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Your analogy is faulty...

Chances are that if you work for a company, the company was not allowed to make an agreement with its competitors to limit your pay drastically below where it would be without that agreement.  That's an agreement in restraint of trade, and unless you're covered by a CBA, your employer can't do that.

 

As for Title IX, it doesn't require equal funding for men's and womens sports (think about the differences in salary between mens and womens CBB coaches).  It requires equal opportunity, which is measured in a lot of different ways.  However, I'd suggest that it would be better to allow the revenue athletes to gain the value from their labor and re-tool Title IX so it only applies to the subsidy-receiving sports, than it is to continually steal from the revenue athletes. 

 

 

He said he wants it.

Now, maybe he's just being a good soldier and trying to sell this to his constituency; a pawn in a complicated scheme.  Or, maybe he just means what he said.  Which is more likely? 

This is just another in a long line of decisions

that crap on the hardcore fan.   I am now 100% off the Brandon bandwagon (this plus "our coach this fall").  Seems like a business-centric dweeb. 

Tolzein to Toon, Crist to Floyd, Cousins to Martin,

Marve to Smith (if Marve is any good).  All of those are scary now.

 

Toon is a stud.  

This is absurd

Nobody seems willing to ask (or explain)  what event prompted the school to change its security policy, or what the target of the policy change is (alcohol? terrorists with water bottles of doom? irate Cleveland Browns fans?). Dollars to doughnuts this was prompted by something hypothetical and extremely unlikely to happen (though I'd love to know whether Michigan's vendor contracts have variable prices based on policies like this). 

I disagree with the "risk" of Derrick Rose...

How has Memphis' program been hurt?  They're going to be a top-15, top-10 team this year: Pastner's class of 2010 is one of the top-5 in the country, and he has another top-100 kid coming in 2011.  Memphis' basketball program post-Rose is stronger than Michigan's program has been since the Fab-5.  If Dorsey ends up starring at another BCS conference school, Michigan is imposing a competitive disadvantage on itself for little (if any) benefit.  

 

More importantly, I bet that RR is  gone by February if he wins 9 or 10 games this season. 

Nebraska is a incredibly good addition. Two years ago,

I don't think anybody expected or predicted that the 12th program would be a major power like Nebraska.   The games between the Big Four (Michigan, OSU, PSU, and Nebraska) will be mf *events.* 

That sounds great. Agree about ND:

Adding ND only to the conference would probably lead to an overall reduction in the quality of Michigan's schedules.  I suspect that more often than not, Michigan would replace ND with a pansy subsidy-game.  That would be my least favorite expansion: ND only.

No, that really isn't good enough. That's their ceiling (note

the fact that they've literally never been to the NCAA tournament, too), and that ceiling is pretty low.  They barely scraped by EMU, they lost to the worst team in the Big East, and they looked good in a bowl only because they played a 7-5 Auburn team and got really lucky at the end. 

 

This is how you start the long, boring road to becoming Virginia

or Northwestern.  If Rodriguez has any real success in 2010 or 2011, he's got to think about going to a school that's interested in winning a national championship (e.g. Tennessee, Texas A&M), not a school that's content with 9 win seasons every now and then with warrior-poets.   Heck, a major reason RR faced difficulty here was the lack of jucos.  This is obscene. 

Will the NCAA come down as hard on USC as it did on Bama?

Will Kiffin be USC's version of Mike Shula? Even for a great recruiter -21 scholarships is a lot to overcome.

C+/B-

I'd give it a higher grade if it weren't so far behind PSU (and likely OSU), and if MSU and Iowa weren't so close. Not having a gargantuan talent advantage against Iowa and MSU is going to be annoying and costly. Plus, there are lots of projects, not enough "immediately ready" talent to plug the holes in 2010.

That said, if Gardner pans out quickly nobody will care about the rest of the class. A great QB is more valuable than anything else on the field, and a great QB can allow a team with talent disadvantages at every other position the opportunity to win a game (see the 2009 Sugar Bowl). If Gardner's a difference maker by 2011 (unlikely but possible), everything else is gravy.

Last year Pryor and Boeckman hit

their long passes, this year Pryor air-mailed the three long passes he attempted, all of which were wide open.

That said, without looking at the stats the offense felt like it was much, much more effective against OSU this year than it was last year, despite only scoring 3 additional points. The OSU games are the best demonstration of subjective offensive improvement; the worst are the Illinois games.

I don't think the offense improved that much.

Michigan went from the 44th toughest schedule to the 88th toughest schedule, and ND's defense fell through the floor. The offense was definitely better at moving the ball against horrible teams, but not demonstrably better at moving the ball against reasonable defenses.

That could be due to injuries, of course.

...and Minnesota and Colorado both

shifted into less spready offenses this past offseason. Obviously, neither is a traditional power.

EMU changed from a spread to a multi-formation pro style offense

this year...

The results were terrible: 117th in YPG, 112 in yards per play, from 25 ppg to 16 ppg.

Not that EMU is a traditional power or anything.

Alabama would have had a neat passing spread if Mike Price had stuck; that would have been fun to see.

It's strange, but I think

that on balance, sending top high schoolers (other than a once in a lifetime guy like LeBron James) to the D-League would hurt their visibility more than it would help the visibility of the D-League. The average D-League team draws fewer people than Hope College men's team (half of a Hope-Calvin game), and seems to get almost no media coverage. I don't think that a couple of guys like Brandon Jennings, Kosta Koufos, Greg Monroe, or BJ Mullens would have any impact on that number. A guy like LeBron would, but I think that someone with that amount of talent+hype will come along once in a generation. I suspect that each one of those guys would have received less exposure/coverage in the D-League than they had in college.

Frankly, I don't understand why the NBA invested in the d-league at all. It can free-ride on two domestic developmental leagues (NCAA, CBA), and can also draw from Eurobasket.

I agree with you about NBA arenas, but I think the game itself very compelling to watch, especially in the playoffs.

I don't think that would be better for the NBA.

Nothing seems to generate much interest in the D-league, and the NBA gets several benefits from forcing top talent to unwillingly play 1 or 2 years in college; more support for a developmental league that the NBA doesn't pay for, more interest in the draft, greater competitive balance (40-60 additional competitive games entered into the analysis of each player increases the value of a top pick), etc.

Note; this is not a normative justification of the draft restriction as "fair."

The no-charge zone is a step in the right direction, but

I like Chris Mottram's proposal to just not call roughly 95% of the charge-block calls that are currently made. The NCAA should try to create a disincentive to play fan-unfriendly, floppy defense.

http://rivals.yahoo.com/ncaa/basketball/blog/the_dagger/post/For-the-go…

Penn St. was on the road, too.

Penn St. beat Syracuse in the Carrier dome.  And "clearly" is a wild overstatement; Wisconsin won by 3 and was outgained by Fresno St.  Fresno St. is okay, but their "resume padding" win over Rutgers looks less impressive after Rutgers got absolutely destroyed by UNC. 

Why did Penn State drop,

Why did Penn State drop, Funky?  They beat Syracuse 55-13, and they drop a spot?  I know they haven't played anyone good, but they're beating bad teams by 30+ points, which seems more impressive than what Wisconsin's done.

 

I posted the link,

and I certainly didn't add any typos.  But I question whether the "findarticles.com" version that I linked to is identical to the version that ran in the Sporting News. 

 

 

Remember when Dienhart mocked the hiring of Pete Carrol? "Tom Dienhart Dear Mike Garrett: I 'think you made a mistake hiring Pete Carroll as USC's next coach. As Trojans athletics director, you needed to hit a home run with this hire. This looks more like a scratch single. I know. Carroll might end up being grand, but the perception in the here and now is what matters for a program that's on the wane. And that perception isn't good. Some might compare Carroll to Paul Hackett, the coach he replaces. That might not be fair, but you can't blame them. Carroll is an NFL guy. He's a defensive tactician who hasn't coached in college since 1083, when he was an assistant at Pacific. Hackett was an offensive expert who hadn't coached in college since 1092 when he landed the USC job before the 1998 season. At least Hackett's most recent college stint at the time was as head coach at Pittsburgh. Unlike Hackett, Carroll proved he can be a successful head coach, leading the New England Patriots to a pair of winning seasons and playoff berths. He's also a super-enthusiastic guy. But Carroll doesn't know college football. Oh, he's saying the fight things. You know, stuff like, "If you can understand the process in the NFL ... in the draft process, it's all about watching players in college, I don't consider myself unfamiliar with the college game at all." I'm sure Carroll, like Hackett, knows his X's and O's. The problem is the college game Carroll doesn't know. It was the same one Hackett had trouble grasping. I'm talking about things like academic issues, recruiting / and dealing with alumni. Is Caroll up for whispering sweet nothings into the ears of know-it-all 18-year-olds? Is Carroll up for spending more time speaking at booster events than breaking down film? Is Carroll up for fans demanding to know why USC can't dominate the Pac-10 anymore? Carroll needs a positive start and would help himself by retaining defensive line coach Ed Orgeron and running backs coach Kennedy Pola, a pair of Hackett assistants who red-line their intensity meters. I know, Mike. You say, "Average Joe doesn't know football." Believe what you want, but Average Joe has reason to doubt your hiring skills and thinks you are part of the problem. Hackett was 19-18 at USC, and his last team finished last in the Pac-10, the first t/me that ever has happened. He was your man after you mishandled the termination of John Robinson after the 1997 season. Your job might be riding on Carroll's performance. Your non-communicative ways cause people to make conclusions that might not be tree about you and your program. And you didn't help yourself a few years ago when you gave a "pep talk" in the locker room. It was hard for you to believe people didn't fall over themselves to coach your beloved USC. But it's not that good of a job because it's not 1975 anymore. The 85-scholarship limit has made college football an equal-opportunity sport in which schools such as Oregon State and Virginia Tech have BCS dreams. Also working against USC are substandard facilities-all the way from Heritage Hall to the antiquated weight room. And the L.A. lifestyle isn't tot everyone, especially not for assistant coaches. Housing prices are out of sight, To live in a decent area, coaches must drive an hour to and from work. Their days are long enough as it is. Oregon State's Dennis Erickson and Oregon's Mike Bellotti are the biggest names who sniffed around the USC job but didn't really pursue it. San Diego Chargers coach Mike Riley would have been a good hire. He served as Oregon State's coach from 1997-98 and was USC's offensive coordinator before that, but he couldn't make up his mind. When he continued to drag his feet, you grabbed Carroll, who was out of work last season. Contrast that to the job search at Alabama. Marquee names such as Virginia Tech's Frank Beamer and Miami's Butch Davis seriously considered taking the job. In the end, the Tide got TCU coach Dermis Franchione, one of the hottest coaches in the college game. Dennis Franchione, USC Coach. Would've had a nice ring to it. Sincerely, Tom" http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1208/is_1_225/ai_69058326/print?…