|
Post by Commissioner on Aug 30, 2019 11:23:01 GMT -5
By the way, someone, I believe PTC, mentioned that WOTS was that the NCAA was waiting to see that Triple J and Ballantyne actually enrolled before considering the appeal. Note that classes don't start at LIU until after Labor Day. Final registration doesn't end until September 17. They should be there working with their teammates. Yes but I imagine the NCAA would want to see the formal enrollment. I should note, I'm not optimistic that we win this even if they do get enrolled there.
|
|
|
Post by calihanmole on Aug 30, 2019 11:56:51 GMT -5
Hate to say it, but I’m also not optimistic we win the appeal. I could see the NCAA saying that while JJJ and JB were odd circumstances, our Program still ultimately allowed the numbers to fall. Whether that fall was partly because of the dynamics of a coaching change and the fact JJ was on staff might not be relevant enough for the NCAA to determine that our situation is so outside the scope of the intent of the rule that we deserve the ban reversed.
I don’t mean this as a criticism of our AD or leadership in anyway. I think it’d be tough for any mid major to win this thing. And, sadly, I think if Duke or MSU had our same circumstance the ban would have already been reversed.
|
|
|
Post by ptctitan on Aug 31, 2019 7:33:22 GMT -5
I would not overthink this issue. If we have one advantage in this appeal, it is our AD's prior work experience inside the NCAA's bureaucratic labyrinth. He was VP of Membership and Student-Athlete Affairs at the NCAA. Also, there are strong incentives for the NCAA to uphold our appeal on the APR. Otherwise, an assistant coach who fails to get the head coaching job could deliberately retaliate against his former employer's program by causing enough players that he recruited and coached to transfer and sit out a year so that the APR could be intentionally sabotaged for the coach who got the job instead of him. Over the past few years, the AD has bolstered the academic support services in his department. In January 2019, he brought back Holly Kerstner as Associate AD for Student Services. He hired her away from Oakland. She had been academic adviser here during the Perry Watson era. He added a faculty representative and an intern to her staff. Together with the recently added study facilities donated by the McNamaras and Eli Holman, we can show a greater financial commitment to academic support services for our student-athletes. Finally, it would be unfair to penalize a program with post-season ineligibility because it took steps preemptively to rectify a negative coaching situation on one of its teams - especially when none of the players and coaches who caused that situation remain on the team. In the new era of the transfer portal, the loss of eligibility and practice hours should be reserved for programs that exhibit a multi-year disregard for academic progress - not for situations resulting from coaching personnel changes that trigger player transfers. For these reasons, I remain optimistic that our post-season eligibility will be restored.
|
|
|
Post by calihanmole on Aug 31, 2019 8:27:42 GMT -5
I hope you’re right, ptc. You make some good points. Also, respectfully, some of what you just said has nothing to do with the ban and it sounds to me like you’re also overthinking this, only from an optimistic point of view.
I just have no faith in the NCAA to overturn a ban based on a hard rule like this for a small school like us. Coaching changes and all of what you mentioned aside, the penalty is based on something numeric and I don’t see the NCAA even putting in enough thought and consideration to explore what the intent of the rule was and how we are in the unfortunate spot of having this happen. There are these ugly personnel issues and my guess is the NCAA will rather not get involved or give any detailed response.
Being a fan of a mid major school and following mid major hoops for about 13 years, I don’t see the powers that be caring so much about how the rule screwed us. I can give just one other example from our own program. Isiani’s clearance to play from the NCAA took how long? The entire recruiting process plus an entire academic semester. The NCAA clearance guys probably used his file as a coater for their coffee while they watched P5 games. Compare him to Moretti, who played for Texas Tech. Moretti had similar eligibility issues. Played for his national team. Also, Moretti played on some club teams that would be considered professional. In fact, I don’t think any reasonable person would argue that Moretti played in a professional basketball league before he arrived in the US. The question is, did he navigate that process and not take compensation to keep his amateur status? I don’t know, but I know the NCAA didn’t delay their analysis and response to Texas Tech a second longer than they needed to.
All I’m saying is, I don’t see the NCAA as totally equitable. Again, if our circumstances with the ban happened to one of the teams you see on the covers of the preseason ranking magazines the ban would have been reversed before the NCAA big wigs left for their summer vacations.
|
|
|
Post by ptctitan on Aug 31, 2019 11:12:45 GMT -5
At this point in time, questioning the NCAA's impartiality is overthinking the issue. My prior post expressed 4 reasons why: 1) Vowels experience inside the NCAA bureaucracy; 2) our institutional efforts to improve academic support that were occurring even before the APR was announced; 3) the motivation for the NCAA to protect all of its members against possible sabotage by a disgruntled assistant coach who does not get his desired job; and, 4) the unfairness to the current team that should be obvious to the members of the Academic committee.
Because these two players were in good academic standing when they left U-D, if they had enrolled in a school for the fall 2018 term, the NCAA would not have considered them drop-outs; and, their academic standing points would not have been lost. That's one reason why there is a one-year delay from the end of a school year and the final computation of the APR for that school year.
We need to wait for the evidence that at least one of them has enrolled in any college somewhere in the U.S. That evidence will be available shortly. Waiting for this conclusive evidence does not indicate our argument is weak. Suggesting that it does so indicate is overthinking the issue, IMO.
|
|
|
Post by calihanmole on Aug 31, 2019 12:12:06 GMT -5
Hope you’re right! I’ll just add, I don’t think the whole “this ban punishes the kids on this current team and they weren’t the ones that caused the infraction” argument historically hasn’t held up very well with the NCAA. I think the NCAA uses bans to punish schools and programs mostly so that leadership will pressure coaches and ADs to follow the rules. The fact that student athletes sometimes pay the prices for the misdeeds of others is a really unfortunate aspect of the system. But we need to remember that the alternative to things like post-season bans would be monetary fines. A system like that would simply make rule breaking tolerable for wealthy schools, as they have the deep pockets to pay fines.
Does anyone know if the appeal needs to be resolved by a certain date? I’m assuming the decision needs to be made before the MBB season starts.
|
|
|
Post by Commissioner on Aug 31, 2019 13:51:35 GMT -5
This is neither here nor there are the merits of our appeal, I suppose, but frankly, the rule is stupid. The purpose of APR is to assure that schools are not recruiting kids who are not academically qualified for that particular school, that they are provided with the necessary academic support, and that the athletes complete interests are considered once they get there. The school can't make athletics so dominant that the students can't do their studies (the fact that UD has higher standards than Wright State, or that Bucknell has higher standards than UD, isn't considered--the kids have to meet the standard where they go to school). If a kid drops out for reasons other than academics, it's hard to see why the school should be penalized at all. Note that a school doesn't get dinged if a student in good academic standing leaves early for the NBA. So why does it get dinged if he leaves early to take a sabbatical year, or start a diving business in Fiji or a software company in Silicon Valley? Or hang around with his dad at some "prep" academy? Believe it or not, there are quite a few successful people who were perfectly capable of handling college academics but dropped out to start businesses or do something else.
In other words, the criteria should be academic standing. Who cares if they drop out for other reasons?
|
|
|
Post by calihanmole on Aug 31, 2019 14:20:07 GMT -5
Well said, Commish. I had a good friend attend SIU Carbondale back when they were pretty good in the early 2000s. It was common knowledge that many of the MBB players didn’t ago to classes. Most of them were enrolled in communications or sports management. Not trying to knock SIU specifically or comm majors, but it’s pretty messed up that Andrew Luck taking honors classes at Stanford counts for the same as a guy who can barely read taking 101 courses at UNC with the needed help of a tutor. Let’s face it, most of these rules and policies are unfair and often punish the wrong people.
As for why a player leaving for the NBA does not ding a Program, it’s because the schools sending players to the NBA have more influence over the NCAA.
|
|
|
Post by nctitan on Aug 31, 2019 22:20:40 GMT -5
The NCAA should decide whether it is looking at a program, a sport or a university.
If a program is retaining and graduating, is it fair to ding a specific sport? If members of a sports team are benefiting from unfair advantages (tutors writing papers, bogus courses) should that sport get a pass? If a university offers classes designed to benefit athletes but then opens that up to all students should that be a ding? (Yes, UNC, I'm looking at you.)
Analysis 101 takes me to asking what is the purpose of the rule? Is it to encourage student athletes in their academic areas, or is it to punish programs that either are willfully disobeying or by happenstance falling below an arbitrary threshold? And, of course, in this retention case, does the metric really matter and does the formula really measure the metric?
|
|
|
Post by ptctitan on Sept 1, 2019 8:03:23 GMT -5
Hope you’re right! I’ll just add, I don’t think the whole “this ban punishes the kids on this current team and they weren’t the ones that caused the infraction” argument historically hasn’t held up very well with the NCAA. I think the NCAA uses bans to punish schools and programs mostly so that leadership will pressure coaches and ADs to follow the rules. The fact that student athletes sometimes pay the prices for the misdeeds of others is a really unfortunate aspect of the system. But we need to remember that the alternative to things like post-season bans would be monetary fines. A system like that would simply make rule breaking tolerable for wealthy schools, as they have the deep pockets to pay fines. Does anyone know if the appeal needs to be resolved by a certain date? I’m assuming the decision needs to be made before the MBB season starts. The NCAA states clearly that post-season ineligibility is not punishment for violating any rules of conduct. A 4-year APR of 930 or greater is a requirement for any team's post-season eligibility. The actual stated punishment for missing the 930 minimum score is 16 hours of weekly practice versus 20 hours that are normally permitted. Of course, post-season ineligibility is a de facto punishment. It could even cost us our share of the HL's participant's loot for appearing in the NCAA tournament in 2020. There are no misdeeds being punished here. It was not a breach of any NCAA rule for either of these two players to transfer. NCAA rules do not require any player to enroll in any school in the next full term after they leave their first school. We are talking about how the NCAA calculates the APR and its application to a very unique transfer situation when those two transfers were most likely prompted by our decision not to promote JJ to head coach. Commissioner makes a good argument about the relevance of player retention points. This is true especially in the era of the transfer portal. Also, remember that these two players transferred late and during the transition from the old transfer system to the new portal that became effective in October 2018.
|
|
|
Post by calihanmole on Sept 1, 2019 8:10:25 GMT -5
Hey, I’m on your side. Nothing would ruin my winter quite like having the Titans ineligible for post season play. We’ll see what the NCAA says.
|
|
|
Post by Commissioner on Sept 3, 2019 9:10:03 GMT -5
|
|
|
Post by titantarheel on Sept 6, 2019 11:43:45 GMT -5
Daily dose of pessimism on the wandering tale of JJJ and Jack B. The LIU B coach tweeted out a short vid of team running and no sight of a tall out of shape red head, nor a short little guy. Ugh. I really don't care what they do, but them not enrolling could affect my Titans and THAT is what I care about.
|
|
|
Post by Commissioner on Sept 6, 2019 11:49:02 GMT -5
Daily dose of pessimism on the wandering tale of JJJ and Jack B. The LIU B coach tweeted out a short vid of team running and no sight of a tall out of shape red head, nor a short little guy. Ugh. I really don't care what they do, but them not enrolling could affect my Titans and THAT is what I care about. Their roster on-line still shows just 9 guys. For what little its worth--and it's very little, but at least it's positive--Athlon mentions both players in its LIU preview.
|
|
|
Post by titantarheel on Sept 6, 2019 12:50:47 GMT -5
Daily dose of pessimism on the wandering tale of JJJ and Jack B. The LIU B coach tweeted out a short vid of team running and no sight of a tall out of shape red head, nor a short little guy. Ugh. I really don't care what they do, but them not enrolling could affect my Titans and THAT is what I care about. Their roster on-line still shows just 9 guys. For what little its worth--and it's very little, but at least it's positive--Athlon mentions both players in its LIU preview. True - there are 12 guys (at least) running in this video, there may be another one off to the left if the camera didn't pan all the way left. Also this summer the Coach had a number of different team activities going on and the dynamic duo weren't in any of those pics. At SOME point they ought to be seen around the team and have it be evident they are actually on the team.
|
|