There's some pretty severe emotional whiplash in the transition between the drug-fueled bitcoin bro giving OSU's commencement speech to the parent committing suicide by jump from the stadium.
It should be noted that at this point in Howard's tenure he had also done nothing "less than ideal". Not that I'm not happy with the moves May's made, just that looking smart early doesn't necessarily imply future success.
I wish people would stop confusing legal issues with NCAA issues. An NLI is binding under NCAA rules, not under the law. Yes, many NCAA rules have been overturned by the courts on anti-trust grounds, but anti-trust law is complex and not every NCAA rule is subject to it. A school probably couldn't challenge an on-field rule of play in court and get it overturned, for example.
Michigan wants to play sports against other schools. And the only viable way to do that is to submit to the authority of some kind of overarching organization that organizes these contests and the surrounding rules. Right now that organization is the NCAA.
You might argue that other schools have ignored NCAA rules and gotten away with it, which is true, but many others have not gotten away with it. At the simplest level, other schools have to want to play sports against Michigan. And if Michigan ignores the agreed-upon rules of the game, then the other schools can choose not to play sports against Michigan. That probably wouldn't happen, but the relationships between schools are complex, and not playing nice with others in one sport can have consequences that impact relationships across all sports and even academia. Basically, ignoring the rules is a political decision, not a legal one. Oftentimes ignoring the rules can be a politically advantageous decision, but only if you play the PR game around that choice well, and honestly, if you get at least a little lucky, too.
I'm always at my in-laws' house the day of the The Game because of Thanksgiving. They're not football fans at all and either want to chat through the whole game or else avoid me entirely (their first experience with The Game was 2016). 3 years ago I got sick of being the elephant in the room and decided to go to a bar instead. The last 3 years I've gone to the same bar and ordered the same thing every time. I know exactly where I'll be watching The Game this year, and exactly what I'll be eating.
That's not how any of this works. The NCAA had to finish their investigation no matter what Michigan did in the way of self-imposed sanctions. The idea behind the suspension of Harbaugh was that it would act as "time served" when the NCAA eventually determined what the penalty would be. So if the NCAA decided on a 4-game suspension, there would only be 1 game left to serve. No one expected the NCAA to stop their investigation because Michigan self-imposed sanctions; that's just not how self-imposed sanctions work.
That being said, Warde is probably not a good AD. But if you're going to bash him, at least bash him based on realistic knowledge of how his job works.
No. The difference between FBS and DII is too much. But give them a 5-year sojourn through FCS land and I bet they'd be ready to make the jump to the MAC. GVSU and Ferris should really both make the jump to FCS. And not just because I wish they'd stop beating the shit out of my huskies...
I wonder if that's a Harbaugh versatility thing. Seems like, depending on exact body type, you can plausibly switch from LB to just about any non-OL position on the field. We've seen EDGE, TE, RB, and S happen. Maybe Harbaugh thinks if you get a bunch of LBs they may be able to fill holes elsewhere as needed.
MTU had a bad year in hockey, but got better as the season went on. Even better, there were some young players that showed a lot of potential and made me excited for next season. Then the portal opened, and every one of those young players was in it.
I don't begrudge the players for looking to improve their situation and maybe find a spot on a title contender, but it is pretty brutal for fans to know that we'll only every see unrealized potential.
If I'm a cellist, I can get paid by my university to play cello. I can play cello for third parties and get paid by them. I can transfer to another university and play cello for them immediately.
All the recent changes in college athletics have been to allow college athletes the same basic freedoms as every other student in every other specialty on a college campus.
There are two differences remaining between the cellist and the football player:
The cellist can get paid directly by the university.
The cellist can major in cello, while the football player cannot major in football, even though both are legitimate professional fields.
I know it feels wrong to have these players transferring around constantly, but this is much more in line with what it means to be an amateur college student than the previous model.
I'm with you on the TRUE tournament idea. Every college sport has a national tournament where every conference champion is guaranteed a spot. If FBS was structured like CBB and college hockey (with a similar fraction of participants making the tournament), we'd have either a 24- or 32-team tournament with all 10 conference champions guaranteed a spot.
It's incredibly unfortunate that the very structure that made CFB unique and quirky and interesting and lovable (the bowl postseason based on tradition and rivalries over money and even fairness) is exactly what created the opening for money to completely take over the sport in a way that hasn't happened anywhere else. Because the postseason was defined by numerous private organizations with fuzzy objectives, it was comparatively easy for money to push out tradition as the dominant motivation. If FBS football had had an NCAA-administered postseason like every other sport, it would have been much harder for the various conferences, schools, factions, and administrators to exert structural influence in the same way, because the basic idea of national fairness would have excluded such pressures.
No one argues Atlantic Hockey or the Big South shouldn't have an auto bid to their respective tournaments, so it's wild to me that giving auto bids to all FBS conferences is such a nonstarter. The old rhetoric of how "unique" and "special" FBS football is, with its "tradition" and "history" that used to justify the weird postseason is now useless. There is literally no argument for the FBS postseason to be the way that it is. The FBS postseason is the way it is purely because the factions with political power right now are exerting all the influence they can to bend the entire structure of the sport to their favor.
Numbers update: Brian's percentages project an expected 7.41 transfers in, for an expected roster size of 14.41. This is down 0.25 players from Monday.
Yep. If it's better to play all 25 year olds, then recruit that demographic. There's a reason the Michigans of the world recruit young, talented players, and it's because it usually take you farther than the over-agers.
But it's not like BC's roster construction should be news to anyone. I've seen this board have exactly the same conversations about football and basketball, too: The best way to field a team is a solid mix of a few young ultra-talented players, a few older mid-career guys, and a few grizzled "glue guy" veterans with enough talent to keep up but not so much they're of professional interest. All veterans gives you a high floor, and all young talent gives you a high ceiling, but the best way to maximize everyone is to mix it up.
This latest batch of numbers comes out to an estimated 7.66 portals in, for a roster size of 14.66, an increase of 0.4 players from last time Brian did one of these.
Realistically my numbers mean that Brian's speculative percentages are slightly on the high side, and there's an extra 126% in there somewhere, distributed among those players. But for total guesstimates, that's actually quite close.
I count 4 returners, 3 incoming freshmen, and an expected value of 7.26 portals in, according to Brian's speculative percentages, for a total expected roster size of 14.26 players.
I know at times MTU's roster has been up to half Canadian, and more recently we've had Swedes, Finns, and Australians as well. Programs like UM tend to be more American, but still fill out with at least a handful of Canadians and usually one or two from further abroad.
Tech hockey is THE sport in Houghton (where I am) as well, but is there enough money in a 20,000-person micropolitan area to fund any kind of competitive NIL? Probably not, especially when considering that Yoopers are some of the most crotchety, old-fashioned, get-off-my-lawn people in existence. Marquette is a bit more modern and cosmopolitan (by Yooper standards) but I still don't think it's enough.
I'd say we're heading for a P5-G5 style split, but I'm not sure there are enough P5-style programs in college hockey to actually make that happen.
For the record, playing a football game on an aircraft carrier in the middle of Lake Michigan would be incredibly cool and also the most American thing ever done. Can you imagine the blimp shots of that?
In football and basketball NIL has leveled the playing field in some ways (and not in others). Hockey, however, has only a handful of programs that could wield NIL in any meaningful way, so I suspect more NIL involvement in hockey would increase the disparity between the haves and the have nots, rather than decrease it. Michigan being one of the "haves" in hockey, I'd guess most people wouldn't mind that too much, but I do know that many here miss the days of the old CCHA and WCHA, pre-B1G, when you could have weird rivalries like Michigan-Ferris State, and NIL getting more involved in hockey is going to move the sport further from those days rather than closer.
Obviously, as a fan of a small school, I have my own opinions on this, but I don't think anything I said above is controversial in terms of facts and projections.
Assuming that there was only one B1G team in the final four each of those years, and assuming that all final four teams have an equal chance of winning it all, the probability of no B1G teams having done so is 1.3%
I have no doubt in Moore's ability to field the best 2nd Half Penn State offense the world has ever seen. But I don't think a full season of 2nd Half Penn State offense is going to do a whole lot to this schedule. This feels like a lot of 20-13 games, with a coin flip determining who wins.
Tbf, I'd rather have someone else's guys than no guys. You can't build a functional roster overnight, and there will still be growing pains until May's been recruiting for a few years.
I could see a guy like that wanting to prove he's not just there because the coach slept with his mom. If he really is that entitled, it won't go well no matter where he is. I could also Juwan advising him to stay, because it seems Juwan really does love and respect Michigan. That being said, if I were in his position I think I might go elsewhere for a fresh start.
The best way to mock incompetence is excellence. The juxtaposition between the two titles as is mocks the other one way better than sarcastic imitation. You made the right choice.
Blake Pietila is good, but not as good as he as last year, and our defense has been improving throughout the year but still very shaky. Honestly I'm just happy we pulled our act together enough to make the tourney, and I'll be very pleased if we can keep the final score respectable. Even 4-1 would be fine. Just not another 8-0 debacle like last year (even though I can definitely see that happening). Go huskies!
He may not have been passive behind the scenes, but if that's true, then he's terrible at PR, which is also a big part of the AD's job. Either he's doing a bad job, or he looks like he's doing a bad job, and either one is an indictment on his job performance.
I lived in a tent for 6 months hiking the PCT, and yep. I remember when finding a picnic table at a rustic campground felt like the height of luxury, so having a couch in a living room? Amazing.
I'm not a "Warde Manuel is bad at everything" guy, but this defense of doesn't exactly inspire confidence.
Retaining Jim Harbaugh was a good decision, and well executed. Whether or not this was done out of laziness (as some claim) or genuine analysis, the public will never know. But it's indisputable that this turned out to be a great decision and a well-executed process, so kudos for that.
Brandon Naurato was hired as the only viable candidate at an extremely bad time in the year purely because Manuel had neither fired nor signed Pearson to a new contract for many months after receiving the results of an investigation that found fireable offenses. In this case, Manuel had two competing interests: ethics and winning/stability, and he accomplished neither. We can say with near certainty that the Pearson scandal was handled extremely poorly, and UM hockey ended up with what appears to be a very good coach in spite of Manuel, not because of him. I'd also say the jury's still out on Naurato, too, because he's only been HC for 2 years in a sport with a lot of recruiting momentum. At this point in Juwan Howard's tenure, we were extolling him as potentially better than Beilein.
Sherrone Moore was an incredibly obvious candidate. It would have been a shocking upset if the guy currently on staff who'd interim-coached 4 games that year wasn't hired as the HC in a year with no particularly impressive outside candidates available at the time. He also hasn't coached a single game as full-time HC yet (Harbaugh was still the HC during the week when he was suspended). While Moore seems like a good decision, let's not congratulate Manuel too much for hiring the obvious in-house candidate.
Dusty May, by all accounts, seems to be a great outside hire as the result of a well-executed plan. Manuel should absolutely be given credit for this.
So of the cases you cited, we have 2 well-executed plans with good results, 1 hire so obvious my wife could have made it, and 1 obvious hire that turned out well in spite of the terrible mismanagement that led to it. While it's not the track record of utter ineptitude some make it out to be, it doesn't exactly inspire confidence in Manuel as a top-tier AD, either.
Agreed. Nobody's perfect, and some of us have flaws (and lives) that are more visible than others. By all accounts, Juwan Howard has always tried to live the right way, even though his temper gets the better of him on occasion. I will always be a fan of Howard, even if he wasn't the right fit for this particular job at this particular time.
2500 is pretty small, even by college hockey home site standards. It's Lindenwood's home ice, apparently, and ranks 16 in smallest size among DI men's arenas, which is 15th percentile. Tech plays in a 4400-seat arena in a city of 7000 people. No idea what the NCAA is thinking. Maybe it's a trial run to see how a small rink would handle a regional in a future home sites scenario?
I think the point is that one of the NCAAs arguments for not having the regionals at home sites is because they want the cachet of playing in larger buildings. If they're fine putting a neutral regional in a 2500-seat arena, it completely invalidates that argument. So not only in the NCAA incompetent at creating an exciting regional environment, they're also incompetent at defending their stance against it.
Okay, and...? There are nonpartisan races in American elections. Being an elected position doesn't require party affiliation. University governance is a field that has very little to do with party politics, so it should be a nonpartisan election. This isn't that difficult to understand.
That's exactly what they're doing and why. Their agents are probably looking at the history of similar guys in the combine and figuring there's a higher probability of moving down than up if they do combine stuff. Bad days happen to everyone, and you wouldn't want a single bad day to detract from a career's worth of work.
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There's some pretty severe emotional whiplash in the transition between the drug-fueled bitcoin bro giving OSU's commencement speech to the parent committing suicide by jump from the stadium.
It should be noted that at this point in Howard's tenure he had also done nothing "less than ideal". Not that I'm not happy with the moves May's made, just that looking smart early doesn't necessarily imply future success.
I wish people would stop confusing legal issues with NCAA issues. An NLI is binding under NCAA rules, not under the law. Yes, many NCAA rules have been overturned by the courts on anti-trust grounds, but anti-trust law is complex and not every NCAA rule is subject to it. A school probably couldn't challenge an on-field rule of play in court and get it overturned, for example.
Michigan wants to play sports against other schools. And the only viable way to do that is to submit to the authority of some kind of overarching organization that organizes these contests and the surrounding rules. Right now that organization is the NCAA.
You might argue that other schools have ignored NCAA rules and gotten away with it, which is true, but many others have not gotten away with it. At the simplest level, other schools have to want to play sports against Michigan. And if Michigan ignores the agreed-upon rules of the game, then the other schools can choose not to play sports against Michigan. That probably wouldn't happen, but the relationships between schools are complex, and not playing nice with others in one sport can have consequences that impact relationships across all sports and even academia. Basically, ignoring the rules is a political decision, not a legal one. Oftentimes ignoring the rules can be a politically advantageous decision, but only if you play the PR game around that choice well, and honestly, if you get at least a little lucky, too.
I'm always at my in-laws' house the day of the The Game because of Thanksgiving. They're not football fans at all and either want to chat through the whole game or else avoid me entirely (their first experience with The Game was 2016). 3 years ago I got sick of being the elephant in the room and decided to go to a bar instead. The last 3 years I've gone to the same bar and ordered the same thing every time. I know exactly where I'll be watching The Game this year, and exactly what I'll be eating.
Technically, there are 5 of the same person in each image.
That's probably true, but I'd guess that the placeholders are at least somewhat informed by the tentative plan Dusty & Co have at the moment.
That's not how any of this works. The NCAA had to finish their investigation no matter what Michigan did in the way of self-imposed sanctions. The idea behind the suspension of Harbaugh was that it would act as "time served" when the NCAA eventually determined what the penalty would be. So if the NCAA decided on a 4-game suspension, there would only be 1 game left to serve. No one expected the NCAA to stop their investigation because Michigan self-imposed sanctions; that's just not how self-imposed sanctions work.
That being said, Warde is probably not a good AD. But if you're going to bash him, at least bash him based on realistic knowledge of how his job works.
No. The difference between FBS and DII is too much. But give them a 5-year sojourn through FCS land and I bet they'd be ready to make the jump to the MAC. GVSU and Ferris should really both make the jump to FCS. And not just because I wish they'd stop beating the shit out of my huskies...
That last sentence is an important caveat.
I wonder if that's a Harbaugh versatility thing. Seems like, depending on exact body type, you can plausibly switch from LB to just about any non-OL position on the field. We've seen EDGE, TE, RB, and S happen. Maybe Harbaugh thinks if you get a bunch of LBs they may be able to fill holes elsewhere as needed.
There are two kinds of people in this thread...
MTU had a bad year in hockey, but got better as the season went on. Even better, there were some young players that showed a lot of potential and made me excited for next season. Then the portal opened, and every one of those young players was in it.
I don't begrudge the players for looking to improve their situation and maybe find a spot on a title contender, but it is pretty brutal for fans to know that we'll only every see unrealized potential.
If I'm a cellist, I can get paid by my university to play cello. I can play cello for third parties and get paid by them. I can transfer to another university and play cello for them immediately.
All the recent changes in college athletics have been to allow college athletes the same basic freedoms as every other student in every other specialty on a college campus.
There are two differences remaining between the cellist and the football player:
I know it feels wrong to have these players transferring around constantly, but this is much more in line with what it means to be an amateur college student than the previous model.
I'm with you on the TRUE tournament idea. Every college sport has a national tournament where every conference champion is guaranteed a spot. If FBS was structured like CBB and college hockey (with a similar fraction of participants making the tournament), we'd have either a 24- or 32-team tournament with all 10 conference champions guaranteed a spot.
It's incredibly unfortunate that the very structure that made CFB unique and quirky and interesting and lovable (the bowl postseason based on tradition and rivalries over money and even fairness) is exactly what created the opening for money to completely take over the sport in a way that hasn't happened anywhere else. Because the postseason was defined by numerous private organizations with fuzzy objectives, it was comparatively easy for money to push out tradition as the dominant motivation. If FBS football had had an NCAA-administered postseason like every other sport, it would have been much harder for the various conferences, schools, factions, and administrators to exert structural influence in the same way, because the basic idea of national fairness would have excluded such pressures.
No one argues Atlantic Hockey or the Big South shouldn't have an auto bid to their respective tournaments, so it's wild to me that giving auto bids to all FBS conferences is such a nonstarter. The old rhetoric of how "unique" and "special" FBS football is, with its "tradition" and "history" that used to justify the weird postseason is now useless. There is literally no argument for the FBS postseason to be the way that it is. The FBS postseason is the way it is purely because the factions with political power right now are exerting all the influence they can to bend the entire structure of the sport to their favor.
Returning scholarship players: 4
Committed incoming freshmen: 2
Committed incoming transfers: 4
Expected additional additions per Brian's percentages: 3.91
Expected total roster size: 13.91 players, down 0.5 players from Thursday.
EDIT: This was before Gayle's commitment, which changes the speculative percentages, so I won't attempt to update the numbers thusly.
Hey nice! I was in Science O for GRCHS back in the day (class of '11).
Or be everything Iowa wishes they could be
You mean former Michigan Tech all-american goalie and national champion Tony Esposito?
Holding steady at 7.41 expected additions, for a total roster size of 14.41.
Would like to get some of these out of the "expected" column and into the "actual" column.
Numbers update: Brian's percentages project an expected 7.41 transfers in, for an expected roster size of 14.41. This is down 0.25 players from Monday.
Yep. If it's better to play all 25 year olds, then recruit that demographic. There's a reason the Michigans of the world recruit young, talented players, and it's because it usually take you farther than the over-agers.
But it's not like BC's roster construction should be news to anyone. I've seen this board have exactly the same conversations about football and basketball, too: The best way to field a team is a solid mix of a few young ultra-talented players, a few older mid-career guys, and a few grizzled "glue guy" veterans with enough talent to keep up but not so much they're of professional interest. All veterans gives you a high floor, and all young talent gives you a high ceiling, but the best way to maximize everyone is to mix it up.
This latest batch of numbers comes out to an estimated 7.66 portals in, for a roster size of 14.66, an increase of 0.4 players from last time Brian did one of these.
Realistically my numbers mean that Brian's speculative percentages are slightly on the high side, and there's an extra 126% in there somewhere, distributed among those players. But for total guesstimates, that's actually quite close.
I count 4 returners, 3 incoming freshmen, and an expected value of 7.26 portals in, according to Brian's speculative percentages, for a total expected roster size of 14.26 players.
I know at times MTU's roster has been up to half Canadian, and more recently we've had Swedes, Finns, and Australians as well. Programs like UM tend to be more American, but still fill out with at least a handful of Canadians and usually one or two from further abroad.
Tech hockey is THE sport in Houghton (where I am) as well, but is there enough money in a 20,000-person micropolitan area to fund any kind of competitive NIL? Probably not, especially when considering that Yoopers are some of the most crotchety, old-fashioned, get-off-my-lawn people in existence. Marquette is a bit more modern and cosmopolitan (by Yooper standards) but I still don't think it's enough.
I'd say we're heading for a P5-G5 style split, but I'm not sure there are enough P5-style programs in college hockey to actually make that happen.
For the record, playing a football game on an aircraft carrier in the middle of Lake Michigan would be incredibly cool and also the most American thing ever done. Can you imagine the blimp shots of that?
If you do an expected value calculation by just adding up all the percentages, it comes out to 5.86 added players from that list.
In football and basketball NIL has leveled the playing field in some ways (and not in others). Hockey, however, has only a handful of programs that could wield NIL in any meaningful way, so I suspect more NIL involvement in hockey would increase the disparity between the haves and the have nots, rather than decrease it. Michigan being one of the "haves" in hockey, I'd guess most people wouldn't mind that too much, but I do know that many here miss the days of the old CCHA and WCHA, pre-B1G, when you could have weird rivalries like Michigan-Ferris State, and NIL getting more involved in hockey is going to move the sport further from those days rather than closer.
Obviously, as a fan of a small school, I have my own opinions on this, but I don't think anything I said above is controversial in terms of facts and projections.
Assuming that there was only one B1G team in the final four each of those years, and assuming that all final four teams have an equal chance of winning it all, the probability of no B1G teams having done so is 1.3%
I have no doubt in Moore's ability to field the best 2nd Half Penn State offense the world has ever seen. But I don't think a full season of 2nd Half Penn State offense is going to do a whole lot to this schedule. This feels like a lot of 20-13 games, with a coin flip determining who wins.
Tbf, I'd rather have someone else's guys than no guys. You can't build a functional roster overnight, and there will still be growing pains until May's been recruiting for a few years.
I could see a guy like that wanting to prove he's not just there because the coach slept with his mom. If he really is that entitled, it won't go well no matter where he is. I could also Juwan advising him to stay, because it seems Juwan really does love and respect Michigan. That being said, if I were in his position I think I might go elsewhere for a fresh start.
I hate semantic bleaching.
I think it's Lindenwood's home ice, which is a new program. I guess that's allowed because Lindenwood isn't eligible for the postseason until 2026-27.
I'm *hoping* that this is a trial run of a smaller arena to get some data on how home ice regionals might work.
The best way to mock incompetence is excellence. The juxtaposition between the two titles as is mocks the other one way better than sarcastic imitation. You made the right choice.
Lol, against this BC team? I'll be perfectly happy with a 4-1 loss, because I'm fully expecting another 8-0.
Blake Pietila is good, but not as good as he as last year, and our defense has been improving throughout the year but still very shaky. Honestly I'm just happy we pulled our act together enough to make the tourney, and I'll be very pleased if we can keep the final score respectable. Even 4-1 would be fine. Just not another 8-0 debacle like last year (even though I can definitely see that happening). Go huskies!
He may not have been passive behind the scenes, but if that's true, then he's terrible at PR, which is also a big part of the AD's job. Either he's doing a bad job, or he looks like he's doing a bad job, and either one is an indictment on his job performance.
I lived in a tent for 6 months hiking the PCT, and yep. I remember when finding a picnic table at a rustic campground felt like the height of luxury, so having a couch in a living room? Amazing.
I'm not a "Warde Manuel is bad at everything" guy, but this defense of doesn't exactly inspire confidence.
Retaining Jim Harbaugh was a good decision, and well executed. Whether or not this was done out of laziness (as some claim) or genuine analysis, the public will never know. But it's indisputable that this turned out to be a great decision and a well-executed process, so kudos for that.
Brandon Naurato was hired as the only viable candidate at an extremely bad time in the year purely because Manuel had neither fired nor signed Pearson to a new contract for many months after receiving the results of an investigation that found fireable offenses. In this case, Manuel had two competing interests: ethics and winning/stability, and he accomplished neither. We can say with near certainty that the Pearson scandal was handled extremely poorly, and UM hockey ended up with what appears to be a very good coach in spite of Manuel, not because of him. I'd also say the jury's still out on Naurato, too, because he's only been HC for 2 years in a sport with a lot of recruiting momentum. At this point in Juwan Howard's tenure, we were extolling him as potentially better than Beilein.
Sherrone Moore was an incredibly obvious candidate. It would have been a shocking upset if the guy currently on staff who'd interim-coached 4 games that year wasn't hired as the HC in a year with no particularly impressive outside candidates available at the time. He also hasn't coached a single game as full-time HC yet (Harbaugh was still the HC during the week when he was suspended). While Moore seems like a good decision, let's not congratulate Manuel too much for hiring the obvious in-house candidate.
Dusty May, by all accounts, seems to be a great outside hire as the result of a well-executed plan. Manuel should absolutely be given credit for this.
So of the cases you cited, we have 2 well-executed plans with good results, 1 hire so obvious my wife could have made it, and 1 obvious hire that turned out well in spite of the terrible mismanagement that led to it. While it's not the track record of utter ineptitude some make it out to be, it doesn't exactly inspire confidence in Manuel as a top-tier AD, either.
Agreed. Nobody's perfect, and some of us have flaws (and lives) that are more visible than others. By all accounts, Juwan Howard has always tried to live the right way, even though his temper gets the better of him on occasion. I will always be a fan of Howard, even if he wasn't the right fit for this particular job at this particular time.
2500 is pretty small, even by college hockey home site standards. It's Lindenwood's home ice, apparently, and ranks 16 in smallest size among DI men's arenas, which is 15th percentile. Tech plays in a 4400-seat arena in a city of 7000 people. No idea what the NCAA is thinking. Maybe it's a trial run to see how a small rink would handle a regional in a future home sites scenario?
In that case you'd better hope for no CCHA refs, too.
I think the point is that one of the NCAAs arguments for not having the regionals at home sites is because they want the cachet of playing in larger buildings. If they're fine putting a neutral regional in a 2500-seat arena, it completely invalidates that argument. So not only in the NCAA incompetent at creating an exciting regional environment, they're also incompetent at defending their stance against it.
Can confirm, this documentary is amazing. The Barkley Marathons is such a fascinating event.
Ah, that would make more sense.
Okay, and...? There are nonpartisan races in American elections. Being an elected position doesn't require party affiliation. University governance is a field that has very little to do with party politics, so it should be a nonpartisan election. This isn't that difficult to understand.
That's exactly what they're doing and why. Their agents are probably looking at the history of similar guys in the combine and figuring there's a higher probability of moving down than up if they do combine stuff. Bad days happen to everyone, and you wouldn't want a single bad day to detract from a career's worth of work.
I'm intrigued by how information can be both confidential and inaccurate.