kshoe

I agree the PAC will have a seat at the table. Just too important not too. I guess I disagree that the long-term trend of people heading to the West will continue indefinitely. To put it simply, there are currently too many people and not enough water out West. At some point the droughts, constant fires, electricity shortages, etc. will materially affect the quality of life out there and will offset the warmer weather that has attracted all those people. The Midwest isn't dead yet.

Agreed. I think it’s even worse than that when you put a thoughtful response on social media 98% of the people may agree with you but the 2% that don’t will form a vocal opposition such as the one Hanlen dealt with yesterday.

The folks on the Tigerboard were not very excited about the Christian Jones commitment, that is for sure. Time will tell who is better between him, Kramer, Thames and Hughes. I recognize they are all different types of players but they are all local guards that either we or Mizzou are/were recruiting so comparisons are natural.

Pretty sure the decision was made in late April when Covid was still raging. Stuen being sick at the time and nobody else wanting to lead it could have been a contributing factor, but the women didn't have theirs either.

UConn women basketball players should get more in NIL than UConn men and they probably will...

I'm not a huge fan of the NIL rules, but the one thing I think it does well is get around the non-revenue and women's sports demanding equal pay. If the NCAA had decided to just pay every men's basketball and football player $20k a year, you'd better believe there would have been lawsuits from the non-revenue and women's sports saying it isn't fair. But under NIL it's ever man, women and athlete for himself/herself under free market rules. If the local car dealership decides to pay every men's basketball player $20k and nothing to the women, then its tough luck.

I'm sure it's buried in this thread or elsewhere, but anyone got a summary of known non-conference opponents and dates?

I don't think that's really the solution. It works for die-hards of any school that will pay those fees, but the average fan of a team or even causal fan nationwide of a sport isn't going to pay to buy subscriptions for every team. For example, when I watch college football I watch the big games that are on CBS at 2:30 or ESPN/ABC at 7 PM because they are big-time teams playing other big-time teams. I have no interest in searching for an internet feed to watch Alabama play LSU and then entering my credit card info for the pleasure to do so. But if I turn on CBS and the game is on, I'll watch. Going down the path of cutting out the middle man risks alienating a large set of eyeballs that would otherwise tune in if it was free (and the only cost incurred was having to watch tv commercials).

Don't know, even though your example is basically pulling the top 4,500 players out of college basketball (13 x 350 teams). I do know that compared to 30 years ago when you had guys like Laettner, Hurley, Grant Hill stick around for 3 or 4 years, college basketball has already had a significant evaporation of talent to pay for play leagues. A quick google search tells me there were 175 early entrants from college in the 2019 NBA draft. If it was like the old days, there would probably be an extra 300-500 players in college instead of the NBA, G-League or Europe. Somehow the game has survived that exodus and arenas are largely still packed. Proving once again its the name on the front of the jersey and not the back that matters.

The value that a coach presumably adds is his ability to attract the top talent of whatever pool of players is available (typically young men aged 18-22). If the top 200 players in that age group all left and played somewhere else, the college coach would still have value identifying the 201st best player and recruiting him to school. The fans of the school would likely keep coming no matter what because they root for the name on the front of the uniform, not the back. Makes is hard to argue that players 1-200 really add all that much value if they could just vanish and the value of the college game and coaches salaries don't materially change.

This is the heart of it for me. Speaking about basketball only, a 19 year old has many options regarding where to take his talents. He can go NBA, G-League, Europe, China, wherever and get paid whatever the market will bear. It seems reasonable to me that NCAA schools can set the pay equal to the value of a scholarship and say "If you don't like it, go somewhere else." Throw in NIL, and most 19 year olds will make more with a scholarship and NIL revenue than they would playing in any of those other leagues. Football is a bit different as there is no palatable place for a 19 year old to go other than college.

It's a huge plus for the revenue generating athletes in football and basketball. Seems like a negative for the vast majority of other athletes as funding to pay the players will come from the non-revenue sports budgets. I'd expect all but the largest programs to cut as many non-revenue sports as possible. Some of that already started with COVID and this will likely accelerate it.

KenPom's from last season: Buffalo: 77 SFA: 151 Illinois St. 198 Better have a bunch of P6 names lined up for the remainder of the non-con season.

Yuck

In fairness, two people in my office read the article and asked me about it. Both thought it sounded like COVID. I told them I didn't think it was but couldn't explain what it was and why there wasn't a better description of what happened. I understand the desire for privacy, but when things aren't explained it leads to speculation and given the past year, speculation about COVID is completely natural.