Old guy

@Dr. Holly Hills There is something you should know just in case. In order to receive COLA increases from Social Security you must wait until your social security retirement age. If you retire early you get no COLAs.

A little bit of recognition is always better than no recognition at all.

No, I am too old to have a regular job.

I think it is great that May makes a high 6 figure salary. It makes it so much easier and less traumatic to bring significant amount of savings to the budget by just eliminating a single employee instead of a couple of dozen. Of course he would need a replacement, but one can be found for a much lower salary + benefits.

Nice analysis Wiz. It should not be forgotten that this is the first real game (albeit an exhibition game) that this team has played. This game cannot be taken as an example of what we will do this year once the team learns how to play a game as a team. The second half was a demonstration that things will improve markedly in future games.

Fontbonne has closed already. Wash U bought the campus. By the way the Fontbonne College in St. Louis is not the only Fontbonne College in the US, there was one in Boston. I am not sure if the Boston Fontbonne College is still open or not.

Let's face it, there are too many colleges and Universities in the US for the number of college age students. This means that you must make up for the lack of native (meaning American born) students with foreign students. I will agree that a large number of colleges and Universities may close doors in the next 20-30 years. I hope this situation will bring some light into the mind of people thinking about large NILs and the like. Colleges and Universities will try their best to survive first of all, and only then they will deal with spending money in their sports programs. This should be as clear as daylight.

The news of SLU laying off over 20 staff members due to budget deficits is not good news. Somebody is going to have to make a decision sooner or later about reallocation of available funds and additional layoffs because laying off 20 people will not achieve the $40 M in budget cut savings they are aiming for. Layoffs cause fears and resentments among employees, this includes staff, faculty, and any contractors working for the school. Not knowing that the layoffs are over and done generally decreases the effectiveness of employee work, the longer the process takes, the more disorganized the company becomes. Layoffs are painful, it is best to eliminate all employees that are required to yield the necessary level of budget savings as fast as possible. After the layoffs are completed a major meeting of all remaining employees should be held, either in person or via electronic means, to assure everyone that the layoffs are completed and everyone attending the meeting will not be laid off. This minimizes the level of disorganization in the working place after a layoff. Remember that just about everybody can figure out that laying off 20 people will not produce $40 M in budget cuts.

Nice start we won by 21. Nice game after a poor show in the first half.

Spectrum TV Select will include Peacock premium ad supported service at no extra cost. Peacock is owned by Comcast,. If you have Comcast it may be included in some of their cable offerings tiers.

As long as there is abundant money available to pay NILs, all of these concepts may be tried. If and when the abundant money for NILs dries out the schools will not be able to pay and will have to do other things if they want to continue playing sports. I believe the smaller schools will start leaving D1 in the not very distant future.

You obviously did not read the article dealing with how Harvard is dealing with NILs and sports in general.

Hello folks, the impact of NILS upon Harvard is not a material impact. NILs impact the way Harvard, and other IVYs, see themselves and are a nuisance to them. I think Harvard is shocked by the fact that one of their carefully selected students (remember that the student side is first in line, the sports/athletic ability is secondary as far as Harvard is concerned) would willingly choose money over the privilege of being enrolled at and graduate from Harvard. Please use the link and read the article, it provides an interesting examination of the way Harvard, and no doubt at least some of the other IVY schools, see themselves and how they think about NILs as nuisance and also as a threat to their self image. It is a long article but it shows their thinking about NILs and their impact upon the University. It is true that Ivys are different in the way they think about themselves from other non Ivy schools. Ivy's really prefer to stay in their own little world and not be bothered with NILS or most other schools. You must understand that Harvard really does not care about what Power 5 schools may or may not do and this may be extended to all non Ivy schools. Ivy's and members of the old Seven Sisters schools, now largely coed, share this view about other schools. There are exceptions to this rule like MIT, Cal Tech, and an assortment of other schools highly regarded for their academic excellence, but in general terms Ivys could not care less about what most other schools, which they consider inferior to themselves, do to manage the NILs issue. They really consider sports as something students should be involved in as part of their education in the manner it was done in the old British public school system. In truth, Harvard has a whole raft of courses that do not require students to be geniuses to pass. As long as a student gets the required number of credits they will graduate from Harvard regardless of the courses taken. What the new alum does with its Harvard degree after he he/she gets his/her first job is largely up to the alum. Harvard cares about academics and about money. As long as they maintain their position in the academic world and their level of income income remain intact, the sports are secondary. Ultimately they may go to Div 3 not because of lack of funds to compete with other schools in the NILs arena. However the NILS may become or are becoming an intolerable nuisance distracting attention and resources from their academic side. This may be enough to get them to change to Division 3. Many non Ivy schools in Division 1 may also transfer to to Division 3 simply because they cannot afford NILs, or the legal imbroglios they bring, this is not the case at Harvard or most Ivys. If you want to review and understand the issues brought forward by NILs from an Ivy viewpoint, please read the article. It is long but worthwhile read to understand how Harvard and the IVys think. From the point of view of SLU the issues raised in this article are valid and the clash between sports and academics will have to be resolved one way or the other with one caveat, SLU has a lower level of funding and resources than most IVys do. I really hope that Schertz is as successful this season as I think he will be.

I do not think the Ivy's have a chance of winning a basketball or football championship, but I really do not think they care. Some sports are big in the Ivys, rowing is one of them. Some games in other sports are also big like the Harvard Yale games, but games against other opponents draw way less than full capacity crowds.

There has been a lot of discussion and enthusiasm in this board about NILs and how they will change collegiate sports. I received this article today in an email from Harvard Magazine. It is an article published by Max J. Krupnik, staff writer, in the November-December Issue. This article examines in some detail how the university is thinking about dealing with the changes brought by NILs to their sports. I have mentioned before that Ivys do not view sports as a source of income as other schools do. The big difference is that Harvard does not lack money to pay for NILs. Is endowment in 2023 was $ 50.7 B and their funding drives regularly bring in over $5 B in donations. You can easily calculate the interest brought into the school by such an endowment, add the money from their funding drives, and the money they receive from their part ownership of numerous start up companies created out of their faculty's research. These start up companies yield ample funds after their IPOs. Harvard can fund whatever it wants to fund, including NILs. Harvard and the IVYs spend a lot of resources carefully selecting their students, and from my point of view, are not happy to lose students because of money. This article details Harvard's thinking about how to deal with this issue. One of the options they are thinking about is to leave NCAA Division I and transfer to NCAA Division 3 as a way to keep their carefully chosen student athletes (students first, athletes second). If this idea takes root among the Ivys, you may indeed see an ending of the IVY League sports as we know them. Believe me Harvard will have no problems recruiting students for their sports in Division 3. The article is here: https://www.harvardmagazine.com/2024/11/nil-harvard-ivy-league?utm_source=email&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_term=monthly&utm_content=the-end-of-the-ivy-league&utm_campaign=101624 I hope this article reaches and is read by members of SLU's administration.

The players may know more about the NILs than the fans do. NILs are all about ample money being available for NILs and I just do not see this happening for much longer.

I like it the way it looks, but I would prefer to have 5 entries in the Latest Message Board Posts column rather than 3.

That is correct, and as we all know the Wiz's work is quite reliable and informative. If you combine the Wiz's work with accurate information of the spread prior to a game you can usually get a pretty good idea of how a game is likely to go.

We know the Wiz does not charge for access to his work and predictions. Ken Pom and any other person or companies charge something for access at least to some of their work. Even places like Team Rankings which provides free data and free information about who is expected to win and by how much before the games, does charge for their more elaborate betting information. There is a whole industry of purveyors of statistical sports analysis and betting analysis which make money by providing pre game and pre season statistical sports analysis for all kinds of sports. The appearance of NILs may indeed ruin these analytical companies, but this has yet to happen. Just remember that in order to analyze any sport of any kind you need performance data from games, and this is not available until the season starts. The only performance data that is available is the prior season's data, therefore that is what most statistical analysis companies have to base their pre season assessments upon. It is true that many of these companies will introduce fudge factors into their calculations to try to adjust for things like new coaches and player changes, but their data prior to the start of the season, largely comes from last season. You have every right to judge the validity of these early assessments, however as the teams play and current data becomes available these analytical assessments will become increasingly better and the variability between the different analytical companies will decrease until the end of the season. From what I have seen, The Wiz use pure statistical analysis, Ken Pom adds proprietary fudge factor like a luck factor. Whether it is worthwhile or not to spend your money paying for access to any of these analytical companies is entirely up to you.

What Ken Pom does is similar to what the Wiz does. He bases the preseason rankings upon the prior year rankings. Considering Team Ranking rankings for last season had SLU at 184 (do not know Ken Pom rankings for the end of las season) his preseason ranking is not out of line. He will wait, as The Wiz does for actual game result to modify his rankings. From a statistical point of view, both The Wiz and Ken Pom (using different systems based upon data) are correct.

The overall cash flow coming from the stadium depends on how and to whom they market it. For example, blocks of seats for regular games could be sold to corporations for the season. I think Tampa and St. Pete have enough businesses to sell a fair number of seats that way. They could also sell discounted seats to Veterans or first responders or any other specific group of people like retired old folks. They can rent the stadium to traveling evangelists offering salvation. Known evangelists and or political speakers can bring in audiences in the tens of thousands. Events like the Cirque du Soleil can also bring lots of people in. There are all kinds of things they can do to get a positive cash flow. What is needed is adequate safe parking, events that will bring in lots of people, and ready access to bathrooms and concessions. A nice new stadium with ample safe parking can make lots of money in ways other than sports events. Of course, they will need a good marketing team to achieve optimal cash flow from the stadium

@willie please note that I used the conditional tense in what I wrote above. Homeless people are always a major problem that must be dealt with prior to events like hurricanes ad the like. You have to round the homeless up and stash them somewhere that provides some chance of survival for them. You have to provide food and water for them until the storm is well past, and the debris and flooding controlled. Stadiums and public buildings are often used for these purposes. By any chance are you of the opinion that the homeless can be left out in the open during a hurricane? You can be absolutely sure the homeless were not left out in the open during the hurricane, they were rounded up and stashed somewhere that offered some safety for them. Where were they stashed? I have no idea. I have no idea if the National Guard is regularly activated in Florida (primarily MP and medical units) before a hurricane hits. These are short term activations to help with doing things like providing medical care to those injured, and help rounding up/evacuating the homeless to safe places, whatever and where ever these places may be. These are common duties for MP and Medical units in the Guard. Combat troops (infantry) may also be activated when major damage is expected to prevent looting after the hurricane passes over. Nothing new here except that the Rays' stadium was not used to stash homeless people at.

There were no people in the Stadium when the hurricane tore its roof. If they had had lots of homeless people living in tents in the streets and parks of the city they might have brought them into the stadium for refuge during the hurricane. The result would have been pretty gruesome.

Schertz took 13 years D2 to develop and build up his system. His 3 years at ISU may be taken as a time used for adjusting it to D1 and improving it. Schertz's time at SLU, starting this year, may well be the time his system gets to work fully as he expects. I expect a lot for this season, and do not think I will be disappointed. Thank you HoosierPal

I pray for you all in Florida. The weather has been very tough this year.