In the last six days, I am certain that I spent at least 25 hours in the car and most of it behind the wheel. A long but good family trip. Anyway, I’m a bit behind, but I came across a couple of things I thought I’d group together in one post to kick off the race to the end of the semester.
- EMU Football finishes perfectly bad season. I don’t want to dwell too much on the emu’s perfectly wrong, 0-12 season, mainly because I’ve dumped enough on them already and I don’t want to kick ‘em when they’re down. But a sports savvy colleague of mine pointed out a problem that I hadn’t really thought about before. Sure, we should give Ron English at least one more year as head coach; but what exactly has this guy got to recruit on? “Hey, come play for me at EMU– we’re already at the bottom!”
- “Haves vs. Have-Nots at Public Universities,” from The New York Times. A lot of interesting points here, including the idea that maybe students from different income levels ought to pay different amounts of tuition at public universities.
- “Faculty objects to changing UT’s tenure process,” from the Toledo Blade, though I saw a version of this story a couple weeks ago in Inside Higher Ed. Basically, the president at the University of Toledo wants to be able to interview faculty going up for tenure to help aid his decision, and the faculty union is not happy about it. I think this is one of those situations in which both the suits and the union are wrong. I mean, the union shouldn’t be freaking out about faculty talking to the president; rather, I think faculty ought to be happy that the president wants to be a part of the process. Conversely, if UT President Lloyd Jacobs thinks that a 30 minute interview is all he needs to make an informed judgment about the tenure worthiness of faculty member, well, he’s nuts. The Blade article quotes the president of the faculty union as saying “Dr. Jacobs is on record talking about how he’ll be able to judge people on the basis of gestures, intonation, and other things.” That’s a little disturbing.
Just a fast comment about EMU football. The EMU coaches aren’t going to be going head to head with UM/MSU recruits. However, they can sell positive points about EMU and I’ve known many high school athletes that like the idea of being part of a class of recruits to help turn a program around. In fairness to Coach English, the talent level here was a bit lower than MAC level. I believe in giving college coaches 4-5 years to prove themselves because of the recruiting process. On a lighter note, the LA Times has always run a “bottom” 10 for college football and professional football. Years ago (30 yrs ago or so) I became a fan of Wake Forest because they were ranked #1. In an odd way, it does generate interest as people look to see what happens with the school. And yes, I was home for Thanksgiving and the Times has EMU as #1 (with excellent MAC coverage of the week’s games). In some way, I can live with following in the footsteps of Wake Forest – especially with their academic reputation.
This is the first time since 1981, i think, that EMU has won no games all season, but we’ve had some recent seasons in which we’ve barely won a game or two, and it’s been ages since we’ve had a “winning season”. If football success can, as it is argued by its advocates, do great things for a school, then why isn’t it also true that football failure doesn’t do real damage to a school’s reputation? Any one recall what Murray Sperber says on this? The tag of a loser school is an expensive one to wear, and a hard one to drop.
The Prez is committed to winning!
Glad the season is over…BB is a lot more fun and we win games!!!
Keep dreaming because that is what the administration is doing with Ron English. Good thing they don’t pay for performance around the University because otherwise English would owe the Univerisyt money.
To answer sitedad’s question (if it’s a real question or just intended to poke fun) about how would a team at the bottom recruit: It’d be a good sell for those kids that are not top-tier recruits. Instead of playing practice squad and 2nd and 3rd string their entire collegiate careers at a well-known powerhouse, why not go to a school where you’ll actually get to play?
You know, why go to U-M or MSU as a quarterback and ride the pine all four years when you have a better chance of playing and succeeding at EMU? You figure a lot of these guys, if they’re not starting (or getting ample playing time) at their position by their junior year, then they probably aren’t going to play much their senior year because the team is already grooming the new freshmen and sophomores to replace the current starters come next year.
Jim – because riding the pine at a powerhouse school (although UM and MSU are not powerhouses right now) might still get you a professional contract post draft (or with a semi-pro team or non American pro team – CFL, Europe, etc)
Jim, it’s a real question. I mean, seriously: what has English got to recruit on? I hear what you’re saying about a place like EMU attracting not top-tier recruits and/or folks who want to play, but if that’s all we’re looking for, they could hire me as coach. And I work a lot cheaper than English does!
Fast item: The latest research does not support the idea that athletics defines how a university is perceived. For those of you who might be interested, the scholarly conference on collegiate sport (CSRI) will be held Apring 21-23 at North Carolina Chapel Hill. It’s an excellent conference.
Fast update. The final bottom 10 (from Steve Harvey of the LA Times): W. Kentucky #1, EMU #2 and further down the bottom 10: Florida International, Miami (OH), Kansas, Michigan, and Notre Dame. (I can’t remember the other 3)