GP1

My prediction is this. We will start out the season 0-1. I will predict the rest of the season after the Temple game.

Maybe, maybe not. Are we going to suspend every player coming out of college this season for five games who might have some relationship with a drug dealer? 80% of the rookies wouldn't be on the field for the first five games.

Then you have a reading comprehension problem. I can't help with that.

Respectfully, this is a bad point. We don't punish people in this country for crimes committed in another country. We may send them back to the country where they are charged, but we don't punish them here.

Only authority that is stupid and wrong is stupid and wrong. Goddell is both stupid in many cases and wrong in this case...making him stupid and wrong. What Pryor did has nothing to do with his professional career. Will Goddell next suspend player from Miami who are now in the NFL and caught up in the problems going on at the U?

Article Leave it up to Roger Goodell to actually make me feel sorry for Pryor. There is no reason for this other than Goodell is an attention whore. He is what is wrong with making a lifelong legal bureaucrat (he has only worked for the NFL in his professional career) the leader of a professional sports league. See something you don't like....make a rule. See a player you don't like...punish him with a rule. The guy is terrible.

Good point about espn. A lot of complaining about politics and how ugly it becomes centers on the 24 hour news cycle and I would agree with that line of thinking. The 24 hour news cycle of espn has gotten college athletics out of control. ESPN is a problem. They all sit around and act shocked when a school is caught cheating, yet many of them played college football and saw first hand cheating. I don't know if the kids are not the problem. They are a secondary problem.

I absolutely love this tread and I can't believe more people aren't posting. The more you read about this case, the more you realized how out of control college athletics has become on every level. Are the players corrupt, or has the arms race in the form of building one facility after another caused this environment? College kids are college kids (not just athletes) and if you put a free hooker in front of one of them (imagine the quality of hooker one can get in Maimi), there is going to be some sex going on in 99% of the cases. College kids are not able to resist the temtations presented to them. A kid who grows up in a ghetto, in most cases, is not going to turn down a ride on a million dollar yacht in Miami, or a free $1,000 per hour hooker, or a dinner at a high end steak house, or anything else ("Is there a bigger racial divide in American than the difference between the players playing college football and the high end donors?" Mrs. GP1, the luckiest woman in the world). Universities have spent millions in building facilities. Ashland University just spent $20 on athletic facilities for a D II school....a D II school... and $70 million on school buildings...talk about a school that doesn't have its priorities straight. The money doesn't fall out of the sky...it has to be raised. At a school like Miami (and there are others like Miami), there aren't that many high end donors so if you find one, you let him basically do whatever he wants in order to keep up with the Jones. If you don't, you are finished. What's the ncaa's solution to this problem it doesn't see as a problem? Create more rules preventing the kids who have no chance of turning down a free hooker from getting the free hooker. It seems to me that the arms race has created the problem, not the players. If the people at the ncaa had a combined half a brain, they would restrict the "building processes" at these schools that are at the core of the problem. The players aren't at the core of the problem. The problems are the athletic departments who haven't seen a stadium building project they would turn down and the ncaa who is obsessed with making college athletics bigger and bigger at any cost. Nobody will say it, but that's the problem. It's so out of control now that no control can be established and every off season we are going to hear these stories until the ncaa reforms or is eliminated. The main stories of college football are now about teams in a scandal and not, you know, actual college football. It's terrible for college football.

...to a guy under Federal investigation for drug dealing. Knowing what we now know about college football, is anyone shocked by what went on at Miami? The only shocking thing about it is it took so long for it to come out given how much of it was going on. Does anyone believe Miami is the only bcs school where wealthy donors are buying players hookers? It is going on everywhere. Probably last night at a pathetic team like Minnesota, some player told some hooker, "Thanks honey. Donor X told me the money is on the dresser next to the lutefisk."

My only guess is the league is so lazy they can't think of anything else.

Are you saying people think it is one way, but it is really the other way? I would agree. To be the best, you have to beat the best. It's the same tournament for everyone so let's just go out there and win it regardless of the set up.

By conference season? What are they doing in Canada? He needs to have his rotations down before the season starts and then go on an ass kicking frenzy from day one.

I can't believe Mount Union football hasn't given him an award for the countless articles he wrote about them while being paid by the AKRON paper while ignoring the Zips. It's been a long time since Pluto won anything. It goes to show how lazy the guy has become and how bad his articles/ideas are now. The Cleveland Journalism Hall of Fame? I didn't know one even existed. Not only did he ignore the Zips, he was a contributor to the lack of adult view of the people around Akron about a D-1A football team. The Zips were always "the little engine who could" in his mind. If he was a more creative writer, he should have been writing about "the little engine who should". He never demanded more from the leaders of the Univeristy with articles pointing out how we should be better in football than we were.

I'm not a fan of flavored beer. However, I have yet to taste a beer that tastes like French fries.

Does Pluto actually work anymore? It seems as if all he does is dig up old articles, rework them a little and get them printed. The guy is without any new ideas.

I disagree. Week 2 against Temple could be the difference between a winning or losing season.

Link Not even Bagels get past the ncaa laws. It's astonishes me that institutions of higher learning would belong to such a stupid organization.

This is a good point. Nicely has taken his biggest strides and is just about as good as he is going to be. If the coaches think the players are equal and there is a bigger up side witih one player, go with the up side. I don't know who is winning the battle or even how close it is. May the best man win.

Article Getting back to the foolishness of the ncaa. Everyday Should Be Saturday has been running regular pieces on the stupidity that is the ncaa handbook. My favorite quote, "The ncaa is the world's worst homeowner's association." The ncaa needs to be eliminated.

Just think if these kids were allowed to go out and get a job signing autographs. A lot of this could have been avoided.

Wouldn't the ncaa save more time if they looked into the minority of bcs players who aren't breaking the rules?

Race does play a roll...in everything. Many kids get slotted into holes at a young age and by the time they get to college, there is nothing else. I don't know if this kid played RB and LB or just one, but it's hard to change a kid into something if he never played that position. I've said all along I'm not interested in anything other than winning. Give me some winners. Many on this board are old enough to remember a Cleveland Brown (Version 1.0) named Brian Brennan. If I remember right, he still did/does radio for the Browns. He was a third down WR for the Browns what seems like long ago now when the Browns were a top notch NFL team in the toughest division in the NFL. Everyone thought Brennan was the usual slow white WR who had good hands and could come through on third down. He could play every down if, by golly, he was just fast enough. The truth was just the opposite (go figure), every season he played for the Browns, he had the fastest 40 yard dash time on a team with some really fast guys. He had good hands, but only ran good short patterns and couldn't block to save his life. That's how you become a third down specialist of any color.

Bistro Bella Vita Not as much seafood as bistro. Everything from seafood to steaks to pasta to pizza. One of my all time favorite dinner places when I was traveling in corporate America. I'd love to hear back on your dining experience. Toledo has been a successful program in the past and will be successful again. People want to be associated with that. BTW, something happened to me yesterday that made me feel good about UofA and the future. I had a chance to speak with the AD from UNCC at a professional event. I was telling her about how poorly UofA has done since opening The Big Dialer. She looked me dead in the eyes and said things would get better because Akron has too much going for it for things not to get better. She is well on the back end of her career (37 years as a coach, assist AD and AD since around 1997) and doesn't have to pull any punches. It was nice to speak with a confident, competent and smart athletic director who is not looking to her next job because she is in her last job.

At this point, you would be telling the people of Akron they are a bunch of losers. Good luck selling that ticket. Start to win and then tell everyone the school is like them.

I'd have giveaways, if I could get local businesses to donate them. It wouldn't be the focus of my marketing efforts though. What to do with marketing money is the question at hand though. And a good question. I'd take a bunch of it over the next 3-4 years and pour it into an academic program to keep at risk players in school. At the same time, I'd go out and get at risk players and keep them in school and win some games. The big schools do this every day. Once I started to win, I'd have focused campaigns on winning and sell tickets based off of that. It's supply and demand. Right now, there is no demand because the product is so bad. Selling tickets at high school football ticket rates sets the wrong tone because it is so hard to raise ticket rates. Think about it. If they sold tickets at $5 per ticket during a winning season and then raised it to $10 after a winning season, the Beacon Journal would have an article with the headline, "The University of Akron Raises Ticket Prices 100%". Nobody would read beyond that headline. They should keep ticket prices where they are, focus on getting a winning product on the field before concerning themselves with marketing. UofA has a winnig problem, not a marketing problem. I'm pretty certain that if UofA could average 7.5 wins per season over a three year period with never a losing season, one MAC Championship and one at large bowl bid, they would sell a lot of tickets. People from NE Ohio love football and would embrace a good college football team in a second. I'm not saying the place would be sold out, but I don't think a 15,000 person season ticket base should not be out of the question. With an average 5,000 walk-up, it would be a good time at The Big Dialer. It's like the old question a woman asks, "Does this dress make me look fat?" The answer isn't the dress, it's the fat that makes her look fat, but nobody in their right mind would say it. We been on a steady diet of losing for so long, we have losing fat rolls like a Can't State cheerleader has fat rolls from eating pot laced brownies. We can have the greatest marketing campaign in the world and it isn't going to sell many tickets because the losing has been so bad.