GP1

I agree. Sometimes a lot of old sayings go through my head. One I'm hearing right now is, "Birds of a feather flock together." Let's hope we aren't the same thing when the Bid Dance starts. The Zips are a very good college basketball team, but they still have some proving to do.

Zeke would have fallen to the ground and broken his back if he didn't hold on to the rim. Centers don't get that type of opportunity very often and I can see how it might leave someone in a dangerous situation. The ref should have taken that into consideration.

I did.

True. Even more than numbers though, any team with a lead should expect a desperation series of punches from the other team. They are going to land some. It's all about how a team handles the punches. NDSU had their starters in when they went on their "run" (use that term loosely as it relates to what NDSU did last night). The Zips kept their normal rotation in and rested players on schedule. When ND's starters got tired, the desperation punches were not as strong against a well rotated and rested Zips team. When the Zips had their rested starters in, the run ND went on subsided. Squashing a desperation second half run of a losing team with rested players is a common feature of the NBA. KD did a nice job of keeping the team on schedule last night and squashing ND's second half run. Last night was all good in just about every meaningful way.

It normally isn't one thing that costs any team a game. My guess is the following items will cost the team, or any team, more than free throws: 1. Missed shots from less than three feet away. 2. Turnovers 3. Poor communication on defense that allows the other team easy scores. 4. Poor defensive rebounding that allows the other team easy second chances. Free throws are important. Executing on the four items above puts a team in a position where they have the lead late in a game and the ball is controlled by players with better FT percentage than Tree. Zeke gets a lot of dunks, Rico is good with the ball, our defense is sound and Zeke dominates the middle...so, I'm confident free throws won't be much of a factor.

Zips looked good tonight. Nice job.

What if he is on the national championship paella eating team?

Sounds like either a Terry Pluto article, or a Can't State student on mushrooms....or both.

Having a stadium like this is completely obnoxious for a high school. There had better not be on student in that school district using a text book more than a year old.

How much money has he brought in?

I'll bite....What is he doing well?

Who is Fabio?

In terms of his primary job responsibility and the topic at hand, the new arena, I think a year is sufficient enough to ask for evidence of results. You are correct, none of us really knows what is going on or if the money is getting in line. However, there is no information coming out. Maybe they are keeping it close to the vest (no pun intended), or maybe there is no news to feed. George Thomas has been doing a good job of covering the Zips and I'm sure this topic has come up in his conversations. I see little reporting on it from his standpoint so my guess is there isn't much to report and that is a problem for those who want the new arena. If George knew something, it would be reported as this would be a big story and he wouldn't want to be scooped by anyone. This whole Tressel thing at UofA makes me think of the movie Moneyball. There is a scene early in the movie where the fat kid is talking to Brad Pitt in what is supposed to be the garage at Jacobs Field. He talks about how wrongheaded the mindsets of major league teams are because they ask the wrong questions and come up with the wrong answers, or overspend for players, because of it. If you watch the movie, teams have these dinosaurs working as scouts who sign players based upon how they look and everything else that doesn't matter. We brought in Tressel for the same reasons. He was the guy who would look good to the people of Ohio. It didn't matter that he had no experience in doing the job of raising money for an arena...it only mattered that he looked good. Style over substance. That's one of the major lessons of Moneyball. Substance matters more than style. Bringing in Tressel closed the door on looking for people who could actually raise money for an arena. Like in the movie where the fat kid tells Pitt that getting rid of Johnny Damon is a good thing because it opens up all sorts of interesting possibilities, the same could hold true if YSU did indeed hire Tressel to be President. It could open up all sorts of possibilities in terms of getting someone in who can produce in lieu of looking good. Some will call my previous post bashing Tressel. It isn't and it has nothing to do with him. His $200K is probably a drop in the bucket compared the amount of money that gets flushed down the toilet at public universities. It is bashing Dr. Proenza and what seems to some of us to be an inability to hire the right people in positions of leadership as of late. This hire reminds me of the old scout in Moneyball who asks the question, "Who is Fabio?" after the Pitt character makes a negative comment about signing players because the look like Fabio. One of the other really old scouts says, "He's a shortstop."........"Who is Tressel?"...is the answer football coach or fundraiser? He is a football coach with multiple national championships at various levels who is dabbling in fundraising. Anyone who has ever read a Jack Welch book knows, "Be cautious of the dabbler."

First of all, we have learned from his OSU problems, his employers aren't allowed to do written performance evaluations of him as they leave a paper trail saying he has ethical problems. If they did though and he received the question above, he would say: Tressel: "Well Dr Z, I did. I successfully duped a state university into paying me $200K. In fact, I was so good at it, I would like a raise to $300K." Dr. Proenza: "Well Jim. We can't lose you because you are so valuable. Your demands sound reasonable. In fact, how does $400K sound?" In all seriousness, don't spend money on the JAR. Either build a new stadium, or don't. Either get people who know how to raise money for a new stadium, or don't look at one. GET PEOPLE WITH EXPERIENCE IN THIS KIND OF WORK!!!!!! They need to figure it out.

OK, the Zips have won 12 in a row. We are talking at large bid. You are on the selection committee and like most of them, you probably have not seen a lot of the mid majors play you have to decide if the Zips get into the big dance or not. The question of the Zips comes around and they have won every game in the MAC with the exception of the MAC Championship...a close game (1-5 points). What questions do you ask about the Zips and put them in order of importance? Feel free to make up your own questions. Look at them as a committee member probably will, and not a Zips fan. 1. What is the power ranking of their conference? 2. Who have they lost to? 3. Any significant wins? These are my questions in order. I would ask these questions of any team on the bubble. I think the Zips need to win the MAC to get in the Big Dance. We know this is a good team, but tournament selection committee members don't know them very well. I don't know the power ranking of the MAC, but I see the standings and the league doesn't appear to be good. Maybe Dave in Green could help us out with the power rankings. I can live with the OK State loss. The Blue Jays loss would be a big one for me. Mid major vs. mid major OOC loss isn't good. The Blue Jays are an elite mid major team and that's what you have to be to be taken seriously as a mid major if you want to make it inside of the bubble. I probably wouldn't go to question three after seeing the CCU and Detroit defeats. To me, who you lose to is more important than who you beat. You SHOULD have wins against good teams if you want to make the Big Dance...it's a chance to play for the national championship and they can't just let anyone in. If you are on the bubble, you had to have won games against Detroit and CCU. CCU is 12-12 overall and in a horrible conference. Detroit is a nice 18-9, but not a marquis win. These games hurt more than beating OU twice helps. If I made it to question three, OU...maybe, but I wouldn't make my decision based upon how a team did the previous year in the Bid Dance. Remember, I'm a tournament selection committee member and my memory of mid majors going far in the Big Dance only lasts as long as the following week's game. I would ask the same questions of OU as I have of the Zips if they were on the bubble. Final ruling...The Zips are out. Not everything is their fault, but they had limited chances to make a big splash this year and didn't take advantage of them. A couple of times, they jumped in the pool against CCU and Detroit and there was no water in the pool. Again, you are on the Tournament Selection Committee. You haven't seen the Zips play much if at all. You have to make a decision in a time span of an afternoon. What do you ask and what do you decide? The next few weeks are critical for this team. I think they have to win the MAC Tournament.

I'd be happy if the Zips just focused on their next opponent. As a fan though, it's fun to speculate. I don't know how we would do against osu (osu fans don't really know how they would against us), but we have a lot of momentum behind us if we can run the table through the MAC Championship. I like confidence and momentum. I like this Zips team. I like them even more with confidence and momentum. The ability to win a game like this is there...they would just need to get the job done by playing a sharp game.

They didn't have to. Joining the Big Ten solved their financial problems and they will bring them back. CK's post was about mid major sports.

Nothing will give. It won't affect women's soccer. After all of this time and all of the work I've put into explaining it, you still don't understand the building process. When adults ran athletic departments, before the building process (bbp..sort of like BC or AD), nobody engaged in activities that would knowingly harm the finances of institutions. People would say radical things like, "Why and the Hell would we do that? We can't afford it." Or, "The numbers don't add up." Or, "That's insane, nobody comes now, why would they come in the future?" "We might be able to build it, but we'll never be able to maintain it." When people spoke these radical words, it made sense and people didn't act on their impulses. Where are we today? We have gone from the radicals who wondered how schools would be able to afford the building process, to people who simply don't care what the results of the building process are as long as they can add a line to their resume and move on to another job. At the end of the day, you, the taxpayer, will pay for the women's soccer team whether you like it or not. You are going to pay for the empty stadium. You are going to pay for the upkeep of the indoor arenas. You are going to pay the coaches salaries. You are going to pay for all of the crap the idiot athletic directors of this country have concocted in their heads and duped university presidents to fall for. You are going to pay for all of it at UofA, BGSU, OU, Toledo, Can't, etc. Doesn't taste too good, does it? How does field hockey taste? I think it blows that my tax money goes to supporting the CCU football program. Like the banks, the building process has gotten too big to fail. Athletic departments are going to have to be taxpayer supported or they will collapse under their own weight. All of the unmaintained arenas and stadiums and practice fields, etc. would be too big of an eyesore to not have the taxpayers pay for the upkeep on these white elephants. Americans have become very interesting. We want things, but we don't want to pay for them. Democrats want a big welfare state...to the point it could never be paid for and then they don't want to cut it. Republicans want a large military that can't be financially supported, but don't want to pay for it. College athletics fans want nice, new, empty stadiums, but don't want to pay for them. So, enjoy women's soccer. It is what the building process has birthed.

The mac should focus on good competition between itself and other MAClike conferences. Spending too much time worrying, and trying to match what the BCS teams are doing is counter productive. Good teams, good talent, good competition, good coaching, good game day experience, good entertainment, etc are what the mac should focus on. Matching the bcs teams with our crappy version of the "building process" is not the answer.

College football may change at the BCS level to the point that a ten game conference schedule becomes the norm. Conference champions make the playoffs so in order to determine that, they will have to play as many games against each other as possible so there are no questions about who, or who may not be the best team in a league. More evidence of the rapidly changing landscape of college football. I find it all very interesting.

I think your assessment is right on the money. The MAC should immediately stop the I-AA teams and play teams from MAClike conferences.

Depends on what they do to the RB. If they do the job right, it would cost less to build Crew Stadium? If memory serves me correctly, Crew stadium is 100% above ground and is a steel frame, aluminum seating stadium. It wouldn't cost much to build. The Big Dialer would cost more than Crew stadium because of all of the brick work and being partially in ground.

According to our friend in Montreal, some fans will be able to watch the game under a shade tree.

It would depend on what the contracts say, but I think this is a great idea. The problem is the league I would like the Zips to play BB in already has 16 members (A-10) so maybe there isn't a fit there. The A-10 is a fun league and I think you guys would love the competition. CK posted the other day about the teams that come and go from the MAC not really being part of the core group of teams. Historically, neither are we or Buffalo or NIU. Why not us? It wouldn't hurt to at least have some back room discussions about it.

The RB needs much more than a coat of paint. It is a concrete structure with a faulty foundation that will cost millions, upon millions to remediate. Thousands of potential seats could not be used because the benches would have to be replaced. The press box will need to drastic renovations to it in order to occupy it again. The stall doors in the mens rooms don't have doors. I've worked in the construction industry for a long time. I always tell people that if they knew what went on while a building was being built, they would never walk into one. Here is my opinion of the renovations they are going to make on the RB...If they can fix up the RB for what they say they can, don't step foot in that place or you will be risking your life. The RB should be condemned and razed before someone gets hurt.