(01-19-2014 09:06 PM)CardFan1 Wrote:  ND is a Majority member of the ACC. They officially are members. They also play 5 ACC members and face mostly Current P5 Member OOC games filling out each season. No way ever are They left out.
Now an interesting thing is Temple, Cincinnati, USF, and UConn all have Multiple years in AQ status and Now You also have UCF, SMU, Houston, Memphis all playing as official AQ conference members. This group should be given the highest consideration for P5 status. They were given a ticket out of the left behinds but were punished by circumstances beyond Their control. Others were invited to the former AQ Big East conference but never arrived or left before actually playing as AQ. Some compromise should be reached for those programs.

Trying to figure out how one figures Memphis football, which backdoor'ed it way into an AQ conference for "one year" should be given any consideration for P5 status.

No way.

The only school in that list of yours that I believe deserves consideration is Houston.

If we are strictly speaking football I would have to say that Boise State can easily make an argument for themselves over the past 15-20 years, but as an over all program of all sports not talking TV markets is there really anyone out there??? The only reason I mentioned Boise is the fact Idaho was once a power player years ago with the big boys even though I am talking about two different schools, but Boise is the flagship school of the state, and they IMO could play with the big boys given the opportunity, but their overall programs I don't have a clue about. I guess like the poster mentioned Houston from their SWC days, and possibly Rice, but those markets are already saturated with the SEC, Big12, CUSA, Sunbelt etc in given them any chance in hell of getting an invite.

UCF is a juicy plum waiting to be plucked, IMO. Very unlikely the ACC takes them, however.

I don't think any of these issues are as simple as some would make them out to be. These schools, and the NCAA, do not operate in a vacuum. They operate in a world that has laws and courts and public opinion.

Let's say, for a minute, that the P5 conferences decide to withdraw from the NCAA entirely, and establish a new organization that nobody else is allowed to join except by their invitation. How long do you think it would take for somebody to realize that they are operating as a cartel, in the worst sense of that word, and sue them in federal court?

For a century legislators and politicians have helped to maintain the facade that big time college football is an amateur activity, with a legitimate educational purpose, and therefore due special treatment when it comes to tax laws? Such a move by the P5 would put a tremendous strain on our willingness to believe that canard. If athletes can get a pay raise because they are employed by one of 65 or so rich employers, and be denied one because their employers can't afford it, how can we not realize that this is simply an unrelated business activity for those 65 schools, subject to taxation?

Frankly, that pay raise is really a minor issue. You could have made just as good a case today as you might tomorrow. The only difference would be our willingness to pretend that what we know to be a lie is not, because we enjoy it vicariously.

The P5 leaders aren't stupid. I'm sure they realize there would be serious risks to splitting from the NCAA and limiting access. They would have to establish some criteria for membership beyond just membership in one of their conferences, the same way the NCAA has criteria for eligibility to compete in D-I, D-II, etc.

The NCAA requires D-I schools to offer some minimum number of scholarship sports, for example. And for football, they require minimum attendance requirements that vary between FBS and FCS subdivisions. It would be hard for the P5 to exclude schools who are willing to abide by their rules, and who already meet or exceed criteria that schools like Wake Forest would set a lower limit for. How is Wake more "worthy" as someone put it, than Houston? Or Navy?

I believe that whatever emerges will not exclude schools that should be included. If there are 80-90 schools in a D-4, as opposed to the 250+ in D-I, the P5 would have all the autonomy they need, with a lot less risk.

(01-19-2014 03:48 PM)lumberpack4 Wrote:  Here's the main point, almost all of the B-5 conferences members have been in the same group for 10 decades or more despite the conference name. Almost none of the G-5 members were ever in these groups, viewed as peers by the groups, or most importantly ever played football as a peer with these five groups.

Tulane, SMU, TCU, Rice, Houston, Idaho, and Montana are the ONLY members of the G-5 that were once a member of these B-5 groups and still play football at the highest level. Notice who is not in that group - UConn and Cincinnati. Cincy did not play in a major conference for football for almost all of the 20th Century.

Now if you look at who is left, you have schools like UConn, ECU, Temple, UCF, USF, the MAC, Memphis, Tulsa, Boise State, and numerous move ups over the past 15 years. Of this group only East Carolina has been attempting to play football at the highest level for the last 40 years, all the rest are more recent commitments or as in the case of the MAC represent a non-commitment to becoming larger and attempting real competition with the B10.

There is no right to a B-5 conference spot and no right to a TV contract. I think the B-5 have a right to take their ball and play amongst themselves and I think they can claim the others would be free riders on their 100 year investment.

If anyone has a legitimate complaint of sorts, it might be Houston and Rice. They were the casualty of SMU's vast cheating when the SWC broke up and were left out of the B12. Cincinnati has no one to blame but itself for it's conference choices and athletic choices from 1945- to the 1980's. Tulane chose to leave the SEC in 1966 and drop it's level of competition. Temple dropped it's commitment to football low enough to be tossed out of the Big East. UConn, USF, and UCF have no complaint they chose to start FBS football programs in the last 25 years.

This doesn't mean that something can't be cobbled together that would be respected enough by the B-5 to get some sort of football cut, but if you haven't been at it for the last 100 years, what do you really deserve? How have you earned a place or did your school see an opportunity in the last two decades to take advantage of FBS status without making the prior commitment?

Cincinnati has been playing football at the highest level for almost 130 years.

You seem like you know your history, so you should know that there was a long time in college football where conference affiliation was hardly that big of a deal. UC was an independent football school for half of the 20th century. They played major schools during that time. Schools such as Louisville, Houston, Rutgers, Temple, West Virginia, Tulane, Miami (FL), Penn State, Virginia Tech, Kentucky, Boston College, Army, Florida State, Navy, Indiana, Vanderbilt, Alabama, Kansas State, and Ohio State were all played at least 3 times during those independent years.

My point is, UC may not have been in a 'major' conference, but they certainly played a major conference schedule for most of their history. They have been playing football at the highest level long before the word conference even existed. The level of success was not always there as it is now, but I think we can both agree that's not really what you are arguing. To mention UC and UConn together like they were in the same situation for football is ignorant at best. It's simply ignorant and completely and utterly incorrect to suggest that UC is taking advantage of FBS status now all of a sudden.

In my opinion, UC does not deserve to be 'relegated' to a lower division for the mere crime of not having the correct geographic location to have a natural fit in a conference, which is exactly why and how conferences were formed. It had nothing to do with TV contracts, which is a 15 year phenomenon. Schools simply played who was in close proximity to them.

UC may not 'deserve' to be in a specific conference, because that is an ambiguous word, but they certainly deserve to be playing football at the highest level.

(01-20-2014 10:31 AM)stxrunner Wrote:  

(01-19-2014 03:48 PM)lumberpack4 Wrote:  Here's the main point, almost all of the B-5 conferences members have been in the same group for 10 decades or more despite the conference name. Almost none of the G-5 members were ever in these groups, viewed as peers by the groups, or most importantly ever played football as a peer with these five groups.

Tulane, SMU, TCU, Rice, Houston, Idaho, and Montana are the ONLY members of the G-5 that were once a member of these B-5 groups and still play football at the highest level. Notice who is not in that group - UConn and Cincinnati. Cincy did not play in a major conference for football for almost all of the 20th Century.

Now if you look at who is left, you have schools like UConn, ECU, Temple, UCF, USF, the MAC, Memphis, Tulsa, Boise State, and numerous move ups over the past 15 years. Of this group only East Carolina has been attempting to play football at the highest level for the last 40 years, all the rest are more recent commitments or as in the case of the MAC represent a non-commitment to becoming larger and attempting real competition with the B10.

There is no right to a B-5 conference spot and no right to a TV contract. I think the B-5 have a right to take their ball and play amongst themselves and I think they can claim the others would be free riders on their 100 year investment.

If anyone has a legitimate complaint of sorts, it might be Houston and Rice. They were the casualty of SMU's vast cheating when the SWC broke up and were left out of the B12. Cincinnati has no one to blame but itself for it's conference choices and athletic choices from 1945- to the 1980's. Tulane chose to leave the SEC in 1966 and drop it's level of competition. Temple dropped it's commitment to football low enough to be tossed out of the Big East. UConn, USF, and UCF have no complaint they chose to start FBS football programs in the last 25 years.

This doesn't mean that something can't be cobbled together that would be respected enough by the B-5 to get some sort of football cut, but if you haven't been at it for the last 100 years, what do you really deserve? How have you earned a place or did your school see an opportunity in the last two decades to take advantage of FBS status without making the prior commitment?

Cincinnati has been playing football at the highest level for almost 130 years.

You seem like you know your history, so you should know that there was a long time in college football where conference affiliation was hardly that big of a deal. UC was an independent football school for half of the 19th century. They played major schools during that time. Schools such as Louisville, Houston, Rutgers, Temple, West Virginia, Tulane, Miami (FL), Penn State, Virginia Tech, Kentucky, Boston College, Army, Florida State, Navy, Indiana, Vanderbilt, Alabama, Kansas State, and Ohio State were all played at least 3 times during those independent years.

My point is, UC may not have been in a 'major' conference, but they certainly played a major conference schedule for most of their history. They have been playing football at the highest level long before the word conference even existed. The level of success was not always there as it is now, but I think we can both agree that's not really what you are arguing. To mention UC and UConn together like they were in the same situation for football is ignorant at best. It's simply ignorant and completely and utterly incorrect to suggest that UC is taking advantage of FBS status now all of a sudden.

In my opinion, UC does not deserve to be 'relegated' to a lower division for the mere crime of not having the correct geographic location to have a natural fit in a conference, which is exactly why and how conferences were formed. It had nothing to do with TV contracts, which is a 15 year phenomenon. Schools simply played who was in close proximity to them.

UC may not 'deserve' to be in a specific conference, because that is an ambiguous word, but they certainly deserve to be playing football at the highest level.

I like the University of Cincinnati.

However you should go to the following site: http://cfbdatawarehouse.com/data/div_ia/...esults.php

If you look at just the last 6 decades, Cincy does not play a major college slate in which they play at least 6 B-5 teams until the year 1983. In fact between 1960 and 1975, - 15 years, Cincy played just 13 games against B-5 teams with the exception of the home and away series with Louisville. Those B-5 teams were Kansas State, Maryland, BC, Texas Tech, WVA, Indiana, and money games at Colorado, TAMU, Washington.

Time in the MAC, Missouri Valley Conference, and CUSA is not a resume that screams - "We deserve to be in the B-5".

In many ways Louisville is like a twin and it has to hurt that the academically inferior twin made it to the B-5 - but the fault for that lies with your administration and their decisions in the 60's, 70's and 80's.

Playing a "major football schedule" is something that is three decades old for Cincy. The other issue is what did you do with those three decades or more particularly what success did you have in the 80's or 90's - was it anything like Louisville's? No? Did your basketball success of the 50's and 60's continue into the 70's, 80's and 90's? No.

The fact is that Cincy played de-emphasized football for at least two decades over the last half century or so and that decisions hurts you today.

(01-19-2014 09:25 AM)Wolfman Wrote:  

(01-19-2014 01:11 AM)ClairtonPanther Wrote:  I swear people are making this out to be a bigger deal than it's going to be. I'm anticipating a move similar to the A/AA split in the late 70's/early 80's.

Football
Div 1A... Current P5 + AAC & MWC for football
Div 1AA... MAC, Sun Belt, CUSA, and some of the larger FCS conferences
Div 1AAA... the rest of the FCS

Basketball
Div 1A... P5 + AAC, MAC, Sun Belt, CUSA, Big East, WCC, A10 and a few others
Div 1AA... the other conferences

So no, I don't see how this is going to affect Notre Dame and their independence at all.

I like the concept but one of the problems I have with the current system is that there are ~120 D1 football programs and 300+ D1 basketball programs. I think if you are going to be in a division you should be all-in. The exceptions would be if the NCAA doesn't sponsor a sport at that level (DII hockey?) or you are starting up a program (you can start at a lower division but must work up to your primary division).

It's also going to be hard(er) to say 1A you can have different rules and voting than 1AA.

Actually, Wolfman, part of the problem is that there are about 250 football programs in D-I. While they compete in two separate subdivisions (FBS and FCS), they all get to vote on football issues. At the margins, some FBS schools' interests are much closer to the FCS schools than to the P5.

If you look at all the D-I schools based on conference strength alone, there are three distinct groupings. The P5 clearly stand alone at the top of the food chain. This year's Sagarin strength ratings have the PAC 12 at the top, with an average rating of 82. They edge out the SEC, which comes in at 81, followed by the Big XII (78), B1G (75) and ACC (73).

Then there's a sizable drop, to the AAC (65), MWC (63), Sun Belt (60) CUSA (59), Missouri Valley (59), Colonial (57) and MAC (57). Keep in mind that next year both the AAC and CUSA will be weakened by realignment, and that the MVC and Colonial are allowed 22 scholarships fewer than the other five conferences. So this would be a pretty competitive group of 80 schools - clearly enough for a separate division - that could potentially have bowl access plus a separate four team championship playoff.

But there are some individual schools in this second group that have greater affinity with the P5 (or think they do). Most of these are in either the AAC ot MWC next year. Then you have the service academies. Who's going to tell Navy they can't play in the big leagues?

One solution would be to allow schools to opt in to the top division provided that they either have an average football attendance of 30,000 or belong to a conference that does. That could allow schools like East Carolina (avg attendance of 47,000) to opt in as an independent, or as part of a trimmed down AAC that included USF, UCF, UConn, Cincy, Navy, Houston, Temple and Memphis (conference average 33K). You could even throw in La Tech, Southern Miss and Marshall and stay above the 30K mark with a 12 team conference.

It's tougher in the west because there are fewer teams overall and sparser population. Nevertheless, there are five schools that could play as independents (Boise, Air Force, San Diego State, Fresno and Hawaii) or you could patch together a conference by adding UTEP, San Antonio and Nevada.

If all those schools opted in (including Army which would qualify as an independent) you would have 87 schools. With 64 schools voting against 23, the P5 would be as autonomous as they need to be without running afoul of serious antitrust concerns. What's more, 87 schools is closer to the size that FBS started out as than what it has grown to today.

(01-19-2014 04:50 PM)lumberpack4 Wrote:  

(01-19-2014 04:07 PM)esayem Wrote:  Maybe the pack has enough trouble trying to figure out what happened to all of their sports teams.

We haven't been able to cheat nearly as well as you over the past two decades. You actually have to go to class at State even if you are in a revenue sport.

Now, keep in mind I have a degree from both UNC and NC State so I KNOW the truth.

Did you learn why Duke plays Temple?

(01-20-2014 11:14 AM)lumberpack4 Wrote:  

(01-20-2014 10:31 AM)stxrunner Wrote:  

(01-19-2014 03:48 PM)lumberpack4 Wrote:  Here's the main point, almost all of the B-5 conferences members have been in the same group for 10 decades or more despite the conference name. Almost none of the G-5 members were ever in these groups, viewed as peers by the groups, or most importantly ever played football as a peer with these five groups.

Tulane, SMU, TCU, Rice, Houston, Idaho, and Montana are the ONLY members of the G-5 that were once a member of these B-5 groups and still play football at the highest level. Notice who is not in that group - UConn and Cincinnati. Cincy did not play in a major conference for football for almost all of the 20th Century.

Now if you look at who is left, you have schools like UConn, ECU, Temple, UCF, USF, the MAC, Memphis, Tulsa, Boise State, and numerous move ups over the past 15 years. Of this group only East Carolina has been attempting to play football at the highest level for the last 40 years, all the rest are more recent commitments or as in the case of the MAC represent a non-commitment to becoming larger and attempting real competition with the B10.

There is no right to a B-5 conference spot and no right to a TV contract. I think the B-5 have a right to take their ball and play amongst themselves and I think they can claim the others would be free riders on their 100 year investment.

If anyone has a legitimate complaint of sorts, it might be Houston and Rice. They were the casualty of SMU's vast cheating when the SWC broke up and were left out of the B12. Cincinnati has no one to blame but itself for it's conference choices and athletic choices from 1945- to the 1980's. Tulane chose to leave the SEC in 1966 and drop it's level of competition. Temple dropped it's commitment to football low enough to be tossed out of the Big East. UConn, USF, and UCF have no complaint they chose to start FBS football programs in the last 25 years.

This doesn't mean that something can't be cobbled together that would be respected enough by the B-5 to get some sort of football cut, but if you haven't been at it for the last 100 years, what do you really deserve? How have you earned a place or did your school see an opportunity in the last two decades to take advantage of FBS status without making the prior commitment?

Cincinnati has been playing football at the highest level for almost 130 years.

You seem like you know your history, so you should know that there was a long time in college football where conference affiliation was hardly that big of a deal. UC was an independent football school for half of the 19th century. They played major schools during that time. Schools such as Louisville, Houston, Rutgers, Temple, West Virginia, Tulane, Miami (FL), Penn State, Virginia Tech, Kentucky, Boston College, Army, Florida State, Navy, Indiana, Vanderbilt, Alabama, Kansas State, and Ohio State were all played at least 3 times during those independent years.

My point is, UC may not have been in a 'major' conference, but they certainly played a major conference schedule for most of their history. They have been playing football at the highest level long before the word conference even existed. The level of success was not always there as it is now, but I think we can both agree that's not really what you are arguing. To mention UC and UConn together like they were in the same situation for football is ignorant at best. It's simply ignorant and completely and utterly incorrect to suggest that UC is taking advantage of FBS status now all of a sudden.

In my opinion, UC does not deserve to be 'relegated' to a lower division for the mere crime of not having the correct geographic location to have a natural fit in a conference, which is exactly why and how conferences were formed. It had nothing to do with TV contracts, which is a 15 year phenomenon. Schools simply played who was in close proximity to them.

UC may not 'deserve' to be in a specific conference, because that is an ambiguous word, but they certainly deserve to be playing football at the highest level.

I like the University of Cincinnati.

However you should go to the following site: http://cfbdatawarehouse.com/data/div_ia/...esults.php

If you look at just the last 6 decades, Cincy does not play a major college slate in which they play at least 6 B-5 teams until the year 1983. In fact between 1960 and 1975, - 15 years, Cincy played just 13 games against B-5 teams with the exception of the home and away series with Louisville. Those B-5 teams were Kansas State, Maryland, BC, Texas Tech, WVA, Indiana, and money games at Colorado, TAMU, Washington.

Time in the MAC, Missouri Valley Conference, and CUSA is not a resume that screams - "We deserve to be in the B-5".

In many ways Louisville is like a twin and it has to hurt that the academically inferior twin made it to the B-5 - but the fault for that lies with your administration and their decisions in the 60's, 70's and 80's.

Playing a "major football schedule" is something that is three decades old for Cincy. The other issue is what did you do with those three decades or more particularly what success did you have in the 80's or 90's - was it anything like Louisville's? No? Did your basketball success of the 50's and 60's continue into the 70's, 80's and 90's? No.

The fact is that Cincy played de-emphasized football for at least two decades over the last half century or so and that decisions hurts you today.

I'm glad you like UC. I like most of the ACC schools and enjoy watching the conference, which is why I check in on here from time to time.

Again, I believe you are looking at the past through the lens of the present which distorts the truth. However, there is no doubt that UC has made some poor decisions, but none of them are related to conference choices. We were no more in control of our conference situation than Houston was when they were unceremoniously dumped out of the SWC/B12. We didn't drop down because we couldn't keep up. UC was simply stuck in the middle without a home for most of their history. They made the best of what they could. I don't see any decisions being made that would lead you to believe UC shouldn't compete at the highest level.

I agree that UC definitely de-emphasized football for a time, but they have supported basketball for their entire history. It is completely incorrect to say UC basketball didn't follow up their 50s and 60s with success. UC was 170-79 during the 1970s, with 4 tournament appearances and a sweet 16 appearance. UC's success during the 90s with Bob Huggins is well documented (Final Four, 2 Elite 8s). UC basketball is without doubt among the Top 20 programs of all time, so it is wholly wrong to doubt our basketball program's credentials for competing at the top level.

My last point, I personally don't think it hurts at all to see UofL in the ACC. They deserve it as well. If the situation was reversed and UC was in their position, I would be arguing for their inclusion by bringing up many of the points that got them in the ACC. UofL and UC are remarkably similar institutions, with UC making better academic decisions over the years, and UofL making better athletic decisions. Both schools have been trending upward for 20 years and show no signs of slowing down.

I'm not saying UC deserves to be in the ACC or any other conference, and I can understand why some members feel like they don't really fit. I do take issue however, when you say they don't deserve to compete at the highest level and then compare them to programs like UConn and say UC has taken advantage of recent FBS football membership.

(01-20-2014 12:11 PM)esayem Wrote:  

(01-19-2014 04:50 PM)lumberpack4 Wrote:  

(01-19-2014 04:07 PM)esayem Wrote:  Maybe the pack has enough trouble trying to figure out what happened to all of their sports teams.

We haven't been able to cheat nearly as well as you over the past two decades. You actually have to go to class at State even if you are in a revenue sport.

Now, keep in mind I have a degree from both UNC and NC State so I KNOW the truth.

Did you learn why Duke plays Temple?

Have you learned that BusinessWeek is carving up your cheating scandal http://www.businessweek.com/articles/201...corruption


1. Keep your eye on the ball.
UNC’s administration for years has obfuscated the core elements of what’s gone wrong at Chapel Hill, and that pattern continues. This rigid defensiveness speaks volumes about the mindset that dominates the NCAA’s “revenue sports.” To cut through the fog of denial and personal vilification, one has to remain focused on what’s important: At UNC, the university’s own internal reviews and investigations—limited though they’ve been—have shown that since the 1990s, football and basketball players have been steered into fake “paper classes” that didn’t meet. Grades were routinely altered without authorization, and faculty signatures were forged.

Story: College Athletes Come at Bargain Prices for Apparel Giants

Top university administrators have refused to acknowledge that this corruption resulted from a campaign to keep football and basketball players academically eligible to play. Instead, administrators have implied that the phony classes and grades were the work of one rogue department chairman, who in December was criminally indicted for defrauding the university.

UNC’s resistance to connecting the dots between its powerful Athletic Department and the counterfeit classes defies logic and reveals, at a minimum, willful blindness. The pending prosecution of longtime African and Afro-American Studies professor Julius Nyang’oro—and the prospect that, in pursuit of leniency, the former department chairman will explain who actually initiated and knew about the bogus classes—may finally force UNC leaders to face reality. Let’s hope so. The NCAA, for its part, has been equally lax in accepting the school’s implausible contention that there was no connection between sports and academic fraud.

2. The problem probably wasn’t limited to one department.
Why would it have been? Yes, numerous varsity athletes majored in African and Afro-American Studies, raising serious questions about whether past Tar Heel champion basketball teams were populated by players whose eligibility, in retrospect, ought to be questioned. But if authorities were earnest about wanting to find out just how widely the rot has spread, they would investigate the transcripts of all varsity players for the past 20 years, scrutinizing whether dubious grades were available from other departments. That kind of aggressive probe hasn’t occurred. Administrators just don’t want to know.

Story: College Athletes Should Be Paid Exactly This Much

3. Rather than engage in painful introspection, UNC has changed the subject to Mary Willingham.
A campus “learning specialist,” Willingham blew the whistle on the shameful coddling of athletes. She explained to Dan Kane of the Raleigh News & Observer how for years she and her fellow tutors steered basketball and football players into sham classes, crippling them intellectually. She was just doing her job—until her guilty conscience prompted her to speak out.

On the side, Willingham, who has a masters degree, did some research on UNC athletes’ literacy levels. She gathered statistics that reinforced her personal experience that an alarming percentage of football and basketball players can’t read or write at a college level. She informed UNC’s top brass. Last summer, they rewarded her candor with a demotion and ostracism. Then, last week, in response to CNN’s having cited Willingham’s research, among other data, the university orchestrated the campus version of a public flogging.

At a faculty meeting on Friday, Provost Jim Dean accused Willingham of scholarly malpractice. “Using this data set to say that our students can’t read is a travesty and unworthy of this university,” Dean declared. “These claims have been unfair to the students, unfair to the admissions officers, unfair to the university.”

It’s difficult to know where to start in refuting Dean’s denunciation. First, to be fair, UNC raised interesting questions about whether Willingham correctly analyzed the facts and figures she gathered. She told me that she stands by her work. At least part of the discrepancy appears to arise from UNC’s stressing different and more recent data than the numbers Willingham relied on. I haven’t reached a firm conclusion about the statistical dispute. But I think it’s very possible that in its zeal to discredit a dissident, UNC has compared apples to oranges, vastly overstating Willingham’s mistakes, if she made any at all.

Much more important, though, is UNC’s transparent attempt to change the topic from undisputed fraud (phony classes, faked grades) to Mary Willingham. The “travesty,” to use Provost Dean’s highly charged word, consists not of one chagrined staff tutor who may—and I stress may—have misinterpreted test results. The travesty is that UNC put athletes in pretend Swahili language classes to keep them eligible. The “unfairness” stems not from Willingham’s desire to come clean after years of participating in a dirty system. It stems from UNC cheating its basketball and football stars out of the education they deserve. And let’s not forget that non-athlete students became collateral damage when they unwittingly wandered into sham classes that did nothing to build their knowledge or skills.

4. UNC students are learning a horribly misguided lesson.
By far the most disheartening reaction I’ve seen to the Tar Heel fiasco has been the statement (PDF) issued Friday by UNC student body President Christy Lambden. Expressing lockstep support for the administration, he said student leaders “are convinced that the procedures and protocols that have been put in place are exactly the right measures to ensure that student-athletes at Carolina continue to succeed athletically.” Lambden lashed out at Willingham for “hurt[ing] the reputation of Carolina without cause and in doing so hurt[ing] its students and student-athletes, for seemingly no other reason than to draw attention and to create a buzz-worthy story.”

This is exactly backwards. UNC has sullied its own reputation by hosting Potemkin courses. The university has hurt the students enrolled in those courses. Willingham, who has no discernible appetite for celebrity, has tried to put a stop to the harm. Sadly, Lambden and presumably other future Tar Heel alumni prefer to preserve the athletic spectacles they so enjoy, rather than consider the real costs to themselves and their classmates.

NOTE: Peter Grauer, the chairman of Bloomberg L.P., which owns Bloomberg Businessweek, is a trustee of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and sits on its Foundation Board and the UNC Global Research Institute Board.


[/color]I think this is what you need to focus on - not Duke and Temple.

(01-20-2014 12:32 PM)lumberpack4 Wrote:  

(01-20-2014 12:11 PM)esayem Wrote:  

(01-19-2014 04:50 PM)lumberpack4 Wrote:  

(01-19-2014 04:07 PM)esayem Wrote:  Maybe the pack has enough trouble trying to figure out what happened to all of their sports teams.

We haven't been able to cheat nearly as well as you over the past two decades. You actually have to go to class at State even if you are in a revenue sport.

Now, keep in mind I have a degree from both UNC and NC State so I KNOW the truth.

Did you learn why Duke plays Temple?

Have you learned that BusinessWeek is carving up your cheating scandal http://www.businessweek.com/articles/201...corruption


1. Keep your eye on the ball.
UNC’s administration for years has obfuscated the core elements of what’s gone wrong at Chapel Hill, and that pattern continues. This rigid defensiveness speaks volumes about the mindset that dominates the NCAA’s “revenue sports.” To cut through the fog of denial and personal vilification, one has to remain focused on what’s important: At UNC, the university’s own internal reviews and investigations—limited though they’ve been—have shown that since the 1990s, football and basketball players have been steered into fake “paper classes” that didn’t meet. Grades were routinely altered without authorization, and faculty signatures were forged.

Story: College Athletes Come at Bargain Prices for Apparel Giants

Top university administrators have refused to acknowledge that this corruption resulted from a campaign to keep football and basketball players academically eligible to play. Instead, administrators have implied that the phony classes and grades were the work of one rogue department chairman, who in December was criminally indicted for defrauding the university.

UNC’s resistance to connecting the dots between its powerful Athletic Department and the counterfeit classes defies logic and reveals, at a minimum, willful blindness. The pending prosecution of longtime African and Afro-American Studies professor Julius Nyang’oro—and the prospect that, in pursuit of leniency, the former department chairman will explain who actually initiated and knew about the bogus classes—may finally force UNC leaders to face reality. Let’s hope so. The NCAA, for its part, has been equally lax in accepting the school’s implausible contention that there was no connection between sports and academic fraud.

2. The problem probably wasn’t limited to one department.
Why would it have been? Yes, numerous varsity athletes majored in African and Afro-American Studies, raising serious questions about whether past Tar Heel champion basketball teams were populated by players whose eligibility, in retrospect, ought to be questioned. But if authorities were earnest about wanting to find out just how widely the rot has spread, they would investigate the transcripts of all varsity players for the past 20 years, scrutinizing whether dubious grades were available from other departments. That kind of aggressive probe hasn’t occurred. Administrators just don’t want to know.

Story: College Athletes Should Be Paid Exactly This Much

3. Rather than engage in painful introspection, UNC has changed the subject to Mary Willingham.
A campus “learning specialist,” Willingham blew the whistle on the shameful coddling of athletes. She explained to Dan Kane of the Raleigh News & Observer how for years she and her fellow tutors steered basketball and football players into sham classes, crippling them intellectually. She was just doing her job—until her guilty conscience prompted her to speak out.

On the side, Willingham, who has a masters degree, did some research on UNC athletes’ literacy levels. She gathered statistics that reinforced her personal experience that an alarming percentage of football and basketball players can’t read or write at a college level. She informed UNC’s top brass. Last summer, they rewarded her candor with a demotion and ostracism. Then, last week, in response to CNN’s having cited Willingham’s research, among other data, the university orchestrated the campus version of a public flogging.

At a faculty meeting on Friday, Provost Jim Dean accused Willingham of scholarly malpractice. “Using this data set to say that our students can’t read is a travesty and unworthy of this university,” Dean declared. “These claims have been unfair to the students, unfair to the admissions officers, unfair to the university.”

It’s difficult to know where to start in refuting Dean’s denunciation. First, to be fair, UNC raised interesting questions about whether Willingham correctly analyzed the facts and figures she gathered. She told me that she stands by her work. At least part of the discrepancy appears to arise from UNC’s stressing different and more recent data than the numbers Willingham relied on. I haven’t reached a firm conclusion about the statistical dispute. But I think it’s very possible that in its zeal to discredit a dissident, UNC has compared apples to oranges, vastly overstating Willingham’s mistakes, if she made any at all.

Much more important, though, is UNC’s transparent attempt to change the topic from undisputed fraud (phony classes, faked grades) to Mary Willingham. The “travesty,” to use Provost Dean’s highly charged word, consists not of one chagrined staff tutor who may—and I stress may—have misinterpreted test results. The travesty is that UNC put athletes in pretend Swahili language classes to keep them eligible. The “unfairness” stems not from Willingham’s desire to come clean after years of participating in a dirty system. It stems from UNC cheating its basketball and football stars out of the education they deserve. And let’s not forget that non-athlete students became collateral damage when they unwittingly wandered into sham classes that did nothing to build their knowledge or skills.

4. UNC students are learning a horribly misguided lesson.
By far the most disheartening reaction I’ve seen to the Tar Heel fiasco has been the statement (PDF) issued Friday by UNC student body President Christy Lambden. Expressing lockstep support for the administration, he said student leaders “are convinced that the procedures and protocols that have been put in place are exactly the right measures to ensure that student-athletes at Carolina continue to succeed athletically.” Lambden lashed out at Willingham for “hurt[ing] the reputation of Carolina without cause and in doing so hurt[ing] its students and student-athletes, for seemingly no other reason than to draw attention and to create a buzz-worthy story.”

This is exactly backwards. UNC has sullied its own reputation by hosting Potemkin courses. The university has hurt the students enrolled in those courses. Willingham, who has no discernible appetite for celebrity, has tried to put a stop to the harm. Sadly, Lambden and presumably other future Tar Heel alumni prefer to preserve the athletic spectacles they so enjoy, rather than consider the real costs to themselves and their classmates.

NOTE: Peter Grauer, the chairman of Bloomberg L.P., which owns Bloomberg Businessweek, is a trustee of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and sits on its Foundation Board and the UNC Global Research Institute Board.


[/color]I think this is what you need to focus on - not Duke and Temple.

Perhaps this particular conversation would be better conducted in a separate thread. It's not relevant to this one.

(01-20-2014 12:41 PM)ken d Wrote:  

(01-20-2014 12:32 PM)lumberpack4 Wrote:  

(01-20-2014 12:11 PM)esayem Wrote:  

(01-19-2014 04:50 PM)lumberpack4 Wrote:  

(01-19-2014 04:07 PM)esayem Wrote:  Maybe the pack has enough trouble trying to figure out what happened to all of their sports teams.

We haven't been able to cheat nearly as well as you over the past two decades. You actually have to go to class at State even if you are in a revenue sport.

Now, keep in mind I have a degree from both UNC and NC State so I KNOW the truth.

Did you learn why Duke plays Temple?

Have you learned that BusinessWeek is carving up your cheating scandal http://www.businessweek.com/articles/201...corruption


1. Keep your eye on the ball.
UNC’s administration for years has obfuscated the core elements of what’s gone wrong at Chapel Hill, and that pattern continues. This rigid defensiveness speaks volumes about the mindset that dominates the NCAA’s “revenue sports.” To cut through the fog of denial and personal vilification, one has to remain focused on what’s important: At UNC, the university’s own internal reviews and investigations—limited though they’ve been—have shown that since the 1990s, football and basketball players have been steered into fake “paper classes” that didn’t meet. Grades were routinely altered without authorization, and faculty signatures were forged.

Story: College Athletes Come at Bargain Prices for Apparel Giants

Top university administrators have refused to acknowledge that this corruption resulted from a campaign to keep football and basketball players academically eligible to play. Instead, administrators have implied that the phony classes and grades were the work of one rogue department chairman, who in December was criminally indicted for defrauding the university.

UNC’s resistance to connecting the dots between its powerful Athletic Department and the counterfeit classes defies logic and reveals, at a minimum, willful blindness. The pending prosecution of longtime African and Afro-American Studies professor Julius Nyang’oro—and the prospect that, in pursuit of leniency, the former department chairman will explain who actually initiated and knew about the bogus classes—may finally force UNC leaders to face reality. Let’s hope so. The NCAA, for its part, has been equally lax in accepting the school’s implausible contention that there was no connection between sports and academic fraud.

2. The problem probably wasn’t limited to one department.
Why would it have been? Yes, numerous varsity athletes majored in African and Afro-American Studies, raising serious questions about whether past Tar Heel champion basketball teams were populated by players whose eligibility, in retrospect, ought to be questioned. But if authorities were earnest about wanting to find out just how widely the rot has spread, they would investigate the transcripts of all varsity players for the past 20 years, scrutinizing whether dubious grades were available from other departments. That kind of aggressive probe hasn’t occurred. Administrators just don’t want to know.

Story: College Athletes Should Be Paid Exactly This Much

3. Rather than engage in painful introspection, UNC has changed the subject to Mary Willingham.
A campus “learning specialist,” Willingham blew the whistle on the shameful coddling of athletes. She explained to Dan Kane of the Raleigh News & Observer how for years she and her fellow tutors steered basketball and football players into sham classes, crippling them intellectually. She was just doing her job—until her guilty conscience prompted her to speak out.

On the side, Willingham, who has a masters degree, did some research on UNC athletes’ literacy levels. She gathered statistics that reinforced her personal experience that an alarming percentage of football and basketball players can’t read or write at a college level. She informed UNC’s top brass. Last summer, they rewarded her candor with a demotion and ostracism. Then, last week, in response to CNN’s having cited Willingham’s research, among other data, the university orchestrated the campus version of a public flogging.

At a faculty meeting on Friday, Provost Jim Dean accused Willingham of scholarly malpractice. “Using this data set to say that our students can’t read is a travesty and unworthy of this university,” Dean declared. “These claims have been unfair to the students, unfair to the admissions officers, unfair to the university.”

It’s difficult to know where to start in refuting Dean’s denunciation. First, to be fair, UNC raised interesting questions about whether Willingham correctly analyzed the facts and figures she gathered. She told me that she stands by her work. At least part of the discrepancy appears to arise from UNC’s stressing different and more recent data than the numbers Willingham relied on. I haven’t reached a firm conclusion about the statistical dispute. But I think it’s very possible that in its zeal to discredit a dissident, UNC has compared apples to oranges, vastly overstating Willingham’s mistakes, if she made any at all.

Much more important, though, is UNC’s transparent attempt to change the topic from undisputed fraud (phony classes, faked grades) to Mary Willingham. The “travesty,” to use Provost Dean’s highly charged word, consists not of one chagrined staff tutor who may—and I stress may—have misinterpreted test results. The travesty is that UNC put athletes in pretend Swahili language classes to keep them eligible. The “unfairness” stems not from Willingham’s desire to come clean after years of participating in a dirty system. It stems from UNC cheating its basketball and football stars out of the education they deserve. And let’s not forget that non-athlete students became collateral damage when they unwittingly wandered into sham classes that did nothing to build their knowledge or skills.

4. UNC students are learning a horribly misguided lesson.
By far the most disheartening reaction I’ve seen to the Tar Heel fiasco has been the statement (PDF) issued Friday by UNC student body President Christy Lambden. Expressing lockstep support for the administration, he said student leaders “are convinced that the procedures and protocols that have been put in place are exactly the right measures to ensure that student-athletes at Carolina continue to succeed athletically.” Lambden lashed out at Willingham for “hurt[ing] the reputation of Carolina without cause and in doing so hurt[ing] its students and student-athletes, for seemingly no other reason than to draw attention and to create a buzz-worthy story.”

This is exactly backwards. UNC has sullied its own reputation by hosting Potemkin courses. The university has hurt the students enrolled in those courses. Willingham, who has no discernible appetite for celebrity, has tried to put a stop to the harm. Sadly, Lambden and presumably other future Tar Heel alumni prefer to preserve the athletic spectacles they so enjoy, rather than consider the real costs to themselves and their classmates.

NOTE: Peter Grauer, the chairman of Bloomberg L.P., which owns Bloomberg Businessweek, is a trustee of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and sits on its Foundation Board and the UNC Global Research Institute Board.


[/color]I think this is what you need to focus on - not Duke and Temple.

Perhaps this particular conversation would be better conducted in a separate thread. It's not relevant to this one.

Extraordinary cheating is germane to all college sports threads - don't you think? After all the original premise of this thread was debunked way back. The entire thread is a migration from the original premise that somehow Notre Dame was not a part of the ACC.

(01-20-2014 06:37 AM)Hokie Mark Wrote:  UCF is a juicy plum waiting to be plucked, IMO. Very unlikely the ACC takes them, however.

Are they a significantly juicier plum than Houston, USF, UC, UConn, Temple, etc?

(01-20-2014 09:34 PM)Marge Schott Wrote:  

(01-20-2014 06:37 AM)Hokie Mark Wrote:  UCF is a juicy plum waiting to be plucked, IMO. Very unlikely the ACC takes them, however.

Are they a significantly juicier plum than Houston, USF, UC, UConn, Temple, etc?

Yes.

(01-20-2014 11:23 PM)nzmorange Wrote:  

(01-20-2014 09:34 PM)Marge Schott Wrote:  

(01-20-2014 06:37 AM)Hokie Mark Wrote:  UCF is a juicy plum waiting to be plucked, IMO. Very unlikely the ACC takes them, however.

Are they a significantly juicier plum than Houston, USF, UC, UConn, Temple, etc?

Yes.

Why? Based on the success of this year's team? The Big East/AAC didn't consider them juicier than those teams. Why should anyone else?

(01-20-2014 09:34 PM)Marge Schott Wrote:  

(01-20-2014 06:37 AM)Hokie Mark Wrote:  UCF is a juicy plum waiting to be plucked, IMO. Very unlikely the ACC takes them, however.

Are they a significantly juicier plum than Houston, USF, UC, UConn, Temple, etc?

They are currently that the Big XII can hope for...

(01-21-2014 10:56 AM)Maize Wrote:  

(01-20-2014 09:34 PM)Marge Schott Wrote:  

(01-20-2014 06:37 AM)Hokie Mark Wrote:  UCF is a juicy plum waiting to be plucked, IMO. Very unlikely the ACC takes them, however.

Are they a significantly juicier plum than Houston, USF, UC, UConn, Temple, etc?

They are currently that the Big XII can hope for...

If the Big XII wanted to be bold, they could be the first to go to 16 schools by adding BYU, ECU, USF, UConn, UCF and Cincy. Boise might be a fallback if BYU wants to stay independent (which they might, for religious reasons).

(01-21-2014 11:03 AM)ken d Wrote:  

(01-21-2014 10:56 AM)Maize Wrote:  

(01-20-2014 09:34 PM)Marge Schott Wrote:  

(01-20-2014 06:37 AM)Hokie Mark Wrote:  UCF is a juicy plum waiting to be plucked, IMO. Very unlikely the ACC takes them, however.

Are they a significantly juicier plum than Houston, USF, UC, UConn, Temple, etc?

They are currently that the Big XII can hope for...

If the Big XII wanted to be bold, they could be the first to go to 16 schools by adding BYU, ECU, USF, UConn, UCF and Cincy. Boise might be a fallback if BYU wants to stay independent (which they might, for religious reasons).

Dude, the over/under on how long Texas would remain with that grouping of schools would be set to 12 1/2 months, and I'd take the under.

(01-21-2014 01:50 PM)ecuacc4ever Wrote:  

(01-21-2014 11:03 AM)ken d Wrote:  

(01-21-2014 10:56 AM)Maize Wrote:  

(01-20-2014 09:34 PM)Marge Schott Wrote:  

(01-20-2014 06:37 AM)Hokie Mark Wrote:  UCF is a juicy plum waiting to be plucked, IMO. Very unlikely the ACC takes them, however.

Are they a significantly juicier plum than Houston, USF, UC, UConn, Temple, etc?

They are currently that the Big XII can hope for...

If the Big XII wanted to be bold, they could be the first to go to 16 schools by adding BYU, ECU, USF, UConn, UCF and Cincy. Boise might be a fallback if BYU wants to stay independent (which they might, for religious reasons).

Dude, the over/under on how long Texas would remain with that grouping of schools would be set to 12 1/2 months, and I'd take the under.

I agree. But if the other P5 want to destroy the Big 12 and go to 4 super-conferences, then it's a great move.

(01-21-2014 01:55 PM)HuskyU Wrote:  

(01-21-2014 01:50 PM)ecuacc4ever Wrote:  

(01-21-2014 11:03 AM)ken d Wrote:  

(01-21-2014 10:56 AM)Maize Wrote:  

(01-20-2014 09:34 PM)Marge Schott Wrote:  Are they a significantly juicier plum than Houston, USF, UC, UConn, Temple, etc?

They are currently that the Big XII can hope for...

If the Big XII wanted to be bold, they could be the first to go to 16 schools by adding BYU, ECU, USF, UConn, UCF and Cincy. Boise might be a fallback if BYU wants to stay independent (which they might, for religious reasons).

Dude, the over/under on how long Texas would remain with that grouping of schools would be set to 12 1/2 months, and I'd take the under.

I agree. But if the other P5 want to destroy the Big 12 and go to 4 super-conferences, then it's a great move.

I said if they wanted to be bold, not if they want to be smart. If Texas wanted to bolt, where would they go, and who would go with them? There's room for four in the PAC, but only two in the B1G. I think the SEC would tell them to pound sand.