Top 25 talk

[Gregory Sager]

PS, brevity is overrated. 

[Mr. Ypsi]

PS,

At every school I know of, Freshman, Sophomore, etc., is a matter of credit hours completed, not years on campus.  I have a student this year who hopes to be a Senior by next year - he has been attending EMU every year for 17 years!  (Obviously, he has averaged slightly less than 2 courses a year; an extreme case, but not THAT different from many of our students who work full-time and/or must drop out from time-to-time to earn tuition.)

It is not at all uncommon here to have a 5th year student who has just become a Junior.  We DO have a large number of students who finish in four years, and I'm sure a majority finish within six years, but there are many for whom 7, 8, 10, etc., is necessary.

EMU does have a pathetic (though recently improving) NCAA graduation rate for football and men's basketball, but compared with the 6-year time period the NCAA uses, neither is THAT far below the student body as a whole, and for MOST sports, the scholarship athletes are far ABOVE the overall student graduation rate.

At many (if not most) d3 schools, the traditional FSJS four-year degree is still the norm; for the majority of college students, overall, four years is NOT the norm.  As a college instructor (and a father of kids soon heading off to college!) I don't LIKE it, but that is the reality today.

[Mr. Ypsi]

Greg,

'applaud' to you for the brilliant irony: 'brevity is overrated' in what has to be the shortest post you have ever made! 

[Pat Coleman]

The USA Today version of that post:

Brevity? Overrated.

[John Gleich]

Mr. Ypsi (screw it, it's easier and more fun to just say "Cab"... and it's more brief, so I'll go with that, 'cause I suppose it can be a goal...)

So... Cab,

The whole "credit hours" makes sense.  I think technically I've been a "second semester Senior" for a full year, and I wasn't a "first semester senior" until I was half way through my 4th year.  I also remember being a "first semester sophomore both before AND after the first semester of my college career (what can I say?  I knew I was going to be at Point for 4 years (after transferring after my first), so why take more of a load then I had to?).  (and so my 4 turned into 5... but whatevs)  (Do I use too many parentheses?)

In an interesting development (and probably less of a ploy to prevent students from spending a tremendous amount of years in college and more of a ploy to just flat out make more money) UWSP two years ago informed students that if they reached a certain number of credit hours (165) before getting a degree, there would be a surcharge added to their tuition fees (and I believe that it was equal to the tuition... so they basically payed double, though I'm not positive about that).  My major is 37 credits (plus the Gen. Ed. credits) and I "lost" credits from my a) former engineering major b) the Education stuff from my former Math Ed stuff, and I'm still at just 105, or something like that, and I'm only going to be taking at most 30 credits this school year, so you've gotta be taking hardcore semesters, EVERY semester, and trying to get like 2 majors and 3 minors, with no crossovers, to get to that, I think...

What's this thread called again?    Oh wait, tis the off-season, it really doesn't matter!!! 

[True Basketball Fan]

I would rate that last post as #3 on the TOP 25 List of most irrelevant topics on this thread.   

[Gregory Sager]

Pat, if my post had been included in one of those Reader's Digest Condensed Novels, it would've read:

"Brief? Eh."

Warren, I think that the nickname for New Trier was originally suggested by a teacher or an administrator, not a student. And I'm with you on the matter of "Gepids" being a terrific nickname -- although I've always been a bigger fan of the Heruls in terms of obscure Germanic barbarian tribes.

However, it should be noted that the Gepids received their rather derisive name from their rivals the Visigoths; in Gothic, gepanta means "slow". I'm not sure I'd want to root for a team whose name originally meant "the slow ones".

They weren't a complete historical cipher, though. The Gepids led the coalition that destroyed the Huns and thus restored the freedom of the Germanic tribes at the Battle of the Nedao in 454 AD, the year after Attila died of a drunken nosebleed.

[diehardfan]

One....




Two....




Three...



Stop it you crazy boy people!!!!! 



Yeah, like that is going to work...

rolls eyes ----->

[Coach C]

Pat,

I think the USAT version might have included a nifty color graph of some type.

C

[diehardfan]

  Totally... probably bar or line graph showing the decreasing enjoyability of brevity over a 10 year span.. something like that.


Argh! Now I am contributing to the problem... curse you people! 

[True Basketball Fan]

Nevertheless.........

I've got two CCIW teams, three WIAC teams, three MIAC, two HCAC teams, one NIIC team, two IIAC teams, and two MWC teams all in the preseason Top 25.  That's 15 of the top 25 teams within at most a half a day's driving from the windy city.  Basketball is good in other places, but I like the Midwest the best.  We'll see how many come from all of those conferences I mentioned, I don't think I'm off by much.

[David Collinge]

Two from the NCAC, too.  And the OAC and MIAA are usually strong, although they may not have any preseason Top 25s.  Midwest (Minnesota to Ohio, diagonally) basketball is definitely the best IMHO.

I'm not sure which teams you are talking about, but just off the top of my head I'd be surprised to see five preseason Top 25 teams come out of the MIAC and IIAC.  Then again, I don't pay a lot of attention to the Western Region between the Mississippi River and the Coast Ranges.

[True Basketball Fan]

I'm thinking Wartburg and Buena Vista out of the IIAC, and Albion and Calvin, possibly Hope from the MIAC.

[Pat Coleman]

Ahh -- there's the rub.

The MIAC is the Minnesota conference. The conference you're referring to is the MIAA.

[True Basketball Fan]

Michigan Intercollegiate Athleteic Conference sounded good.......thanks for correcting my blunder.  BTW, I've got nobody in the MIAC in the Top 25.