Good read:

<a href='http://www.thestarpress.com/tsp/sports/local/02/dec/1203Zaleskicolumn.php' target='_blank'>http://www.thestarpress.com/tsp/sports/loc...leskicolumn.php</a>

Quote:Unless somebody at Ball State grabs the bull by the horns soon and says, "We're going to get this done the right way," you have to pity the poor sucker who comes in as the school's next coach.

Let me re-write that last paragraph.

"Unless somebody at Ball State grabs the bull by the horns soon and says, 'We're going to get this done the right way," you have to pity the poor sucker who will take Testicle Tech to I-AA."

Uh. This is our good friend Doug Zaleski's column--I'm not sure that he speaks for the Muncie Star.

And in typical Doug fashion, he's about five years late on this piece. Most knowledgeable fans have been crying this river for eons. But now that former University President Worthern, former AD Seger, and now former head football coach Bill Lynch are gone, he's proclaiming from the housetops what we've all known for some time.

Oh, by the way MAKO. Ball State will drop to IAA in football about the time Marshall joins the SEC. I'm confident that our new president, new athletic director and new head coach will reverse recent trends.

RochesterFalcon Wrote:Good read:

<a href='http://www.thestarpress.com/tsp/sports/local/02/dec/1203Zaleskicolumn.php' target='_blank'>http://www.thestarpress.com/tsp/sports/loc...leskicolumn.php</a>

Also a rather flattering piece for WMU and our facilities. Although despite all of this, we still have lost to the Cardinals the past two years.

Motown Bronco Wrote:

RochesterFalcon Wrote:Good read:

<a href='http://www.thestarpress.com/tsp/sports/local/02/dec/1203Zaleskicolumn.php' target='_blank'>http://www.thestarpress.com/tsp/sports/loc...leskicolumn.php</a>

Also a rather flattering piece for WMU and our facilities. Although despite all of this, we still have lost to the Cardinals the past two years.

Kinda makes you wonder whether it's really Darnell that should be axed for not living up to expectations, especially considering that he has no excuses.

NIU is unfortunately operating under similar constraints as Ball State. It's a miracle that Novak has us in a position to claim back-to-back MAC West co-championships considering how little help our administration and facilities offer to the lifeblood of every program - recruiting.

This was just weird.

The complaints sounded alot like Blackney's complaints about BG.

UM indicates that he required more support from the administration. If BSU is looking to find another wunderkind, the conventional wisdom is that they need to give him support.


However, I didn't completely understand the local recruiting thing. UT has only 5 freshman from Ohio? But how many from Michigan? That's just as "local".

Thinking the answer is to recruit more from FL and TX is naiive at best. Those states are already heavily recruited, the remaining players are on par with what's available in IN. Build up fans in IN, and have kids determined to play football instead of pansy-ass basketball, and they'll be alright.

The point was, his budget capped the number of players from other states Lynch could recruit. And Indiana isn't a exactly a hot bed (although I'm certain it produces better players than the state I now live in).

I'm curious if other schools have suffered this problem. In particular, Akron seems to go very, very heavy at Ohio kids.

I wasn't trying to flame Ball State with my I-AA comment. However, I believe I saw in another thread that attendance has been dropping regularly for the past several years. If you want to be a I-A program however, you've got to make the financial committment to it. Without that type of committment, it's much more difficult to recruit quality athletes whether you're recruiting in Indiana or Alabama.

As for limiting the scholarship money, that's just stupid. You have to recruit to fill needs. Just as an example, let's say you need to recruit a couple of wide receivers. There are 4 kids available and interested but the two better ones are from out of state. Do you tell them to go to another MAC school simply because you don't have the money for a scholarship? Again, that's just plain stupid.

From my very limited perspective, it sounds like the University president is one of those folks that doesn't particularly care for athletics and doesn't see any real value in athletics to the University as a whole. Of course, my perception could be way off as it's limited to reading that article. From the for what it's worth department, Ball State is not one of those programs that is perenially (sp?) horrible and should be playing I-AA ball. They have a fine tradition and it is a shame if I-AA gets forced on them simply because the president won't make the financial committment to have a competitive program.

RochesterFalcon Wrote:The point was, his budget capped the number of players from other states Lynch could recruit. And Indiana isn't a exactly a hot bed (although I'm certain it produces better players than the state I now live in).

I have wondered about this before. Isn't this basically fiction, how much money is "spent" on scholarships?

I mean, there are no extra costs to BSU in having a student from CA vs one from IN, so the scholarship awarded to a CA resident doesn't really "cost" the university more. It's just bookkeeping to say the university didn't "receive" the extra tuition that a CA student would pay like they would from a non-scholarship student. But in fact, the university receives no money from either a CA or IN student, so it's a wash as to the real cost to the university. BSU just "doesn't receive" more money from the CA student than it "doesn't receive" from the IN student. :rolleyes:

Furthermore, it's unlikely the CA student would even attend BSU if it weren't for the athletic scholarship.

DrTorch Wrote:Thinking the answer is to recruit more from FL and TX is naiive at best. &nbsp;Those states are already heavily recruited, the remaining players are on par with what's available in IN. &nbsp;Build up fans in IN, and have kids determined to play football instead of pansy-ass basketball, and they'll be alright.

His point was that Indiana doesn't have the depth of FB talent that those states do, and if you have a school mandate to bring in nothing but Indiana kids, you're going to end up taking players that may not truly measure up to MAC quality and you certainly won't be stealing too many kids from Big Ten schools.

As for having kids play FB instead of BB, that's much easier said than done in this state.



<!--EDIT|HuskieDan|Dec 4 2002, 10:33 AM-->

HuskieDan Wrote:His point was that Indiana doesn't have the depth of FB talent that those states do, and if you have a school mandate to bring in nothing but Indiana kids, you're going to end up taking players that may not truly measure up to MAC quality and you certainly won't be stealing too many kids from Big Ten schools.

Hello, that was pretty obvious.

My point is that TX has 8 Div IA schools, and OK, ND, LSU, Ohio State, LaTech, UNM, NMSU and others sifting thru the recruits. Thinking that Ball State is going to get bigger prizes from TX rather than IN seems a bit far fetched. They may pick up an occasional role-player (such as a speedy WR) but recruiting primarily in IN is not the problem.

No it's not far fetched. The more quality kids a state has the more chances you get to snag a good player. Did you read the part about them having three impact true freshmen this year and two were from out of state? One of them was a DL from Florida, Justin Schwsomething and no one in this state wanted him and he's a great pickup for them. In Florida you'll find many players like that. Overlooked because the talent level is so deep.

When a state has little depth (thus weak competition) the bottom kids aren't that good where as the bottom kids in Florida, Texas and Cali are. The fact that they can't truly get the best players available to them also means the good kids in Indiana won't look to favorably upon them. They'll go to Western, Toledo, etc. e.g., Toledo has two early commitments from a pair of Indiana O-linemen with good size: 6'4" 285 and 6'6" 280.

Gary Darnell said it best in his final press conference, "We

DrTorch Wrote:

HuskieDan Wrote:His point was that Indiana doesn't have the depth of FB talent that those states do, and if you have a school mandate to bring in nothing but Indiana kids, you're going to end up taking players that may not truly measure up to MAC quality and you certainly won't be stealing too many kids from Big Ten schools.

Hello, that was pretty obvious.

My point is that TX has 8 Div IA schools, and OK, ND, LSU, Ohio State, LaTech, UNM, NMSU and others sifting thru the recruits. Thinking that Ball State is going to get bigger prizes from TX rather than IN seems a bit far fetched. They may pick up an occasional role-player (such as a speedy WR) but recruiting primarily in IN is not the problem.

Purdue recruits a LOT in Texas and Illinois, and ND is a national recruiter - why? Because they can, and because they aren't finding it all in Indiana.

It didn't appear to me that Zaleski was suggesting that BSU be allowed to recruit heavily in TX & FL, but was rather using it as reference to IN. If you don't throw your hat into that ring, you're guaranteed to not pull anything in. And believe me, Indiana is pretty mediocre for FB talent on a yearly basis. There's some, but not a lot.

I believe the way it works, the university accepts the student-athlete and charges tuition approrpriately. There is generally then a scholarship fund to pay the university for those tuitions. I'm not sure if the scholarship fund would be charged out of state tuition, but it is not far-fetched for it to occur considering those two entities do tend to be separated, to my knowledge. Either way, the point is that BSU's budget has been horsecrap, and if you aren't going to spend like your peers then you probably shouldn't expect to compete very well with your peers.

I think there is also the associated costs of physically travelling to TX, FL or where ever to meet with recruits and have them come to campus. If everyone is in Indiana, then the coaching staff can simply drive (i.e., no hotel, meals, airfare, etc.).

MAKO Wrote:I wasn't trying to flame Ball State with my I-AA comment. However, I believe I saw in another thread that attendance has been dropping regularly for the past several years. If you want to be a I-A program however, you've got to make the financial committment to it. Without that type of committment, it's much more difficult to recruit quality athletes whether you're recruiting in Indiana or Alabama.

As for limiting the scholarship money, that's just stupid. You have to recruit to fill needs. Just as an example, let's say you need to recruit a couple of wide receivers. There are 4 kids available and interested but the two better ones are from out of state. Do you tell them to go to another MAC school simply because you don't have the money for a scholarship? Again, that's just plain stupid.

From my very limited perspective, it sounds like the University president is one of those folks that doesn't particularly care for athletics and doesn't see any real value in athletics to the University as a whole. Of course, my perception could be way off as it's limited to reading that article. From the for what it's worth department, Ball State is not one of those programs that is perenially (sp?) horrible and should be playing I-AA ball. They have a fine tradition and it is a shame if I-AA gets forced on them simply because the president won't make the financial committment to have a competitive program.

I didn't take it as a flame. But wanted to express my confidence that the university now has individuals in places of authority who are committed, both philosophically and financially, to the program.

Blaine Brownell gave his inaugural speech, as BSU's new president, on December 1, 2000. In two years he replaced the old AD, who with Brownell's predecessor, was a big part of the $$$ problem and now coach Lynch.

Did Lynch get screwed? Even I agree with HuskieDan, on this one. (Although, I think Bill contributed to his own downfall.) But I'm guessing the new AD's (Cunningham was hired effetive August 5th last summer) hand was forced when he kept getting the same response from potential donors for football facility improvements.

The reality is that when there is a significant administrative change, like a President or AD, changes often occur not long after, especially if a coach is not already very successful.