MBB: Michigan Intercollegiate Athletic Association

[MIdoubleA]

The registrar's home page on Calvin's website has listed a new class for the fall semseter. Coaching the KVS way aka Right Way vs Every other coach's philosophy in the country 101. The syllabus is already available for those who are interested. Looks like some great discussions for the month of October. Enrollment in the class is limited. If you wish to add the class after the first day of class, you must sit in the back, participate in discussions, take notes, do assigned readings, however you will not receive credit for the class. Rewarding those who come after the original class roster is made, is not the KVS way.  

Someone PLEASE give Carl some Karma for me, this is genius.

[bulldogalum]

Brilliant, Carl, absolutely brilliant.

[kcrest]

Okay, I was wrong about the MIAA Tourney.  If Calvin loses Wednesday the highest remaining seed hosts.  In the old days of the seven team MIAA the league champion hosted automatically b/c they got a bye the first round.  So, my mistake and apologies for the misinformation.  The DeVos Center might get that MIAA tourney yet!

[oldknight]

Okay, I was wrong about the MIAA Tourney.  If Calvin loses Wednesday the highest remaining seed hosts.  In the old days of the seven team MIAA the league champion hosted automatically b/c they got a bye the first round.  So, my mistake and apologies for the misinformation.  The DeVos Center might get that MIAA tourney yet!

Apology accepted.

[AndersDY]

This seems like a Church Council meeting--"let's move on to the next issue as soon as I have my say about the old one."

Given this basically turned into an RCA vs. CRC pissing match, doesn't that seem rather apt?

[Civic Minded]

Okay, I was wrong about the MIAA Tourney.  If Calvin loses Wednesday the highest remaining seed hosts.  In the old days of the seven team MIAA the league champion hosted automatically b/c they got a bye the first round.  So, my mistake and apologies for the misinformation.  The DeVos Center might get that MIAA tourney yet!

Ah, now I'm remembering!  Thanks for the memory jog, kcrest, and the info.  I was struggling to make sense of what I thought I knew with what I remembered from a few years back...

(And of course, apology accepted.)

[almcguirejr]

Integrity(def.) 1 : an unimpaired condition : SOUNDNESS 2 : firm adherence to a code of esp. moral or artistic values : INCORRUPTIBILITY
3 : the quality or state of being complete or undivided : COMPLETENESS
syn. 1 see HONESTY  2 see UNITY

I think GVW does lack integrity on the DVS issue.  He is the one who publicly stated that DVS would not play this year because he didn't want to disrupt team chemistry.  

GVW and 15 men on this team set 3 goals on Oct. 15th.  They were going to
win MIAA season and tournament championships and a NCAA  championship.
They even put the roman numeral III on their warm ups to signify this.  It was less than 24 hours after not achieving goal #1 that GVW decided that they could not achieve goals 2 and 3 without playing DVS.  Instead of hunkering down and facing adversity with the group of men that had been with him all year, he chose to bring in an outsider who he said was just there to practice.
I believe he compromised the integrity of his team ( see #3 of def.)  This compromise may pay off with a NCAA championship but, it may also turn out to
be counter productive.   I think GVW took a huge risk to the credibility he has built up over 25 years of coaching.

Sac's comments about GVW letting a "20 year old play the game he loves" and  " a 20 year old who needed a change of life" are comments about only
DVS.  There are 10 other 20 year olds on the team who want to play the game
they love.  Those 15 other players committed on Oct 15, I don't think they have to have their dreams become secondary to DVS "who needed a change of life on Jan. 15.  This is not about DVS it is about (as Bo use to say) THE TEAM
THE TEAM THE TEAM !!!

As far as DVS losing a semester of elgibility, that was his decision.  GVW doesn't owe him anything if he just "dropped" in at Hope to try and inject himself into the team.  If he didn't want to lose elgibility he could have stayed
at EMU on scholarship and saved himself a semester's worth of tuition.

GVW has every right to play DVS now, but why violate your own statements.  I think he has handled this clumsily and he has lost some creditability by not following through on what he said.  He made very public statements about why DVS wouldn't
play maybe he ought to publicly talk about why he changed his mind.

[big_yellow_hat]

Now that was NOT a Calvin fan.

[ziggy]

well said, Al.  Just another man's opinion but one well stated.

[northb]

Another question to stimulate discussion other than the word salad of DVS/GVW/WWKVSD:

If you are Alma or Olivet, who would you rather play in the first round of the playoffs, Hope or Calvin?

[John Rusnak]

Well, the honest answer is it doesn't matter which one you play, you are going to lose.

With that said, Calvin is on fire right now and doesn't look to be turning around anytime soon.  Hope at least has proven that they are not unbeatable.

[John Rusnak]

By the way, I say that recognizing that Calvin has more losses, that Hope lost to Calvin and Calvin lost to Hope, etc etc etc.

[tniem]

Frankly it is a bit surprising/disappointing to me that only three games have been sell outs.

I kind of expected that.  Everybody remembers Knollcrest, the Civic, and now DeVos on those magical nights when it is a sellout (read Hope/Calvin and lately Hope/Albion) but they are the exception not the norm.  There are a lot of games against Trinity and Alma throughout the season that do not have a lot of flair.  They can be fun but they usually do not fill the place in either GR or Holland.  Sure a new stadium should draw extra interest but after you have been there once...  it's still basketball.

You are correct that it does look a bit empty in Knollcrest with only 300 there, but they don't fold out the north bleachers or the upper decks so it is a bit cozier.

As they should.  I wish there was a way to do that in the DeVos for the women.  But since there is not and they were going to share the court, I am glad they factored the smaller crowds into their equation.

My point was one should never build a church, stadium, fieldhouse, gym, motel, hospital, etc. etc. based on 100% occupancy.  A more realistic number might be 70%, and then only at peak times. 

I believe in churches it is known as the 80/20 rule.  Basically once a church reaches 80% capacity it stops growing because their is not the welcoming additional seats.  I agree with you on hotels and hospitals of a similar type rule.

I am not sure that is the case with stadiums.  It costs a lot to build each additional seat (or more appropriately row) and it costs a bunch to pay to keep the extra space open (heating and lighting).  But I find it hard to believe that people stop showing up because there are only a certain percentage of seats left - concerts often sell out.

70% of 3200 is roughly 2240.  If Hope's men's b-ball team is averaging much more than that this year one can make a case the De Vos may have been built too small. 

Hope is averaging 2922 for home games or 91% of capacity.  I agree with you that if the stadium was only for men's basketball then the case can be made that it is too small.  But it is not only for men's basketball.  I think that is where we disagree or coming at it from a different perspective.  The school needs it for women's basketball, Holland Christian basketball, concerts, special events like Nykerk, and once the Civic has something done to it - for Tulip Time.  That is a lot of other things going on that the school really does not want to pay the extra seats for. 

Then again the administration may think the men's b-ball team has peaked so this is as good as it is going to get!!

Knowing this administration, there is nothing at Hope that he believes is as good as it is going to get.  It is just a matter of priorities.  President Bultman describes things as A, B, and C towns/venues.  He would call a Chicago/Detroit an 'A' size venue.  Grand Rapids would be a 'B.'  Holland a 'C'.  And of course some of us would say 'D' for the size.  There is nothing wrong with being that size, you just need to factor that in when you go to build.  Holland talked about a much larger stadium, the so-called Arena Center, and they would still be talking if this administration didn't see a different vision more in line with the size of the community.

Attendance at sporting (and other) events in the fieldhouse has waxed, and waned over the years, but if you asked the persons responsible for making it that size I am sure they would say they would do it again

And I would be happy that they would do it again!  I think it is great that Calvin and the city of Grand Rapids has Knollcrest and that it fits with your school's mission and vision of what a stadium would be.  I am just saying that it is not the only vision and when you factor in the size of Holland, it makes more sense to have a more modest vision.

If one were to multiply the number of sellouts in the fieldhouse (over 40 years) by the 1300 seat difference between it, and the De Vos, at say $ 5.00 per seat it wasn't such a bad investment.  Like field of dreams, "if you build it they will come".

Just as an example, in those dollars, if you have had three sellouts per year (which would mean a lot of sellouts in the earlier days that were probably at a lower cost but for simplicity...) that would net an extra $780,000.  And at the rate of the building back in the 1960s, it may have been a good investment.  Today, the extra 1,300 seats would be in the millions of dollars.  Economically it is not a good investment, especially when you are giving up the opportunity of using that money today in other ways to improve the college.


Don't get me wrong realist, you also make some great points.  And you are not alone.  I know the President has had many complaints from Hope alums about the size of the stadium.  But his response all along was that we are not building this for one game a year.  If we are going to do that, we should just play it at Van Andel (which they probably should start doing).  He wanted it to be the proper size within the context of the college's mission and values with men's basketball just being a part of that.  In that way, I really believe - which is why I defend this so strongly - that he made the right call.

By the way, Hope will be making a similar decision in the next half decade about a performing arts center.  Those big vision people in Holland will want a couple thousand seat auditorium.  Hope will say, "If we want that (which we do once a year currently), we will use DeVos Auditorium in Grand Rapids."  Then the school will go and build a 500 seat place.  It is just a different way to prioritize and think about the school's needs and money.  As basketball fans (or music fans in the second thing's case), we want bigger.  But we also need to be realistic about the uses of the arena and how it impacts the rest of the budget when we won't fill it most of the time.

[tniem]

Is there a forum that discusses MIAA sports not found on D3sports.com?

Are there sports other than Basketball and Football?

[AndersDY]

Well, tniem answered my question about whether there is a limit placed on the length of posts on this board.