GP1

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.

I respectfully disagree by 1/2. Winning is both a marketing tool and the goal of sporting competitions. Any winning program can use the fact that they win in their ads. I would. You can do lots of things with winning. You can sell shirts with how may conference championships you have won, bowl game appearances, etc. People wear these items around town and remind everyone who isn't participating they should and those who do, why they do. You can have ads with the team holding a championship trophy. You can have ads with your team playing in a bowl game. I could go on all day. You can't do much with losing. Winning also drives season ticket sales as fans want to get their tickets early so they get a good seat so you can say in an ad, "Get good seats while they last." Nobody wants to watch a winning team from the 20 yard line if they can get better seats by buying early. Minor league baseball comes to mind. I saw a study once of ticket sales in minor league baseball. The vast majority of tickets sold for minor league baseball are season tickets. I'm sure that holds true for Akron football as well. If a team is waiting until the middle of the year to sell tickets, they won't succeed. If you have a losing season, nobody wants season tickets. If you have a winning season, fans want season tickets. Winning is also a factor in recruiting. Recruiting is a form of advertising. Teams that win tend to get players that help them continue to win if they play their cards right. Winning is a good product. I like to sell good products. Losing year after year after year is a crappy product. Tough to sell.

The losing is the real problem. If they start winning, players stay, better players come to school, coaching looks better and the reporting picks up. In a general sense, I'm excited for football season, but I love college football and it bleeds into my opinions of UofA/olutlook for the season. I'm going to hold back until the Temple game. I'll have a better sense then. If we get destroyed or look bad at home, my interest will fall off greatly. Until then, I'll remain positive.

I like they have Coach I giving these interviews. Maybe doing some interviews with the team capts. would add some flavor to these videos. The same guy doing the video each day makes it a little tedious.

Not everything is about you and what happens to you. I realize there are good and bad employees with every group. I also know that every job site I go to the Mexicans are working their asses off, and they are good at what they do. They do the work that Americans won't even apply for a job to do. If we have a group of people in this country who have come here and are working hard, why would we want to deny their children a college education if they can get into college? Many of those children are Americans because they were born here...are we going to deny American citizens a college education because of their parents? I'm the racist? These kids see their parents working hard every day. That's how a work ethic starts. In a few years, the children of these illegals will be working circles around the groups of Americans who have been here for a long time. Blaming a "different" group was popular in Germany at one time too. Remember the Nazis and their obsession with Jews? All the Jews in Germany were doing was out-working the non-Jews and they became successful during difficult economic times in Germany, so the Germans got upset and blamed them for their problems. Sound similar to the "wet-backs"?

If you are trying to be funny, this isn't funny. I assume you are talking about Mexicans. I work in the construction industry. If it wasn't for the Mexicans, nothing would get done. There are basically three type of people working on a job site: whites, blacks and Mexicans. Let's say there is a reroofing project on a home. This is how it goes down with these three groups and then you will understand why Mexicans are on every job site. I was told this by a guy who is president of a roofing company in Charleston so everyone knows where it is coming from. The white guy shows up hungover, turns his boom box up as loud as it will go and uses profanity every other word. At the end of the day, he asks for an advance on his pay so he can go get drunk again. The white guy is bad for business because the housewife who had to listen to the boom box and profanity all day tells the owner and all of her neighbors about what happened. The black guy drinks like the white guy only instead of the boom box and profanity, he spends half of his day arguing with his boss about everything under the sun as if a job site is a civil rights debate. He's bad for business too because he only does half a days work and gets paid for a full day. The Mexican guy shows up for work on time, keeps his mouth shut and does his job well as hard and as fast as he can until the job is done. No boom box, he might be using profanity, but nobody would understand it because they don't speak English and they don't talk to each other because they are too busy working. At the end of the day, he goes home to his wife and kid and shows up for work on time again the next morning without a hangover. Accepts he gets paid on a certain day and doesn't ask for advances. We are lucky to have Mexicans here. The immigrant groups in this country know more about what the American dream is than the groups who have been here a long time. We have become a lazy and entitled society. If you are worried about people sucking up resources, you should worry about the legions of white Baby Boomers who have not saved a dime for retirement and will be asking the government to suport them as they get old. They will become a huge voting block and will get everything they ask for like they have their entire spoiled and entitled lives. The Boomers could not, nor would they do what the Mexicans do.

I do drink red, white and blue. The Labatt Blue packaging has a blue background, white lettering and a red maple leaf. Canadian ehhhh? I like Canada. Some of the things they do there make it almost like another country.

Anyone watch any nfl last night? Notice the number of touchbacks since they kick from the 35 now? It's what the nfl wants. Less excitement and less injuries. No thanks. This is how we are going to be "entertained" by the drama of the nfl this season.... 30 yard fieldgoal followed by a commercial followed by a touchback followed by a commercial followed by guys actually playing the game. No thanks. Want to make the nfl more exciting? 1. Eliminate the extra point and make a TD worth seven points. 95%+ extra points are successful. There is no excitement. Allow a team to try for an extra point by running a non-kicking play from the 3. 2. Make the goal posts half as wide. More than 50% of 50 yard+ fieldgoals were successful last season. It isn't impressive to make one now so make it more difficult. Make coaches make hard decisions instead of easy decisions. It's more exciting to watch a team go for it on fourth down than watching a fieldgoal. 3. No fair catches. Create a halo around the returner like they do on the cfl (5 yard) and require returns. 4. 20 seconds between plays after the ball is set. I don't need to watch Peyton Manning point at every player on the defense and call out what position they play for 35 seconds. After watching that act a couple of hundred times a season, it gets tiresome. 5. Only one non-injury substitution per play. Player replaced for injury may not return for 8 clock minutes after the injury. Let's get rid of the third down backs, etc and get guys who can play every down. The nfl needs to get back to guys playing the game in lieu of trying to create drama where it doesn't exist. Look, here comes another touchback.