Bevo's Daily Roundup - April 27, 2009
by dimecoverage on Apr 26, 2009 9:49 PM CDT
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Your Monday fix.
Does this mean we have to cheer for the Redskins?
Yes, a lot of people have said this for quite some time. The Big 12 needs to drop the two divisions and just have the two best teams play for the conference championship.
Lost in the vociferous debate that raged over who should have represented the South Division in the 2008 title contest was the fact South members Oklahoma and Texas should have met in a rematch.
The most obvious solution is to do away with the divisions and match the two teams rated the highest in the BCS standings at the conclusion of the regular season.
The BCS is thinking about hiring a lobbyist to handle the dealings with Congress.
NewsOk talks to former OU assistant coach Larry Lacewell about the NFL draft.
Draft Day is miserable. It’s like a 10-hour football game. You’ve spent all these months getting ready after your scouts spend months preparing for it. If you sit where we were a lot of years, at the bottom of the first round or somewhere between 18 and 25, you start seeing all the players you really want come off the board. It’s a sickening feeling. By the time you get to draft, your top players are all off the board.
O.J. Brigance, former Rice linebacker, Canadian Football League player and then a special teams ace on a Super Bowl championship team, is an exceptional person. He was diagnosed with ALS and continues to inspire.
His body ravaged by Lou Gehrig's disease, ALS, a fatal motor-neuron disease that inexorably weakens its victims, making every movement, every word, an impossible struggle, Brigance nevertheless pounded his point.
"Enjoy every moment."
Why anyone would want to write five long blog columns about the Aggies is beyond comprehension, but a Washington Post writer did just that.
Frequently during my brief stay at Texas A&M I've wondered to myself: Does anybody in the outside world know what's going on here?
This is not to suggest that College Station is cut off from the outside world. Television signals penetrate the perimeter. Newspapers are delivered. There are no roadblocks or checkpoints. My e-mail appears to get through.
And yet this is a place apart, a bubble so full of strange rituals that I sometimes feel moved to flee, to drive out of town, stop at the first house I see and bang on the door. "Oh thank god," I'd say, when the door was opened and I fell across its threshold. "Do you know what's going on back there? We've got to call for help."
And finally...
The Top 10% Rule is only a UT problem.
More and more Texas high school students who crave the culture of a big state university – the brand name, the sprawling campus, the serious football – are finding it outside the Lone Star State.
Conventional wisdom says Texas' "top 10 percent" rule, which guarantees top-ranked high school students admission to any state university, is fueling a brain drain that forces students with not-so-stellar grades into academic exile.
But it's not really a top 10 percent problem. It's a University of Texas at Austin problem.
UT-Austin is so popular and wields such a powerful brand that too many high school seniors long to be Longhorns. Those in the top 10 percent win automatic admission to UT-Austin, leaving thousands of others to compete for the few seats left.
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just realize that if you cheer for the Redskins...
…you’ll also be cheering for Chase Daniel. :-)
(For now, anyway…)
Rock M Nation
Thrust nunchuk upward!
Really?
We’re cheering for a dude riding the bench, if he’s lucky enough to make it past the scout team?
by Meekrob on Apr 27, 2009 9:29 AM CDT up reply actions 1 recs
looks like..
..Washington also signed Joe Ganz from Nebraska, so he’ll have to compete w/ him too.
by vy til i die on Apr 27, 2009 11:02 AM CDT up reply actions
I'm fine w/ that
Chase is a native texan and he’s Colt’s tight homie why shouldn’t we root for him?
other than he’s on the redskins.
by Longhorn@Berkeley on Apr 27, 2009 10:57 AM CDT up reply actions
The problem with doing away with the divisions...
…is that it sets up the possibility of an instant rematch. So long as teams tend to play rivals from within the division at the end of the season, there’s no chance of a championship game being a rematch of a game played the week before.
Presumably, even if divisions were done away with, teams would still schedule as if there were divisions, similar to the way basketball is scheduled — even though there is no “Big XII South” in basketball, Texas still plays all the football South teams twice and the football North teams once.
This isn’t an isolated problem. Just look at 2007. If the division structure didn’t exist, the championship game would have been Kansas-Mizzou — just one week after their much-hyped, nationally-televised prime time showdown. Removing the divisional structure also would have denied OU — a team with two conferences losses, both against teams from the tougher South, which beat itself up that season — a chance to prove it was better than either Kansas or OU.
For me the ideal would be to drop 2 teams and go to the Pac 10 model
I would say drop Baylor and Iowa State (they could stay in basketball if they wanted to) and just go with 10 teams. As you say, it is silly for one team to ride the advantage of schedule to win the division or the entire conference. While you will still have some imbalance as teams will get different slates of home and away games, at least your conference champion will determined on the field not by geography or schedule or the BCS.
I would like to see what is offered up as a potential 4-year schedule if they did away with divisions. I am not sure I would like to give up the yearly games with OU and A&M, but I also think the Big 12 South is turning into a beast that might not be willing to be constrained by a divisional format.
Easy solution
I am not sure I would like to give up the yearly games with OU and A&M
Just set the schedule up ahead of time with Texas and OU playing in the Big 12 Champ. game and not playing each other in the regular season. Those are the 2 best teams year in and year out anyway.
This was only partially posted in jest. Moving OU to the North and keeping us in the South would, in reality, almost always wind up with us playing each other each year anyway.
DC: Glad you located
the OJ Brigance piece; meant to mention it in a post 10 days ago after it ran page one of the Htn. Chronicle. Well worth reading for those who haven’t yet . . . The Aggies series you mention reminds me of why I chose NOT to go there 40 years ago — because it felt like a closed city cut off from the rest of the world. I think this has long been an issue in Aggie athletics: The us against the world mentality so many Aggies revel in puts the athletes in an over-hyped, can’t-perform-at-peak-level state.
Scheduling without divisions
Assuming that dropping two schools isn’t on the table, if divisions were dropped and scheduling was done in a way that did not mimic old divisional structures, there would HAVE to be permanent opponents a la the SEC. — there is no chance in hell we would agree to long-term schedules that didn’t have us playing our two biggest rivals each year.
There would probably be two per school — we’d get A&M and OU; OU would get us & OSU, for obvious examples, but it’s unclear who’d become, say, Iowa State’s permanent opponents.
A couple of problems with that. Just like LSU always has to play Florida (and vice versa), we would always have a presumably-tougher slate than Iowa State. Imagine a year in which Iowa State catches fire and gets to play permanent opponents Baylor and Kansas State while we’re playing OU. They’d start with a leg up. It’s basically the Kansas problem from 2007 — running up a great record when the luck of the draw gave them the weakest possible conference schedule — and dropping the division structure does nothing to guarantee that luck-of-the-draw scheduling wouldn’t happen again.
Also, that means Tech and Baylor would start playing us only two or three years out of four. Not so sure how happy they’d be with that, losing a huge (for them) in-state rivalry game.
One other thing to keep in mind is that everything is cyclical, and just because the Big XII South is much stronger today doesn’t mean that it will be in a decade. Conference scheduling and division structures should be determined by what’s best for long-term stability, and not in reaction to where the power schools are today.
If there are permanent opponents then I would say no to scrapping the division format...
Dropping the divisions but keeping permanent opponents would be worse than the division structure. It would create even bigger imbalances in the scheduling if the two of the power teams happen to be rivals (ala us and OU). The biggest problem with any of this would indeed be the fact that many teams would lose their biggest butt-in-the-seat games every couple of years if they aren’t one of the two rivals. This ultimately is why it won’t happen. Tech won’t want to lose us and OU as yearly rivals.
If we are going to keep divisions we need to go with a periodic reorganization like they guys at Rock M Nation propose (part 5 here) where the non-divisional opponents are reshuffled based on their records over the preceding 4 year period to maintain some sense of balance.
I agree that things are cyclical, but they aren’t guaranteed and the cycles can last decades. Schools like Texas and OU might remain dominant for 20 or 30 years while a team like Missouri might only be able to ride a 3 or 4 year streak. The fact that Texas is the prime recruiting ground for the conference already puts the North division at a disadvantage, one that might only spiral further.
Ultimately if long-term stability were the key element, I think we would already have 10-team conference. Each team in the conference would get equal visibility across all the regions, helping to alleviate some of the recruiting advantages of the South and you would ensure that your conference champion would be a proven commodity not weak and compromised division winner that managed to catch the other division champ on an off day.
But who is to say...
…that your matchup with OU or A&M is sacred in that case? The Nebraska/Oklahoma matchup was sacred when the Big 12 began, but that didn’t stop the conference from putting an end to it.
We'll carry the banner high!
Bring On The Cats
Aggy comments in Washington Post
Pretty typical, acting like they are the only school on Earth that actually respects dead people, etc. Fish Kamp link from Kelley’s blog was interesting. They hold their youth-kult, mind-kontrol session at some Methodist retreat site, even farther out in the weeds than College Station itself…with a disclaimer at the bottom of the site stating Fish Camp is NOT a religious event. Yeah, right, at least not in the traditional sense, Aggy gods = General Earl Rudder and Sul Ross.
what year did you attend Fish Camp?
It is amusing to me that so many ‘sips like to comment on Fish Camp, yet they’ve never attended or experienced it.
It is amusing me that aggies like to use words like “teasips” and “sips” to denigrate the refined, yet they’ve never experienced anything refined.
by burntorangehorn on Apr 27, 2009 2:26 PM CDT up reply actions
Thank you...
I didn’t realize what the whole “sips” thing was until now….so they are making fun of us for being refined? Isn’t that like making fun of someone for being smart?
Tea is delicious!
I've been fuelin' my dreams eatin' greens and beans.
by 16thLonghorn on Apr 27, 2009 3:05 PM CDT up reply actions
My sentiments exactly. Thus my confusion with the pejorative manner in which people sling the term “educated elite.”
by burntorangehorn on Apr 28, 2009 11:13 AM CDT up reply actions
U "Tea"
At the time it started, there was nothing negative about drinking tea. It was commonplace. The Aggies hit on ‘tea’ because we are U"Tea" (or “Tea” U to our dyslexic cousins.)
Before you criticize someone, walk a mile in their shoes. If they get mad, you're a mile away AND you have their shoes.
Right, but it carries the additional intent of belittling the relatively white-collar culture of UT as opposed to the blue-collar culture for aTm.
by burntorangehorn on Apr 28, 2009 11:12 AM CDT up reply actions
actually
it had to do with texas’ little traditional texas tea day
I believe y’all had some tradition where you saluted the State of Texas’ Independence by having tea, or something like that? The term came out as a way of making fun of that tradition.
Big 12 Champions or BCS Wannabes?
However they do it, the Big 12 championship teams should be determined by their performance in the Big 12, not according to BCS rankings. Asking outsiders to vote on our conference champions is just asking trouble, isn’t it?
Before you criticize someone, walk a mile in their shoes. If they get mad, you're a mile away AND you have their shoes.
Main campus or football players?
proud to swim home
by learned hand on Apr 27, 2009 3:29 PM CDT up reply actions
Shenanigans
Tech’s general population grad rate is 55% and the football programs grad rate is 79%.
UT’s general grad rate is over 75% and the football grad rate is 50%.
I have an idea why we graduate so few – a mean GPA of 2.5 a semester for footballer players is a starting point – but Tech’s got some explaining to do.
proud to swim home
by learned hand on Apr 27, 2009 6:54 PM CDT up reply actions
I don't mean to ask a dumb question.
But what do you mean Tech has some explaining to do? Are you suggesting we are graduating football players who shouldn’t graduate, or are you just being dismissive of our undergraduate 6-year graduation rate?
I'm not being dismissive of Tech
But I do think it’s problematic that Tech touts its football graduation rate when it’s vastly disproportionate to the graduation rate of the regular students.
I think it’s a valid point to ask why, just as Texas takes heat for its disproportionately low graduation rate. I’m not assuming that Tech graduates football players who shouldn’t graduate, though that is a bit of question given the disparity.
I think there’s a greater chance that it’s a simple economic issue (i.e. Tech is too expensive for its general population which isn’t inconceivable in West Texas) and the tutoring the football players receive needs to be more generally available. Maybe Tech just pumps out a lot of athletic art history majors. Or perhaps half the student body needs to sit in their desk on the 50 yard line and do their homework while a pirate stares them down. Whatever motivates kids these days.
Regardless of what factors lead to the disparity, touting the grad rate or less than 130 kids while 45% of the student body does not finish what they started strikes me wrong.
proud to swim home
by learned hand on Apr 27, 2009 9:31 PM CDT up reply actions
Some things to keep in mind...
UT’s 6-year undergraduate graduation rate is nuts good, and I think that’s a huge credit to the University and its policies. We can poo poo Tech’s 55%, but that’s still above the national average. There are probably a lot of cultural reasons, on top of UT’s educational superiority, for why it is the case that you have such an incredible general graduation rate. Harvard’s 6-year graduation rate is 97%. There is no mystery regarding Harvard>UT>Texas Tech. That’s a quality of school issue. You get kids that generally have a higher GPA, higher SAT, and higher interest in the school they’re attending than does Texas Tech.
As you’ve said, we’re talking about 130 kids. There is no secret to graduating 130 kids at a higher rate than twenty seven thousand, or fifty thousand, kids. At Texas Tech we have a program whereas: If you do not go to class, and the HC hears that you do not go to class, you do not get to play football. Texas Tech football players are no more intelligent than UT football players (and probably no dumber). We have a head coach that just gives a shit about kids going to class. If Ed Britton (starting WR) or Shannon Woods (former starting RB) or McKinner Dixon (starting DE) don’t go to class, they don’t get to play, period. And the result of that is, big shocker, they go to class. If Mike Leach is told that you don’t attend class, or that your grades aren’t very good, you will not practice with the team. Period. He made Ed Britton study at the 50 yard line, he basically cut McKinner Dixon, and he straight put a 150+ carry RB in 2006 in his doghouse and forced him to earn his way back to the team.
Quotes:
Dixon was an up and coming star on this football team.
http://www.redraiders.com/2009/04/13/tech-notes-dixon-suspended-might-be-done-leach-says/
Texas Tech coach Mike Leach said he suspended defensive end McKinner Dixon indefinitely on Monday for not taking care of his schoolwork responsibilities.
I think Dixon had 9 sacks last year, behind only Brandon Williams (who just got drafted by the Cowboys in the 4th round) and really was going to be a huge part of our defense. Anyone can cut the 5th string DE but if you are serious about making players graduate, you have to send messages. Leach did.
"We’ve got 130 people out there,’’ Leach said. "I’m getting sick and tired of wasting time on a handful of people who can’t do what they’re told. It’s like the 95-5 (idea): You spend 95 percent of your time on 5 percent of your players. Baloney. I’m not doing that.’’
Same story for Ed Britton, who is basically our starting split end, and the most experienced receiver on our roster. He has been a substantial part of our offense for the past two years and had every opportunity to be a substantial part of our offense this year. But:
Edward Britton, Texas Tech’s most experienced split end, was demoted before spring practice and further raised the ire of Tech coach Mike Leach this week. After Friday’s practice in 30-degree weather and a few snow flurries, Britton was sent to study classwork on the double-T at midfield of Jones AT&T Stadium.
He sat at a desk, in street clothes and a heavy coat with the hood pulled up.
"Ed didn’t like showing up and studying at places I felt like he needed to and like the academic people asked him to, so he can go study out there on the 50-yard line," Leach said. "We’ll take baby steps, and if he does good studying out there, we’ll decide if we’re going to actually let him practice."
Asked if Britton was on thin ice, Leach said, "I’d say that’s accurate. All guys that don’t study are on thin ice, as far as I’m concerned."
Why should there ever be any surprise? If you want young human beings who want to do nothing more than play football, but you also want them to graduate, you have to make them accountable. Mike Leach doesn’t know much about honey, but he uses the stick with great effect. There is no grand secret to getting 130 volunteers to graduate at 79%; you just have to be serious about graduating them. There isn’t a single school in the entire country that couldn’t have 80% graduation rates within the next 2 years, so long as the people with their finger on the button gave a shit about graduating 80% of the players. You either take school seriously… or you don’t play. End of story. That isn’t a knock on Mack Brown, but the reality is if Mack Brown wanted to graduate 80% of his players, he could accomplish that. But why should he? There is at least no correlation between graduation rates and success, and potentially a negative correlation rate between graduation rates and success. Oklahoma is at the bottom with something like 46%, and UT is close behind with 50%. And no one questions that those are the two best teams in the Big 12.
I would TOTALLY agree with you that Tech needs to increase its general graduation rates, as would every Tech grad in the country. But when we’re talking about football, Texas Tech is demonstrably better at graduating its student athletes than is UT, and there’s some reason for that (just as there is some reason you graduate 75% against our 55% in the general population). Just as Texas should get huge credit for their impressive undergrad grad rate, shouldn’t Tech be rewarded for putting the student back in student-athlete? How can you encourage coaches to graduate their players, if that is a stated goal of the NCAA/Big 12? One way might be: Split ties using graduation rates, right?
There are too many uncontrolled for variables...
Graduation rates are merely a metric that can be useful in a broad mandate like the one the NCAA has put together recently but it is one that can be easily manipulated. I am not saying Tech has this problem and in fact Bobby Knight and Leach have both done a lot to help their players get something additional out of their time on campus, but there are other schools that would have no problems making sure their graduation rates were artificially high if that were such an important metric. Wasn’t Nebraska known for year for having an athletes-only academic program which was really nothing more than a diploma mill? I think those sorts of programs aren’t allowed in the Big 12 charter, but I am sure it can be easily circumvented.
The sad reality is that the schools in the Big 12 aren’t equal when it comes to the quality of the education their students are getting and even worse some schools have programs designed to ‘help’ their students graduate, be they athletes or not. Why should one school in the conference have an advantage over the other schools solely because it is the weakest in the educational challenges its students’ face?
Why should one school in the conference have an advantage over the other schools solely because it is the weakest in the educational challenges its students’ face?
Is the kinesiology program at UT really remarkably more difficult than the kinesiology program at Tech, or anywhere else? The academic programs you and I face at UT and Tech respectively are very, very different from those faced by athletes, for the reason that you and I scored something like at least 300-400 points higher on our SATs than did most athletes, at either school. I have a really hard time accepting that the reason UT’s fooball graduation rate is 30% lower than Tech is simply because the latter is a dumb school and the former is a smart school.
Kids on football scholarships are very often at Universities they could not otherwise attend but for the fact that they can throw a football far or run very fast or lift a lot of weights. The challenges UT athletes face are not unique just because UT is a better school than, say, Oklahoma. It defies belief to think that 50% is the highest possible graduation rate UT football players are capable of, because yours (and mine, actually) is such a difficult academic institution. There are a lot of really good schools that have athlete graduation rates in the 90s.
One reason to reward schools with high graduation rates is because it is difficult to imagine that schools will have much incentive to help these kids graduate unless they have some reason to do so.
I wasn't singling out Tech here, 'Thin' Skin Patrol!
I am saying that seedier schools would abuse the graduation rate metric if that had any important role to play in determining who wins the conference. Just because Leach won’t abide by players not going to class and Brown tries to steer clear of even recruiting guys that might be a reach when it comes to the classroom, doesn’t mean other teams won’t skirt the rules to make sure their graduation rates are better than their competition.
Add to it the fact that NFL rules allow for guys to jump early and you have another imbalance where teams that recruit top-notch athletes get penalized when those guys bail early. I am all for guys coming back and getting their degrees, but once they leave the program it shouldn’t be up to the coaches and school to keep them enrolled in classes anymore.
Two responses:
Your first point is that basing success in part on graduation rates will encourage people to cheat on graduation rates. I think it is absolutely true. Although they never got their degrees, somehow Dexter Manley and Gary Anderson (the running back) spent four years at I think Oklahoma State and Arkansas, yet incredibly were illiterate. But that probably proves too much; no matter the metric used to distinguish good teams from bad, cheaters will try to abuse the system to get an advantage. If the basis is “winning” coaches will violate NCAA rules if it increases their likelihood of winning (perhaps by fudging the grades of Dexter Manley and Gary Anderson to get them through four years of eligibility without having to teach them how to read). It’s also defeatist. Because the NCAA claims to take seriously graduating students, it shouldn’t be enough to say “We can’t incentivize graduation rates because then people will cheat on graduation rates.” How else are we supposed to get kids to graduate? Kids are much better off with that degree, and we should do what we can to get those kids that degree. If this requires more stringent enforcement, so be it. Fear that people will violate a worthwhile rule shouldn’t be a reason not to enact it, although perhaps that is some consideration.
To your second point, I am skeptical that it alters graduation rates that much. You have something like 130 kids on your football team. This last year Texas Tech had, I believe, more underclassmen (1, Brandon Williams) drafted than did Texas (unless I’m wrong, Orakpo, Roy Miller, Chris Obogo whatever, and Henry Melton were all Seniors). Even if every player drafted out of Texas every year were an underclassmen, and they aren’t because that’s actually the exception to the rule, we’re still talking about 7-8 kids max but sometimes 4-5 kids out of a 130 person program. Even if every NFL level talented Texas player failed to graduate because they went into the NFL, I doubt it would increase your graduation rate by 5%, let alone 29%. I just do not think kids jumping early has any significant impact on any school’s football graduation rate.
by Skin Patrol on Apr 28, 2009 11:52 AM CDT up reply actions
I'd like to continue in this
But I’m coming to terms with how much Corporate Tax I’m going to have to learn in the next 48 hours.
In any case, you and rickyspub have given me some stuff to mull when I’m finally through with this law school business
proud to swim home
by learned hand on Apr 28, 2009 12:13 PM CDT up reply actions
I agree that it is defeatist, but the NCAA has proven itself even more cynical than I can be...
Until the NCAA is given some real power to exercise over the big-time football, there is really no point in being anything but defeatist. Teams will cheat both on the field, in recruiting, and in the classroom to get an edge. If something like this passed, the end results would like be that most teams would all fall into a similar range and then those 2 or 3% differences will matter.
Not to be too spiteful, but mainly because this is such a silly argument anyway, I would laugh my ass off if Tech were the first victim of this rule and they end up in divisional tie with OU which completely reorganizes its academics to ensure that even illiterate athletes graduate to get their numbers up. The kick-in-the-nuts that ultimately sends OU to the championship game is a single percentage point all because Tech had one guy go pro as a junior and the guy never graduated.
You have absolutely no reading comprehension skills!
I pray I never have you as my lawyer!
Or rank according to Playboy as a party school
"From the waist down, Earl Campbell has the biggest legs I have ever seen on a running back." -John Madden
by run Bevo run on Apr 27, 2009 5:58 PM CDT up reply actions
Would only be fair if the value of the degrees was equal.
We could always settle it like gentlemen. You know OL urinating on the walls of the stadium.
Just a thought...
When I first heard about the graduation rates at Texas, I was appalled. But the bottom line is that you can bring an athlete to the Univeristy, give him all the advantages he could possibly get- tutoring, study hall requirements, great access to computer labs, check on class attendance, etc.- but in the long run it is up to that student to take advantage of the educational opportunities and excel. No matter how much you offer, you cannot force these kids to do well or even graduate. The ones that do are the exceptions. Our society puts a high value on athletic ability and many of these athletes come to Texas for one reason and one reason only: get to the next level. Texas excels at producing NFL talent, as does OU. If that this their goal, no amount of prodding or encouragement is going to make the athletes study any more or any harder. Their goal is to stay eligible so that they can play. Period.
It is time we accept the sports program at major schools for what they are. They are here to produce winning teams and to serve as a quasi-NFL farm system.
I am sure the alumni associations has no problem calling on their successful drop-outs for cash either...
While I am sure the B-school wants to see all its students graduate, I doubt they mind if one their numbers drops out and starts up a multi-million dollar company. I am sure the alumni association gets the successful athletes and other drop outs in their databases and call on them more often than any of us regular grads!
Students?
If it is the case that a kid is mentally incapable of accomplishing a degree at a University, then they should not be at the University, right? It is one thing to lower your admissions standards for incoming athletes, it is another entirely to hold out a degree as a carrot to some 18 year old who is incapable of getting what you promise. The vast majority of even scholarship level College football players will never make it in the pros. If they can’t get a degree from the school, are incapable of doing so for whatever reason, then they are better off not being in College.
Eligibility standards are low, but they are at some level above “None” because where they are at is thought to be at least minimally determinative of a kid’s ability to graduate. If that is a myth (which it isn’t; there is some reason that Florida has a 15% higher graduation rate than Texas, and it isn’t because they have more discriminatory academic standards than Texas, it is because they have some policy that encourages graduation) then we shouldn’t be letting these kids participate in College athletics at all.
There are a lot of schools with athletes and programs that look just like Texas. Michigan has a higher graduation rate than Florida which has a higher graduation rate than USC has a higher graduation rate than Texas which has a higher graduation rate than Oklahoma which has a higher graduation rate than Georgia. San Jose State has something like a 36% graduation rate not because it brings in players who exist only to “get to the next level” — because they aren’t going there. Nor do they excel at producing NFL talent.
Something that Michigan does better than Texas does better than Oklahoma does better than San Jose State explains this discrepancy. Rather than throwing up our hands and saying the reason graduation rates are low is because these kids are dumb and don’t care, I think we’re better off trying to find out what Texas does better than Oklahoma.
THINK OF THE CHILDREN.
by Skin Patrol on Apr 28, 2009 12:08 PM CDT up reply actions 1 recs
The schools have it set up to help these athletes to graduate if they so choose. It comes down to the fact that the kid decides to get an education. Or he/she doesn’t. (This doesn’t just apply to football.) The athletic departments can just do so much.
by dimecoverage on Apr 28, 2009 3:59 PM CDT up reply actions
We just need to stop wringing our hands and worrying about it. They either graduate or they don’t.
by dimecoverage on Apr 28, 2009 7:59 PM CDT up reply actions
Give it a rest already!
The day Leach leaves and some other coach comes in, you’ll be singing a different tune if the team’s graduation rates fall (especially if the team is winning). If Leach hadn’t brought up this silly notion in the first place, you wouldn’t have even known what the football team’s graduation rates were anyway.
What the fuck do you know about me?
You don’t have the foggiest fucking idea what I would or wouldn’t be doing if Leach left and graduation rates fell, or what moment in time I found out about Texas Tech graduation rates.
Thin skin indeed!
Dude, if you going to come here and spout off some inanity by Leach regarding using graduation rates for tie breaking purposes and then defend it as if your life depends on it then get ready to take some flak for being such a douche about it. It ain’t gonna happen, so let it go.
[To the rest of the BON readers: Sorry about feeding this troll for so long.]
Me?
You are the one who above accused me of saying Tech are cheaters when I not only never suggested that, but even went so far as to say that Tech isn’t cheating (I don’t know how Florida got into this since our discussion was centered on the Big 12 and their tiebreaker rules). I have deconstructed your argument on several different levels and instead of trying to refute my points you defend it by calling me a defeatists and accusing me of saying Tech is cheating. And each time I tell you Tech isn’t at issue, I am looking at the hypotheticals of the rule change you this is so dearly clever. I have never stated my situations were guaranteed to happen but just the potential, and perhaps likely, outcomes given the history of cheating in NCAA football and the inability of the NCAA to enforce their rules.
This has been a rhetorical argument since your suggested rule change will not happen and therefore my hypotheses will never get put to the test, but you are treating it as an absolute. I am still amazed that you are a law student. You have come into this with your judgment already made and refuse to argue its potential weaknesses based on any elements of fact.
(Also, you might want to be aware that these comment threads constitute a message board since they are fairly unmoderated! You came on here in the best message board-style to pollute it with your off-topic flame. The Big 12 tiebreaker wasn’t even mentioned in the post but you came on here to put forward a Mike Leach talking point and then when called on it you have flamed away rather than engaging in a real argument to defend the position.)
Your explanation makes no sense.
Your fear of rewarding teams for having high graduation rates is that it will cause people to cheat. There is no system of determining a champion that won’t encourage cheating.
I bring up Tech and Florida because they are schools with high graduation rates. If they aren’t cheating (hence the question) then there is no reason to doubt that other schools can achieve high graduation rates without cheating. It’s not complicated.
You have come into this with your judgment already made and refuse to argue its potential weaknesses based on any elements of fact.
I just don’t know what you expect me to do. You present as unsophisticated a deconstruction as possible (that we can’t do something because it might be abused) and… ok? I accept that. I’ve responded to it in a few ways: 1) It is defeatist 2) It proves too much 3) It can be remedied through enforcement, just like every other rule.
You got petty. You opened an unnecessarily spiteful paragraph, predictably, “Not to be too spiteful…” You followed me here even though I was not even talking to you, and you start telling me how I feel, or when I decided graduation rates were important, which are things you wouldn’t know anything about. You called me a douche and a troll, of all things, even though I’ve been a member of this site for years.
There is nothing in my posts that would’ve prompted your treatment of me. I respectfully disagreed with the things you said up and until you started insulting me. That’s why I think the site is better off if you were some place else.
by Skin Patrol on Apr 30, 2009 10:47 AM CDT up reply actions
And not to bring up old Southwest Conference dirt...
but wasn’t Larry Lacewell the assistant coach that was accused of spying on a UT practice? Or at least of orchestrating the plan? And the poor guy that Switzer had an more-than-platonic relationship with his wife?
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