GP1

The Lost City of Z is the best book I have read in a long time. Buy it and you won't be sorry. As good as if not better than Undaunted Courage. The book is so good it received a glowing review from Michiko Kakutani of The NY Times. Kakutani almost always gives books poor reviews so when a good review is issued, it is a must read. Good books are hard to come by these days because our society is becoming so stupid that we can't handle difficult reading or anything that is slightly interesting. Bookstore visits have recently become almost depressing for the Great GP1, but I am feeling better after reading this book.

One of my favorites. With this great marketing tool, he finished fourth in the Heisman Trophy voting that year. Congratulations Oregon marketing on your fourth place finish and your billboard.....I guess. Billboards are a complete waste of money for selling football tickets. They are like annoying pop-up ads on the internet. Billboards are great for advertising Hooters at Myrtle Beach and getting the word out to truck drivers as to the location of the Asian Massage "Spa". Nobody drives down the road, sees a billboard and picks up the phone and calls for season tickets. Think of the thousands, maybe millions, of people who drive by billboards on Rt 8 weekly. The response rate for a billboard has to be less than 1% or every game would be sold out. They would do better with a targeted mailer to a D&B list. The one thing they are doing and should continue to do is telemarketing. My friend had four tickets last year (never had season tickets before). He received a call from the ticket office and they told him two next to him opend up. He bought his four and the other two. Upselling an existing customer is easier than bringing on a new customer. I'm actually surprised they could figure that one out. Secondly, pay athletic department staff 10% of any sales they make to new ticket holders. I know it is probably hard for the staff to stop pushing paper and "supervising" the ISP team, so give them some incentive to do it.

Is anyone else having LBJappreciation day? Are people standing in the streets of NY holding "Home" signs?

If he played six more years, we would only get 12 plays out of him. No thanks.

I'm gonna guess $0. Why would he donate anything? Would he pay for the U to get a new arena, and so make obsolete the place he played his high school games in? I doubt it is zero unless you know something we don't. I agree with where you are going. If the future of the Cavs....If the future of the City of Cleveland.....If NE Ohio......If Ohio in general.....If the future of UofA is critical to LBJ staying in Cleveland, Ohio my as well close up. LBJ has had something like five years to give something really big to UofA and he hasn't. It isn't like he has been in the poor house starting his career. He owes UofA nothing and UofA owes him nothing. If he moves on to another city, it isn't like some day he couldn't give something even if he didn't play in Cleveland. LBJ is a good guy so I don't mean this as a statement about him. The amount of people lining up to kiss his ass...from public figures (Mayor Don), business leaders (InfoCision) and many in the general public makes me sick. It makes NE Ohio look small time. I'm sure that if LBJ decides to stay, many associated with the groups above will pat themselves on the back and say their efforts had something to do with it. LBJ might even lie to make them feel good and say they had something to do with it. LBJ is going to make a business decision and all of the ass kissing in the world isn't going to influence it.

How much has he donated thus far?

My wife remembers that billboard more than I do. Quite fondly in fact. Given the brilliance of using billboards as marketing devices, we must have had one Hell of and paid gate that year.

Great pic, Mama Zeke! The Zips had a football player a few years back......Jason Taylor......another fine Western PA lad.....you may have heard of him ......well as part of a marketing campaign before his senior year (if I recall correctly), he was prominently featured on several area billboards in his football gear, but with his shirt off and his chiseled physique prominently displayed. This was an early indication that JT would have the potential for other careers after (well even DURING) football. Do I see history repeating itself? Thanks for your insight and your CALMING influence! Personally, I think it would be goofy to dress Zeke up in football gear. +1

I'm not sure where this comes from. Every game I saw, I saw players playing hard even though they were put in an impossible situation. Our guys were in good shape, the problem was we deployed too small of a line-up. By the fourth quarter, they wore down. Like DrZ says, the new scheme alone should help this problem.

Is bringing an over the hill Shaq really trying to win or is it an example of bad management bringing in an old player with nothing left in the tank? Is "Z" an example of trying to win or is he another hack the management brought in to make themselves look like they were trying to do everything they could? The reason the Cavs didn't go anywhere is the talent level on the team isn't very good. Average talent + old guys+ one superstar = early exit from the playoffs. It's the freaking playoffs for crying out loud, not the regular season. Those that follow basketball can name a lot more teams with that equation that failed than those that found success. Livingston is everything that is wrong with sports writers these days. He has a view of the world of sports that has long left the world of reality, if it even ever existed, years ago. Change and youth are difficult for guys like Livingston to accept. This is a terribly thought out article. The decisions the Cavs made last off season were a disaster. LBJ shouldn't make his decision based upon what they did in the past, he should make it based upon what player decisions they will make in the future. New York makes terrible player decisions. Chicago is no better. Cleveland is the place for LBJ...they can make just as bad of decisions as the other teams.

Going from 210 to 235 is only a 12% increase in his weight. I don't think a 20 year old kid is going to collapse under the strain of that increase in weight. He is 6% up in weight now which tells me putting the weight on slowly is a good way of keeping him from getting chubby. This is all positive. His increased strength will increase his confidence. It will make him more durable. I thought the kid looked in really good shape for his age and height last year. He should be the best player in the MAC next year. It's all good.

Coaching or instructing a kid how to play the game is the easy part. The hard part is getting the kid to improve himself when nobody is watching. His progress will be up to him.

Interleague play has started and so has my yawning about interleague play. Want to make it more exciting? This article gives some good tips on how to improve interleague play. Hint: Making interleague play more exciting by having more of it thus "growing" it isn't the answer.

Fret not, Skip...you are dead wrong. I agree. The kid has too much natural talent to flop in the MAC unless at some point he becomes a compete head case and I don't see that happening either. My only concern was his accuracy, but he has some good coaches around him who can help with that part of his game. If he is willing to listen to his coaches and work hard during the summer, his accuracy should not be a problem. I hope he is working hard this summer. The responsibility for his development falls squarely on his shoulders.

The Chris Henry story this week has opened up a lot of discussion about player safety in the NFL. If you read this story closely, you see he had head injuries as far back as college while playing at WVU. UofA probably has some players playing right now who have experienced the same type of injury and may be in the same condition as Chris Henry was at WVU. Player safety should be a the front of all discussions about college football and you almost never read about it. Instead, we get mostly talk about realignment (realignment is an important issue). The NCAA cares more about money than the NFL does. This article points out two very important changes the NFL should enact. First, no three point stances. Second, weight limits on players need to be a must. There are already rules about hitting with your head so they just need to enforce those rules. The problem is, I don't know how these needed changes would have helped Chris Henry. He played a position that "little" people play. Speed is part of the force equation so it isn't like he was hit by a huge player after catching a pass. He gets hit by extremely fast people. He also never played out of a three point stance. What I do think would happen with the above changes is an even reduced focus on the running game and as a percent of plays. The spread offense would be a permanent fixture in college and NFL. Man-to-man defenses would be forced to be played and the player getting clocked over the middle by a safety would be reduced to next to nothing. We already see football moving in this direction. Any thoughts on player safety?

Why? So you can watch adults bounce the ball off of their heads for two hours?

There is nothing wrong with building this hotel. However, building hotels alone isn't the answer. The City needs to give people a reason to do business downtown in order to make the hotel a business that can survive. I look forward to staying at it myself. As a Platinum Rewards Member at this brand i will get a free room using my points.

When the incident took place, I wasn't thinking that clearly.

I double dog dare you to sit and watch nine innings of an Indians game. Come back and post after. I'm a Pirates fan. I could watch an Indians game standing on my head. It's all about conditioning and 15+ years of watching the Pirates has me in the best "watching bad baseball shape" I have ever been in. I fart in the general direction of this challenge. Get a tape of last nights game and watch it. It took the opposing pitcher 88 pitches to retire 9 innings of Indians batters. You'll get a real good idea of the type of "major league" talent that is on the team from top to bottom. You do have some conditioning being a Pirates fan, they are almost as bad as the Indians. If you have watched 3 full Pirates games this year I would be shocked! MLB is a joke. Wake me up after the strike. I watched some of the interleague between the Pirates and Indians. Pretty brutal to watch, but I survived and have come out the other end in better shape than I was before. Bring on a Baltimore vs Indians series!!!!!!!!

Analysts told Crain's New York Business that James, who becomes a free agent July 1, would have a huge impact on the company's stock price and revenues. A Knicks team featuring James would boost MSG Network's ratings, along with bringing an immediate $10 million to $20 million increase in revenue, Patrick Rishe, a professor of economics at Webster University, told Crain's. If the Knicks start making the playoffs, the annual spike could skyrocket by as much as $50 million. At the same time, Rishe said the value of the franchise, which Forbes put at $586 million last year, to increase by as much as $150 million with James, according to Crain's. LeBron can be cash cow for MSG LBJ impact on Chicago....2.7 BILLION with a B! I believe the NY story. The Chicago story is fantasy with little evidence as to how that will actually happen.

So....Last nigth I am in Poe's on Sullivans Island getting a burger and a couple of beers. About an hour in I have to take a leak. I go to the bathroom and the toilet seat is down. I'm not one to touch a public toilet seat so I stand on my left leg and try to raise the seat like I always do. The worst cramp sets in on my left calf while trying to lift the seat. I can hardly walk today....

I agree that five years ago the stadium was chosen do exactly what you say. The problem is college football is changing faster than anyone thought. Soon there will be no more FBS or FCS. It will be different levels in college football named whatever they name it. If the super conferences force the creation of a division between FBS and FCS, so be it. I would love for the Zips to be part of it. We could compete well at that level with what we have. We'll never be able to compete with the super conference schools with what we currently have. I disagree. If we get a new arena built soon for basketball at 9-11,000 capacity (and I'm all for working with the city and putting it downtown, which is pretty much campus anyways), then our facilities will be on par or superior to many BCS schools (who'd have ever thought we'd be able to say THAT ten years ago?). All we need is a winner in football and the fan support will come. I agree and disagree. It depends on the sport. If we had a BB arena as you describe, then I would agree we would be on par with a lot of BCS level BB programs. As great as our football stadium is, it is still years behind some of the 60K-100K stadiums out there that BCS schools play in. The school has no money, the Athletic Department spends more than it makes every year and the State of Ohio is broke. The Big Dialer looks today exactly as it is going to look 25 years from now and not a single seat will be added. Facilities don't make you a winner, winning makes you a winner. I hope we have all learned that after the football season we had last year. If facilities are the end all, be all, how come our BB team has been to the MAC Championship the last four years and our football team stunk as of late? I really think that if the super conference scenario takes place, we are in a great position to be in a middle level the NCAA could create between D-1A and I-AA. If there are 130 (appx) teams in D-1A and half went to the super conference (they should only take 40 IMNHO) and half went to a new level, that would still be pretty good football at the new level. With our current facilities, we could compete there all day long. We are never going to compete at the BCS level, or at the high level college football is going. MAC ADs really need to think about the direction of the league in the next couple of years. I never get the feeling they are looking at the landscape of college sports (where it is and where it is going) and making decisions based upon that. I know a lot of us wish it was different, but wishing makes me think about one of my mother's favorite sayings. "Make a wish or $h!+ in your hat. See which one fills up first." Our hats are getting pretty full at UofA.

Give it some time. I'm sure the "organizers" of the event are using photoshop to fill in hillside as we type.

Crowd estimation based upon t-shirts handed out...it only gets worse. I'll take the word of the "university officials" over the guys with egg on their faces.

I agree that five years ago the stadium was chosen do exactly what you say. The problem is college football is changing faster than anyone thought. Soon there will be no more FBS or FCS. It will be different levels in college football named whatever they name it. If the super conferences force the creation of a division between FBS and FCS, so be it. I would love for the Zips to be part of it. We could compete well at that level with what we have. We'll never be able to compete with the super conference schools with what we currently have.