GarySJ

I'm pleased with the list. All three finalists have solid AD credentials, and experience that is highly relevant to what USF needs of its AD (overseeing construction of new buildings, promoting events, etc.)

All the finalists sound excellent to me. I'd be pleased with any of the three.

Others have done this already, but I'd like to take a crack... There's a difference between being a fan and being a fanatic, in the sense that some people are religious fanatics. I'm just a fan, and it's all I ever intend to be. To wit: Absolutely. There have been situations where it's been in USF's best interest for one of these teams to win a particular game. For example, as much as I detest the Criminoles, I rooted for them to beat Wake Forest when the latter was trying to become bowl eligible at our expense two years ago. Minus ten points for me. I'll gladly cheer for the Bastard Gators, along with anyone else this side of al-Qaeda, if it is in USF's best interest. So minus another 10. Yes -- I have received at times high-quality Gator-themed gifts, from my UF graduate family members, as well as items from other schools. They also receive Bulls stuff from me on occasion. I refuse to insult my own flesh and blood by refusing a gift, so I lose another 20 points. I feel a deep hurt when people suffer or die. I refuse to let my emotional involvement in the outcome of any sporting event get to the point where it physically upsets me. It's not healthy. There goes another 10. I'll admit I was madly clicking refresh over that whole Cornelius deal. But I wouldn't call it "emotionally attached." Minus 10. I wanted to take some post-graduate classes, and considering that I was living in Seattle at the time, USF was hardly an option. It is not disrespectful to one's alma mater to attend a school whose offerings suit their needs. And check some resumes -- most people have attended more than one college in their lives. Minus 10 more for me. First of all, I schedule around major USF sporting events to the greatest degree possible. Second, rooting for the Bulls is one of many things in my life that is important; it's not the only thing, and it takes a back seat behind more important aspects of my life -- my brother's wedding this fall, for example. Believe it or not, he and his fiancee didn't have the foresight to schedule it during a USF bye week. If a conflict arose I would choose depending on the relative importance of the other event. So I lose 10 more points. I don't cry for days and days over anything. -20. Hop like a child? Moi? Minus 20. I would choose whoever was most qualified for the job. Minus-10. I would never force any path on my children. I would let them make their own decisions in life, and support any choices they make. Every university has its own appeal, and its own worthwhile educational offerings. What works for me might not work for someone else. Besides, if my father was as loyal to his alma mater as you're demanding me to be, I'd be posting this on the Texas Tech Red Raiders board. Have you ever been to Lubbock, Texas? I'd call it an armpit, but that's an insult to armpits. Thank God my old man didn't think like you do -- the sewage-infested well water alone would have killed me by now. Minus 35 more points for me. I lost count, but by your ratings I must be somewhere between SouthTampaKnight and Jonathan Alpert on the loyalty to USF scale. If being worthy means the things you suggest it does in this poll, I'd just as soon be unworthy.

I still say Ralph Fiennes, if you want to lend CJL an air of sophistication: http://www.kinoweb.de/film2000/EndOfTheAffair/pix/ea1.jpg

Was Troy State not interested?

It's because there have been 25 of them, and not one is a member of this board. Come on, who better than a BullsPen poster to be the new USF AD? Really, we spend so much time debating what USF Athletics should do, why not take the opportunity to do it for real? Tell ya what: I'll pay $50 cash to the first registered member of this board* who applies for the USF AD job and gets his name listed in the Trib as an applicant. If you manage to get interviewed, I'll make it $100. Payment can be collected at the South Carolina game, or you can PM me to make alternate arrangements. Surely some of you have AD aspirations. Bulliever? Smazza? MikeG? Velcro? Basketbull? HowieP? If the Assistant Intern Director of Intramural Lacrosse at some D-III school can apply, why NOT a BullsPen poster? We've got loyalty, we know the fan base better than anyone, and we'll work cheap. Right? * - offer valid for USF fans only P.S. I haven't fallen off the earth, just been insanely busy the last few months.

Updated to 18-61, including 0-2 this season, with our loss to UofL today. Remaining games vs NBE teams this season are @Cincinnati 2/11; Marquette 2/26; and DePaul 3/6.

Most of them never wanted him to leave.

Rice didn't do quite enough for quite long enough. Your success either needs to be very long (like Molitor), or very dominant (Eckersley) to be HOF material. Roberto Alomar is close, but if Sandberg can't get in it's hard to make a case for Roberto.

It's way too late. The guys he's interviewing aren't as good as the guys he fired. Pederson screwed this up bigtime, and now he's being blown off by anonymous NFL coordinators.

I miss Mohammed Saeed Al-Sahaf. He was great.

Talk about scraping the bottom of the barrel! Who does Nebraska interview if Callahan turns them down? Todd Berry? Marty Morninweg?

I agree heartily on both counts. The luxury tax is no deterrent to big spenders, and the luxury tax payouts are not encouraging smaller teams to spend money on talent. The baseball luxury-tax plan vaguely resembles a cap plan on a foggy day if you squint. But it is so weak it might as well not even exist. As discussed previously, it is little deterrent to big spenders and little incentive to lesser ones. Which is why it got approved -- the owners will have no part of "revenue sharing" and the players will have no part of "salary cap," so they agreed on something that really does neither. And I bet it's all merchandise. I couldn't find any figures for MLB, but the NBA claims ~$2B in gross revenue from merchandise sales annually; MLB's figures can't be too far off from this, and if so would account for most of the growth seen above -- not to mention a significant piece of MLB's total revenue. I'm sure the union is using these numbers to argue their case. But do the players really deserve credit (and thus higher salaries) for this development? Looks to me like the high revenue figures have little to do with the game itself. MLB could fold tomorrow and people would still buy replica third-color Colorado Rockies jerseys. Will MLB collapse financially when the sports-clothing fad wears off? Forgive me for this brief digression, but I found it interesting. Anyway, there's got to be something producing all this new money, because attendance and national TV ratings are stagnant at best, even with all the palatial new publicly-funded stadia. Links of interest: The IRS page on sports franchises -- http://www.irs.gov/businesses/page/0,,id=7095,00.html A little dry but interesting if you know about accounting. http://www.econedlink.org/lessons/index.cfm?lesson=NN146 This appears to be an economics lesson for high school students. Interesting reading nonetheless.

Didn't he get in a fight with Pedro Martinez?

Best Tug McGraw quote: when asked about the difference between natural grass and artificial turf: "I don't know, I never smoked artificial turf."

Now wait just one manizzle...

...go an entire year without being sued, arrested, fined, suspended, or tattooed? ...turn pro after one year in college and not be a total bust? ...take five steps and not get called for traveling? ...appear in an awful animated movie? ...unretire for the third time? ...hit .200 in Class AA ball? ...get a higher TV rating for a rerun (Game Six of the 1993 NBA Finals vs. Phoenix on ESPN Classic) than a live game (Wizards-Knicks on TNT)? Lots of possibilities for this one...

I've been trying to work up a comparison between NFL and MLB broadcast contracts. What I've realized is that it's an apples-to-oranges comparison. In MLB, the vast majority of games are aired via team-specific broadcast contracts, as opposed to league-wide broadcast contracts. With 162 regular season contests per team, a very low percentage of them will make ESPN, Fox, or ABC. It makes sense for most of the regular-season schedule to be carried on team-specific, regional channels. (The same is true of the NHL and NBA.) We in Florida have little interest in all three games of a midseason Indians-Royals series, and it isn't profitable for national channels to carry more than the occasional game of interest. Thus, MLB teams turn to regional channels like YES (Yankees), NESN (Red Sox), TBS (Braves), Fox Sports Whereveritis, and other such regional channels to carry the bulk of their team's games. In the NFL, on the other hand, it makes sense for every single game to be part of the national broadcast deal, since there are only 16 of them. Unlike the D-Rays, the Buccaneers have no need to broadcast regular-season games on Sunshine, because all the Bucs games can be seen locally via the NFL's national broadcast package (blackout rules aside). Even if you follow an out-of-region NFL team, you can see all your team's games within the NFL's national TV contract via DirecTV/Dish network, or, at worst, a local sports bar. Here's where I'm going with this: the MLB broadcast revenue-sharing plan does not speak to the nature of MLB broadcast arrangements. Yes, revenues from national TV games are shared leaguewide, but that is by far the smaller piece of the pie. The source of most MLB broadcast income is regional deals, which are not shared. It makes sense for the NFL to equitably distribute its TV revenue, because all broadcast dealings are handled by the league office, not the individual teams. (Individual teams do make deals with local sports channels for coaches' shows, preseason games and whatnot, but those are small potatoes.) The MLB's "luxury tax" attempts to mimic NFL revenue sharing, when their financial model is totally different from the NFL's. The vast majority of individual-team revenue isn't affected by what they're trying to put a "luxury tax" on. And the small part that is, can be easily circumvented via creative accounting. Bottom line: MLB is trying to core an apple with an orange peeler. They need to come up with something that addresses the unique nature of their broadcast deals. This offseason's player movement in MLB makes it painfully obvious that the luxury tax is not achieving the intended effect of balancing team spending (and thus, competitiveness) league-wide.

Or Texas isn't as good.

I was six years old.

There is a difference between money and value. Anyway, with such stringent operational definitions there is little to debate.

They're hiring a GM and demoting Wannstedt to coach-only duties. Nice idea, but it's about seven years too late. The Dolphins needed to do that when Jimmy Johnson was annually wasting high draft picks on bad running backs, picks that could have been used on other areas of need (cough cough QB cough cough).

Most nouveaux riche sports owners like Snyder and Mark Cuban seem to have gotten that way through the stock market, as opposed to building wealth in an actual company.

Dog tracks and jai alai frontons usually have something of the sort -- pick six winners and win a big progressive jackpot. It's still a bad bet because the payout odds are much less than than the odds of hitting.

Read the CNNSI article linked above. It explains the creative accounting practices used to achieve this sort of result. Basically, most baseball team owners also own the groups that broadcast their games. They transfer the profits to the TV group and claim losses with the baseball team, so they don't have to pay as much in luxury tax.