GP1

The problem Conway has is eventually he is going to have to start talking. Once he does that, the rest of the state will realize he is a leftist. This could be as close as he gets to Paul.

John Steigerwald is a long time Pittsburgh sports reporter and has an interesting blog where the discusses this issue. He brings up an interesting issue in I think what is the second to last paragraph. That is, if these super conferences come about, it eliminates the seventh game a year teams play against lower level conferences such as the MAC because the TV money will be huge and the money from the seventh game will be unnecessary. This is exactly the opportunity schools like UofA need to wedge themselves from being a sacrificial lamb a couple of times a year. If these super conferences are created, it opens the door for the NCAA to reform the highest level of college football. Instead of pretending the MAC is at the same level as BCS conferences, they can be honest about the disparity between BCS and non-BCS conferences and separate those teams from one another to maintain the integrity of competition and college football. These moves are purely about money. That doesn't bother me. What bothers me is the fraud the BCS schools pull on their fans when they sell them tickets to, for example, UofA vs PSU. When you go to these games, you are having your money stolen from you by the home school.

IMNHO, the number one reason (there are many reasons) to renew tickets is an answer to the following question. Am I entertained by the product I see on the field and is that enough entertainment value to spend my hard earned money on? If the answer is yes, then renew. If the answer is no, some of you may have some thinking to do. A college football game is a huge investment in mostly time so you at least want to be entertained by what you are going to spend a day doing. I think it is stupid that they are not having fan interaction outings such as the golf outing, but that is a side issue compared to whether or not one finds the product entertaining. If I still lived in Ohio, I would have season tickets this coming season. I am entertained by going to the games regardless of the ability of the team to win, regardless of who is the AD and regardless of my concerns about the philosophy of the new coach. I like watching D-1 college football and anything lower than the MAC I would not spend my money on.

I'm sure you gained so much insight while riding the pine. You have any idea how much talking goes on behind the scenes? Any idea how decisions are made, or how coaches find out about other jobs? You really think TW didn't have the entire staff knowing what was going to happen if they failed? Do you really think the coaching staff didn't already know going into the season what was going to happen? TW started September 10th (officially). Reno resigned 10/31 (officially). A whole 41 days. Everyone wants to blame the new guy, but Hunter had more information on the goings on than anyone. If any decision was made TW only signed off on it. It was JD's hire, he had as much say in it as anyone. But you guys jump on the AD. With no proof of what went on from the University's side. Someone sold you a bill of goods. People believe what they want to believe, regardless of what I type, so I say to all - enjoy your weekend. Going with the new direction of this thread, but preserving its recent tenor, just let me say, where do you get off telling me to enjoy my weekend? If I want to abhor my weekend or detest my weekend, then that's what I am going to do. Go Zips. I take it you will be watching the Golden Girls marathon today and then the Thirty Something marathon tomorrow on Lifetime.......

Believe what you want. RF DID make a mistake and WAS some place he should not have been during a time when coaches are NOT allowed to recruit. I liked every encounter I ever had with RF but the fact of the matter is that he did screw up and hopefully he learned from his mistakes and gets another opportunity to follow his dreams. OK, where was he and why was it a violation?

See I would disagree with this statement, if no violation occurred then he would have no problem finding another job. So what does that tell you? Additionally if he left on "bad terms", and he didn't do anything wrong, he would have a lawsuit on his hands that any lawyer would take up and it wouldn't cost him a cent. Reno may very well have been a "good guy" but it doesn't mean he didn't make a mistake. Either way I stick by my belief that he was given an opportunity after everything came out and he chose to walk. So ask yourself, why did he walk? It's Friday...maybe you've started happy hour a little early. For someone trying to salvage their career, a suit against your former employer is a pretty stupid thing to do. Talk about being unhireable. The next interview would go as follows: Interviewer: "How did you leave your last job?" Reno: "I sued them." Interviewer: "Thanks for coming in." What his not getting another job tells me is the unnecessary stink TW left on him is following him around. He is a good guy and he didn't make a mistake. See CK's response. There is not a piece of evidence showing he did anything wrong. He walked to get away from the stink and try to salvage his wrecked career. Every time I think of the Reno situation is makes me sick and I didn't even know him. Here is a West Point graduate who worked his ass of for UofA and his career is ended by a lazy, bumbling fool of an AD.

Interesting take on the Reno situation. Has anyone heard anything public about this issue? My guess is no, because there was nothing there. I know of no University rule that requires a suspension while being investigated. There is no doubt he would have been fired at the end of the year. He would have had to look for a new job. Does he have one yet? Google his name and see why not. Everything that comes up is about this issue. When you hire an assistant coach, you don't want the fans to Google their name and that is what comes up. Basically, TW ruined his career by going off half cocked. Reno is a good guy who didn't deserve this. TW's handling of the situation reminds me of every sleazy guy I knew when I worked in corporate America. With any luck, what goes around will come around.

An amazing thing about the call you received was there was no concern at all from the caller about your situation. Just a terrible sales call all the way around. Calls like this to a long term fan should be from the AD. Would anyone like to ask Dr. Proenza the following question?..... What the Hell were you thinking when you hired the new AD? I have zero confidence in the guy. I think some of you feel the same way, only you are too nice to say it out loud.

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.

Response #1: If the Cavs lose LeBron, they are toast. He was a once-in-a-lifetime, miracle draft pick that staved off the inevitable. There would be an Oklahoma City Cavaliers if it weren't for LeBron. Response #2: The Indians can't win. They traded away all their great players for a sack of beans and some Dollar General jewelery. Their run of being competitive is over. They don't have the personnel or the bankroll. Response #3: Most Zips fans were pretty excited about Getsy in 2005. Response #4: The Celtics needed to find a way to win after Bird. It took them 22 years to do it. And they are the Celtics. The Cavs are the Milwaukee Bucks, sans LeBron. Once he's gone, they are essentially a MAC basketball team. I can't wait to watch South East Milwaukee State play the Zips in a couple years. Response 1A: Then move the team today because at some point in the future they are going to be without LBJ. Response 2A: Someone has to win the Indians division. Everyone can compete in that division even with Chicago. The Indians may not be good today, but they could be good in the future. Response 3A: Especially the Great GP1. Response 4A: Bias was Boston's ticket and he went the way of a drug overdose.

It requires no more staff than they currently have. Run the promotion from now until the end of July. The results can easily be tracked on a spreadsheet by someone in finance. Believe me, there are enough people sitting around the University with their thumbs up their butts that tracking this for Athletic Department staff would not be hard. This is a way for everyone in the Athletic Department to get involved and earn some extra cash. They all complain about not making enough, well...here you go.

Now we are getting to the heart of the issue. Which is worse, a drunk Airman or a drunken Sailor? Kind of comes down to an old question. Is it worse to die in a plane crash or drown?

I posted this idea on the board over three years ago so it must be a good idea. I just got off the phone with a young man from Wake Forest calling about my season tickets for next year. I forgot to send in my renewal, but his call reminded me. Seats are being assigned at the end of this week so if you want the same seats, you need to get the check in by Friday. He asked me to make the envelop to his attention. Why? I asked..... Well, WF has set up a program where they pay their staff commission for ticket and Deacon Club renewals and new sign ups. They are one of the first schools in the country to try it and he said it is working great. Of course it is, give people incentive to work and they will work. The WF athletic director has won the national award for the best AD in the country two times in the past five years. This is the kind of creative thinking an AD should have. Stop doing what everyone else is doing, be creative and different. It works. Very simple. Renewal = 5% of sale. New customer = 10% of sale.

LeBron is a cash cow for NE Ohio. Without him, the Cavs are back to Brevin Knight, Shawn Kemp... and 4k people coming to downtown Cleveland on any given night. He's the difference between the downtown bars and hotels being packed for 45 - 50 nights per year, and them being at 20% occupancy. If LeBron departs, downtown Cleveland will be a ghost town ... once again. Turning around the Cavs took one guy. Turning around the Indians takes 12 guys. And the Indians are no where near close to having those 12 guys. The Indians are WAY closer to being the Pirates than the Yankees. Or the Twins for that matter. Go Zips. Fine, someone show me how much money he brings in and then prove to me that amount will go down to zero of he leaves. I know you are an engineer and it can be limiting at times, but this is a different kind of A + B = C. This LBJ argument you are making is 1+1=2. I look at it as C=10. There are a lot of ways to get to 10. 9+1, 8+2, 7+3, 6+4 or 5+5. The Cavs can win without LBJ. ITZ is right. If LBJ is their only chance at success, then they need to fold the team because nobody knows how to create a winning team. I don't think LBJ is going to leave, but if he does, that's life. The Lakers won after Shaq and the Cavs can win after LBJ. Someone just needs to find a way to gather a good team with a good coach and win. If Detroit can win, the Indians can win. If the Twins can win, the Indians can win. It is more important for Cleveland for the Indians to be good than the Cavs. I'll bring this around to the Zips since this is a Zips board. After 2004, all the hand wringers said, "What are we going to do without Charlie Frye? Woe to Zips fans." What happened in 2005? We won the league without Frye. The Cavs can win without LBJ, they just need to find a way to do it.

I'll bite. How much milk does that cow produce a year in total dollars and dollars in relation to the overall economy of NE Ohio? The Cavs play 41 home games (in a 20,000 seat arena) plus playoffs. Wouldn't they be better off f the Indians were good in lieu of the Cavs. The Indians play 80+ home games a year with 40,000 seat arena. I'm not buying that LeBron is a cash cow for NE Ohio. LeBron is a cash cow for himself though. Mayor Don is a joke and if this is the brain-child of his, the city is in bigger trouble than I had thought. This is just grasping at straws. I have absolutely nothing against LeBron. In fact, I almost feel embarassed for him for having to attend things like this. I wonder if Mayor Don's staff ran this by the LBJ marketing machine before they decided to have this day. Then again, a chance to sell a huge amount of his products during the off season probably isn't a bad marketing idea....Will UofA be smart enough to sell products on the same day or will it be restricted to LBJ stuff?

This is so pathetic, it is laughable.

Here is a big question I have. Are there that many people out there who have the kind of cash necessary AND willing to donate it at the higher price?....For a parking spot next to the stadium, when in reality, most places to park at UofA for less money really aren't that far from the stadium? Before I owned my own business, I worked for big companies and believe it or not had really good positions. Before we made a business decision that we were certain would upset a customer, we would make a "risk analysis plan". The purpose of the plan was to explore all possible outcomes of a decision to see if making the existing customer base upset was really worth the risk. At times it was......at times it wasn't, but we at least put some thought into it. How this went down was so stupid it makes me think they spent zero time weighing the pros and cons. Let's face it, if the team is bad again next year, attendance will drop off dramatically. Even if some of those spots open up at a much lower price, many of you (and there really aren't that many of you all together) are upset to the point you will not get a Lot 9 sport OR you realize you are having just as much fun in your new, less expensive lot as you were in Lot 9. The lot will sit empty and they my as well allow the Sun Grill and The Odd Corner to be rebuilt there. It's funny to think about how things could go full circle. I always thought the parking questions were silly when we played at the RB. Let's face it, there was no real difference in parking location from one lot to the next...just different levels of crappy. The Bid Dialer is a different story and there should have been some consideration for long term fans. I take that back. Mack did have consideration for long term fans, TW has consideration for his next job. This situation has been poorly, poorly, poorly, poorly conceived and executed.

I've been writing on this board for years about this very topic and it looks like I'm right again. I took a minute to look at the best team in the Big Ten in the past 5 years, which is tOSU. 21 of the 95 players from the roster (23%) I picked up were from south of the Mason Dixon Line or California. Many more are from out of state but mostly rust belt kids. When a tOSU coach goes to a player and says, "Come to tOSU and you can play for a national championship". He is not telling a lie. tOSU gets the best out of state talent of any school in the midwest, they play a cake walk of an ooc schedule, they play in a talentless conference and they are a media darling so they get voted high in the polls regardless. Every year, they stand a good shot at going undefeated and if things fall in the right direction, they could win the national championship game. Next year is going to be a long year for tOSU haters. I'm glad I don't live around their obnoxious fan.

Like all economics, not everything is easy to explain. What is certain though is spending a portion of your taxes for a bureaucrat to manage what you should be able to decide for yourself what to do is not efficient. The problem we have today is politicians have taken to calling all government spending a "stimulus". Bailing out a bank is not a stimulus. Making government employee unions happy by not cutting employees is not stimulus. Building a bridge is more like a stimulus, but since one in three American bridges are in disrepair, I would call it a necessity. If Obama wanted to project himself as being a responsible adult, he would portray road and bridge building as "good government" or "responsible government". Not a stimulus. Americans want badly for our government officials to behave in an adult manner. If one actally did, that person would be loved by all. Wider roads are a stimulus. Rail systems from the suburbs to the city are not stimulum...they are welfare programs designed to create more people sucking at the breast of government because every mass transit system, with the exception of NYC, loses money evey year.

Libertarian economist? I think I'll pass. "If all the economists were laid end to end, they'd never reach a conclusion." -- George Bernard Shaw Ill go with the masters... Keynes and Hayek Mankiw is not a Libertarian. Read his blog. You are assuming economists can be laid end to end. If any of you are uncertain about who Keynes and Hayek, here is a rap song that will help you understand the difference between the two. Lastly, you may like masters, but I'll take King Adam Smith above all else. Milton Friedman second.

This link takes you to Greg Mankiw's blog. Many of you may have used his Economics text books in college. The video from yesterday explains why we are so screwed, but it does it in a funny way. Lasts less than three minutes and explains the world economy during that time.

Beer, guns and football. Sounds like my kind of day.

ZipsWin! is a good example of someone who has spent 25+ year supporting the program and is getting crapped on by the Athletic Department. Over the years he has gone from a GA ticket guy, to a GA/parking pass guy, to a GA/parking pass guy with Z-Fund donations, to Reserved Seats/Expensive parking pass guy with even higher levels of Z-Fund donations and so on. He is what you want your alumni to be as they progress from young adulthood to old age (OK, not that old). Along the way, he as been forced to sit in some of the worst facilities in the country, drove up and down Rt8 in horrible weather to watch BB games and tailgated in a field next to a crappy little airport. He was nice enough to call it a courtesy call, I call it a go "f" yourself call. ZW! is a reasonable guy along with CK and others on the board. Had UofA approached him in any other way other than a "f" yourself way, hard feelings could have been avoided (see my plan previously). There are probably only around 25-50 calls UofA would have needed to make to avoid a problem...let's face it, that about sums up the die hard fans....we're not talking tens of thousands here. They might have even been able to increase donations had they handled it differently. I don't know who made the calls, but there are so few, TW could have made some of the calls himself. My guess is he was out searching for other landmines to step in. There is a right way to present bad news and a wrong way to present bad news. This was handled wrong.

Or any of his time.... The guy is an absolute do nothing.

Bingo!!!!! Changing the parking situation is an easy resume line for people working in the Athletic Department. That's why things get done. I've never thought parking was a big deal. This is not a big deal. In fact, I think people obsess too much about it on this board. With that said, I'm not much of a fan of our AD and this is an example of how things poorly get handled. I think he is lazy and a "ready, fire, aim" guy....Just like I said about him last year during the Reno episode. I think I have this guy pegged pretty good as a short term employee of UofA....we can only hope. Our last three ADs were Thomas, Mack and TW. I guess two out of three ain't bad.