Old guy

At least we are getting national attention. Something like ugly is beautiful, who knows where this leads.

Hey Franchise, life has ups and downs. You were not responsible for choosing either of these characters. Don't waste your time feeling victimized by this, look forward. The future looks good for us, for a change.

Likes dislikes, who cares what the thing looks like, maybe it will scare our opponents. Let's go and win games.

Whatever his impression about the lack of fans may have been, he will see the campus, talk with the coaches and the other players, and then he will have to go somewhere by himself and try to figure out where it is that he fits best and what place can offer him the most opportunity. Once that is clear to him the decision will be made with or without hordes of greeting fans.

Bonwich, I think it guarantees the consensus opinion which is not necessarily the lowest common denominator. If what you mean to say is that such an activity strips out most potential avenues for innovation and change, then you are probably right. From my point of view, you do not have to like it (I do not like it either) but it may still be a new and fresh approach as to what a "Billiken" mascot of a sports team is or could be. Design firms live out of creative talent, something I am not well endowed with. Time will tell.

OK, so you agree that the occasions where a single person is responsible for the new logo and image of a large enterprise (SLU qualifies as a large enterprise) are rare, and that there are committees of some kind passing judgement. Dr. Pestello was aware of the work that was being done and most likely signed his approval as well. Of course a portion of the approval was due to the presentation made by the design firm in regards to the new logo and mascot. I also fully agree with the negative effects of focus groups. They bring nothing new into the equation, what they do is to emphasize commonality of experience and taste patterns. In other words focus groups make decisions that accommodate consensus opinion in taste and eliminate the outlier factors. This is, in an unofficial way, what we are doing in this forum right now, presenting our opinions as a focus group of sorts. Looked at it from that perspective we are eliminating out of our "common think" commonly disliked features representing extremes that clash with our ideas. I think the gray portion of the new billiken face is the factor that most frequently clashes with our combined view of what a "Billiken" should look like. Would you agree?

Hello Bonwich. please just answer one question, if a total logo redesign (including the mascot) aimed at improving the image of a corporation or university is NOT planned by commitee (desing firm and corporate commitees, plural) using techniques like focus groups, how do you imagine the work is really done? Just asking. Do you really think the majority of University presidents, or their staff (including ADs) are well versed in design issues and can conceivably come up with anything that will modify public perception for the better? Again just asking and yes, it was two questions not one.

And the verdict is iin, no one likes it. Maybe we are trailblazers into a new era of ugly, or at least of clashing with consensus opinion.

Surprise! no one likes it.

I am not trying to justify bad behavior but I would like to point out that Lonergan most likely behaved in the exactly the same way from the very beginning of his tenure as head coach at GW. It is said the leopard does not change his spots, well let's apply that saying to this event as well. Since Lonergan was head coach at GW for a number of years, it should be evident that his behavior was tolerated by the GW administration for many years before they took action to investigate. This multi year delay points out that some specific event probably happened that kicked the administration into action about what had become the standard pattern of behavior by Lonergan for a number of years. In addition to Lonergan's bad behavior, which appears to be a fact, we should also consider the tolerance for such behavior shown by GW's administration for many years to the mix. This, of course, brings up the question: why was this behavior tolerated by the administration for so long, and what happened to kick the administration into taking action after such a long delay?

Sounds to me like a real blow up took place in GW sometime Friday and Lonergan was just offed, period. Whatever the official causes given for the termination may be. that will be all they are: the official causes for the termination. I would think that this event will alter the pecking order within A10 for this coming season, and no I do not think the alteration of the pecking order in A10 will go low enough to affect us in any way.

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Although I think you may be overly optimistic with your post bilikenbill, the fact does remain that we have 3 new players coming into play this season that we have yet to see play: Welmer, Johnson, and Moore. In addition we have to consider the effect of the new coach and the three transfer red shirts who are helping train or retrain our players. It is not beyond reason that we may wind up having a better season that is expected. Sorry Wiz your F+ prediction may or may not be accurate, after all it all depends on how positive the effects of all of these changes turns out to be, and how low our expectations are. Predictions at this stage in the season are based upon too many unknowns to be accurate, we need to see them play before we can say with any degree of certainty.

Brianstl, UMass is not in a sizable metro area it is located in Amherst, MA, a town whose main function is to support several colleges and Universities. Not large, about 2 hours West of Boston, past Springfield, MA.

Wow! Brazilian and German illegals, a rough bunch to be sure.

Everyone, I mean every male (I suppose this applies to some females as well), can man up to some degree regardless of how macho they may be already. Neufeld can, of course, do so.

Indeed, very good news.

Jimbo, unfortunately every person reacts differently to mono (as is the case with most other diseases) partially because no two person's diseases are identical or cause identical responses by the affected individual. Neufeld may do very well and have a very short recovery period and be as new when the season starts, or he may not be quite so lucky as all that. This has nothing to do with Neufeld manning up, and everything to do with how his body reacts to the disease.

Yes, mono is nothing to be dismissed offhand, it can affect weight, mood and physical activity for fairly long periods of time.

Of course all of this assumes the roll out of the new Billiken was a carefully planned event. It just may not have been so, just a matter of expediency, Like: "we need the new Billiken out yesterday, how about doing it tonight?" That is the night before they did it. With the extra added "no mascot period" we add to the complexity and lack of thinking involved in this decision. Anyone thinks this was carefully planned?

Zink, I agree, it will be an interesting year to watch, even if we do poorly as expected. Some of the kids will step up as you say and this will be interesting to see.

I do not know about you, but I expect to see Hines playing in the coming season, and possibly also Psimitis, the new Greek walk on. I think they are going to need to get them into play.

One of the issues with mono is that people that have had it recently just do not want to eat, that makes it difficult to regain the weight.

I do hope all the best for Crawford, but the kind of lower extremity injuries he has can reactivate at any time. I would question whether he can play the full season this year (with only 9 scholarship players in the roster) without reactivating his injury. That is assuming he has not already reactivated it during practice.

billikenfan05, hate to say this but everyone (as in Universities) is more or less in some degree of a pickle nowadays. One portion of this pickle is the erratic behavior of the market coupled with the minimal interest return from bonds and treasuries which feed the endowments. The other portion is the ever increasing need for financial aid, research projects, buildings, personnel, regulation related expenses, athletic expenses, etc... this list is not exhaustive. It is not easy to try to balance the whole mess, as a matter of fact it requires real ability and a very competent staff to do so. I think SLU does very well compared to some other places.