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Post by Kapitan on Jul 23, 2021 18:05:21 GMT
I think the NCAA is going to be undergoing several changes in the next few years. I would hate to be in charge or be responsible for its future in any way. I actually think it might make sense to disband it at what we consider the Power Five level. Let schools form whatever leagues they want. Be for-profit if they want. Make their own rules. Having a nonprofit entity enforcing complex amateurism rules for huge-dollar leagues with players who now aren't required to be truly amateur? What's the point of it?
For D2 and D3, maybe there is still some sense, but for D1 and especially high level D1? I don't know.
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Post by Sheriff John Stone on Jul 23, 2021 18:24:37 GMT
I think the NCAA is going to be undergoing several changes in the next few years. I would hate to be in charge or be responsible for its future in any way. I actually think it might make sense to disband it at what we consider the Power Five level. Let schools form whatever leagues they want. Be for-profit if they want. Make their own rules. Having a nonprofit entity enforcing complex amateurism rules for huge-dollar leagues with players who now aren't required to be truly amateur? What's the point of it?
For D2 and D3, maybe there is still some sense, but for D1 and especially high level D1? I don't know.
I think that's what will happen. "They" will make their own rules. I realize the NCAA...approved...the athletes now being allowed to accept compensation for endorsements and the like, but this almost feels like a mutiny, where something is being overtaken.
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Post by Kapitan on Jul 27, 2021 11:57:35 GMT
Another of Minnesota's highly touted high school basketball players being pursued by the hometown Gophers is leaving home: Demarion Watson, a class of '22, 6-8 wing whose stock has been rising over the past year to the point that he is now generally considered to be around the Top 100 in the nation, is headed to Iowa State.
New Cyclones coach TJ Otzelberger has been recruiting Minnesota hard since taking over at Iowa State, landing fellow '22 Top 100 guard Eli King as well as transfers SG Gabe Kalscheur (Minneapolis, Minnesota) and PF/C Robert Jones (Prior Lake, U of Denver).
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Post by Kapitan on Jul 27, 2021 14:28:49 GMT
I actually think it might make sense to disband it at what we consider the Power Five level. Let schools form whatever leagues they want. Be for-profit if they want. Make their own rules. Having a nonprofit entity enforcing complex amateurism rules for huge-dollar leagues with players who now aren't required to be truly amateur? What's the point of it?
For D2 and D3, maybe there is still some sense, but for D1 and especially high level D1? I don't know.
I think that's what will happen. "They" will make their own rules. I realize the NCAA...approved...the athletes now being allowed to accept compensation for endorsements and the like, but this almost feels like a mutiny, where something is being overtaken. One thing about this is, is it really a mutiny? Or rather, is a mutiny a bad thing in this case? Why should universities have a governing body like the NCAA specifically over them? It's just tradition, really. The NCAA was a body assembled to control the early 20th century Wild West of corrupt college sports. But college sports remained corrupt, and the NCAA frankly is a fox guarding the henhouse.
As the landscape is inevitably changing regardless, why not reinvent things more thoroughly so that they work better for the current situation and ideal near-term objectives, as opposed to trying to keep fitting into a century-old paradigm?
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Post by Sheriff John Stone on Jul 27, 2021 15:24:47 GMT
I think that's what will happen. "They" will make their own rules. I realize the NCAA...approved...the athletes now being allowed to accept compensation for endorsements and the like, but this almost feels like a mutiny, where something is being overtaken. One thing about this is, is it really a mutiny? Or rather, is a mutiny a bad thing in this case? Why should universities have a governing body like the NCAA specifically over them? It's just tradition, really. The NCAA was a body assembled to control the early 20th century Wild West of corrupt college sports. But college sports remained corrupt, and the NCAA frankly is a fox guarding the henhouse.
As the landscape is inevitably changing regardless, why not reinvent things more thoroughly so that they work better for the current situation and ideal near-term objectives, as opposed to trying to keep fitting into a century-old paradigm?
Well, not all mutinies are bad. Ever see The Caine Mutiny?
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Post by Kapitan on Jul 27, 2021 15:28:48 GMT
OK, so we're both roughly on the same page, maybe. I'm not sure, myself. But I definitely look at it as, the status quo isn't actually very good. So not all change is inherently bad. That said, it's not necessarily good either. It really comes down to the details.
The biggest questions, I think, are how centralized should college sports be? Does it make sense to further separate the revenue generators (which are basically pro teams) from everything else? Etc.
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Post by Kapitan on Jul 31, 2021 21:41:25 GMT
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Post by Kapitan on Aug 4, 2021 20:25:09 GMT
The Gophers picked up an under-the-radar, but sneakily important basketball commitment today: Braeden Carrington, a 6-4 SG from Park Center HS (Brooklyn Park, MN, a Minneapolis suburb) committed.
He's not rated among the Top 100 recruits nationally, but in the past year or so he's gone from almost entirely off the radar (other than to recruiting freaks) to generally considered just outside of that Top 100. He's a phenomenal shooter--REALLY good--and he also spends some time as a PG. He's a smart player. And he's still growing. (His head coach said he may be 6-5 by now, and he was listed 6-3 last season.) I think at worst, barring injuries or some massive behavioral flaws that I have no reason to believe exist, he will be a deep bench player and shooting specialist. And I have no reason to believe he won't be better than that, a rotation player within a year or so and possibly a good starter later.
No disrespect to him or his game whatsoever, but maybe even more important is that he comes from Grassroots Sizzle, the AAU program that has recently produced Jalen Suggs and Chet Holmgren, and currently has Prince Aligbe (Top 100 but unsigned yet), Demarion Watson (committed to Iowa State), has probably half a dozen other D1 recruits on their current senior team, and is a hugely important program to serve as a resource. Coach Pitino failed miserably with them, basically not recruiting them at all. Making inroads to the MN basketball scene will require Sizzle, even though that's certainly not the only program that matters.
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Post by Sheriff John Stone on Aug 27, 2021 1:13:41 GMT
The Memphis basketball coaching staff is turning into a Dream Team:
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Post by Kapitan on Aug 27, 2021 11:33:37 GMT
It already was one to begin with! Penny's first staff there had former NBA players Mike Miller and Sam Mitchell (the latter also a former NBA Coach of the Year). It has almost fully turned over since that first year, but now you've got Larry Brown and Rasheed Wallace...
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Post by Kapitan on Aug 27, 2021 20:33:07 GMT
By the way, it is worth noting that Coach Hardaway isn't just signing big-name coaches: his 2021 recruiting class includes the #4 and #5 prospect in the class of '21 (using 247 Sports' rankings), as well as #44, #99, #122, and #144. Obviously ratings are fluid and subjective, but one thing is clear: this class is loaded with talent. They also bring in two former Top 100 recruits as transfers.
In all, their class includes one PG, five wings, one PF, and two Cs.
Oh, and that #4 prospect? He just reclassified up to class of '21: he was the #1 rated player in the '22 class. Emoni Bates is a VERY talented offensive player in the Kevin Durant mold. But he is, as that reclassification would indicate, young. He won't turn 18 until January.
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Post by Sheriff John Stone on Aug 27, 2021 20:42:37 GMT
I'm not a big college basketball fan, but I might have to catch a Memphis game and see if the team (cough) plays the game the right way.
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Post by Kapitan on Aug 31, 2021 11:58:59 GMT
New Gophers basketball coach Ben Johnson got his third in-state 2022 commitment yesterday, with super-athletic 6-7 wing Joshua Ola-Joseph of Osseo (a small northwestern suburb of Minneapolis). Ola-Joseph joins 6-3 shooting guard Braeden Carrington (Park Center) and 6-9 PF/C Pharrel Payne (Cottage Grove).
What's interesting is that whle Johnson came in with a mandate to sign local players--and as a Minneapolis native who played for the Gophers, as a good candidate to draw them in--he actually was unable to ink any of the highest-rated Minnesota prospects. Point guard Tre Holloman signed with Michigan State; Eli King and Demarion Watson both committed to Iowa State; Cam Heide is off to Purdue.
But this spring and summer, all three of those recent commits (Carrington, Payne, Ola-Joseph) really rose in recruiting circles to be considered among the fastest-rising prospects in the country, to say nothing of the state. Each of them is arguably on the fringe of being a Top 100 prospect nationally.
The result is that, thanks to an inordinately deep '22 class, Coach Johnson was somehow able to miss on all those top prospects on whom he had a late start but somehow also ink a small handful of up-and-coming, legitimately talented in-state prospects. It was a good year to get a late start!
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Post by Kapitan on Sept 2, 2021 11:52:58 GMT
The talented Gophers football team looking to bounce back to 2019 form after an abbreviated, injury-plagued and COVID-ravaged 2020, opens the season tonight by hosting conference rival and national powerhouse Ohio State.
Talk about a tough opening game! Whatever happened to starting each season against the likes of Southeast Iowa Technical College or whatever? It's nice to see what you're working with and build a little conference before diving into the deep end.
The Gophers are 14-point underdogs. Part of me thinks we have a real chance to compete, but I'm trying to just take it as it comes and hope it's a good game.
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Post by The Cincinnati Kid on Sept 2, 2021 14:48:56 GMT
I'm really looking forward to the Bearcats season. We have a legitimate shot at the playoff, which would be a first for a non P5 team. I've been trying to grab some tickets to see them at Notre Dame, but it was the first to sell out and third party sites are charging outrageous prices (that I might end up paying anyway).
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