bonwich
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Posts posted by bonwich
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(I'm lost, too, especially since my browser isn't displaying the diacritics correctly :-). )
I'm not sure that your untruncated name has ever appeared on this board, but the well-reasoned and well-written letter to the editor in today's paper had um, similarities to the writings of a certain frequent here. A quick cross-reference on the h.s. alumni web site provided confirmation.
Your droog (who can resist a "Clockwork Orange" reference?),
josef basamanowicz
(which means, by the way, "the son of the guardian of the forest." Bog knows why Daddy chose to shorten it. we assume that you're the pharmacist's son, or something similar
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Czy pan jest polska? Bardzo dobre! A Polack with more than a decade of Jesuit education. Now it all begins to make sense.
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http://mutigers.ocsn.com/tickets/tickets-m-footbl-body.html
It appears that you have to make a donation to the Tiger Scholarship Fund to be eligible to buy 'Husker tickets.
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I see that, in addition the brilliant name, their ad placement is so good that you've seen it frequently.
The MBA program is now being marketed as SLUMBA. Nighty-night!
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At least two years ago, some wealthy donor found the name "Baby Blues" politically incorrect and pressured someone, probably the good father, to eliminate it. So now, in the grand tradition of fine marketing of our athletic department, the St. Louis University dance squad is known as the St. Louis University Dance Squad. (SLUDS, anyone?)
I've noticed, however, that the clever marketing isn't limited to the athletic department anymore. The Business School now invites one and all to sleep through their MBA. Brilliant!
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ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
© 1985 St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Saturday, May 11, 1985
BAKKEN VIOLATES AN NCAA RULE
By Dave Dorr Of the Post-Dispatch Staff
St. Louis University Athletic Director Jim Bakken has learned the hard way how easy it is to become entrapped in the web of National Collegiate Athletic Association rules. Bakken said Friday he violated a rule by attending high school basketball games. He is not allowed to do that in an official capacity as an athletic director. He has detailed in a letter what took place in response to a request from the NCAA and is awaiting a reply from the NCAA.
It is an NCAA infraction if anyone from a school other than the head coach or a full-time assistant coach attends a game. The line can become fine, but that's ho w the rule reads.
''If we'd have known the rule, we would have disguised him in a Groucho Marx nose,'' said St. Louis U. Coach Rich Grawer, who took Bakken with him to two McKinley High games in February.
''I even introduced him to recruits,'' said Grawer.
But, said Bakken, the bottom line in what appears to be an act of negligence is that the NCAA was informed of Bakken's attendance by someone after the Billikens successfully recruited McKinley's Monroe Douglass and Roland Gray, two of the state's top players.
''We were turned in,'' said Bakken. ''If we were recruiting players of lesser stature, nothing would have been said.''
Bakken said he received a letter from the NCAA asking him to document his attendance at games Feb. 22 and Feb. 27 (both McKinley) and any others he may have seen.
{snip}
Because St. Louis U. was handed a year's probation during the Ron Ekker era for conducting illegal summer basketball practices, the current SLU staff has bent over backward to pay close attention to the NCAA rulebook.
''Not only do we call (the NCAA) to check on a rule, but we identify ourselves,'' said Bakken, alluding to the fact that the NCAA often receives anonymous calls reporting that a coach or school may have been guilty of a rules violation.
{snip}
new article
ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
© 1982 St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Friday, March 19,
EKKER ASSAILED; BILLS CAGERS PUT ON PROBATION
The National Collegiate Athletic Association has added a final footnote to the controversy and turmoil that marked Ron Ekker's last months as basketball coach at St. Louis University by placing the Billikens on probation for one year.
In announcing the punitive action -- at a time when St. Louis U. is in the process of naming a new head coach -- the NCAA's Committee on Infractions cited Ekker and others for providing the university with 'false and misleading information' during its investigation.
The penalty bars the basketball Billikens from postseason play and any televised game next season.
{snip}
The NCAA said that Ekker conducted summer practices with members of the team on numerous occasions in 1979, 1980 and 1981 and that an assistant coach conducted illegal practice sessions on two occasions during the summer of 1981.
Charles Wright, chairman of the NCAA's infractions committee, said that in determining the penalty against St. Louis U. the committee 'noted that the university did not take immediate action in the fall of 1981 to terminate the employment of its head basketball coach when the institution discovered he had reported false information.''
The penalty was not unexpected, but it was ironic, coming on the eve of the Midwest Regional at the Checkerdome, the basketball home of the Billikens.
Two weeks ago, the NCAA informed unversity officials that sanctions would be imposed against the basketball program. Indications are that the university will not contest the sanctions.
Larry Preo, recently hired as athletic director at St. Louis U., had these comments on the probation:
'My reaction is, well, let's just get it behind us, 'Preo said by telephone from Milwaukee, where he is finishing his job as director of physical recreation at Marquette. 'I was aware of the NCAA investigation during my interview process. The university and Charles (Schroeder) were very honest with me.
{snip}
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Geez, how soon we forget. Good ol' Father O'Connell, who LIVED in a freakin' dormitory (Marguerite) in our day, and ate with students virtually every meal. I never had a similar privilege with Irving Shane when I went to the University of Wisconsin (although I bet he had a snowmobile). Of course, Dan did drop hockey and *wanted* to make basketball a D-2 sport, but no one could ever accuse him of being aloof.
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...love them P-D archives!
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I was kind of surprised we ran that letter, since we'd corrected the original article the day after it ran:
"St. Louis University is now considering building its new arena on campus because of higher-than-anticipated costs to buy land in the Grand Center arts district. The university has yet to make an official decision. This story and in Friday's Metro section implied that a decision had been made."
Nonetheless, I suppose belt-and-suspenders is the best policy for getting a correction made. Kudos, by the way, to the poster who correctly surmised in a previous thread that this "news" was merely a little jawboning to try to keep speculators from asking land prices as if the arena were already built.
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Friend o' mine, class of '79, brought his daughter here for "orientation" last week. Yes, LAST WEEK. This is *not* her father's Oriflamme. The U. now holds one level of orientations ALL SUMMER so that the new kids hit the ground running at the end of August.
Now, my friend Dr. B. used to sit with us at the games for years (he's one of the other 11 people B-Roy used to see in his student days -- and, like me, he's a faculty brat), so he already has his share of Billi-gear. (In fact, he was wearing a t-shirt when I saw him on Saturday. I'll have to ask him if that was a freebie as part of the orientation or if he had purchased it, and when. It wasn't, by the way, blue.) But imagine someone without a 3-generation pedigree bringing their parents to campus for the first time and looking for souvenirs inside that bookstore. First impressions? They could be a lot better.
Ahh, but wait for the new Busch Center. Wait for the new Web site. Wait for blah blah blah blah blah, and hold no one accountable for the constantly abysmal marketing of our fine alma mater.
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I can remember a day when you always thought that getting bombed made a lot of sense, regardless of what point you were trying to make :-).
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I love you, man ;-).
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I think I was unclear in necessary and sufficient conditions regarding our good Father. I didn't mean to imply that it's being built only because Biondi wants it; rather, because Biondi has thrown his weight behind it, it will be built.
The only counterargument I'd have with you is on your point #3, and for that, I'd note that both the Savvis Center and the Jones Dome lose money, so it seems highly unlikely that a SLU arena would make money *unless* it were subsidized with a huge endowment, in which case it wouldn't truly *make* money in a classical accounting sense. I continue to worry about all these grandiose claims of "event hosting," because there are more than enough concert venues in town, and short of reviving the hockey program, I'm just not seeing what else they're going to put in there. (Not to mention that Grand Center's Executive Director is Vince Schoemehl, who gave St. Louis such visionary and successful projects as the Gateway Mall, St. Louis Centre and Union Station.)
But as I've said, the thing is definitely going to be built, so now it's up to us to do our part to make it work.
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Your arguments all sound great, but by and large there isn't a whole lot of real-world evidence to back them up. The notion of sporting facilities as revitalization tools has been disproven time and again all over the country, most specifically in St. Louis. How many "bars and restaurants" have sprung up around the Savvis Center, a fabulously ornate facility hosting a wide range of sporting and entertainment events? How many are there around the Jones Dome? Or even Busch?
-The arena is the critical element of revitalizing one of the most important and historic areas in the region; the revitalization of this neighborhood is key to enhancing the university's image, which, in turn, should lead to increased applications, recruitment, quality of students and faculty, etc.
"The" critical element? Not hardly. "The" critical element in revitalizing Grand Center is small restaurant, retail and office, along with a significant permanent resident population. Those small restaurants and retail will in turn require something Grand Center has never been able to provide -- automobile and pedestrian infrastructure so that it's cheap and easy for everyday people to turn it into an all-day-and-most-of-the-night commercial district akin to the U. City Loop. (And the U. City Loop certainly did not become what it is by placing some multimillion-dollar facility there.) Unfortunately, it's quite plausible that the arena will have an opposite effect by further crowding out cheap parking in the area, much as the numerous $5 lots for the Fox and Powell have impeded bar and restaurant development in the area thus far.
The Fox, which has brought literally hundreds of thousands of people into Grand Center year-round for 15 or 20 years, has thus far failed to be able to support a single long-term medium- to high-end restaurant (in combination with Powell Hall, which brings in 2,000 more people 2-3 times a week, about 30 weeks out of the year). 15 basketball games a year is somehow going to be different?
-Successful college basketball programs have been proven to significantly and positively impact a university’s name recognition and applications--without a new arena, SLU will have a difficult time developing and maintaining a top basketball program.
I submit, without supporting data, that Harvard and Bennington (and for that matter Emory and Reed and Tufts and Wash. U. and any number of academically selective institutions without benefit of "successful college basketball") have seen their "name recognition and applications" increase at the same or faster rate as Duke and Stanford, or even Gonzaga and Creighton. (I'd also point out that SLU's freshman enrollment and overall entrance criteria have somehow managed to increase steadily for the past decade or so despite benefit of an on-campus arena or "successful college basketball program.")
At the same time, you may have read last week that our dear brethren in Columbia have been bleeding distinguished faculty at a rate much higher than the national norm (and we won't even get started on how much Mizzou raised tuition for next year). Now, some of this gets, at least on the Mizzou front, gets intermingled with state budget issues. On the other hand, I'd suggest that this whole "we need great sports to be great" argument is merely a reflection of the massive amount of money being wasted on professional sports all over the country. And if it keeps up, college sports are going to run into the same burstable economic bubble that's currently menacing pro baseball, basketball and hockey.
-It will provide the university with an opportunity to host large academic events, which in time should enhance the university’s academic reputation.
Can you name any of these "large academic events"? Who the heck holds a "large academic event" in a 13,000 seat arena? This is the same logic that once said that the Jones Dome wasn't just a football stadium -- it's actually an extension of the Convention Center. Well, sometime count how many "convention" activities are held every year in the Dome.
-It will directly and indirectly (though new restaurants, bars, etc.) enhance the social opportunities for students.
See above regarding "new restaurants and bars." In addition, there have been thousands of students, faculty and staff right there for years and years and years, and yet the surrounding neighborhood has always been woefully devoid of such support facilities.
-It will bring alumni and local sports fans back to the campus on a regular basis.
You have me there.
When it comes down to it, most of these arguments are moot, because Biondi has decided the arena is a good idea, so it's going to get built. And meanwhile, he's raising even more money for research facilities, which I'm pretty sure are more important in the long run for establishing and maintaining SLU's reputation as a *university*. And the U. continues to build endowments to support merit-based financial aid. So I'm not vehemently anti-arena; I'm just trying to make the point that most of the stated reasons for building it are well-orchestrated PR spin.
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I've been saying on this board almost since the first rumors surfaced that a new arena is at best a wildly speculative project. It's pleasing to see that our resident numbers-cruncher, kwyjibo, seems to agree with me.
That's not to say that I won't contribute to it (inasmuch as I can or as that would make any difference) or go to games there. However, I've said before and I'll continue to say that the *only* real justification for this arena is ego. I'm not sure where you're getting this "demand exceeds supply" hypothesis, but in the best case that refers to 15 home games, less than five percent of the total number of dates the facility can house.
Not to rehash what I've said before -- in short, that St. Louis as a total marketplace is totally overcapacitized with athletic and entertainment facilities. But my other worry, especially given the number of kids I need to put through college, is that this whole athletic-facilities thing has turned into an arms race, while at the same time that the Mizzous and SLUs of the world keep building bigger and better tens-of-millions-of-dollars jock palaces, the cost of a college education has consistently risen at two, three, five times the rate or overall inflation. (As a friend who just took his daughter to SLU orientation said to me over the weekend, in our day it was possible to hold down a job and come close to paying your tuition. That simply isn't the case any more, and the amount of debt that a lot of kids are carrying right out of school is downright scary.)
I'm reasonably confident that Biondi will secure enough of an endowment for the new facility that operating costs will, in fact, be "revenue neutral." But I'm equally confident that all of this talk of concerts and conventions and the like as a source of significant revenue is a major league fairy tale.
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Michael Jordan on the SLU campus this weekend? And 100 top high-school prospects? Anyone from the board spying on this (is it even open to the public)?
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I think you missed Basketbill's timeline, T. They're *recruited* when they're 16 or 17 and make their *decisions* often as early as their junior years in high school. And that is, in fact, a scary thought given the effect those decisions can have on a coach's career.
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A bowling alley, even! Who knew?
"Saint Louis University is considering developing a residential, office and retail center near the school's proposed basketball arena, scheduled for completion in 2005.
"The development, not unlike the Ballpark Village concept the Cardinals have proposed as part of their new stadium, would likely feature restaurants, apartments, business offices and entertainment venues, such as a movie theater or a bowling alley....
"The arena and the proposed mixed-use development would be located in a roughly four-square-block grid bordered on the north by Washington Avenue, on the south by Olive Street, on the east by Leonard Avenue and on the west by Theresa Avenue. The site lies just across Olive Street from a large parking garage on the SLU campus near North Compton Avenue."
See the link for the full story:
http://stlouis.bizjournals.com/stlouis/sto.../02/story1.html
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It was released last year on August 26.
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Good gracious, St. Ignatius! I'm thinking he took the "men for others" thing to a bit of an extreme.
?)
To Nark
in Billikens.com Main Board
Posted
His profile only shows "David Nark" as his name, but since I can find his full name on articles from the old board via Google, I'll take your word that outing him isn't any big surprise.
Here's the letter from today's Post:
Where the jobs are
An Aug. 3 article about the reopening of the reversible lanes of Interstate 70 unfairly mischaracterized the level of employment in or near downtown. The article cited a so-called expert who claims that "there now are more jobs within five miles of the intersection of Highway 40 (Interstate 64) and I-270 than there are in downtown St. Louis."
By comparing the relatively small geographical area comprising downtown with an area defined by a five-mile radius, this expert is mixing apples and oranges.
Had he compared a five-mile radius from downtown with his five-mile area in West County, the number of employees in downtown would dwarf the number in West County. This re-defined downtown area would include Anheuser-Busch's brewery and headquarters, A.G. Edwards' world headquarters, BJC's headquarters, Washington University's medical complex, and St. Louis University's two main campuses. These are five of the largest employers in our region.
Even without re-defining the boundaries, downtown's employment remains steady at 97,000, the largest economic engine in the Midwest outside of Chicago. Misleading information leads to a poor public perception of downtown St. Louis, which in turn adversely affects the national perception of our entire region.
David L. Narkiewicz
(The quoted language in the earlier posts, by the way, was Polish, and his is much better than mine. Anthony Burgess invented a language called Nadsat for "A Clockwork Orange" based loosely on Russian, which has lots of similar words to Polish. More than you ever wanted to know, I'm sure. [but you did ask
.])