Old guy

I did watch this game, I think the small chance that SLU had to beat Duquesne evaporated with Zheng in the last few minutes, things might have gone with Van Bussel and Hargrove in, even if Hargrove fouled out. Let's hope for a better situation for next year.

A loss is a loss, our season is over. Ford is done as per Martin Kilcoyne, we will soon see if this is correct or not. The time of truth as to how many players stay or go is coming for the players. I assume the staff will go. It is done.

That is probably correct.

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I am pretty sure you do not have sources in the Vatican either, I most certainly do not. The US currently has 13 cardinals, maybe some of them follow college basketball and are happy about those wins.

I have no interest in D2 or D3 schools, but many of them are not lacking money or prestige, what they lack is an interest in sports.

Everyone is trying to make a living, I do believe the search for openings by assistants and the consultants coming in are confirmation that Ford is going. I did like the way Harriman talked after the game in KMOX.

We won this one, it was close but a win it was. Now on to the next one.

Cheeseman, first I was not aware that these Div II schools were in an athletic union. Second the lack of people in churches and in colleges or parishes is due to a lot of factors. For example Catholic church attendance has gone straight down because they demand a lot of money to be a member of a parish, and because the church has lost meaning for a lot of people. A lot of these people leaving the Catholic church are attending the evangelical family churches instead. The difference is that the catholic church simply does not make you feel like family and the evangelicals do. Please do not believe me if you do not wish to do so. Colleges relied for a fair amount of time upon foreign students to fill their student quotas and they were also a significantly less expensive to attend. However, foreign attendance is down, and tuition, particularly for private schools, is way up. For example tuition at the Georgetown School of Medicine was $2000 per year when I attended in the late 1960s. My daughter who attended Case Western Reserve School of Medicine still has over a $100,000 of tuition debt for med school. She graduated in the early 2000s. It does not take a genius to understand that a degree from a Public College/University, costs a lot less than attending a private College/University. SLU may be one among few Universities with attendance increase, good for them. Shedding programs that do not have enough enrollment to produce profits was a good move.

They do not need to, Wash U and the other schools mentioned above, have that situation under control. No need for the IVYs.

OK, I was not aware about this Egghhead Eight arrangement but it is completely in character with the schools named. They belong where they are and so does Johns Hopkins. As far as buying part of the acreage belonging to Fontbonne currently, just forget it, there is nothing else right next to Wash U available for their expansion.

Let's agree upon a number of items regarding Ford. No one here knows what Ford's contract stipulates about the money that is to be paid in case of early termination. It is entirely possible that there is a contractually specified date after which the money to be paid is reduced. The end of the A10 tournament may well be the date specified in the contract after which the money to be paid is reduced by ? amount. May is already in a bad position because of the contract extension he gave Ford. He is not going to fire Ford until the date to reduce the money owed to Ford is past. This is all beyond our pay grade, we must be patient.

I think Wash U is closer in academical approach to other elite Universities in the Midwest, like U of Chicago, Northwestern, U of IL Urbana Champaign, than to the IVYs. I could see the creation of a midwestern, plus perhaps some elite Southern schools like Duke and U of VA, than a union with the IVYs. Sports may become a problem with the creation of a Midwestern Elite league.

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This is why I do not use ChatGPT or AI. There was a time when I used a commercial financial AI system extensively and had talks with the head Quants in places like the CBOE or CBT, cannot remember which one. No more, I do my own. A few last things to say. Keep track of what happens to celebrity mansions after the well dries and the mansion goes for sale. Watch the price go straight down from lack of buyers. Anyone that builds or purchases one of those Super Yachts is eventually in for super sized losses, not to mention maintenance, crew expenses, docking and taxes.

I am not saying Ford is stupid. I am saying that losing a $2.5 M salary is tough on anyone. As far as coaches go, the time comes when they are let go and they have no prospects. It has happened to many coaches. For example take Belichick from the Patriots. When he was let go, the word was that he would have all kinds of offers, not so. Same thing happened with Cuonzo. And yes, it does take a good presentation and a good deal of success and experience to have success as a coach. Yet the time comes when they find no takers. I think Ford may well be in a similar situation. A very successful man that reached a salary level few ever come close to. But the well appears to be drying. Some respect is due from my point of view, your choice.

What makes you think that millionaires do not go broke? It all depends on how much they spend, many think there is no end to their money which is emphatically not the case, not as long as they depend upon a very large salary. You are young, of course, and know nothing about money, but the good times always end. Finally, you should give Ford at least a small level of respect and understanding. He is not having a good time currently. And just so you know, lots of major sports players retire with lots of money and wind up broke, this is not uncommon.

He will stay as a HC for as long as he can. However what happens when the salaries offered become too low, or when he just gets no offers? He will still be alive and has to figure out what he is going to do. If you think head coaches may have no offers, or no acceptable offers after being let go from their positions, search what team is Cuonzo Martin coaching this season.

OK but what I can add at this time is not medical in nature. Ford has been the SLU basketball HC since March 2016. Initially he was partially paid by the contractually agreed payments he was to get for being fired from OSU before the end of his contract. In a prior episode he left UMass early to go to OSU and most likely received similar payments. I am sure about the OSU payment, this is not the case about the UMass payments. The current episode with SLU is coming close to another early termination, whenever it happens, and he will receive a high amount of residual payments as determined by his contract. What is Ford to do? The obvious answer is to get another coaching job. The not obvious choice is to make a change of direction and do something else. I think that a lot depends on how much money he has accumulated in retirement and investment accounts. Assuming, and this is my assumption, that he probably has successfully accumulated a significant amount of money in retirement and investment accounts, he has other job options available to him. The obvious thing to do is to find another highly paid HC job. This may or may not work. He may find it difficult to get something that pays him near his current income. Of course he will be paid by SLU for early termination as agreed in his current contract. So, all depends, following his normal pattern of employment, upon how well he performs in the new HC position, and how much of an increase in salary he may get with his contract renewals. If he does not get enough, then he has a problem. I think eventually he is likely to get to a situation when he has to accept a significant decrease in his income as a basketball HC. He will probably will not like this, but it probably will happen sometime sooner or later. At this time a lot will depend upon the amount of capital he has saved in retirement and investment accounts. If he has enough he may continue living out of his retirement and invested savings by budgeting and withdrawing money out of his accounts. One option that he can take at some time in the future, when he reaches this point, is to become an investor or a businessman. I chose the investment route after my retirement because I do not know anything about managing my own business but I know the investment business. If Ford has saved enough money he can become an accredited investor and learn how to invest profitably. Of course, he can use an financial manager to deal with his money instead of doing it himself. There are other ways to provide income for yourself after you have to retire from your present occupation. What he chooses is entirely up to him. Ultimately he will probably have to make a choice between a number of options, other than coaching basketball, or slowly consuming his saved capital. Going back to the way he looked during today's game, I think he realizes there are better options for himself than trying to stay as basketball HC at SLU. As I tried to point out, he has a number of options available if continuing as a basketball HC somewhere does not work. I wish him good luck and all the best with the transition when and if it happens.

Bizz, after this season, I doubt very much that a potential job offer by SLU can be used as leverage for a P5 job, we are that low at this time.

As I watched today's game in the TV this afternoon, the occasional frames showing Ford appeared very different from the way he has looked in other recent games. In most recent games Ford's voice yelling could be heard, particularly in the radio, and the times when he was shown in TV he looked both agitated and was red faced many times. At the end of the game he was hoarse. This was not the case today, he was much calmer, his face was not red, and he did not look agitated. This is just an observation, it can mean absolutely anything at all, but he was neither agitated nor looked pi-sed off today during the game, and yes, we did well today. I wonder why he did not look as in the other games? Is the fact that we won this game all there is to it?

Did not expect the Bills to win and they did. I was a most pleasant surprise.

Cockroaches as living beings may survive nuclear warfare but NOT ALL cockroaches will survive nuclear warfare. Let's hope May is not among the survivors of this event at SLU.

Minuscule chance or not, it comes to the probability and the risk associated with the decision of Ford's termination. If the contract stipulates a major reduction of the money that must be paid to Ford after a specific date, then this is the road you take. If it does not, then you may start calculating the infinitesimal probability level for Ford to win the A10 tournament. So the decision to take the risk he will win the tournament or not does not have to be exercised if there is a certain contract stipulated termination date that significantly decreases the payment going to Ford after his termination.

You are way too optimistic about Ford. I honestly think he has absolutely no chance of winning the tournament. I will be very surprised if the Bills manage to win one or two games at the A10 tournament this year.