Category Archives: Sports

Lots of basketball news

Posted on March 6, 2012 by sitedad | 1 Comment

First, the bad news. The Emus lost last night and are now out of the MAC tourney. But while that’s disappointing, it sounds like the men’s team had a pretty decent year– not great, because they finished 14-18 overall, but they did win the west half of the conference with a 9-7 record. And new coach Rob Murphy was named the MAC coach of the year.

As for the women’s team: they finished 21-8 and at the top of the west part of the MAC, and I have to assume that if they do decent in the MAC tournament, they have a decent shot of getting into the NCAA tournament? Plus Tavelyn James was selected as the MAC Player of the Year, and she received the Frances Pomeroy Naismith Award. So congrats to her!

→ 1 Comment

Posted in In the media..., Sports, Student Life

Basketball cancelled for duel (well, not really)

Posted on March 5, 2012 by sitedad | 2 Comments

I received a kind of surprising email from Geoff Larcom the other day. The subject line was “You’re invited to watch EMU duel Northern Illinois Monday night in MAC Tournament game at Convocation Center.” Is that what college sports has come down to now? For the play-offs, we just agree to have a knife fight?

Seriously though, there is actually a basketball game going on this evening, though I think the right verb in that first sentence is “play”:

The Eastern Michigan University men’s basketball team will duel Northern Illinois University in a first-round Mid-American Conference playoff game at 7 p.m. in the Convocation Center Monday, March 5. First-year coach Rob Murphy’s team has enjoyed an exceptional inaugural season, finishing first in the MAC West and displaying tenacious defense and timely offense.

EMU is seeded fifth in the MAC Men’s Tournament, and Northern Illinois is seeded 12th. The winner of Monday night’s game will face the winner of Ball State versus Western Michigan in the second round at Quicken Loans Arena in Cleveland, Ohio Wednesday, March 7, at 7 p.m.

Sadly, I haven’t been able to make a single basketball game this season and I teach tonight, so I’ll be missing this one too. But it sounds like Murphy’s team did pretty decent this season.

→ 2 Comments

Posted in EMU Events, Sports

“Top 10 EMU officials collect combined $2.4 million”

Posted on February 24, 2012 by sitedad | 13 Comments

From annarbor.com, “Top 10 Eastern Michigan University officials collect combined $2.4 million in 2011.” You know, I have to say that I’m not really bothered too much by this list. I think the coaches get paid too much money, but unless EMU wants to get out of the big-time sports business (not a bad idea, never gonna happen) we’re going to pay enormous salaries for those people.

It’s a worthwhile read, but here’s the top 10 list:

Football coach Ronald English: $367,920
President Susan Martin: $295,120
Former Provost Jack Kay: $274,083
General Counsel Gloria Hage: $227,293
Vice President of Development Thomas Russell: $220,645
Assistant football coach Phil Snow: $214,481
Former basketball coach Edward Ramsey: $202,828
Chief Financial Officer John Lumm: $197,277
Athletic Director Derrick Gragg: $196,466
Social work faculty Donald Loppnow:$194,738

By the way, the next 10 highest paid EMU employees? All faculty, and all but one of them a College of Business prof.

→ 13 Comments

Posted in Administrator Life, Budgets, EMU President, Faculty Life, In the media..., Sports, Staff Life

Two bits of extra credit reading

Posted on December 16, 2011 by sitedad | 1 Comment

I’m not procrastinating from finishing up my fall term– honestly, I’m not! Well, maybe a little. In any event, I thought I’d pass along two links to things that I thought would be of interest here.

First, there’s ”Bowling for Chumps,” by Pete Kotz in The Village Voice. Alert EMUTalk reader Dick Schwarze posted this in the comments and I thought it deserved a promotion to the main part of the site. Kind of a long piece, but an extremely detailed account of the highly dubious world of college bowl games. Makes me glad that the Emus didn’t quite get there this year.

Second, there’s “What is College For?” a column in the “opinionator” part of the New York Times by Gary Gutting. It simply puts out there an answer to the question at hand that is a useful reminder that college is about more than job training and that both faculty and students have an obligation to remember that. I found it an inspiring way to get to that pile of grading.

Speaking of which….

→ 1 Comment

Posted in Academics, Blogosphere, Faculty Life, In the media..., Sports, Student Life

“Women defeat U of M, James sets EMU record”

Posted on December 12, 2011 by sitedad | 2 Comments

I haven’t been following basketball too closely yet, but as the Echo reported, it would appear the women’s team is doing pretty well– at least they just beat Michigan and they’re 6-3 right now. I have no idea if U of M’s women’s basketball team is any good this year– and guessing from this game, I’d guess not– but it’s still always good to see the Emus come out on top of that other university in town.

→ 2 Comments

Posted in College Fun, In the media..., Sports

At the EMU-MSU game, perhaps the ZOOperstars were the highlight

Posted on November 28, 2011 by sitedad | 6 Comments

I’ve been pretty busy with the ol’ day job since returning from my undisclosed location over the Thanksgiving break, so my apologies for some of the layout issues with the banner pictures on the site. I’m hoping to fix that yet this week if things slow down a bit. But I did have time to notice in my news feed that Michigan State came out a little ahead of EMU on Sunday’s game. And by “little ahead,” I mean that MSU didn’t lap EMU; rather, they only won 72-40. Holy cannoli, that ain’t good. And there were only 3,711 folks there? Really?

Well, at least there was this bit from some group/person/fake animal called the ZOOperstars:

→ 6 Comments

Posted in College Fun, In the media..., Sports

Emus get flushed by the flashes

Posted on November 20, 2011 by sitedad | 2 Comments

I think it is fair to say now that the Emu’s chances for a football bowl game, even in something like the Scruffy McFerson’s Chicken Pick’in Bowl, are now zero with the loss to the Kent State “Golden Flashes.”

Here’s a link to the annarbor.com story; here’s a link to the emueagles.com story. Either way, they lost to Kent State 28-22, which means the Emu’s only chance at a bowl at this point (and it’d only be a “chance,” not a guarantee) is to beat a favored Northern Illinois team in Illinois. Which means no one ought to be buying plane tickets to New Orleans or whatever other bowl town just yet.

So, let’s just assume for a moment that things go as expected at Northern Illinois and the Emus lose. Stranger upsets have happen, so this is by no means a forgone conclusion– I mean, it’s not like their last game is against Michigan or something. But again, let’s just assume that what comes to pass and the Emus finish 6-6 overall and 4-4 in the conference. What have we learned here?

→ 2 Comments

Posted in In the media..., Sports

“Penn State could learn lessons from EMU’s failure to report crime”

Posted on November 19, 2011 by sitedad | 1 Comment

annarbor.com ran an article called “Penn State could learn lessons from EMU’s failure to report crime,” which is really about this article on the ABC News web site, “Lessons for Penn State: Cover-Ups Cost Money, Student Lives.” By the way, annarbor.com seems to do this a lot, running stories as if they came up with them from other web sites. Kind of like this blog, only a) I’m always pretty clear on giving credit, and b) I don’t claim to be a news source– more a rumor source, frankly. But I digress.

Anyway, I think the ABC story is actually kind of a mish-mosh mess and I don’t really see the connections to the Dickinson murder. Oh, don’t get me wrong– Dickinson’s rape and murder were obviously horrible, and the EMU administration’s cover-up of it was also obviously horrible. But the botched handling of Dickinson’s murder happened in a short period of time and among a relatively small group of administrators, whereas the child abuse scandal at Penn State seems to have gone on for years and it involved a lot of people.

→ 1 Comment

Posted in Dickinson Murder, In the media..., Sports

“Hrabowski: An educator focused on math and science”

Posted on November 18, 2011 by sitedad | Leave a comment

To take folks into the weekend, I thought I’d share this video from a story about Freeman Hrabowski that was on 60 Minutes last weekend. Here’s a link to it if the embedded video doesn’t work.

Hrabowski is the President of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, which is a university sorta/kinda like EMU in some ways– both are regional institutions with a history of working with “at risk” and otherwise non-traditional students, commuters, etc. It’s an inspiring piece about the ways that he’s leading innovation there. Anyway, one of the things he talks about in this interview (albeit briefly) is football. From the transcript:

Hrabowski: We need hands on experiences. We need to be encouraging that curiosity. And people cannot– should not be allowed simply to sit back and be bored.

Students can also get jobs and internships at one of 76 companies located on campus. Most are technology startups. They get help growing their businesses and tax credits, along with access to students and faculty. One thing you won’t find at UMBC…

Pitts: You had a chance to get a football team at UMBC, right? And you said no?

Hrabowski: People talk about that. Right. I mean, well– well, first of all, it takes a lot of money for a football team to win.

Hrabowski prefers to win on different playing fields. Incoming freshman Francois Rice noticed right away.

Francois Rice: It seems like everything’s flipped. Where, you might go to another university and the football team might be top dog. Here, it’s the chess team that’s top dog. And it’s–

Pitts: The chess team?

Rice: Yeah, it’s cool to be smart.

Rice is part of the 23rd incoming class of Meyerhoff Scholars – a program that recruits high achievers in math, science and engineering who are aiming for graduate degrees and careers in research.

Oh, if we had only put our money into the chess team. Or academics, or something.

→ Leave a comment

Posted in Academics, Budgets, EMU President, In the media..., Sports