GP1

The picture is not correct. Isn't Chase to the upper left side behind the President's head?

It's really not complicated. They take the actual number of attendees and multiply it by the square root of NRA members in Summit, Stark and Portage Counties then divide that number by the number of John Birch Society members in all of Ohio.

I know a guy who has season tickets right behind the plate for the Richmond, VA minor league team. When they called him to renew his tickets, they asked him what it would take for him to renew. He said he wanted to throw out the first pitch at a game and they said OK. The week before the game, he went with a friend to the local high school baseball field to practice (How much practice does it take to throw a ball one time from the mound to the plate?). They got to goofing around and he pitched for like two hours. He blew out his arm and couldn't throw the first pitch. Don't blow out your arm KD!

In general, I like the schedule. I'd rather play Tennessee first, get it out of the way and then play UCF fourth. I'm also a fan of watching college football while the sun is out. Ideal starting times are between noon and 2:00...closer to 2:00. So in general I like the starting times. However, the first game should be played at night in the north because the weather cools for the fans in the evening. It's all about comfort for me. Give me 2-3 hours of tailgating in the warm sun, a three hour football game (add a half hour for replays) mostly in the sun and I go home without having to spend a day, on into the night, freezing my butt off in NE Ohio at a football game.

90% of people who watch games think they can do a better job. Now is their chance. An NFL ref makes between $40K and $120K per year.

Golf allows for interaction with three other people. Moderator note: I f'd up and accidentally hit the "Edit" function instead of "Reply." This deleted a lot of GP1's post, since I only wanted to reply to a short section. The gist of his post was recommending that people take advantage of the post-golf dinner, as it affords the opportunity to interact with a lot of Zips fans you cannot meet on the course. Sorry - CK

Imagine the droppings he would leave on a windshield.

They may not sign Prop 48, but they have a lot of JUCO players on their team. Kids that end up at D-1A schools from a JUCO, for the most part, had grade problems. Not Prop 48, but close enough. No kids with questionable backgrounds? Not a single one in all that time? Are you sure? What Solich does that works great is to use his network of coaches to find players who slip through the cracks of BCS level schools. They are out there if you know where to find a coach at a BCS school kind enough to recommendone to you. The QB from last year was a good example of that. He had a bad knee his JR year of HS and Oklahoma looked past him because he was too much of a risk and they believed they could get equal talent without the knee injury. Solich took the risk and they won the MAC. This is the type of risk we need to be taking. I don't know of Solich does things the "right way", but he sure does do them the smart way. Lastly, can we all stop talking about local recruiting bases. If we want to be a good team, out recruiting base needs to be all of Ohio, Michigan and western PA. Grab a few really good ones from outside of that area and you can have a good MAC team.

A couple of things. First, college baseball players get drafted while their season is going on all of the time. Second, we can't let what happens to 8 players who get drafted decide the fate of our level of football. If a team wants a player bad enough, they will wait for him. Our level of football continues to fail for one simple reason....nobody tries. We follow Captain Smith's orders, but we never really try.

I agree with your comments about risk. We do need to take risk. However, that risk should not put any student, athlete or non-athlete, at risk. Safety comes first. This guy seems to be around, not once...but twice, a situation where a person not only had a gun, but was willing to use it. Like I said, I am willing to look past a lot in order to win, but safety comes first and I think this guy doesn't just put others at risk of having to watch a cop write up a speeding ticket for him, but he puts the lives of himself and others at risk with the people he associates with. Youngstown is only one hour from Akron.

Not the analogy I would use. Actually, you can get someone out by throwing the ball at a runner in baseball. Can anyone name the play? A better analogy for a rule change that is really good for a game like football takes place in the CFL. The CFL allows multiple receivers to run toward the line prior to the snap of the ball. Creates a different dynamic in the game. Every sport has some rules that can be changed to promote more exciting play...Soccer is not immune from looking at ways to making changes that make the game more exciting.

Fans of hockey argued against changing rules that increased scoring for years. When rules were changed to promote scoring and action, more fans were created and the loyal fans stayed. The game was improved. The mistake hockey made was the introduction of the shootout to win OT games. I don't like the idea of it in either sport. I disagree that people who don't like soccer want to see scoring increased. People who don't like soccer aren't going to watch regardless of the numbers of goals scored. The NBA could have games end 200-198 and I wouldn't watch because I don't like the NBA. Increased scoring picks up the marginal fan who likes the sport but wants something a little different. Increased scoring won't lose fans.

Isn't the real solution to adopt rules that promote more scoring throughout the game? I don't know what those changes would be because I don't like the sport, but years of playing craps has taught me about the odds of something happening. Years of watching sports has taught me that fans love watching scoring and when a league like the NHL adopted rules to promote scoring, fan interest went up. It becomes a win-win for the sport. If four goals is the norm (I really don't know what that number is right now, but I think I'm being generous), it presents three ways of getting to four and two present no PK: 4-0, 3-1, 2-2. Lower scoring games offer even fewer options and better chances of a tie. Thus, the PK comes into play. If the game was modified to promote more scoring, there would be fewer PK endings. For example, if soccer changed the rules and there were eight goals total in a game, the ways of getting to that number become 8-0, 7-1, 6-2, 5-3, 4-4...Five in total (four non-PK endings) and the odds of a PK ending are reduced. If a game ends in a tie, sudden death becomes the best way to finish in a sport that now has a better chance of scoring as the overtime will not last six hours. Whatever they do, there should not be a different set of rules in OT as there is in regulation.

Comment directed to all, not wadszip individually. Terry Bowden is the coach of the team, not Jim Tressel. Terry Bowden is a football coach in good standing with the NCAA and will be dealing with the football team on a daily basis. Jim Tressel is a guy who was thrown out of the NCAA and will be doing something other than coaching football. Terry Bowden didn't need a second chance for anything. He isn't doing this for the money or the glory...he has plenty of both. Jim Tressel isn't doing it for the second chance. He already has his money and glory as well. This isn't a stroy about second chances. It is a story about risk and how much risk an organization is willing to take on a person.

I'm the first one to give a player some slack, but when gun play is involved, I'm not. If a guy gets in a fight off campus or is picked up for speeding or smoking pot or something like that, I can look past it. This kid is a threat to others around him. By the looks of it, he doesn't have a scholarship. The first time he steps out of line, he gets the boot. Let's just hope someone doesn't get killed the first time he crosses the line.

Amazing...Brian Sipe played for the New Jersey Generals. I don't remember that. I don't think this league will work because I don't think players can be developed for the NFL the way MLB does with minor leagues. The length of a football player's career is too short to spend it in the minors. I do applaud the ownership group of this league understanding the huge market football provides. Nature abhors a vacuum. Spring and early summer is the vacuum of football for Americans. We crave the game. Now is the time for a college football division to play in the spring to fill that vacuum. If Fox is looking to provide football on a sports network, MAClike conferences should be filling that position with a national conference of their own. Fox will promote the Hell out of the league, get people watching and make us some money. Something is going to fill the vacuum because nature says it will. Mother Nature is always right. Do you guys want to continue to suck hind teat behind the BCS and NFL; or do you want to do something that, for once, puts us in a position to control our own destiny?

Scholarship or walk-on?

I lived in NE Ohio for 20 years and never heard of this school. I thought he could have done better than this. In any event, good luck to him.

Since "Deadly Possession of an Empty Head" isn't a crime, I went with stolen property.

I totally agree it is creative on the part of the top 4 conferences, but not something unexpected. However, I don't see the Boise States of the world as their target. I see what's happening as a natural evolution of college football. The top four conferences could try to wait to see what the other do, be we all know the reality is those conferences will never be able to catch up for many reasons. I don't blame the top four for doing their own thing. They have earned it. Now is the time to strike and that's what they are doing. The Boise States of the world were always nice underedog stories. There will continue to be underdogs, but they will be schools like Mississippi State, Vandy, Northwestern, Purdue, Kansas, Oregon State, etc. There are plenty of small fishs in the top four conferences to create some underdog excitement. These teams don't compete very well in their conferences and this gives them a chance to do something great for their schools if they can somehow win their conferences. The truth is, it is more impressive when a school like Vandy wins their conference than when a Boise State wins their conference and wins a BCS game. Are the smaller conferences victims in this scenario? In some ways, yes...They are victims of their own inability to find any direction or traction in the current world of college athletics. Personally, I see this as one more step towards nonbcs schools having their own division. Ready or not, it's coming. The real question is, what are we going to do about it? Are we going to take charge of our own direction or are we just going to sit back and try to clean up the mess when all is said and done?

Not unless you spend your time nitpicking every post like the worst kind of wife nitpicks her husband. Makes for the worst kind of poster. But yes, I meant Syracuse and thank you for having the intelligence to understand that in an imperfect world, mistakes get made. This story really isn't about the rich getting richer/big vs. small fish as DiG frames it. It is a story about a conference making a horrible decsion and now it has to live with the mistake. It isn't the fault of the SEC or Big 12 or 10 or PACwhatever the ACC made a horrible decision. It isn't the fault of those four conferences the rest of college athletics can't find their A$$ with both hands. These conferences are doing exactly what they should be doing by putting more and more distance between them and the rest of college football until one day they have their own division. MAClike conferences will continue to sit back, follow Captain Smith's orders and go down with the ship instead of saving themselves. Our inaction is horrible and one day we are going to get what we deserve as well.

Great article Dave and thanks for posting. I live in ACC country and have season tickets for one of their teams. They are getting exactly what the deserve in terms of football. The additions to their league were solid basketball additions, but actually make the league worse in football. Any move a conference makes should have football in mind. I don't blame the other conferences for ignoring them for football because they didn't make it a priority. What could the ACC have done differently? They should have added WVU to their league when they had the chance and now WVU is in a league that will allow them to compete for a national championship...not a bunch of stupid hill folk as people believe. They didn't add WVU because of a half-ass reason about academics, but in reality, they didn't want to bring in a new team and immediately have them be the #1 football team in the league like what happened with VA Tech. WVU would have immediately become the best team in the ACC for football. WVU gives them more national football credibility than Pitt or WVU. WVU scored more points against LSU than any other team other than Oregon and was in the game until late when it got away. They destroyed the ACC champion in a bowl game. WVU was the choice for the ACC...they ran from them and now they are getting what they deserve.

Are we talking about athletic department employees or Ludwig von Mises?

Know or suspect?

Try this. It is the direct link to Slate. The article is one of main articles. Look for the football players.