I'm enamored with the "current" talent level on the Zips team. I'd take Zeke, Tree, McAdams, Walsh and when he was on the team Diggs over Andy any day of the week. I don't think it would be hard to come up with 10 names better than him over the past 15 years. If he did crack the top ten, it wouldn't be close to five. Andy was a solid player and I don't want to make it seem like I'm belittling him. Solid players earn you first round loses in the MAC Tournament. We now have star MAC players on the team who win the MAC Championship. There is a huge difference between the Andy Hipshires of the world and what we have now.

This could be by design. It appears to me as if LBs at the major college and NFL level don't seem to be the Hulks they used to be. With rules designed to promote passing and the spread offense, a huge run stopping LB isn't as important as a smaller, more mobile LB. A LB doesn't have to be as big as a DE. I really believe in coming years, base defenses may be called 4-3-4's, but in reality they are going to be 4-2-5s. What will worry me is if the size of our front four is not improved. What we don't know about Turner is if he is the same weight, but his strength improved 30% and his quickness improved as well.

Where to go with this? If this was a Motown group from the 60s (since I went to the Motown Musical on Broadway last week, I had to get that in.), this group would be called "Jimmal Ball and the Forgettable Four". The problem with Hipsher was he didn't bring good enough talent to Akron. The Zips didn't bring top notch talent to Akron until Zeke came to town. There was a smattering of good players, but never top notch players. I could be totally off base, but other than Ball, there isn't guy on the above team that would get significant playing time mid season last year. Hipsher was such a bad judge of talent, he gave his two sons scholarships.

The subtitle of this thread should be, "Better them than us."

Good point by that the number of Olinemen on the roster is woefully low at 11. They are going to need to bring in 7 walk ons just to field a scout team offensive line.

I don't know if they should have to do as well in sports as they do in football, but they should be required to do the minimum to stay eligible. There are very few cases of academic problems compared to guys taking money. There should be part of their "salary" held back and given to the person upon graduation. Half if probably too much, but something like 10-20% might not be a bad number.

He'll probably be leaving around then anyhow to get a bag of Doritos.

If they cap the money being put back into sports, how are they going to pay for the "building process" that has been completed (even though it never really stops)? Seriously, they have built one monstrosity after another. How are they going to pay to maintain them?

Yes, they should.

@Dave, Always a good defender of the status quo and large institutions. When you were working, did you think your pay was fair with the value you brought to the company? If you didn't think it was fair, were you free to go somewhere else and work? The point with college football is we have coaches making over $4 million a year and players making next to nothing. The players aren't free to go anywhere else to play football. There are ADs making more than they deserve for the talents they have and the players make next to nothing. There are TV networks making money hand over fist to televise the games of people making next to nothing. Universities are taking out taxpayer backed bonds to add to their stadiums, yet the players can't get paid? Like I said, the ncaa losing this lawsuit could be the best thing for college athletic ever. It will introduce sanity back into it. Again, if we capped coaches salaries at $1 and gave more money to the players, who would be harmed? $1 million is a lot of money. What else would a college coach be able to do to make that kind of money? And the half wits that are athletic directors? I guess the ultimate question is, "If college coaches salaries went up to $20 million a year and conference revenues from television quadrupled and the players still weren't paid, would that be a good system?"

Absolutely terrible idea g-mann17. The Death Star had no transporter beam. The only really good feature of the Death Star is the laser beam that can blow up an entire planet. TW unleashed a similar weapon on our football program when he hired Ianello.

To answer your last question...Keep the scholarship limit at 85. Only scholarship players get money. The players will have to go somewhere. Level the playing field? Who cares? It is already so unlevel there is no bridging the distance. How about instead of leveling the playing field, we introduce sanity into college athletics?

More to the story? Of course there is. How do you think Paul Harvey held down that gravy job for all of those years?

How can you be anti-Transformer and anti-hot air balloon? Seems un-American to me.

Sports Illustrated Article Very good summary. My favorite point is if the NCAA loses, universities might be thrown into a state of sanity and stop with all of the spending on coaches salaries and stadium additions. At that point, the people who are making the money for the stadiums and coaches salaries might actually get some of that money. If the NCAA loses this, will college athletics be harmed? Depends on who you think is being harmed. The people in most danger are overpaid coaches and ADs so I'm not getting to upset about that. If they don't like it, they can get a job like everyone else or try to make it in the NFL where there are no pretenses about what is happening. If Urban Meyer had his salary cut in half, there would be enough to pay all 85 scholarship players on that team $24,705 per year. Not a ton of money, but who deserves the money more? I don't want to make it seem like I'm picking on Meyer, but if his salary was cut in half or if the ncaa capped coaches salaries at $1.0 million per year, what else would most of these guys do? Get a job at an accounting firm? Would Meyer go back to being a bad commentator or ESPN? No, he would hate that job and he would keep doing exactly what he is doing only for less money. Nick Saban, The Mad Hatter, etc.? What else would these guys do? The same exact thing they are doing now. Will the players who make the money be harmed? No, because they will start to get back some of the money they have made. Will MAClike schools be harmed? Maybe. Maybe some sanity will be introduced into their daily athletics operations. Who am I trying to kid? No, they won't be harmed because they will just find a way to get the taxpayers to pay for the maintenance of the monuments ADs have built in honor of themselves. If you capped ADs salaries at $400K per year, what else would half of these clowns be able to do for a living? There aren't too many high paying jobs for half-wits that allow somebody to con taxpayers out of money, so they have nowhere else to go. I know how much some of you fret about a world without the NCAA and the building process that goes along with it. In reality, losing this case could be the best thing ever to happen to college athletics and taxpayers around the country.

I'm just trying to be part of the building process. After all, weren't we told to "Think Bigger"?

I bet he wouldn't say that if he knew he was going to be air lifted via hot air balloon into an arena through an retractable roof.

What if when the arena transformed itself into a walking arena and could travel the distance between campus and the arena in five minutes? Would a five minute walk seem so crazy at that point? Throw in the team arriving in a hot air balloon through the retractable dome and the cheerleaders arriving via chariots drawn by the dogs that competed in the dog show at the arena earlier in the day delivered to campus by the trucks that competed in the monster truck event the night before driven by the ice show dancers from the show prior to the monster truck show, how could a fan not have a great time in this taxpayer funded arena like that?