Good points, Jim. I guess it just galls many of us that the school which deserves to be 1-A the least of all 117 was able to avoid the struggle many other schools will have to go through.
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Good points, Jim. I guess it just galls many of us that the school which deserves to be 1-A the least of all 117 was able to avoid the struggle many other schools will have to go through.
I really don't care if the Uinversity of Arkansas at Monroe football program lives or dies. I do care about my many friends who teach out there. Delta CC is in the process of absorbing the school which is sad for the faculty and students. The best that can happen is for the good programs to be absorbed by LSU and Tech. I guess Crowville could take on their football program without taking too much of a hit.
Yep...thats where my mom went to college. Home of the mighty Boll Weevils!Originally Posted by Dawgpix
Obviously you didn't read my post carefully. I won't make any cheap brain cell remarks here, becasue I am going to assume it was an honest mistake. You have every right to dislike schools playing home games other towns. Everyone is entitled to their opinion, and in point of fact I have never been a big fan of schools playing home games off campus either, but I guess I just don't think its that big of a deal either way. You holding that opinion doesn't make you stupid, and I never said you opinion of disliking off-campus home games was stupid. What I said was stupid is someone believing that ULM playing a "home" game in Little Rock is exactly the same as Tech playing a home game in Shreveport. Go back and re-read my post, and see how off base you were.
And I agree 100% about Shreveport not giving a crap about Tech. But then, the same argument can be made for Ruston not giving a crap about Tech either. That is the whole reasoning behind playing one game a year in Shreveport, to expose a larger group of people to Tech football in hopes that gradually you will create a larger fanbase. This is the route that Ole Miss, Arkansas, and Miss. State (to a lesser extent) used. They are all small college-town schools that had games for years in the nearest big city, which grew their fanbases, and eventually they moved all home games back to campus, having to enlarge their on-campus stadiums considerably (and now selling them out) when they were never even filling them up before. Only time will tell if this same approach that has worked for so many other schools will work for Tech.
But that is not what this thread was even about. It was about ULM playing in Little Rock not being the same as Tech playing in Shreveport. And, since we do live in America, I am holding strong to my opinion that anyone who thinks it is the same is only 3 or 4 brain cells away from not being able to breathe on their own.
Congratulate? This whole deal is silly and very unrespectful. Little Rock's War Memorial is not a neutral site. I don't care you can bring up UT/OU's Dallas tradition, us playing at Shreve, but War Memorial is Ark's backyard. ULM pulled off a classless act and everyone knows it.
Brilliant my ass.
My reaction is the same as always: I don't see the point of being in IA if a program doesn't have enough support to easily maintain more than 15,000 average actual attendance. If a program has to worry about that, it doesn't have the support level to compete in the Division.
Also, the BCS squads don't really "need" the ULMs of the world to have their 6 or 7 home games every year. The impact of playing IAAs is already a lot less negative (as opposed to playing minor IAs) than most people think and what negative impact there is could be eliminated with a couple of minor rules changes.
One would be to say a team could count one win over a IAA every year toward Bowl eligibility. This would have very little impact anyway because BCS teams that do play IAAs every year have found it hasn't really kept them out of Bowls as things stand, but it would change the perception and allay some fears. Or they could just do away with the restriction on IAA wins with respect to bowl eligibility entirely. That also would have very little impact as I doubt you'd ever see a team with only 6 wins and more than one being over a IAA get invited.
Meanwhile, they could change the BCS formula to make playing IAAs "neutral" with respect to the quantitative aspects. Use only power rating systems that do not consider IAA games and leave IAA games out of the SOS calculation. Thus a team wouldn't gain or lose anything by playing a IAA.
My experience living in the Baton Rouge area is that their fans don't really care if it's a Western Illinois or a ULM. They don't want to see either. They want to see something like Oregon State. And as far as competetiveness or lack thereof there really isn't much difference. In fact Western Illinois was LSU's most competetive non conference game in 2003 while The Citadel was more competetive than the ULL game was in 2002.
Was it any more interesting for LSU fans to watch the Tigers beat ULM 49-7 than it was for them to watch their team beat Western Illinois 35-7? Was it more interesting for Kansas State fans to watch the Cats beat Troy State 41-5 than it was to watch them beat McNeese 55-14 or UMass 38-7? I don't think so.
But fans of programs like K State and LSU are going to go to the stadium regardless and the programs are going to make their money. Such programs do not "need" the ULMs and Troy State's of the world to do what they want to do.
You just can't use the abbreviation of UAM. The entire name must be spelled out. This will accentuate the effect of "The University of Arkansas at Monroe" and will, no doubt, lead to better student recruitment, better faculty recruitment and save the universe from the forces of darkness...just like the name change to ULM did.
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