GP1

Ranking don't get me excited. I would get excited at the football team at least winning their division every year. A MAC Championship wouldn't be that bad either...maybe two in a row. Winning is the sign of progress. Rankings are something people who don't see all of the games hand out.

And it isn't now? So far, what has been the story for the NCAA 2011 football season? It is a complete circus and it is bad for college football.

The player makes money because of himself and for the school he plays for. He could make money for himself and the school. As it stands right now, the players make money for the schools and aren't allowed to benefit directly from the money they make for the schools. Allowing the kid to have a job allows the school to benefit from having the player and it allows the player to benefit from having he school. At the end of the day, this isn't really about money. The lack of integrity doesn't come from the money. The lack of integrity comes from the SECRETS that have to be kept in order for the players to make money. CK is worried about integrity because a player might fix a game. The money itself does not cause the problem. It is the secret the player and the guy giving the money share that causes the potential lack of integrity. That guy can hold that secret over the players head for a long time, or at least in the tosu case, the guy with the secret gets busted by the Feds. Bring the money making into the light and integrity will be restored. As it stands now, the secret ghosts in closets will be haunting college football for decades unless they bring the money into the open. I remember growing up, the Olympics were for amateurs. Anyone with half a brain knew the Communist countries were using professional athletes. There were a ton of people who wouldn't give up on the idea of the Olympics being for amateurs....very similar to those who don't believe college athletes should be allowed to benefit from their ability. One of the big stories of every Olympics was about the "professional" Soviets vs. the amateur "insert country name here". It was horrible for the Olympics because that was the story, not the athletes (similar to college football stories are now about players taking money, not the sport itself). Finally, sanity took hold and now professionals compete in the Olympics. Unless someone is blindly holding onto the past, it would be hard to argue the Olympics are worse off today because professionals are playing than when they were "amateurs". Anyone watch the US vs. Canada gold game last Olympics? If you know anything about hockey, you would have to agree it was one of the greatest hockey games ever. Basketball is awesome because there are so many good players playing professionally in the NBA and for other countries...the games are very entertaining once the rum-dums are out of the tournament. Bringing money into the light was good for the Olympics. It will be good for college football as well. The secrets with the scumbags around these players need to go away.

Of course it is never enough (it is never enough) and the schools shouldn't have to pay it. The players should be allowed to go out and earn money on their own. Which scenario preserves the integrity of the game better: 1. Player selling memorabilia under the table to a tat shop owner who is under investigation by the Feds for drug dealing. 2. Player getting paid by local car dealership in a signed legal contract at the end of which, player receives a 1099 for services, for signing autographs for four hours in September before school starts. The problem with the way things are right now, of these two options, option 1 is the only one that can exist. How is that good for college athletics? How does that contribute to the integrity of the game? Of course Newton woudl and should get more money. Would you rather have a guy who looks like him signing autographs at your car dealership, or would you rather bring in a blubbery offensive lineman stinking of french fries to sign autographs all day?

Want to preserve the integrity of the game? Let them make money so it can all be out in the sunlight as we know who is making the money and where it is coming from. Preserve the integrity of the game by making it so they don't owe anyone anything and you put them in a position where the players don't have to expose themselves to the jocksniffers and low lives. Is the integrity of the game damaged in professional athletics because the players take money? Of course not. Want to preserve the integrity of the game? Stop allowing tosu to play the likes of ysu. Those games are frauds. Want to preserve the integrity of the game? Make it so guys like Tressel can never coach again in college. He'll be the next Rick Pitino. I could go on all night. The point is, it is laughable to look at what goes on in college athletics/ncaa and apply the word integrity to much of it.

Maybe they would if they could, but they can't get anyone to give them a nickle.

Are those of us on this board squirrel hunters or moonshiners. I like think of my self as a moonshiner.

If we want to end up on the business end of the ncaa whip, we could be like BSU and Marshall. Marshall had ncaa problems. The darling of the non-bcs teams, Boise State, is having ncaa problems. There are too many reasons to get into why the Florida schools are doing well. One of them only won four games least year, but since we only won one, I guess that counts as doing better. The other won their league. It is money. They are also in an attractive places to attend college so they draw better players. They also have a better pool of players around them (please don't tell me how many D1 players Ohio produces every year....MAC schools are flooded with them and it inflates the numbers). College football is a religion in the south and people around Akron are professional sports fans so they won't support the program. We have a stadium named after a telemarketing company....a freaking telemarketing company that made it's money taking money off of little old ladies $25 at a time making them believe they would go to Hell if they didn't donate the money. The list is long....we are truely pathetic.

I agree with Z.I.P. At some point, reality has to set in. We have to live in the world of reality. The reality is, we are in a horrible conference and right now we are a horrible team. Not only that, we have 20+ years of evidence proving we and our conference have no business at the highest level of football. Anyone not able to see that has the intellectual ability of Sarah Palin. I get excited about the Zips being able to win a game against a like school, not getting their teeth kicked in by a bcs level team so we can tell everyone we are at least at their level. WE AREN'T!!!!! Let's say CK is right and it was all just about leadership. Where would we be right now? There are schools in the MAC that have had much better leadership throughout the past 20 years and they, like us, can only do well in the MAC. Miami comes to mind. They have very good leadership, great tradition and they still only get a few thousand fans to their games. There wasn't a respectable conference twenty years ago (the MAC didn't even want us) who would have taken us and there won't be one in ten years. With the best possible leadership, all we could expect is more winning in the MAC with a couple scattered bcs wins under our belts every 4-5 years. Where would the MAC be if it had better leadership? I would say it would be in exactly the same condition it is right now. The reasoning has nothing to do with the leadership of the conference and everything to do with who leads the ncaa. The bcs schools run the ncaa and we/the MAC are not part of that.

I agree. I also think it would happen that way.

Nobody should be shocked by this report. Once that number reaches 30 from the current 22, the ncaa should create a division for those schools. Add an extra 10 to the 30 and force the last ten to make cuts in order to be more profitable. Division 1 sports will change rapidly in the near future. Where will the Zips/MAC end up?

That's an interesting perspective. Only because he is such a boring personality. Without him saying what he said, the 2010-2011 Miami Heat march off much faster into obscurity. Give me Charles Barkley over a guy like LBJ any day of the week.

There is a difference between breaking NCAA rules and breaking the law. Laws make actions illegal because OTHERS are harmed by the actions of the criminal. NCAA rules are made in order to enforce an fantasy many have created for themselves about the nature and purpose of college athletics. Who is harmed by Pryor breaking ncaa rules? I would say that almost nobody is harmed by him breaking ncaa rules. Why?....Well, when everyone is already breaking the most moronic rules in the world, nobody can be harmed by the actions. "But GP1, schools like Akron are hurt by Pryor breaking the rules. It gives them an unfair advantage." This line of thinking is nonsense. We are our own worst enemy and the harm we do to ourselves is far worse than anything tosu or the other bcs schools could do to us.

Let me be clear. LBJ is a jackass. I just find it refreshing to have a player say exactly what he thinks even when he is being a jerk. His words made them losing even more interesting. In terms of missing the fourth period, I didn't see more than five minutes of the finals. Dallas is/was a great story. I'll read about it in the paper.

I find it refreshing when an athlete says what they all think but will not say. The losing was worse for his brand than what he said. The NBA will sell a ton of LBJ merchandise next season.

Real good turnout....maybe. If we had 525 people turn out for something at the Big Dialer, it would be right around 2% of the seating capacity of the stadium. It's all how you look at the numbers. Then again, if the Zips are as bad next year as last year, they'll be lucky to get 525 to show up for a game. I'm more impressed WMU has five guys in the NFL willing to come back to do it. They mention "tradition" in an article. That's how tradition is built...not a former star QB working camps at Ashland University. Again, real good event...maybe. The question is whether or not it will turn into additional ticket sales, or was this just something to do in a town with little to offer in terms of entertainment?

Here is what I would like to know. How many people attended the WMU event and how many ladies attended the Football 101 event? On the surface, they both seem like really good ideas. One event a year is not enough though. At the end of the day, marketing requires results.... meaning, selling tickets or other forms of revenue generation. The best way to generate money from the WMU event is to get some out of the players they had at the event. They are flush with cash right now, my as well get some of it before they blow it all buying a sports bar. Miami has a decent idea. However, waiting for someone else to do your job for you is the lazy way to do your job. My experience in life is the lazy way usually results in failure. The "silent sales force" will only take you so far when the task is difficult. An article on a local TV station or local paper doesn't generate much interest as not many people read those mediums. Few even watch the local news. The article has one comment and two reactions to it. Yaaaaaaaaawn says the folks from western Michigan. Please, someone find out how many people were at the WMU event, not including the countless Athletic Department paper pushers who show up to every event for free food?

I think you might be surprised.

All you have done is define the current state of affairs that isn't working. 1. The life is not fair argument so swallow the crap you are fed because the rules are such you can't change them is not working and hasn't worked for decades...if ever. 2. The rules are being broken every day. We now have a system where a kid has to understand a 400+ page compliance manual from the ncaa in order to keep from breaking the rules. More rules aren't the answer. More bureaucracy isn't the answer. More compliance officers are not the answer. More ncaa enforcement officers is not the answer. 3. I think the public is coming around to the fact the ncaa needs massive change to reform itself. If it doesn't, others are going to step in and do so. When a kid goes to college, aren't we asking that person to expand their mind by asking questions? If I was poor kid playing college football, the following questions would enter my mind: 1. How much money does the school make off of my likeness? 2. How much money does the school make off of the tickets sold to watch me play? 3. How much are they making in alumni donations because of me? 4. Is the value of my scholarship in proportion to the amount of money they are making off of me? 5. Why can't I just have a job? These are just a few of the questions. The problem with the ncaa is the rules applied to the student athletes are not there to lift that person up. They are there to keep that person down. Let's have rules that lift a person up in lieu of keeping them down.

What if your family needs the money to pay for rent and food?

Wow, that $16,000 is almost to the poverty level!!! A guy can live it up on that. This mentality is completely void of any understanding of where a lot of the kids come from and is really the 1950s mentality I like to make fun of. Most people in this country have zero idea how poor many of the families the kids playing college football really are. Many players would have to take that $16,000 and give a lot of it to maybe his single mother on welfare so she can take care of her other children. Any kid who loved his mother and fellow siblings would do everything he could to help her. To pretend otherwise is silly. Again, the answer isn't to pay the kid. The answer is to allow him to make a legal income as long as he keeps up with the most important thing in his life....football, and second....school work. As long as he is fulfilling those obligations in that order, he should be allowed to have a job.

The big schools already have an unfair advantage in recruiting. You don't think $100 handshakes are discussed with recruits and their player/host during their recruiting visit? You don't think that tosu is better able to line up more attractive girls for guys on visits than Akron? You don't think they are all being offered more money to go to tosu than say Akron? You don't think that a recruit walking into a 100,000 seat stadium in Ann Arbor is more impressed than one walking into InfoCision? Please, please, please stop creating illusions for yourself. They get the tatoos because they are forced into a type of black market that forces them to break antiquated ncaa rules in order to get what they need or want. When they break the ncaa rules by taking money under the table, they are also breaking real tax laws. How is that good for college football and the players playing. If people really wanted to protect the players, they would allow them to make money in the open in a legal manner.

Necessary? haha, do you see what you did there? He doesn't or he wouldn't keep making those types of statements. The ncaa is a complete racket. Anyone who thinks bcs level college football is about being a student first is kidding himself. It is about the money and has always been about the money.

Article Great article on why the BCS and NCAA is a monopoly. This gets back to one of the points I always make. The ncaa needs to reform itself before the government does. It would not be out of bounds for the government to regulate the ncaa as interstate commerce. When the government determines there is a monopoly, they frequently make the monopoly break up. I'd love for the ncaa to be broken up. It would be the best thing for college athletics. Multiple leagues and organizations could be more creative in how they go to market. It would be much more interesting than the single minded ncaa. The ncaa needs to reform itself by adding levels within college football that allow the BCS schools to basically enter the sunshine and come out as the professional organizations they all are. If not, every off season is going to be filled with talk of one school who badly broke the rules. This year it is tosu. Last year it was usc. Next year it will be another school. How is that good for college football? I realize it has been entertaining making fun of tosu the past few months, but it isn't a good story for college football.

Since when has college football been about student athletes? College football isn't about professional organizations and the employees who play for them? Wait a minute. They are completely professional organizations making money off of a labor force that doesn't get paid. Professional football has a higher moral standing because the player actually get paid for making millions for their organization. The players in college football are forced into illegal, under the table incomes that force them into criminal actions while in college. Your argument comes back to schools paying players. I don't think the schools should pay the players. The players should be able to have any form of legal income they wish. I really don't see the problem with a human being earning a legal income.