I was kind of surprised to stumble across the CMU and EMU football game on television Saturday afternoon, though I have to say I didn’t stay for all of it. I mean, they were down 35-0 at half and lost the game 56-8. Here’s a link to the Eastern Echo’s collection of links about the game.
Anyway, while I didn’t enjoy the EMU game much Saturday afternoon, I very much enjoyed the Michigan game Saturday evening since my alma mater, the University of Iowa, won. It’s funny; annarbor.com had one (and, as far as I can tell, only one) story about the EMU-CMU game, and about 30 (over the last week) about the Iowa-Michigan game. I expect U of M to get more coverage, but that kind of lopsidedness makes the old Ann Arbor News look positively fair and balanced.
Oh well; it’s too bad that Central isn’t playing Michigan this year.
The last time we hired a Michigan assistant as the head coach in the 70s George Manns it was a disaster. We should have hired an upcoming coach like the Wayne State coach vs. wasting big dollars on chasing Ron English. Next we will start to hear that these are not his players and give his some time and 4 years from now we will be back looking for a head coach. I am sure Ron is a nice guy but so far the coaching has been awful and we will be lucky if we win a game. Someone said attendance was around 3,000 for homecoming so the fans have not bought in to the new regime.
Winning is the only thing that will bring the fans back!
The student section was packed and overflowing into the ‘reserved’ section at least, so that is a good sign (until the second quarter when we all left because it was 24-3 and we’d rather watch MSU v UM)
On a side note that is sort of relevant – at the school I currently attend (Penn State Law), there has been a lot of talks regarding the tax law and the money spent by institutions towards the NCAA as a ‘nonprofit organization’. It’d be interesting to see the impact on institutional spending if the NCAA were suddenly deemed to be a for-profit corporation.
Also, the Supreme Court will be hearing a case on the NFL’s organization structure later this fall that could change the way leagues are organized and controlled (essentially determining whether the NFL is one business with 32 ‘shareholders’ or 32 separate businesses for the application of anti-trust laws). This will not only have a huge impact on other major league sports, but there are potential unknown ramifications on the NCAA structure as well.
And what is the cost of this nonsense. In a time that EMU is facing huge shortfalls in state funding (especially after the stimulus money runs out) we choose to throw millions for a new domed practice facility, game management software etc. and for what? To hopefully turn around a losing program that will still lose huge sums of money even if they do start winning. Brilliant.
Will winning bring fans into see the Eagles? Yes, but not that many and for no longer than the winning streak continues. Most EMU fans of football prefer higher quality of play than will ever possibly be the norm in conferences like the MAC. There’s virtually no tradition within EMU students’ families of being EMU football fans. The Eagle Nation marketing theme is laughed at by EMU students or totally ignored.
I was really bummed when we lost GangGreen…EagleNation just didn’t feel right – maybe that was how it felt to be a Huron when they changed to the Eagles.