MosherJordan

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Date	Title	Body
1 week 1 hour ago	Pardon my football ignorance	But do we absolutely need a SAM in this class? Could Marshall or even Shallman be able to fill that role? Is the 2015 class look to be loaded at the position? It'd be a (minor) blemish on an otherwise epic defensive class that could have a monster DL and a monster secondary.
3 weeks 2 days ago	Sadly, with our poor OL	Sadly, with our poor OL recruiting, we'll struggle to give our QB time in the pocket. /s
4 weeks 1 day ago	I took a graduate course in	I took a graduate course in algebra from Phil Hanlon while I was at Michigan. I did my PhD thesis to extend the cocycle super-rigidity theory of Robert Zimmer (president of the University of Chicago). I love seeing these mathematicians leading such fine universities.
7 weeks 5 days ago	Time for some math.	There are 200ish teams playing 30ish games in college bb. That's 6000ish game, which means there should be 40 or so 1:150 odds comebacks. If there were only 14, it tells you a lot about the ability of anyone to estimate tail events. It also tells you about how bad humans are at intuiting liklihoods. Kenpom win probability metrics were clearly never meant to be used for this type of analysis. it was a great comeback, but we need to not read too much into it. It wasn't destiny, it was luck and a bit of perseverance.
8 weeks 6 days ago	Amen. The year I won the	Amen. The year I won the office pool was actually only slightly more fun than the year I missed the deadline to submit a bracket and just had fun watching upsets and rooting for all the cinderellas.
9 weeks 3 days ago	Nothing, and that's the point	Nothing, and that's the point of capitalism and free markets. When a rich alumni gives an athletic dept a wad of cash, it's a donation, and they name something after them, and nobody bats an eye. Same rich alum gives money to a recruit, and its shady? If everyone loves the level playing field amateur model, why don't more people watch DII or DIII games?
10 weeks 3 days ago	This is the part where I say	This is the part where I say that I don't care about moral victories and whatnot. I only care about the fact that with a 4 point lead with under a minute and in clear foul to salvage any hope territory of the game, we couldn't make a god damn free throw. Not McGary, not Hardaway, not POY Burke. We didn't need all of them. We only needed two god damn free throws, at home, with the B1G for the second year on the line. Whether we deserved to be up by 4 with seconds to go is irrelevant. All I'll remember is that we needed two god damn free throws and we didn't get them. Two free throws and a backbone against Penn State and we'd be sitting atop the B1G alone. I don't care how long we were in the wilderness, this team had the talent to be champions, and champions make free throws and don't loose to league basement dwellers! There is no sugar coating this loss, or drawing moral victories from this season short of a final 4 run, IMO.
11 weeks 5 days ago	Army is being used as a	Army is being used as a proper noun, so gets capitalized. I want to join the army. I went to Army. Names of schools get capitalized, except ohio.
12 weeks 3 days ago	At a certain point,	At a certain point, satisfaction with career and legacy mean more than a few million to a guy who's worth that much. I'm not Tom Brady rich, not even close, but I pass up high paying jobs all the time because I make enough to be part of the 1%, but value my career enough to stay where I'm at because I actually like my employe and job.
12 weeks 4 days ago	Since she left the threesome	Since she left the threesome of Destiny's child, you're quite right.
12 weeks 6 days ago	The experiment is to compare	The experiment is to compare Penn State to several controll groups or schools over the last 30 years to see if joining the B1G had an appreciable effect on its research budget. One could also compare the CIC schools before and after PSU joined against other AAU or broader control groups to see if PSU joining had an effect on existing members. Small sample, yes, but PSU it could still be enough to rule out the null hypothesis at some meaningful confidence level. If I can find individual school research budget data, I'll do the analysis at the next bank holiday.
12 weeks 6 days ago	Fair enough, but if we	Fair enough, but if we eventually learn that Mosher-Jordan is a castle, you have to declare me king of the internets.
13 weeks 3 hours ago	It's always possible that the	It's always possible that the answer is simple if unsatisfying. Delaney tells B1G presidents that 16 team superconferences are inevitable, and that it's better to be the first to 16 than the last. Presidents say if we have to expand, can we get closer to being the public Ivy? Delaney looks at the list of poachable AAU schools, sees that there are a few in nice fat TV markets, and says that he can probably do that. Everyone is blissfully unaware that the final B1G has a research footprint that could make it a force to be reconed with if it ever became self aware. It's possible. It just wouldn't be very smart.
13 weeks 16 hours ago	I definitely respect your	I definitely respect your perspective and am glad you shared your experience. It's entirely possible that we are both right. There may be little in past experience to think that the CIC will benefit from such a strategy. That said, I think part of the opinion I expressed has been validated in that it seems like the universities themselves (even athletically bankrupt Maryland still takes time to highlight the importance of the CIC in the decision making) think the CIC is important, and seem to throw the $8 billion in research funds figure around a lot everytime they talk about themselves. In my experience, the only people who talk about how much money they make are Donald Trump, and people who want you to give them more money. It will take time to see how serious this talk is, and whether it will pay dividends (two different things). I'm happy to remain a skeptic until we get more proof. In the mean time, a hypothetical would be fun. I'd be curious to know how you would react if you were at a CIC school, and the head of your dept (or the dean of the college, or even president of the university) told you that it would be in the university's best interest if there were more intentional cooperation between departments within the CIC? Would direct or indirect pressure be met with acceptance or revolt? How would you react if the president of your university made it clear that this was the new strategy? That's probably the most interesting question to me. I'd think the tendency would be to comply. I left academia for industry some time ago, so maybe it's just me, but I think that I might initially mildly resent being told to limit my options, and then get over it as it's not like I was being told to work with Grand Valley State, and that in the end, I'm not the one paying the electric bill. Also, I got you to double your MGoPoint total in one thread, which as you're an obviously smart guy, has to count for something, amirite?
13 weeks 1 day ago	From the University of	From the University of Maryland itself... While no one is arguing that membership in the CIC was the primary motivation behind Maryland’s conference swap, it played “an essential and significant role,” in the decision, said Brian Ullmann, Maryland’s assistant vice president for communications and marketing. Ullmann, the Maryland spokesman, stressed the importance of future research opportunities stemming from the CIC. “When big grantmaking institutions, whether it’s the government or a foundation, when they’re giving out research dollars or grants, almost always those are given to multi-institutional groups,” Ullmann said. “It’s very rare that you get a large grant that just goes to the University of Maryland. Being a part of an $8 billion research enterprise we think will ultimately generate new incremental research funding for the university. Link: http://cnsmaryland.org/2012/12/04/maryland-set-to-join-big-ten-academic-alliance/ So you may be right, maybe the research dollars and CIC membership isn't the number one motivator for expansion (it's still athletic dollars), but it certainly seems like CIC membership and research $$ is a real part of the equation.
13 weeks 1 day ago	Tens of millions per school	Tens of millions per school may seem small, but that's the level of money the BTN brings to individual schools, and the arguments people make about TV market dollars being the motivation for adding Rutgers seems to equate to a smaller annual increase in revenue for the school than extra money from earmarks would. Heck, the $60M your department spends is more than a lot of athletic departments spend period. As for earmarks generally, it seems Mary Sue Coleman and Univ of Michigan want it both ways, actually. The AAU has long lobbied hard against earmarks, since they divert money that it's memeber schools would ordinarily get. So Mary Sue wants the Alabama Tuscaloosa's of the world cut off, and that $2B returned to normal channels so U of M gets more. On the other hand, she wants U of M to get national landmark status so that she can get more direct subsidization for her school to fill in the hundred million plus shortfall from the state of Michigan. $50 million more in annual research money (wherever it came from) is essentially equivalent to a $1B endowment (edit: I originally said $2B, but it's more like $1B).. Would Mary Sue Coleman trade traditional football games with Iowa for games against Rutgers if she coudl get her hands on an extra $1B endowment? I don't think there's any question. The current B1G schools strengthening their political connections to southern schools before the great exodus of population from their states erodes their political influence further seems like a very real justification for expanding the conference to the UNC, UVA, GTs of the world. I think everyone knows that the university revenue model is unsustainable. Enrollment trends are showing declines in response to untenable tuition. Top notch small private schools aren't as exposed to the risk of big changes in the way college works. It makes a lot of sense for the B1G to create a stronger connection amongst the top public (state flagship) schools to weather the coming storm.
13 weeks 1 day ago	I definitely appreciate the	I definitely appreciate the first hand input you provide. I'm happy to admit that I may have overestimated the effect of AAU membership as an explicit force in the peer review funding process. That said, direct earmarks for universities totals about $2 billion dollars (Link). That's not chump change, and it is undeniably politically motivated. I linked a study by an U of Illinois professor who looked at the funding allocation process who concluded that as much as 40% of the money is influenced by congressional representation through district affiliation or by alumni status. The study is more about the appropriations committee itself, than about general members of congress, but my thinking was that after the B1G adds Rutgers and Maryland, and then maybe two of UVA, UNC or GT to the fold, it would be adding a total of 45 congressmen and 8 senators to the list of potential govt benefactors. That would bring congressional representation to about 25% of the house and 25% of the senate. That's some clout if the B1G can get it to work together. I totally grant you that congressmen aren't calling NSF to make sure Prof. Xavier gets his $300k request to fund his telekenisis study, but the study I linked to in the post still seems to suggest that congress can funnel money where it wants. Maybe as you say it's more general reallocation of funds, but I'm sure Barbara Mikulski pushes for NIH to get more money, she knows Johns Hopkins is getting another $100 mil. I'd also say that it's not just my opinion I'm going on. Mary Sue Coleman has said publicly that she thinks schools like the University of Michigan should recieve special treatment by the federal government to step in and make up for failing state funding. That schools like Michigan are so important to the country as established research institutions, that the federal government should make sure that the population trends shouldn't be allowed to lead it into slow decline with its home state. Now, if the President of the University of Michigan says that in public, you can bet that all the other B1G presidents echo it. And if she is saying it publicly, she is lobbying congress with the same message. And it certainly would help matters if she could align with other top public research schools to amplify the message. This may not be part of the expansion calculus at all, but Delaney has said that the university presidents want expansion to be restricted to good research schools. So even if I'm wrong about why, the reputation score still applies.
13 weeks 1 day ago	I didn't say that the NAS was	I didn't say that the NAS was a funding organization, just that the peer review process involves distinguished professors who are selected by the various agencies on the basis of their work and reputation, similar to the way they get appointed to NAS. My experience comes from the Mathematics dept, which admittedly get grants that are a fraction of what other sciences do, since there are no big expensive labs to run. I respect your input on the peer review process. I never really meant to suggest that the reviewers are intentionally biased. That said, I'd wager there's more unintentional bias than you realize, and schools of thought can be self-reinforcing. As for the political part of the equation, I was basing it on work done by economists who did study things, and find very high influence of the political aspect to spending. There is no federally supported research on gun violence because the NRA has lobbied very hard to prevent it. Of course, it could be all correlation. As I said, the AAU is a who's who, so they might get 60% of the pie because that's where all the good research is happening. But then you'd have to explain why AAU membership is so important to so many schools. Nebraska losing AAU status was a big deal to the CIC members. If AAU has no power, why? B1G is targeting AAU schools. If AAU has no real importance, why? It certainly looks like the B1G is trying to become the public Ivy league, and I don't think that's coincidental. This post was just a way to try to put one rationalization behind why. Still, I don't work on the Hill, and I don't sit on any peer review committees, so I could be wrong. Time will tell, I suppose.
13 weeks 2 days ago	Yeah, the score probably over	Yeah, the score probably over penalizes a Pitt for belonging to a state already "covered" by the CIC. I'm sure the politics is more nuanced, and I debated trying to normalize a state by how many ways political influence would have to be split. I also thought about how to include appropriations committee membership, as that clearly has an effect, but couldn't think of a good way to do it. There is also the idea that the political influence has to be split between a state's AAU members and non-members. Virginia would rank higher if I considered how many AAU members a school shares a state with, since it is the sole AAU member in VA, and Syracuse would lose most of it's luster, since it shares NY with Cornell, NYU, SUNY Buffalo, SUNY Stony Brook and Columbia. The overall conclusion of the analysis doesn't change much either way though. The ACC is a richer target than the Big 12, Pitt is still doesn't add much, Texas is still aces, and Florida State would be a top target if it were a solid AAU member. The point was that by going for a congressional district rich southern states just makes a lot more sense than targeting more midwest or northeast states.  Also, the score doesn't measure research dollars that come from private sources. The research triangle is a very attractive property to add to the CIC. If it takes both Duke and North Carolina to deliver it, then it's probably worth it. Ultimately, I'd guess that the target list is UVA, UNC, GT, and Duke, in that order, and the B1G would take all four if it could.
13 weeks 2 days ago	The real Jim Delaney would	The real Jim Delaney would never admit that B1G expansion decisions were being made over his head, even when he was pretending not to be the real Jim Delaney. Jim Delaney's ego wouldn't allow his fingers to even type the words in jest.
13 weeks 2 days ago	True, but then I acknowledged	True, but then I acknowledged that Nebraska wasn't a great fit for the CIC, and got in because it was a premium football brand. Nebraska was Jim Delaney, not Mary Sue Coleman. The post tries to explain some the motiviation for adding Rutgers and Maryland and other ACC targets. Nebraska was a premium football brand that got the B1G to 12 teams, allowing a conference championshipe, etc. There's no doubt that it was added for mainly athletic reasons. It got through the CIC approval gauntlet because it was AAU at the time, but there has been some rumor that it wouldn't have if it had lost AAU status before. That some university presidents are having enough buyers remorse to rethink how active they should be in the strategy is not that big a stretch, really. Plus, I stayed at a Holiday Inn Express last night.
13 weeks 3 days ago	Yeah, sorry. New to this	Yeah, sorry. New to this whole content creation stuff, so the images didn't take. I replaced them with badly formated tables for the moment. I like to consume information visually, so I'll try and replace these with the graphical version soon.
13 weeks 3 days ago	I'm pretty sure the corollary	I'm pretty sure the corollary is never attribute to stupidity, that which can adequately be explained by bribery.
13 weeks 6 days ago	I just don't want Jayru to go	I just don't want Jayru to go to OSU. If that means Michigan takes him, I'm ok with that.
14 weeks 3 hours ago	You'll be doing a victory	You'll be doing a victory dance over the blood stained white suit you were wearing the night you and a few thug friends stabbed a couple other thugs to death at a night club after the Super Bowl in 2000? Interesting.
14 weeks 18 hours ago	Are you insinuating about my	Are you insinuating about my mother? I'm going to assume you're median board member age. Given that my mother is a 70 yr old widow, I'd say good for her for getting her extreme cougar on.
14 weeks 20 hours ago	And she spends her off time	And she spends her off time in Melbourne? My mother lives in Melbourne. I need to start visiting my mother more often.
14 weeks 4 days ago	Just the Op. if you're	Just the Op. if you're editorialization asserts the moral high ground to yourself, you shouldn't cry when people respond with some vitriol.
14 weeks 4 days ago	Nah. The pope was following	Nah. The pope was following Manti's lead, coming out to say that the concept of God is the biggest case of Catfishing in history.
14 weeks 4 days ago	I would have said our	I would have said our morality held despite the leadership of the various popes. I mean, we all know the inquisition and silence during the holocaust, and protection of pedophiles were amoral, yet dictates of the pope. The latest Pope was a prime enabler of the rape of children, in fact.

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