If Matt Hayes is right about this, then the APR will have been good for something:
It looks as though the NCAA finally will look into the possibility of immediate eligibility after a transfer for players affected by coaching turnover. Although any legislation must clear significant hurdles, there is momentum for such an idea after the recent release of the Academic Progress Rates showed a direct correlation between declining scores and coaching changes. . . .
It’s a sensible idea, but where is this momentum coming from? The schools? Aren’t they the ones who propagate the myth that the kid commits to the institution, not the coach?
And outside of Bobby Petrino, for whom this would be like his own personal Marshall Plan, you wonder how the coaches will react to this proposal.
Perrilloux also said that he had been in contact with two other high-profile players who were interested in transferring to JSU: UTEP wide receiver Fred Rouse and Clemson running back Ramon “Ray Ray” McElrathbey.
Umm… ACC coaches? About that nine conference games schedule you guys just shot down? Don’t get too comfortable.
3. The nine-game conference schedule will come up again: The coaches shot down the idea and this time the athletics director went along. But in two years the ACC will have to renegotiate its television packages and, like all conferences, it will be looking for a raise. The TV boys have told all the conferences that if they want more money they need a better inventory of games over the entire schedule. The coaches will remain adamantly against it but next time around it may not matter.
“We were against adding a 12th regular season game and you see how that turned out,” one coach said to me.
The NCAA takes a preemptive step towards keeping South Carolina from its bowl destiny.
4. NCAA puts bowls on notice: The NCAA sent out an interesting letter to all the bowls last week. The letter essentially said that while the NCAA has certified 34 bowls for next season, that certification does not guarantee that a team will be available for any bowl. It is a pre-emptive move by the NCAA to ward off litigation in case there aren’t enough teams with at least six wins to fill the bowls. Some of the bowl execs I talked to want to know: “If you were worried about having enough teams, why did you certify two more bowls?”
This could get nasty. Right now a bowl cannot take a team unless it has a 6-6 record or better. This December a bowl could be in a situation where it has to petition the NCAA for a waiver to take a 5-7 team. If that happens the NCAA will get hammered in the court of public opinion. And it should.
Personally, I’m a little conflicted on this. I don’t really care who gets to play in the Podunk Bowl. It’s an exhibition game, fer Crissakes. But keeping Spurrier & Co. out of the postseason does have its merits.
Wait a minute - what am I thinking? How much mileage would I get out of South Carolina (or Georgia Tech, for that matter) being the first school with a losing record to play in a bowl game?
Nothing here worth a post in and of itself, but maybe worth a look at least:
TSN’s Matt Hayes lists his top five SEC players at each position. I’m a little surprised he doesn’t list a Georgia player at linebacker, but he does have a good line about Moreno: “I watched the Florida and Auburn games again over the last month, and Moreno’s freshman season looks more impressive with each replay.”
Urban Meyer: It’ll be the NCAA’s fault if I offer another kid like Jamar Hornsby.
I give the Zooker credit. I can think of several head coaches who would never admit to having had an embarrassing moment. Here’s Zook’s:
Q. Your most embarrassing moment? A. At the Georgia-Florida game in Jacksonville, Fla., on national television, with all the cameras focused on me, I ran across the field to the visitor’s sideline instead of the home team’s sideline.
You can tell the ACC is choked up about the decision. Just listen to the commish:
“We will be leaving the Humanitarian Bowl in Boise,” Swofford said. “They provided some excellent experiences for our teams. I think if you talk with our teams they’ve enjoyed being there. It’s a little different kind of bowl experience than a lot of places but our schools, coaches and athletic directors have wanted to move that particular game back more in our geographic footprint…”
Translation: “Our coaches would rather play a ninth conference game than suffer through freezing their ass off in late December on some god-forsaken blue field in Idaho. And they don’t like being sponsored by a truck stop, either.”
No matter how often they’re described as leading their teams into battle, football coaches understand the foolishness in using wartime analogies to discuss their professions.
“There are some similarities with playing football and serving in the military, such as strategy, tactics, training and the fact it takes a lot of guys doing the right thing to have success,” Georgia coach Mark Richt said. “But there is much more on the line when you’re fighting in the military.”
Kudos to Richt and the other coaches joining him on that military tour.
At the ESPN upfront presentation, Ed Erhardt, president of customer marketing and sales, emphasized the network’s effort to diversify its fan base in order to deliver sought-after demographics to advertisers.
Expanded programming focuses on the Hispanic and youth markets — and ESPN.com will introduce content for fans of extreme sports and a light-hearted take on the foibles and highlights of the day’s games.
On the plus side, there is this:
ESPN also plans to “make the opening of college football season a holiday” by televising 32 college games, Erhardt said.
NCAA president Myles Brand says repeatedly that he’s concerned about the “arms race” in big-time college sports, what he calls a “quiet crisis,” especially in football and men’s basketball.
He said recently that only six athletics departments are profitable and that spending for most athletics programs is increasing two to three times the annual rate of general university budgets for academics.
“Tension between faculty needs, academic needs and the desire of athletics departments to be competitive is really a very serious and growing issue,” Brand said.
According to a recent study by UTA Today, the average salary of the 120 major college coaches reached $1 million this year for the first time. Brand said 4 to 5 percent “sounds like money on the margins, but putting it into a stadium instead of science labs makes a difference. When we’re talking 4-5 percent of billions of dollars, that money makes a huge difference wherever it goes.”
Brand is concerned that only six athletics departments are profitable? I didn’t think any of them were supposed to turn a profit. The tax deductibility of contributions to college athletics is based upon its non-profit status.
I was going to comment on this post at The Big Lead yesterday, but let it slide. Since The Wiz has brought it up favorably today, though, I thought I’d make one point about a conclusion the author reached there.
Here’s the passage in question:
… Of course, then you get into the argument that before the BCS, the bowls would not always result in a consensus national champion. That’s when the playoff argument comes into play. Which is why I took the liberty of averaging the margins of victory for the Division I-A national championship games of the last 10 (BCS) years and comparing it to the average of the margins of victory of all the Division I-AA national championship games (from 1978). The results: Average margin of victory for D I-A championship games: 14.50 points. Average margin of victory for D I-AA championship games: 12.87 points. Just goes to show that if you want the best chance of having the truly best teams play for the championship, have a playoff. It’s better for everyone and everything…
Well, wait a minute here. He’s comparing 30 years of data against 10 years of data to make his argument. What’s the result if you compare identical time periods?
Based on his point spread chart…
… the average margin of victory in 1-AA title games over the last ten years is 17.0. If I’m not mistaken, that’s actually greater than 14.50.
Now I’m not a statistician, so I have no idea whether a ten year sample (or a thirty year sample, for that matter) is statistically significant. What I do know is that when you start juggling numbers to justify an agenda, you’re heading into Mark Twain territory.
“We’re looking forward the next three or four years of competing and hopefully winning that game in Atlanta real soon.” (Steve Spurrier, The State, 5/13/08)
