(03-04-2013 10:02 PM)bucfan99 Wrote:  filing cabinet - the past players over the years told me about it. it held players papers and tests. It was/is a great resource for players to learn how to write a paper, get a paper or to study for a test. That probably borders on a rules violation.

What? *Many* departments across campus have repositories of old tests, often curated by grad students, with the knowledge and approval of faculty. That is a historically great way to prepare for a test. Nothing wrong with reading other players' papers, either, so long as plagiarism is not employed. (Duh.) (And there are pretty good safeguards in place now for those professors who choose to employ them.) Remember, for a huge proportion of both men's and women's teams, English is their second (or third) language.

I'd put any randomly-chosen tennis team (either one) member up against any randomly-chosen general student, or randomly-chosen athlete from any other team, in a test of general or academic knowledge. And I'd almost certainly win.

(03-04-2013 10:15 PM)Buccaneerlover Wrote:  

(03-04-2013 09:11 PM)GoBucsGo Wrote:  I agree w/ '88 - the hatred for tennis, or soccer, or any sport that ETSU currently fields is odd. It's not even understandable. Do I need to remind anyone that ETSU played tennis when ETSU had a football team?

Tennis never took anything away from football.

However, it emphasizes particular issues I never liked about some of the pro-football crowd: They hated everything that wasn't football. I've never understood that, but I'm sure someone will come on here and try to tell me why I should hate the "minor" sports. They didn't kill football. And by the way, the football that will "come back" will be nothing like it's former self. At least I hope so.

Go,

I think you know the culture of that campus over the last 20-30 years has been one of division. Presidents and university employees alike have cultivated that division, because it ultimately makes it easier for someone like a Stanton, Mullins or that incompetent wildebeast Barbie who's squatting on their last job to not have to work hard. I can honestly say while I was there I did not hate tennis or golf. I thought Yaser and Brooks were both really fun guys to be around, and intensely competitive. Same with Coach Warren though I never really understood him as a person. Atleast for me, if it's a sport I dislike, it's due to something I've seen. Women's soccer taking away funds from football, men's soccer being started instead of football, certain coaches in sports involved bats and nets (one of which who isn't there anymore) that were just rude if they didn't get what they wanted. Even if you love ETSU like no other, even more than Superfan does it is very difficult to support a jerk, even if he/she is your jerk. Then you have people like Dave and Barbie who continue to tell you how great things are and this is the way to do it, and attempt to be condescending in tone to people who disagree with them. It becomes uninspiring, puts you on the defensive and sends you into your corner.
I'll be honest, until Barbie Breedlove is TERMINATED, that's something that will still linger in that dome like a really bad fart in a crowded elevator. I hope Dr. Sander sends the one of the least successful coaches/administrators in the history of the NCAA packing there will still be a divisive nature there.
I hope we can get to where everyone can support all the programs, not just in athletics but everything. It doesn't have to be one or the other, it can be everything but that's a culture that has to be cultivated from the top down. It hasn't been that way in a long time.
Did I mention that Barbie should've already been shown the door?

Really good posts, both of them, with lots of truth in there....:iagree:

Doc - you hit it on the nose. plagiarism. you will find over the years the same paper turning up over and over just like you will find the same TOEFL waiver letter in player files "written" by each player requesting a TOEFL waiver to be accepted into school.

I don't know about the papers thing. Tests, absolutely. They're an invaluable tool for helping any student study. I'd love to see/hear more from someone on the academic end in athletics comment on that.

As for soccer as it relates to communist/socialist countries, soccer/futbol or whatever you call it is the PREMIER sport of those countries, and the corruption involved in it makes PED's in baseball AAU basketball, Bountygate, spygate and Tim Donaghy look like child's play.
That said, the reality of it is I figure my Mister and Jennings will probably go through a soccer phase, and I'll support them. Hell, I'll support ETSU soccer as long as there's not a divisive nature after the final changes are made. Hopefully Barbie is holed up packing her stuff to move over to storage B as we speak.

(03-05-2013 04:27 PM)Buccaneerlover Wrote:  Hell, I'll support ETSU soccer as long as there's not a divisive nature after the final changes are made. Hopefully Barbie is holed up packing her stuff to move over to storage B as we speak.

You make it sound as though the soccer team will not share the same conference as the other sports after changes come.

(03-05-2013 06:56 PM)Youre my boy blue! Wrote:  

(03-05-2013 04:27 PM)Buccaneerlover Wrote:  Hell, I'll support ETSU soccer as long as there's not a divisive nature after the final changes are made. Hopefully Barbie is holed up packing her stuff to move over to storage B as we speak.

You make it sound as though the soccer team will not share the same conference as the other sports after changes come.

depending on the conference we end up in, they might not.

If the conference doesn't sponsor Men's soccer how would they be?

I think the bottom line to this thread is that the fans and supporters of ETSU support ALL of our programs and always have. What we need Dr. Sander to do is rework the athletic budget and let the minor sports win because the major sports are leading the way and providing the money. What Mullins did for ten years with spending football's money on minor sports was devasting to our school. All the sports are important and we support them all but let us get our priorities in order and make the major sports major again.

Yes and no, 81. Dave Mullins would be considered an ETSU supporter, but did he support football? I have no doubt that Paul Stanton, Barbie Breedlove, Lindsey Devine and others support ETSU, but they don't support all of ETSU. They never did. That was the problem. The cultural issue that some of the minor sports coaches can't and still don't understand that while what they do is really nice and everyone wishes them nothing but the best, it's not front page news, it doesn't move the needle on campus and the two major sports, men's basketball and football are what people truly care about.
Plus and I'll say it again, I have a difficult time supporting the programs who have coaches that I find to be hypocritical jerks. I hope those things get corrected, and I think they will later this year.

(03-05-2013 09:10 PM)Buccaneerlover Wrote:  Yes and no, 81. Dave Mullins would be considered an ETSU supporter, but did he support football? I have no doubt that Paul Stanton, Barbie Breedlove, Lindsey Devine and others support ETSU, but they don't support all of ETSU. They never did. That was the problem. The cultural issue that some of the minor sports coaches can't and still don't understand that while what they do is really nice and everyone wishes them nothing but the best, it's not front page news, it doesn't move the needle on campus and the two major sports, men's basketball and football are what people truly care about.
Plus and I'll say it again, I have a difficult time supporting the programs who have coaches that I find to be hypocritical jerks. I hope those things get corrected, and I think they will later this year.

Good points.

(03-05-2013 01:04 PM)bucfan99 Wrote:  Doc - you hit it on the nose. plagiarism. you will find over the years the same paper turning up over and over just like you will find the same TOEFL waiver letter in player files "written" by each player requesting a TOEFL waiver to be accepted into school.

Well, as I mentioned, there are pretty good ways for faculty to combat that, and they do. I doubt seriously if Yaser encouraged any such activity. He can't control what player(s) write in papers, but I find it implausible that he would encourage that kind of activity. The penalties are just too great, and it's too easy to catch now. Sure, a student may get away with that once or twice, but not repeatedly - unless the instructor(s) is/are very lazy.

(03-05-2013 08:03 AM)BucFyre Wrote:  Don't get me started on Barbie.

Oh, please. Do go on about her. I think not enough people know the disaster she is. So ladle up some of the dirt we might not know...




(I'm being mostly facetious, but not completely......)

(03-04-2013 01:53 PM)posterformerlyknownasthedoctor Wrote:  

(03-04-2013 01:12 PM)bucfan99 Wrote:  Does anyone know about the filing cabinet???

I knew about the candlestick, and I knew a butler was involved, but you got me stumped with the filing cabinet.

You got the candlestick right, but have bad info on the butler.

Mr. Boddy was done in by Miss Scarlet in the office, which is where the filing cabinet comes in.

Okay, fess up folks.

I'll bet all of you would have bet good money that you could have gone through the day on the ETSU boards without seeing a reference to Clue on here.

Doc - I applaud your admiration for Yasser. You probably had the same for Dave until you got burnt.

Yaser is a great guy. Honestly when talking to him you can't help but like him.

You have to wonder if Zaatini will stick around since Mullins is gone. He was sort of the "teacher's pet" and men's tennis got a lot of resources. With football coming on board, all minor sports may see some cuts, especially tennis. He might see this as the right time to go on to bigger and better things. ETSU tennis sure will look different without him and Coach Brooks. Brooks basically built the women's team, which was little more than a club team when he started and turned it into a championship team, and Zaatini built on the strong traditions already in place for the men.

I have to say, though, that I'm not a fan of the new coaching model with Zaatini as director of tennis. The men have a head coach, and the women's team is run by assistants for the most part. I liked the Women's tennis set up much better when Coach Brooks was here. Paying a director of tennis a nice salary to cover both teams then delegating the day to day responsibilities of player development over to assistants for the women while grooming the men into better players is not really in the spirit of gender equity. I wonder if the new AD will bring back a head coach for both teams? If you look at last year's conference tournament, the women who were recruited and coached by Brooks had great wins (Jamie, Kedzo), while the new comers seemed to struggle and the team lost a heartbreaker in the conference tournament finals.

(03-06-2013 08:39 PM)bucfan99 Wrote:  Doc - I applaud your admiration for Yasser. You probably had the same for Dave until you got burnt.

Well, as I said years ago, I used to like Dave. Then I learned something he 'allowed' to transpire that I thought was unethical. Something completely apart from his ETSU job, and that I will not detail. But....even then, I thought he was doing a very good job as tennis coach - and he was. He was a wonderful fundraiser for tennis, as I've mentioned several times. Perhaps most importantly, he coaxed Yaser into coming back as assistant/women's coach, which was a great coup.

But no, I wouldn't say I ever had the same admiration. Yaser had that intangible gift of a white-hot fire in the belly to win every point of every match when he was a player, and he's tried, with moderate success, shall we say, to inject that into his players since he's returned as coach. A few have really gotten it. The closest example, for you all who never saw him play, is Courtney Pigram and his growl, although Yaser clearly surpassed even him in talent in his sport, as well as in the insatiable urgency of every single moment of a match. Neil Cusack, maybe a couple more of the early Irish guys, and maybe KJ (Kevin Johnson), in cross country would also be vague analogies, with Cusack being the closest, probably even more so than Pigram.

So.....when mullins was named AD, I was hopeful he could really do a good job in the fundraising aspect of the job (which we needed, as we always do). I never said he would be a great AD. There might be some here who *think* I said something along those lines, but I didn't. Because I really didn't know if he would do a good job overall, or not. And history quickly showed he wouldn't/couldn't stand up to paulie, and the rest, as the saying goes, is indeed history, in all it's unfortunate inglory. To say he's been a disappointment is an extremely gross understatement. His defensive, secretive reign was foreshadowed by that a priori knowledge I had.....but I just didn't know it at the time.

Yaser is much, much more direct. Downright frank, actually, and refuses to allow wimpy attitudes on the court. He can't stand less than 100% effort. He's been fantastic for the program, as I think virtually all would agree.

(03-06-2013 09:54 PM)rocket Wrote:  You have to wonder if Zaatini will stick around since Mullins is gone. He was sort of the "teacher's pet" and men's tennis got a lot of resources. With football coming on board, all minor sports may see some cuts, especially tennis. He might see this as the right time to go on to bigger and better things. ETSU tennis sure will look different without him and Coach Brooks. Brooks basically built the women's team, which was little more than a club team when he started and turned it into a championship team, and Zaatini built on the strong traditions already in place for the men.

I've been thinking along the same lines. I fear Sander doesn't realize how valuable Yaser is. Far more so than Fred, dare I say. I almost think I can "feel" that coming, although I sure hope I'm wrong.

I would disagree that the women's team was little more than a club team, but I know what you're saying. It hadn't remotely been built into the power it became with Brooks, although as you well know, there had been some good teams. I won't go into the murky cloud under which Steve left; perhaps you know even more than I do about the details. But that's water under the bridge. Or "brook(s) under the bridge", to make a bad pun of it. But I was sorry to see him leave.