Last November, my brother went on a college tour, and I wanted to go to Bass Pro Shop. I am lucky to get to two or three Reds games a year, it is 100 miles away.Originally Posted by Cyclone792
The money I speak of is the athletic departments budget. They aren't pulling money out of construction to pay coaches and buy shoulder pads.
Hugs, smiling, and interactive Twitter accounts, don't mean winning baseball. Until this community understands that we are cursed to relive the madness.
There's a difference between wanting something and something being beneficial. As a UD basketball fan, I hear it all the time regarding a game with Wright State. It just doesn't make much sense for Ohio State to play UC on the road every two years, both economically and in terms of the BCS. They can't control the Big Ten being bad. They have to plan for a strong Big Ten, because if they aren't pushing a BCS bowl at minimum (like this season), they fail. So they play one tough OOC game, and three wins to generate money. It's not about UC, don't be myopic. It's about everyone. It doesn't make sense for any team with the slimmest of legit national title hopes to play two tough OOC games. OSU will play anyone, just not everyone. "Everyone" is just coaches rhetoric.
Since football schedules are set a decade in advance, there's nothing that can be done for a while. If UC keeps building and becomes a perennial Big East and occasional national title contender, maybe we see something happen down the road. It's insane to blame Ohio State when UC is just now getting to the point where they have a logical belief that they can hang with OSU every Saturday, not just the obligatory "given Saturday."
Now, if we had a playoff where 2 losses still kept OSU in the title hunt...then we could talk.
That's why the system needs to change, but that's another discussion. In reality, each BCS team needs to schedule two games against another BCS team each season ... one at home and one on the road.
And FWIW, UC and UD need to get back to playing each other in hoops.
The Lost Decade Average Season: 74-88
2014-22 Average Season: 71-91
Contrary to what you believe, the athletic department is fine.
If they were in such dire circumstances, then part (or all) of Varsity Village would have never happened. The baseball stadium was rebuilt, renovated soccer fields, state of the art facilities, you name it. In fact, the recent vast upgrades to the facilities as a whole has greatly benefitted UC athletics and also aided their ability to develop the football program even this far.
Just last week they announced plans for the practice bubble. If the athletic department was struggling, that practice bubble wouldn't be happening.
The Lost Decade Average Season: 74-88
2014-22 Average Season: 71-91
Much of that was bought and paid for before the Huggins fiasco.
The practice bubble is a welcome addition. It goes towards the goal of retaining Brian Kelly. They are going to have to pay him like a top flight coach, or someone else will.
Hugs, smiling, and interactive Twitter accounts, don't mean winning baseball. Until this community understands that we are cursed to relive the madness.
That's Ohio State's fault!
Yeah, they are. As noted by others, they have a home-and-home scheduled with major competition for the next decade. They don't control the strength of their conference. They don't control what happens to the teams they schedule six years in advance. You are just expecting something from Ohio State that no other program does, including UC.
You guys just need to come to the realization that your football program isn't there yet. It's not arrogance, it's reality, and this time I'm the one being reasonable. If you had a truly great football program, you wouldn't play road games at Yager Stadium; this year Vanderbilt was the first SEC team to ever play there. Top flight programs just don't play road games in stadiums that hold 30,000 people.
Ohio State is the king of college football in Ohio. Again, not arrogance, but reality. So, by your logic, should Ohio State play Toledo, Kent State, Akron, Bowling Green, Ohio, and Miami every year? They are from Ohio, so shouldn't they be yearly rivals as well? I'm sure Miami wants a "fair rotation of home and road games in both basketball and football" with Ohio State, does that mean the Buckeyes should play road games at Yager Stadium and flush millions of dollars down the drain? Can you imagine Ohio State playing in a MAC stadium? It would be a circus, anyone who is familiar with supply and demand understands this.
The program isn't crap, but as of a few years ago UC was playing in Conference USA. The football program was on the same level as several MAC schools. Sometimes, there are reasons for excuses...
As I said several posts back, Ohio State's true athletic department colors show with their basketball program. They ducked UC for nearly two decades during the Huggins era and hid behind the Damon Flint excuse. Ohio State just couldn't see themselves playing a decent in-state team from Conference USA. So long as Bob Huggins was around, Ohio State was never going to play UC, or so was the apparent claim. They only agreed to play UC when UC had one of its worst teams in decades and Ohio State had one of its best teams in decades. And when Cronin approached Matta about playing regularly, Matta brushed him off.
Now it's two years later and we see Ohio State's excuse about not playing Huggins was merely a convenient excuse for the time.
The Lost Decade Average Season: 74-88
2014-22 Average Season: 71-91
Do you really care? I said before my opinion of OSU basketball, but this is a little pervasive. If Thad had agreed to a home and home last year and this year, or even "neutral site" games at Nationwide and US Bank? Would you be happier? I would bet that the argument would be the same. They wanted to play us while we are down, etc etc etc. I have big hopes for UC this season, but that team is flawed. When a game comes around where they need two point guards they are in deep trouble.
Maybe Thad revisits the option in a few years. Who knows, who cares?
Hugs, smiling, and interactive Twitter accounts, don't mean winning baseball. Until this community understands that we are cursed to relive the madness.
Well, we know that these two teams will never play each other 100 times. So it's purely subjective to say how many times OSU would win/lose vs the Bearcats. But my subjective opinion is that OSU would beat them 90 out of 100.
Since 2000, the Bearcats have played Big 10 schools 7 times, and are 0-7.
The Big 10 is 3-1 vs the Big East in 2008.
Again Cyclone.... even as a HUGE Buckeye fan, I love following programs like the Bearcats (and Xavier). Their basketball programs have had far more consistent success then even the Buckeyes. And I fully support the efforts of the University of Cincinnati, in the last few years, in leaving Conference USA and moving to the Big East, in trying to elevate their football program to a top 20 team and get national recognition.
But for a program like Cincinnati's, there is a BIG time financial risk/undertaking that bigger, national programs don't have, and who can "absorb" it better. And even the Bearcat's current Athletic Director says so....
http://news.cincinnati.com/article/2...0314/1009/EDIT
And sadly, but true, it's a well known fact that coaches, especially those that show a measure of success, such as what Kelly is doing with the Bearcats, are very hard to retain, and use these programs as stepping stones to move to those bigger schools, national recognition, and more importantly - having those huge financial resources available to them.Giddiness routed practicality when the Big East asked UC to become a member. It was like walking into a Mercedes showroom with a dollar in your wallet. Buy the sedan now, figure out how to pay for it later. Smell that new league smell. Cincinnati couldn't say no.
Now, there's a practice bubble to be built, practice fields to construct, a successful and popular football coach to keep happy, a basketball program and its crabby fan base to rehab... and....
money to pay for it all?
Mike Thomas wasn't athletic director when UC bought the Mercedes. He's charged with paying for it. He's not complaining, not even close. Who wouldn't jump from Conference USA to the Big East? It's just that, well, the big time costs. Big time.
"There was a never a question we should be in the Big East," Thomas said. "But we're basically down at the bottom (of the conference) with the resources we have for our 18 sports. You can be successful with some of your programs with less. But to sustain (success) is extremely difficult. Having the resources affects your personnel, your facilities, your budgets. In that area, we have some work to do."
Tressel came from that scenario (Youngstown State). So did Rodriguez, now with Michigan.
The above article also states this....
OSU has the largest Athletic Department budget in the nation (110 million). I think the Bearcats is somewhere around 25 mil?Ten years ago, we spoke with straight faces of abolishing football in Clifton. Now, the hottest topic is how to keep Kelly's considerable ambitions hitched to the UC wagon.
Props to Thomas, who couldn't have inherited a worse situation, then hired Brian Kelly. Now, all the AD has to do is raise enough money so the checks don't bounce.
He has to find a way to pay for the practice facility and the fields Kelly requested. If the bubble isn't up by next September and the fields by next December, Kelly's contract stipulates the buyout in his deal is reduced by half.
In other words, it would make it twice as easy for a prospective suitor to pay UC for Kelly's services.
Kelly was the perfect hire for UC football. Which means he'll be perfectly ready to move on, when the opportunity arises. If the Bearcats do get to the Orange Bowl, they'll need T. Boone Pickens to keep Kelly in red and black.
Consistency in winning
Again - Brian Kelly, who replaced Minter, is doing a fantastic job. But other then what Kelly is currently doing, you have to go back over 50 years, under Sid Gillman, to find the glory days of Bearcat football. Since then, there have been occassional glimpses of hope, a few spurts, but a hard time maintaining consistency. 28 losing seasons in the last 54 years. Ten straight from '83-'93. Their overall record is 506-530-51 (.488)
And what "level" would that be? I don't know that Buckeye fans are pretending anything. We're just as proud of our school as Bearcat fans are of theirs. We don't attempt to make them out to be anything more then what they are.CE said it best: Ohio State is the better team, but it's nowhere near to the level that Buckeye fans want to pretend it is.
In the state of Ohio, the Buckeyes are the "big dog". That's not disparaging those other intra-state college football program, but simply the reality of the situation. No other program within the state, historically, has built and maintained the national recognition, nor consistently maintained the level of success that the program at OSU has done. And there is a jealousy factor at play there too as those other programs try to attain to that level that OSU possesses. It's David going after Goliath.
The bottomline to all of this are those two lopsided losses in the BCS NC games over the last two years. People like to take those and then say that OSU is not that it's all cracked up to be. Really? Since the inception of the BCS, OSU has played in THREE of those championship games, and won one. There has only been one repeat winner (LSU). So it's not an easy task to attain to.
The fact that they've gotten to those games - and were selected to be there by that very same BCS computer ranking system - is a testament IMO to the success of this program far more then those losses.
And it's obvious that OSU will be edged out this year when it comes to a BCS Bowl. Thems the rules. But wherever OSU goes, they know their fans will show up in mass quantities and bring in large amounts of revenue.
They are a high profile college football program.
Last edited by GAC; 11-25-2008 at 08:24 AM.
"In my day you had musicians who experimented with drugs. Now it's druggies experimenting with music" - Alfred G Clark (circa 1972)
It would be tough considering that contracts are being made into 2015. The problem I see with mandating BCS schools to play other BCS schools is that doesn't mean they are going to be playing quality teams. If one team played a non-conference schedule that included BYU and Utah this season while another played Indiana and WSU who played the better schedule. Your rule would indicate that the second team in playing two awful teams in BCS conferences played the better schedule.
Say for instance UC and OSU agree to play each other 5 times in a 10 year span. UC is granted 2 home games at PBS. Kelly leaves and UC returns to a middle to bottom of the pack Big East school. OSU has two defacto home games at PBS but loses out on any revenue. They already have some inroads in the Cincy area for recruiting so they lose a national audience playing UC. And UC is a team that is playing with nothing to lose. It really is a lose lose situation for OSU football.
How the Ohio State athletic department handled the basketball situation is a microcosm of how they are. Why not play annually now? Why not in the 90s? Why not before? UC doesn't have any problem hooking up with Xavier; Kentucky doesn't have any problem hooking up with Louisville.
Not that it matters much anymore anyway as the roles will likely be reversed. The Big East is rolling into the midwest and flexing their muscle in Big Ten territory, both in prestige and in recruiting. Meanwhile each December the ACC piles on their annual beatdown of the Big Ten. The Big Ten has fallen behind in hoops and is evolving into a second tier conference rather than maintaining its status as a power conference; it's just not going to be near the same level with the Big East or ACC in hoops without a shakeup.
The Lost Decade Average Season: 74-88
2014-22 Average Season: 71-91
True.
But whose fault is it when OSU is allowed to "strong arm" a school like the Bearcats to play in Columbus (2012)? Shouldn't the blame fall on the Bearcats' administration for not standing their ground, demanding some respect from OSU, instead of accepting a million bucks to move the game to Columbus?
I can understand the position by some about wanting to play the Bucks in Nippert Stadium; but the fact of the matter is that the Bearcat brass is conceding to the situation that brings the most money to the school, because they need it badly if they want to continue to progress up that curve.
Whose decision was it to play the 2002 game in PBS? It made sense, and provided both teams with better paydays since 66,000 showed up for that game, and Nippert only holds 35,000.
Why is OSU playing Toledo in '09 at Cleveland Stadium? Money. The Glass Bowl only holds 26,000. And for an intra-state game, you're going to get that many Buckeye fans alone travelling there to see it.
"In my day you had musicians who experimented with drugs. Now it's druggies experimenting with music" - Alfred G Clark (circa 1972)
As far as the 2012 game, Ohio State was going to opt out of the game. The language of the contract signed by both teams gave Ohio State that option.
So, instead of not playing the game at all, UC negotiated to receive the $1M and play the game at OSU. They would have rather played the game at PBS, but it came down to @OSU or nothing.
http://gobearcats.cstv.com/sports/m-...031808aaa.html
UC Athletics Announces Football Schedule Changes with Ohio State
2012 and 2014 games to be played in Columbus following contractual action by OSU
March 18, 2008
CINCINNATI - The University of Cincinnati Department of Athletics has announced changes to its future football series with Ohio State, moving the 2012 game from Cincinnati to Columbus. The final game of the original contract, signed in 2003, will also be played in 2014 in Columbus.
Following discussions with Ohio State Athletics in which they indicated their intent to opt out of the 2012 game, originally scheduled at Paul Brown Stadium, UC negotiated an enhanced agreement to play the game in Columbus. The compensation for that game now includes cash payments to Cincinnati valued at $1,000,000. These payments begin immediately and will be put toward funding of the new football initiatives at UC.
"This particular football scheduling agreement with Ohio State, like all agreements, contained a buyout clause for the game in 2012." says Director of Athletics Mike Thomas. "It was clear that Ohio State was prepared to exercise its contractual option to vacate this particular game, but we were able to negotiate an enhanced agreement for 2012."
"UC had no legal recourse, nor means to stop this action from taking place, due to the language in the original contract."
Head football coach Brian Kelly, who was involved in the negotiations, stated, "In this case UC is making the best out of a difficult pre-existing contract. It would be a shame to see the only BCS schools in the state of Ohio end an in-state rivalry on the football field. The state with the most-storied tradition in high school football should have that same excitement at the college level."
"I agree with Mike Thomas that playing future games on an even playing field will be an important factor in scheduling for the future," continued Kelly. "This course of action is consistent with my philosophy that Cincinnati will play anyone, anywhere, at anytime."
The University of Cincinnati will close this current scheduling arrangement with the Buckeyes with a final game in 2014, also in Columbus. UC Athletics will be paid $375,000 from Ohio State for this final game, which ends the terms of the 2003 scheduling agreement. This is the final game between Cincinnati and Ohio State on the books.
She used to wake me up with coffee ever morning
The original contract gave Ohio State a buyout clause to just cancel the game, and Ohio State notified UC that they were going to exercise that clause last offseason. Instead of just taking money to cancel the game, UC re-negotiated to play the game in Columbus while taking a million bucks.
What I don't get is why Ohio State wanted to take the buyout. The buyout is supposed to protect Ohio State from UC's program regressing, not the other way around. If UC went in the toilet last year and Ohio State opted for the buyout, then that's a bit more understandable. But if UC's program becomes a decent BCS program, wouldn't Ohio State want that type of road game on their schedule? If UC is on the upswing, wouldn't Ohio State be interested in playing them?
But to opt for the buyout after what was then UC's best season in recent history? And coming on the heels of what the OSU basketball program did?
The Lost Decade Average Season: 74-88
2014-22 Average Season: 71-91
Posting Permissions
|
Board Moderators may, at their discretion and judgment, delete and/or edit any messages that violate any of the following guidelines: 1. Explicit references to alleged illegal or unlawful acts. 2. Graphic sexual descriptions. 3. Racial or ethnic slurs. 4. Use of edgy language (including masked profanity). 5. Direct personal attacks, flames, fights, trolling, baiting, name-calling, general nuisance, excessive player criticism or anything along those lines. 6. Posting spam. 7. Each person may have only one user account. It is fine to be critical here - that's what this board is for. But let's not beat a subject or a player to death, please. |
Reply With Quote