Over on the pressbox

[The Don]

BM stirring things up...

"I've made a handful of remarks about the SLU arena in the Bits.... over a 2-3 year period. So it's hardly something I dwell on.

Besides, the arena fundraising will be the new athletic director's problem when Levick leaves."

--B

http://forums.stltoday.com/viewtopic.php?t=337052

[Billiken Rich]

Left leaning media elitists talk about a right leaning talk radio culture as "living in an echo chamber." The answer is, of course, that moderate and right wing folks have gotten tired of the relentless drumbeat of stories that show an almost unnatural disregard for our feelings, beliefs, views, creed, etc. Bernie and his "press box" is the sports equivalent.

Why would you go there and expect Bernie to be rational? Would you go to NPR, CNN, Time, the New York Times, or the LA times, if you were a conservative looking for the news of the day? Maybe once. Then after you cleaned up the vomit from around the toilet seat, you'd maybe check out Fox News, the WSJ, Drudge, etc.

There is a danger to the echo chamber. I often read a bunch of different papers online and listen to Lizz Brown in the morning for my daily dose of the psychotic left for Balance. The thing you have to do is learn who to laugh at. Bernie is an ignorant, nattering, nabob of negativity. Take him with a grain of salt, or better yet a dose of salts. You'll feel better in the morning after........

In any case, I do not get my Billiken news from the post. This place, even with Phan and Footes and rampant speculation and hand wringing and all the rest is an information network to shame the post and Bernie. I hope no one here is waiting for Bernie to tell us we are a worthwhile endevour and that Billiken basketball is something we should take pride in.

[slufanskip]

"I hope no one here is waiting for Bernie to tell us we are a worthwhile endevour and that Billiken basketball is something we should take pride in."

Well said Rich ... though I don't think BM saying "what is going on" in his way hurts anything.

Official Billikens.com sponsor of H. Waldman

[billiken_roy]

what having bernie m on the bandwagon accomplishes is access to the casual st louis sports fan. the fan i am talking about doesnt have a clue this website exists. if told wouldnt come anyway. and like a lemming, will get in line and do whatever they believe is the "hot sports activity to do" in st louis is at the time. and the likes of bernie m or the electronic talking heads are the ones that decide that. the only thing close to someone that fits that for us is frank cusamumo.

[kevinfootes]

simply put, you're a complete jerk.

[kevinfootes]

What's needed is a good President/AD/SID and winning teams. If you have to rely on the media for fundraising you'll be completely lost.

Wash U is D3 and gets no little sports media attention, even though they're very ompetitive at D3. Why do they have double the endowment of SLU? Superior fundraising.

[TEE]

they have a warm spot in a certain rent-a-car companies heart for starters.......

[BradFan]

Yikes Rich...the only thing scarier than our three-point shooting was that rant. Nice to know you look for balance and objectivity in your news watching. Anybody who counts on Drudge as a key SOURCE should be a concern to all of us.

[AlumniFan]

He is spot on and you just hate that he articulated his point so well.

[kevinfootes]

To say that Lizz Brown is a fair example of the left is like saying billiken rich is a fair example of the right. They're both examples of the crazy fringes that make it hard for government to get things done.

[kevinfootes]

then you must have been drinking the same thing. Hey, if you love cheapshot artists, good for you.

Cheers.

[AlumniFan]

...Drudge is just a link to OTHER published news stories? So are you condenming all of the other news sources out there? That would include the News Telegraph, the Washington Post, the Bangkok Post, the New York Times, Haaretz, Reuters, the AP, UPI, the Independent, Time Magazine on-line, etc.

Drudge is actually an extremely efficient conduit through which to report the news.

As to Bernie, he is an extremely efficient way to read an obnoxoius, uninformed, mean-spirited, fat, college basketball critic who clearly hates Saint Louis University. I cancelled the Post AND stopped adverstising in it after last year's Bernie brain fart. Nice not to have my lawn cluttered with trash in the morning, which, was usually late anyways.

[AlumniFan]

Now you are making sense.......

[SLUNATE]

not to mention a certain family that is the heir to a certain ralston purina fortune.

[AlumniFan]

With those absurd statements, you have just clarified for me that you clearly have no idea what you are talking about. Man, you are WAAAAAAAAAAAYYYYYYYYY out of touch.

[Schasz]

We could get over the top quickly if someone with big pockets came forward. Tee raises and interesting family with SLU ties...the Taylor's certainly have the deep pockets. I understood from a meeting that I attended a couple months ago that they were going to take Enterprise public. That would just fatten their net worth even more. If they have not already committed then I am not real sure if they will. Anyone from St. Louis know anything???

[Schasz]

Interesting how banter about BM and the Arena (that is a very important topic to me as a Bills fan) gets us soooooo far off track on inane political banter.

For the record, even though I doubt he has a lot of first hand knowledge about where we are on the Arena project...I don't have a problem with BM stirring things up a bit. I kind of view that as his columnist job.

[AlumniFan]

...I just think he takes the very low road to do it. The only time I hear about him is on this board, but it seems that he typcially relies on low blows to make his points about the Billikens rather than taking the time to do some actual WORK to provide meaningful, if critical, information/insight.

[kevinfootes]

In rich's post he claimed that I was spreading bad information about the Billikens. You agreed with him. When have I done that?

I'd really like to know about the bad SLU info that I'm spreading.

thanks.

[kevinfootes]

How am I out of touch? Sure BM is a jerk, that's a given as much as saying the sun will rise in the morning or rich will post something stupid. Do you really think BM is keeping anybody from donating?

Seriously, why does Wash U have twice as much money as SLU? SLU needs to do a better job of fund raising. How can you deny that?

Please explain anyting I said that was absurd and why. I'm beginning to think you just give a canned cheapshot reply wihtout even reading the posts. I thought you were a little different than the chepashot artists on here, but maybe I was wrong.

[kevinfootes]

at least that's what I was told in grad school. That's why Purina bent over backwards to recruit Wash U grads and turned their noses at SLU grads.

Anyway, that's what Dr. Amine said in grad school.

[Schasz]

The Arena project is simply we are in need with one of our wealthier Alums to pony up. I keep hoping that will happen soon because I think it is something that could really push our basketball program over the top.

[billiken_roy]

trying to make the fact that wash u has a larger endowment fund than slu a negative is really strange. wash u is an educational institution that is one of the tip top in the world. to make that statement is akin to asking why the red sox dont have the payroll that the yankme's have?

slu has the third largest endowment of any catholic university in the world. and it is my understanding that boston college isnt that far in front of slu. yet you want to try to make it sound as though slu is inferior with the tone of your post. i just dont understand your thinking anymore.

[AlumniFan]

A. I do not think you spread bad information about the Billikens. At times you have very good comments, but at other times, to me, you appear to post things just to piss people off - kind of like BM.

B. I did not see that in Rich's post, unless you mean this sentence: "This place, even with Phan and Footes and rampant speculation and hand wringing and all the rest is an information network to shame the post and Bernie." I do not take that to mean "spreading bad information".

C. I agree with the general points of Rich's post. I am not going to do what some on this board do and dissect every syllable to spot something inaccurate or with which I disagree.* When it comes to Bernie, he is spot on (I also happen to agree with the other, more general comment on the media and the left).

*The exception being posts by a certain hate-mongering poster on this board who has made it his mission to attack me - I WILL point out anything incongruous, inaccurate, misspelled, stupid, etc.

[AlumniFan]

I will resist any "cheapshots".

Washington University has one of the largest endowments in the country. In 2004, Wash. U.'s endowment ranked 12th in the country, behind schools like Yale, Harvard, MIT, Columbia (NY), and in front of Northwestern, Cornell, Penn and others. It is truly a spectacular achievement. I have always been very impressed with Washington University and think that there are a lot of things that Saint Louis University can learn from them (the reverse is also true).

Wash. U. is a school that has attracted a LOT of students from the east coast, especially those who were denied admission to Ivy League schools. They have a very remarkable, if liberal, student population. They have a fantastic national academic reputation. They are also a SECULAR school. These facts mean that their donor base is much larger than SLU's. Simply put, there are a lot of people who will NEVER give to a school affiliated with a religion, let alone a Catholic Jesuit school. However, their donor base and their endowment have very little to do with their reputation in athletics.

If you look at the top endowments, very few are at schools with any religious affiliation. In general, the Ivys come first, large state universities come second, and then high end private schools come third. Interestingly, in the data I reviewed for ALL colleges which was from 2003, only one other A-10 school appears before SLU - Richmond.

Wash. U.'s endowment is probably more on the order of 5 or 6 times as large as SLU's. I doubt that will ever change materially. It doesn't help that SLU's endowment took a bigger hit in the market downturn of 2000 - 2002 than others. However, SLU is in the top 15% nationally in their endowment. I find that pretty impressive, ESPECIALLY given how much the University has spent in the last 10 years to improve the school. Granted, those improvements probably resulted in more contributions over time and will continue to do so, but if the fund raising that had taken place had not been spent on such an aggressive renewal program, the endowment obviously would have been larger. I know that donors gave because they were funding the improvements, but, nonetheless, a lot of dollars that otherwise would have gone into the endowment did not.

Keep in mind another relatively obvious fact about private schools. There is a hierarchy. The more expensive ones, like Wash. U., attract the students of wealthier families. So, from the get-go, they are more likely to be in a position to afford to give more. SLU, with its Jesuit mission, is home to a lot of students who are from families with very limited means. If your last name is Danforth, it is a lot easier to write big checks 10 years out of school than if your name is Smith, you came from a very middle class family, and now, 10 years out, you have 2 kids, a job making $90,000, a mortgage payment, and are helping your parents pay for their mortgage. Now I know there are wealthy and poor kids at each school, but I don't think anyone would argue against the fact that Wash. U. has a much wealthier student population than SLU.

Then you have the big state universities that have big endowments because the graduate a zillion students a year. In that case, it is a numbers game.

So, I think for a Catholic, Jesuit University that has undergone tremendously expensive renovations and expansions to be in the top 15% of college endowments is pretty damn impressive. I think that the fund raising that they have done in the current capital campaign is really an accomplishment. The University giving rate continues to climb - we are close to 20%. The development office is very focused on improving that number over time and has several programs in place to do so. When you say "SLU needs to do a better job of fund raising. How can you deny that?" my response is that EVERY school can do a better job of fund raising, but I think SLU does a very good job considering all of the above. I am sorry that you appear to disagree.

As to being out of touch, you implied that SLU does not have a good President!!! You, and a lot of others, may not like him personally, but what he has done for the University is just downright spectacular.