FB: Ohio Athletic Conference

[scotty]

On another note, I have some friends in the NFL and the word is some scouts really, really like Garcon. Two in particular think he could make a nice defensive back project but obviously if he gets a chance at all it'll be on special teams. Their take on him was, "What was he doing playing DIII ?"

golf clap...

[theaprof]

Congrats RC--my daughters (2) were 3 and 5 last week and now they are a senior and a sophomore in college--how the he11 did that happen?  Enjoy your time.  I have an Al Kaline baseball bat that I kept near the front door that I would be willing to lend you for the formative years.

Hope you, your wife, and your daughter have as wonderful a time as my wife and I have had with our girls.

The wonder of birth kinda puts things in perspective, doesn't it.  Did we lose a football game this year?  Yup, but in the long run, who cares?   I do know that I care that my daughters are healthy and happy.  Football will be back next year.

Good luck and blessings upon you and your family.

Thea Prof

p.s.--Maybe they will grow up and go to a good school, unlike their Dad!!

[SaintsFAN]

sit-n-spin, scotty.

[reality check]

p.s.--Maybe they will grow up and go to a good school, unlike their Dad!!

As long as she doesn't like purple, she can go anywhere she wants.   

[SaintsFAN]

reality,

Terry Malone used to tell us that purple was the color of royalty, unless you wore it because you "played for the other team", if you know what I mean.


**for everyone else...Terry Malone is the all-time winningest coach in OHSAA history...and he was very opinoinated.  His comment was about Elder HS's colors.  Though MTU is the closest thing to royalty that Division 3 has..

[reality check]

SaintsFan

If you carbon-dated Terry Malone and dirt, Terry Malone would be off the charts.



Pierre Garcon fans:

Cool article on NFL.com about small school prospects at the Combine...

Click Here. But don't click here.

[HScoach]

......There is nothing quite like father-daughter love,it is something special.....

Especially in West Virginia.

[HScoach]

Sorry, I couldn't resist.

[Spence]

Yes,congrats RC.There is nothing quite like father-daughter love,it is something special.Spence...Coach Siriani has raised the bar at WJU.I wish some WJU people would weigh in on this;so this will be it, but..their last coach was dying to leave and interviewing with what seemed like every college in the U.S.Unless I'm mistaken ,the program has not had as high as ranked teams as they have had under Coach Siriani.

You're just misinformed.

Let me know when he gets them to the national championship game, like they did twice under the previous coach.

W&J has always been good. They win 80% of the time over the past 25 years. Sirianni has the best record of any coach they've ever had, but look at who they're playing! Their non-conference schedule is pathetic. Oberlin? Hanover? They played a couple good teams in 06, and lost to Salisbury. 07 it was back to the cupcakes, and losing to 8 seed NC Wesleyan was the result. I used to cover schools in their conference and we're talking about like 6th/7th place in the OAC. I-AA and D-II just kills their ability to recruit the talent you need to compete in D-III IMO.

Programs like W&J are measured by what they do in the postseason (not just making it, they make it almost every year no matter who the coach is), and under Sirianni W&J hasn't improved from what Banaszak did; both have 3 playoff wins, and both had 3 in 4 years (since Sirianni didn't get one this year). Sirianni benefitted from playing South Region teams (weak) in all 3 of the wins.

W&J won 10 playoff games in a 4 years stretch from 92-95 under Luckhardt before falling back in the late 90s. But Banaszak rebuilt the program to at least a playoff program, if not the title contending program Luckhardt built over the course of a decade. Banaszak left the program better than he found it. So far, Sirianni hasn't been able to further improve on that.

IMO the only time W&J was good enough to make the playoffs out of the OAC was 92-94.

W&J football = Wooster baseball. Lots of regular season wins, not a heckuva lot of postseason success.

So by the measure of other coaches and Presidents in D3 Siriani looks damn good.After all,other D3 coaches rank his teams highly as compared with themselves.When he was hired, their Prez said he wanted to bring stability to the program,and he did.Insult me if you must but I'm not getting into a dick measuring contest.It would ruin my reputation.

I'll be interested to see if you get a benching and a talking to for using that word. I did.

[seventiesraider]

Funny, my feeble memory recalls Sirianni taking over a program in chaos when the University gave Ban'y the bum's rush after four years as head coach. Of course your version makes your "facts" work out better.

BTW, back in the day W&J was playing powerhouses like Hiram

[JK]

Spence,

The last post actually makes a pretty good argument based on facts and in reality.

But here is the deal: the way you write and the way you come off sounding in your posts is that you are attacking someone.  In the last post it is Coach Sirianni.  It sounds like an attack on him.  Maybe "attack" is too strong a word, but your implication is that he isn't a good coach.  I don't think you mean to imply that he isn't a good coach who isn't being successful (if you do, than you might really be a little nutty), you're just saying that he hasn't pushed the W&J program any further than it has already been.  That is, indeed, a true statement.  But, getting 8+ wins a year and into playoff contention every year, despite what might be construed as a "weak" schedule is, by any stretch, pretty successful.  If you judge "success" solely by winning National Championships, then you indeed have been jaded by Marietta Baseball.  Ask anyone who has any knowledge of the OAC and they will tell you Jim Collins was a GREAT coach, and he turned Cap into a GREAT program, despite the fact he NEVER won a National Championship, nor even an OAC championship.

What rubs people the wrong way is that you seemingly disparage the success of others to make your points, and if you do acknowledge success it seems you do so only begrudgingly.  The example that comes immediately to mind is Matt Campbell.  It is hard to argue that for a guy his age, he has been pretty successful in terms of being a coach (not talking W-L here, just talking about career progression, where he has been, what responsibilities he has been given, etc.).  Again, I don't think you ever meant to say that Matt wasn't a good coach, you just didn't think he was ready to be a Head Coach.  Your opinion, you are entitled to it, but you made it sound like Campbell shouldn't even be mentioned in the conversation by attacking his credentials.

Maybe if you could pepper in a few:
"Not to say Mike Sirianni isn't being successful, BUT if you look at it he hasn't really taken W&J any further than before"

or:
"Matt Campbell looks to be a great young coach with a bright future, BUT I just don't think he's ready to beEtta's HC at this point."

it would make your posts a little more palatable.

Or, perhaps you have already pissed off everyone else so bad that it won't matter.  Or, perhaps you don't care.

Doesn't matter, I tried to help.  I hope I didn't waste my breath.  I somehow suspect that I did.

[Spence]

Funny, my feeble memory recalls Sirianni taking over a program in chaos when the University gave Ban'y the bum's rush after four years as head coach. Of course your version makes your "facts" work out better.

BTW, back in the day W&J was playing powerhouses like Hiram

W&J may have been playing powerhouses like Hiram, but they were winning playoff games against people other than Christopher Newport with the odd OT win over some other South Region team that barely deserves to be there.

Yeah Banaszak was so terrible. The two years before he took over, W&J was like 11-9. The last time they were worse than that was when Luckhardt was getting started. All he did was go 38-9 and win a playoff game every year he coached. D-I schools always hire bad coaches too to be their coordinators.

[Spence]

Well I had a post to this that was long, fun and pithy (your mileage may vary), but it timed out. So the short version.

But here is the deal: the way you write and the way you come off sounding in your posts is that you are attacking someone.  In the last post it is Coach Sirianni.  It sounds like an attack on him.  Maybe "attack" is too strong a word, but your implication is that he isn't a good coach.

You may infer what I did not imply. That does not mean I implied it. You and others see what you want to see and read what you want to read.

  I don't think you mean to imply that he isn't a good coach who isn't being successful (if you do, than you might really be a little nutty), you're just saying that he hasn't pushed the W&J program any further than it has already been.  That is, indeed, a true statement.  But, getting 8+ wins a year and into playoff contention every year, despite what might be construed as a "weak" schedule is, by any stretch, pretty successful.

By any stretch? Not really true. Making the playoffs at W&J is almost given. So being "in playoff contention" is a platitude that really means nothing, because they've been that for two decades.

  If you judge "success" solely by winning National Championships, then you indeed have been jaded by Marietta Baseball.

Yeah, that almost has something to do with this topic. By the way, MC has lost more title games than it has won. IMO the true measure of MC's program is that they've been to the title game 11 times (more than 1/3 of the total D-III championship games) and are about a 1:2 bet any year to win their regional and make the final 8 (especially when completely ridiculous selection criteria don't rob them of a chance at it, as happened in the mid 00s). Other teams have won more championships in other divisions since 1976 when D-III baseball started, but no one else in the sport is even close to their consistency defined by qualifying for the championship tournament and playing in the championship game, in any division.

I never said what you suggest I may be judging, by the way. Standards, circumstances and starting points are different at different places. A consistent 8-2 record for a football coach at Marietta is a different plane of achievement (hell a different planet of achievement) than 8-2 at W&J.

Ask anyone who has any knowledge of the OAC and they will tell you Jim Collins was a GREAT coach, and he turned Cap into a GREAT program, despite the fact he NEVER won a National Championship, nor even an OAC championship.

And I would agree with each and every one of them. The combination of Collins and the commitment to build Bernlohr completely turned around Capital football. The last 3 years, all their playoff losses are to the eventual national champion. Let me know when W&J gets to that level, and Capital had a MUCH lower starting point. Marietta hung 70 on them and Dante Brown went wild in the mid 90s, not to brag on MC but to show how far Capital has come.

Capital got rooked this year in the playoff draw; I thought they should have been ahead of W&J, record be damned. But I frequently disagree with the seeming emphasis the NCAA places on won-lost record over strength of schedule in postseason seeds and selections. IMO Capital would have beaten a lot of teams in the playoffs, just not UW-Whitewater.

Your opinion, you are entitled to it, but you made it sound like Campbell shouldn't even be mentioned in the conversation by attacking his credentials.

I guess if you don't like what someone says, the strategy is to call it an attack. Telling the truth is not an attack. Stating facts is not an attack. Giving an opinion is not an attack. I don't know why the hell Campbell would want the job anyway. He's got a D-I gig at a program that should have some success and help build his resume toward a BCS conference assistant job or lower D-I coordinator position. The money at the BCS level for even assistants wasn't what it is now when Kehres took the step back down. Doc Holliday is getting 400k at West Virginia to be a recruiting coordinator. That was unprecedented, but rest assured other guys noticed. That's the next step in the arms race, beefing up assistant pay. He would be in-freaking-sane IMO to go back to D-III for anything other than Kehres' job, and a little nutty to even do that.

Maybe if you could pepper in a few:
"Not to say Mike Sirianni isn't being successful, BUT if you look at it he hasn't really taken W&J any further than before"

or:
"Matt Campbell looks to be a great young coach with a bright future, BUT I just don't think he's ready to beEtta's HC at this point."

Where was this logic when people here were calling Curt Wiese a bad coach? Where was this call for platitudes and niceties? That's where I see the cognitive disconnect.

I wasn't calling for it, because I don't care. It's your right as an American to be wrong. But it's also my right to tell you so.

Like I've said before, the standard is different when the shoe is on the other foot. When it's your (collective) guys being discussed, you want everyone to play nice. But you have no compunction about saying whatever you want about someone else's guys.

it would make your posts a little more palatable.

Palatable? Are we on the Food Network? If we are, I call dibs on Everyday Italian. 

[seventiesraider]

Did I say anything, anywhere about Banazak being terrible? JK is right. Why does everything have to be toally black and totally white for you? I was challenging the rosey picture you painted of how he "left" the program.  Sure he had a good record, but he couldn't get along with the administration so what he left was actually kind of a mess with a lot of bad feeling. Football programs are a lot more than won-loss records.

So then I think it would be fair to say Banazak and Sirianni have done quite equal jobs, since it's hard to compare opponents from different years. Neither one got deep into the playoffs. They both played in a less than great conference. And btw, does it really matter that much?

[Spence]

Did I say anything, anywhere about Banazak being terrible? JK is right. Why does everything have to be toally black and totally white for you? I was challenging the rosey picture you painted of how he "left" the program.  Sure he had a good record, but he couldn't get along with the administration so what he left was actually kind of a mess with a lot of bad feeling. Football programs are a lot more than won-loss records.

So then I think it would be fair to say Banazak and Sirianni have done quite equal jobs, since it's hard to compare opponents from different years. Neither one got deep into the playoffs. They both played in a less than great conference. And btw, does it really matter that much?

So he didn't get along with the suits. Why do I care? And why does it matter to the new coach that the suits didn't like the old coach?

It's harder to improve a program than it is to maintain one, so I might not agree that the jobs Banaszak and Sirianni have done are equal, but I don't really care enough to argue passionately either way.

Does any of this matter that much? If what mattered was the only thing we discussed here, there would be a lot less D-III football and a lot more discussion of Federal Reserve policy and peak oil.