Not sure what Embiid and Wiggins' raises got them per year, or how those are broken down, so without looking I am going to guess Drew Gooden.
justanotherfan
3643 posts
McCormack looks more fluid running the floor. He's getting into better shape, which is going to make him a much better player. I still think he's a year and a half away from being where he needs to be to really contribute, but under the right set of circumstances, he can help during the end of the conference season and the tourney.
Grimes is the elite player in the group that we are recruiting. Dotson is a very good player, but Grimes can take a team to that next level. I think Dotson is kind of like Frank, with perhaps a bit more polish coming out of high school than what Frank had. Grimes is a top 10 type of talent IMO, would be top 7 if they listed him as a PG, although he can play either spot in college.
I've disagreed with Self on this from the beginning. KU-Mizzou is bigger than any one person within the rivalry, even Bill Self. This matchup needs to be a regular thing, period. I would argue the same had we lost today because rivalries in sports matter, and KU needs a rivalry that matters. Not K-State. Not Iowa State. A real rivalry that people on both sides care about year round.
That's Mizzou. Always has been. Just need to get the games going again. Play in KC every year in everything. Football at Arrowhead. Basketball at the Sprint Center. Baseball at the K or Community America. Soccer at Childrens Mercy Park. People would go because these are events, not just games.
And that is why rivalries matter.
The rivalry has value that KU is not currently monetizing. For non KU fans, this is a rivalry worth watching, same as OU-Texas, Alabama-Auburn and UNC-Duke.
KU doesn't have a nationally relevant rivalry right now. That's what Mizzou gives us.
KSU has basically two periods of football - mediocrity and Snyder. There's no history aside from Snyder, so whatever Snyder does is incredible.
KU has had several periods of up and down football. KU has at least three different coaches that have had double digit win seasons.
Snyder level success would be great... for now. After 15 years of 8 or 9 win seasons, KU would want to take the next step. KSU never did want to, because all they could imagine was falling back to pre-Snyder mediocrity. Remember, KSU isn't a national power in any sport, so being relevant is good enough for that fan base. Relevant doesn't cut it at KU because we have been to the top, same as why a lot of football powers struggle to find basketball coaches because the expectation is so high because the fan base isn't content with just being okay.
When you play a bunch of lightly recruited players, this is where you end up sometimes. Competitive, but can't finish the job.
Snyder has always hoped to catch lightning in a bottle one time - that perfect season where he has the right schedule and the right set of overachievers. Unfortunately, college football has changed in a way that makes his approach almost impossible to work now.
When he started, the goal was to schedule 4 non conference patsies, beat KU, MU, ISU and Okie State every year and hope to catch a year when OU, NU, and CU were down, go to the Orange Bowl and maybe beat a team outside the top 10 to claim a piece of the national title. Then the Big 12 happened and suddenly there's a conference title game.
So then the strategy was to beat the weaker North, catch NU on a down year and play one big game in the title game for a chance to go to the national title game. He got it right once, but slipped up against A&M.
Now with the round robin, he can't avoid the stronger teams some years and he still has to deal with a title game in conference, plus the CFP means even if he wins the conference, he doesn't get a month to prep for the national title game, he has a month to prep for the semifinal.
His whole strategy won't work now because college football changed around him and passed him by. He can't plan to play just one perfect game in a perfect season where everything clicks just right. He has to be top 2 in a round robin, then win the conference title game, then beat two of the top four teams in the country. Snyder never built for this landscape and now he is stuck.
He won't be bad, but the best he can do is maybe 9 wins. His plan has a ceiling because he wanted to play one or two big time games in the season, but to win a national championship you have to play four or five, and even in a perfect scenario, he never built for that.
It would have been fun to see Josh Jackson against Porter.
Frank is fast, but I think Fox has a little bit more juice. Frank will play eventually. The season is long, so I am not worried about Frank not getting any run.
KU should be playing a dual threat athlete at QB right now. The line isn't ready to protect a pro style drop back guy. You have to have a guy that is ready and able to run and make plays with his legs.
KU doing the types of things bad teams do right now.
Get a stop. Muff a punt, give the ball right back.
Force a 3 and out. Immediately throw a pick, give the ball right back.
Instead of getting the ball at midfield, KU basically gave ISU 75 yards of field position to gift ISU 7 points.
A potentially revolutionary idea. 10 pitch max on each plate appearance - if pitch 10 is a ball, batter walks. If its a strike or foul, batter is out.
I'd also do a clock on pitching changes. Too often, the manager goes out and has a "meeting" to let the pitcher get a few more throws in from the pen, then the pitcher comes in and gets his 10 warm up pitches. In the playoffs where there are so many pitching changes, even shaving 30 seconds off each of these could really cut down on the total time for the game.
I agree. That's why I qualified the statement with at the D1 level. Compared to the population at large, those guys are a whole different species. But compared to D1 athletes, they were above average.
@dylans is right about the use of coded language. African American players are always portrayed as being physically skilled in part because it diminishes their smarts and work ethic, giving rise to a line of thinking that African Americans are unintelligent and lazy, despite the fact that LeBron James may be the smartest player ever, and both Kobe Bryant and Michael Jordan were among the hardest workers in the history of the game.
People say Bird and McHale weren't athletic, but they kept up with Worthy and Johnson just fine. I've watched the old video. Bird and McHale were ridiculous. Same goes for Pistol Pete and Jerry West and many others. They were exceptional. Its just that, even in sports, sometimes its easy to fall back on stereotypes, even if that stereotype doesn't fit.
Wisconsin was very athletic. Kaminsky, at 7-0, as mobile as most SF. Dekker, a pretty athletic wing guy. Now, none of these guys were blow the charts away athletic like a Wiggins or Jackson, but they weren't slouches. Koenen was a pretty solid wing for them as well. Hayes wasn't a high flyer, but he was a decent athlete, too.
Wisconsin lacked an eye popping athlete, but they had a team full of above average athletes at the D1 level. You weren't going to blow them off the floor the way you could some of the low and mid majors because of a lack of athleticism. Wisconsin could hold their own at the highest level. They just didn't have that one or two guys that would drop your jaw with pure athleticism.
Looking at his numbers a little deeper, He shot much better from three last year - 17-43 last season vs. 4-22 the previous year. That's a legitimate addition to his game (he was 5-19 as a freshman, so the three point shot was something new for him). He had 11 fewer rebounds total last season in 80 fewer minutes. If you even out the minutes, his rate stats remain basically identical there.
His FG% stayed pretty level (.507 as jr vs. .511 as a soph), even though he averaged 2 more shots per game.
All of that suggests to me that Zach Smith improved quite a bit because he had more responsibility last year but didn't really lose anything in terms of efficiency (attempted 50 more shots last season than as a sophomore).
I would anticipate if he continues to have that level of responsibility and remains just as efficient, we will see a similar uptick in production, hence my guess that he would put up a 14 and 8 this year.
Zach Smith averaged 12 and 7 last year. If he can bump that up a shade (thinking 14 and 8) that's probably good enough for first team all conference. 14/8 is legitimate all conference territory, particularly since he also blocks a few shots and gets some assists. He's been all conference honorable mention the last two years, so this is a pretty logical step.
Vladimir Brodziansky averaged 14 and 6 last year, with 2 blocks to go with that. An argument could be made that he could have been all conference last year. I could see him averaging 16 and 7 this year, with 2.5 blocks. That's not a huge leap for him and if that's the case, again, those are all conference level numbers.
I doubt Udoka averages 16/7/2 this year (if he does, this KU team will be unstoppable). Udoka may not even average 14/8/2 this year. More likely he averages 8/10/3. But that's still not matching what either Smith or Brodziansky will likely do.
Skills are certainly a different category of thing than athleticism, but part of it is also being put in a position to achieve the maximum output.
I think @dylans brought up a good example in Kenny Gregory. Gregory was not a good perimeter shooter. He was a career 32% shooter from three in college. Because he was also only an average ball handler, there was no way for him to tap into his athleticism at the NBA level because he wasn't a good enough shooter to keep a defense honest to allow his quickness and explosive leaping ability to come to the forefront. He had tons of athletic gifts, but jumping high and being fast wasn't enough because he was too poor a shooter to have an impact.
Larry Bird was a tremendous athlete. He wasn't the fastest player, but for a guy his size, he was pretty mobile (pre-back injury). His body control was second to none. Same for balance. Watch Bird coming off screens. His athletic ability to have the balance and body control to create shots in tight spaces is remarkable. Bird wasn't Lebron as an athlete, but he was far more than an average athlete. Watch him going up against guys like Scottie Pippen and Dennis Rodman (elite NBA athletes by any measure). He more than holds his own against them, something that wouldn't have happened if he were a poor athlete.
John Stockton was another guy that, while not fast in straight line speed, had great quickness, hand eye coordination and balance. He wasn't as athletic as some of today's PGs (you can see that when he went toe to toe with guys like Gary Payton in the 90s), but he was not a poor athlete by any means.
Let's remember, almost anyone looks like a poor athlete compared to Lebron James (quite possibly the most athletic human being in history). It's hard to look athletic next to Russell Westbrook or Blake Griffin or others because their athletic abilities are mind altering.
We got a taste of that up close last year watching Josh Jackson. Having seen Jackson and Andrew Wiggins up close, I can tell you two things - 1. Wiggins is the slightly superior athlete - he's faster, jumps higher, quicker, etc. 2. Jackson is likely going to be the better player because, for all of Wiggins flashy athleticism, Jackson has the better overall strength and body control.
Some guys don't have body contol. They can run fast and jump high, but they can't change direction quickly, hold position when bumped off course, etc. Wiggins struggles with that. Jackson doesn't. And that is the largest difference between the two of them. Two tremendous athletes, but one able to tap into more skills because he has better strength and body control (provided his shooting improves).
Athleticism is running, jumping, quickness, agility, strength.
However, there's also a term in the scouting world referring to "usable athleticism" or "in-game athleticism." Some guys are workout warriors that can lift and jump and run and everything in the gym, but get them on the court and they can only tap into 70% of that.
For instance, did you know that Reggie Jackson, PG for the Detroit Pistons, when he was with the OKC Thunder, had a higher vertical leap than Russell Westbrook? Most people are shocked to find that out. But Westbrook can tap into all of his speed, strength, agility, leaping ability, etc. on the floor and use that for basketball skills. Jackson cannot. So while Jackson may technically be more athletic, in game, he can't touch Westbrook's athleticism.
The same may be the case for Cunliffe (I need to watch him play). He has a lot of physical skills, but can he tap into all of that while playing basketball? That's a question that still has to be answered. We know Vick can tap into his athleticism on the court.
His apology didn't make a lot of sense, either, though. The NFL wasn't integrated until 1946, so even on the football field, there was oppression within the last 100 years. The University of Buffalo declined a bid to the Tangerine Bowl in 1958 because the stadium operator would not allow games with integrated teams (Buffalo had two black players). The SEC went largely unintegrated until the 1960s. Pretending that sports was somehow untouched by that societal division is just historically and factually incorrect.
Even if his comments were focused on the NFL exclusively, his statement is still incorrect. Like I said earlier, I am just chalking it up to him not knowing or not remembering because of undetected head injuries, because even the clarification is impossibly wrong.
I don't think KU can do what Snyder did at KSU because KU actually has some history in football. As @Kcmatt7 said, KSU without Snyder wins about one third of their games (welcome to 4-8 every year). When that's your history, winning 7-8 games a year is cause for celebration.
KU has had on and off success throughout its history. Never consistent, but some success. That means the expectation is always going to be higher at KU than it will be at KSU because KSU has no history. They just have Snyder. KSU had never finished a year ranked prior to 1993. KU was ranked in the final poll in 1947, 1960, 1968, and 1973. That's not a long line of history, but again, KU didn't exactly suck the entire time. KU still has a higher all time winning percentage than KSU, even though KSU has been the better program for most of the last 25 years. That's how bad KSU was pre-Snyder, and likely how bad KSU will become post Snyder.
KU just has to find a coach that wants to stay at Kansas after they start succeeding. Maybe that's Beaty (maybe not). But he needs time to at least level the playing field again.
Also, all of that income for the athletes is taxed as salary, whereas the owners likely wouldn't be taxed if they kept that revenue due to accounting and such. So really, athletes getting huge salaries is a financial benefit for the economy and that money does go to teachers, police, fire, infrastructure, etc. because it is taxed at the full rate since it is income.
If athletes made less, the billionaires would keep it and it likely would not be taxed at the full rate. We should all be in favor of athlete salaries going up, if for no other reason than it drives up tax revenues.
100% correct. Having less than 60 scholarship players for a D1 squad makes it basically impossible to compete in a Power 5. I think we are finally into the 70s for scholarship players and should go over 80 next year. We probably won't have the full scholarship squad until 2019 or 2020. Beaty has to get at least until he is playing with a full complement before we can truly evaluate him. You can't compete in a power 5 conference with D2 scholarship levels.
Honestly, every time a former football player says something absurd or can't remember (or doesn't know) something fairly common, that is the first thing I think about. I think he honestly doesn't know or can't remember some of these things. That's its own separate tragedy.
Mike Ditka really embarrassed himself this week. Wow.
The biggest challenge in Europe is finding a stable situation. If you get with one of the better teams in one of the better leagues, you can do quite well. If not and you bounce around in some of the second tier leagues, there are lots of horror stories of not getting paid, showing up and finding no team, or no hotel, or no playing time, or whatever. That doesn't happen in the top leagues, but it can happen at the lower levels because those leagues (and teams) do not have the financial stability.
With everything happening with this FBI investigation, this could be a situation where there are only so many life boats off a growing number of Titanics. Louisville is toast. Arizona is in trouble. The investigation is still going. If a couple more programs get dinged on this, you could see lots of guys scrambling to get out of bad situations. That means lower ranked guys need to commit quickly to guarantee their seat, otherwise when transfers start happening, they won't have anywhere to go.
Either way, buckle up.
Frank has a 10-12 year NBA career waiting on him if he wants it.
He is unlikely to be a star, may not ever even be a regular starter, but he can be a top tier backup PG and spot starter, and certainly a rotation player on a playoff caliber team at his peak. If he's smart with his career, he will be set for life and his family will be comfortable. Good for him. That's how hard work and talent pay off.
It's a give and take with rookies that have played four years in college. On the positive side, they come into the league as more finished products. They are more mature, both physically and mentally, and more ready to compete.
On the down side, they are basically finished products, so if they are not productive in their first year or two, its probably time to cut bait because they likely will not develop enough to contribute later on.
That said, its a great sign that Frank is playing well because that means he will be able to contribute. If he were struggling, I would be very concerned about him falling out of the league entirely.
Harris would have been a bit of a project as a four year player. Good body and athleticism, but very raw skill wise. His hands aren't great and he doesn't really shoot it or handle it well. It's a loss in that we won't have him around for four years, but he probably was two years away from making an impact at KU regardless.
D. Lawson isn't eligible this year because he's a transfer. He can practice like Newman did last year, but can't play in games.
The trouble (or challenge, depending on your level of optimism) is that many of the proposals are things known to the policy makers.
For instance, I think most people would be willing to increase the jury pay, but that takes money, and most people don't want to invest the money in it. Same with the budgets for prosecutors and indigent defense. Nobody wants to put the money into it to hire independent investigators (isn't that what the police are for! they say).
Nobody wants to beef up the budget for indigent defense, lest they be accused of being "soft on crime."
Even the body cam and dash cam stuff has been a nightmare to get passed - many places still refuse to require body cameras (a bill in Missouri to require such failed last year, I think). Between the cost and opposition from police lobbying groups, most of that stuff has yet to make it into law.
And the data collection stuff, well, the current Department of Justice is unraveling a lot of the stuff that was put in place under AGs Holder and Lynch requiring additional data collection and a central repository.
It's not just that it isn't being done. A lot of these things are actively opposed - some for financial reasons, some simply because police groups lobby against it.
How can we make strides when the police don't even want the public to get the information. I'm not even saying that there is anything untoward going on. We just don't know, and without the data, we can't find out.
And this is why we need awareness. Awareness of the issue of police violence. Awareness of the issue of lack of information and data collection. Awareness of a lack of funding and a lack of independence between prosecutors and police. Not because every officer or prosecutor is bad. They are not. But because we, as the public, are the only ones that can act as a check on this system. But we can only do that if we have the information - something we sorely lack right now.
I've been tossing this around for a bunch of different ideas.
You have to start Devonte, obviously. He's your PG, period.
Malik is the best scorer on the team (maybe the best pure scorer Self has had in a while). He's going to be your other combo guard.
The difficult choice is at the wing spot. You really can't start both Vick and Svi because you end up too small, but both will play plenty, so it likely doesn't matter. Self will probably reward seniority and start Svi, but Vick is going to get a ton of run either way because he's probably the best perimeter defender we have.
Preston and Doke up front is a no doubter. We don't have a ton of depth up front, so I can't see those guys not getting the nod. The challenge will be making sure that we don't end up shorthanded due to foul trouble, meaning those guys have to be smart with how they play inside. No silly over the back or reaching fouls.
Late Night is a showcase for the atmosphere, not anything related to the actual team. It's a chance to be a little goofy, have some fun, see the guys run around, etc. They spend as much time dancing as they do playing. It's as much a recruiting tool as anything. The big programs use it as such. There's really no other purpose for it. Heck, they could not play the scrimmage and probably be just as effective.
- Better data regarding all police stops/encounters with the public.
Right now, data is only collected for stops that result in tickets or written warnings. That means that if an officer stops me, but doesn't give me a written warning or ticket, that stop is unrecorded.
We need to track this so that we can get statistical information on if officers are just randomly engaging people of color with no real probable cause or suspicion. The general public never hears about those encounters, but it creates the types of situations where tensions are heightened. We need to know how often this type of thing is happening.
- More use of body cameras and dash cameras that officers cannot disable at the scene.
How often have we seen questionable things happen, but there's no video footage because the body cam or dash cam either was not working, or had been accidentally turned off during the chase/stop/encounter. That should not happen. We have technology that would allow the cameras to record to a separate location and would prevent them from being disabled by the officer when they are actively on duty. The cameras are there for a reason. They shouldn't just be getting turned off.
- Any police involved shooting that may be prosecuted must be moved outside the jurisdiction for prosecution.
It is incredibly difficult to find an unbiased jury in cases that involve police shootings. Part of this is that because people naturally lend credibility to those in positions of power or authority, meaning that a police officer will tend to be more believable because of their position than the average person. You can't do anything about that because that's a natural human tendency.
What you can do something about is that people tend to not want to judge too harshly against the department that they have to call when there is something happening to them. Very simply, people in Lawrence don't want to be too quick to judge the Lawrence PD, because if they are in trouble, they want the Lawrence PD to respond. The best way to handle this is that if there's an officer involved shooting in Lawrence that may bring about criminal charges, it has to be prosecuted in Topeka, or in Kansas City, or Olathe, or Wichita, or Emporia - basically somewhere that isn't Lawrence so that the people on the jury are more comfortable judging the case without worry.
- Community outreach
There's been a history within the black community that the police are not on our side. This goes back as far as lynchings, when often police would stand aside as blacks accused (but not convicted) of crimes were drug from their cells and killed by mobs. Even through the 1950's and 1960's, there was a tendency to trump up charges against African Americans. Now that we have DNA evidence, we are discovering lots of convictions that have imprisoned the wrong people, often based on the testimony of one witness, without any physical evidence (sometimes even ignoring alibi witnesses).
This has led to a tendency by minorities to simply not trust the police. They aren't generally there when we need them - unless its to arrest us. I remember calling a police officer to file a report of a theft. Once he determined I wasn't the suspect, he lost interest, took down my name and what was taken, then left. No investigation. Nothing. He provided zero help. Just didn't care about helping a young black kid. Once I wasn't a suspect, he had no time to talk to me.
That's not something that can be undone overnight. The justice system as a whole has a responsibility in this. People need to outright admit that some of the things that happened in the past were wrong - unequivocally wrong. No qualifiers. Just wrong. And then it has to be established that the practices that led to that - often times simply a desire to get a conviction on the books for a crime - need to be changed.
Part of that is also making jury service more open to poorer individuals. For an hourly worker, the $10 per day for jury service makes it an incredible hardship. By making jury service available only to those with the means to afford it (because hardship is a reason to be excused) the pool is tilted away from lower income individuals, meaning that if you are poor and a minority, the chances of being tried by a jury of your peers is actually fairly low.
- Improved access to justice
This goes to the point above, but let's just be honest - the criminal justice system is underfunded. Grossly underfunded. Prosecutors offices are underfunded. Did you know that prosecutors offices actually have their own independent investigators (i.e. not the police). Except that many offices can't fill those positions, so they simply use the police as their investigators - that means the prosecutors office has a significant conflict with law enforcement officers within their jurisdiction. How can they be expected to look into any of these issues without bias when they work hand in hand.
On top of that, indigent defense is even more poorly funded. In most cases, the indigent defense offices have no investigators on staff. Our constitution guarantees access to an adequate defense, but nobody wants to pay "to defend criminals." Criminal defense isn't about defending criminals, its about defending the constitution, requiring the prosecution to meet its burden on all elements and generally defending the process of justice.
If the very poorest in society can't afford access to justice, because our legal framework is built on precedent, any bad precedent, even ones built on the basis of an individual simply not having access or the ability to mount a defense, are woven into the fabric of our legal system and affect the outcome of later cases. That means they could directly affect you or I if we are ever wrongly accused. That helps everyone, but particularly people of color because...
- Rethink the war on drugs.
We have an addiction problem in this country. Now that it is opiods and suburban housewives are addicted, there is a push to decriminalize addiction (i.e. usage). But how many young minorities are in prison now for usage? We need to significantly rethink how we handle this 'war' because to fight a war you need enemies and there are always casualties.
There are probably a ton more ideas, but that at least gives a start.
Edit: I should probably note that most of these ideas are not original to me. The vast majority are things that have been suggested in various studies, reports, and papers dating back to the 80's and 90's, and supported by research as recent as this year.
I thought they were the ones that get beat. Same difference.
He can't say the obvious that everyone else says - Kansas is the team to beat in the Big 12 until someone beats them. Period. End of discussion.
Doesn't matter who you are, who brings back who, who recruited who, or anything else. Until someone else wins this league, Kansas is the team to beat. Don't like it? Who cares. The league title runs through Lawrence, Kansas until someone can win enough games to change that fact.
We may disagree, but I have to give you credit for engaging in the dialogue. Too many people refuse to engage in the dialogue. I hope that you have gained some perspective from the things that I have written. I have certainly gained some perspective from reading your posts.
The challenge is that the first issue is to raise awareness. Many people assume that police violence against minorities happens only because of actions on the part of minorities, and not due to policies and practices of law enforcement. Perhaps you are aware (perhaps not, as its a little known fact), that there is no central database cataloging all police stops, or even all police shootings in the US. No one could produce good statistics on this if they tried because the data doesn't exist (the DOJ is currently blocking or undoing reforms put in place by the Obama administration that would have funded such statistical information gathering).
To raise awareness you have to do something that draws attention. You have to sit at lunch counters where you aren't welcome. You have to call in the National Guard to go to class. You have to walk across a bridge in Selma. You have to March on Washington. You have to bow your head and raise your fist in Mexico City. You have to boycott buses in Montgomery. You have to Freedom Ride from the north to the south.
If no one challenges the status quo, inequality remains. Every time a young black or brown person was shot by police, there was an immediate chorus of people saying what they did wrong, or citing their record, etc. It was all about excuses. Cops make split second decisions, shouldn't be second guessed, tough job... All of those things are absolutely true. The job is tough. Part of the reason it is tough is because we are hoping, no, we are depending on the good judgment of the men and women bestowed with that badge to protect us.
A few weeks ago an officer in St. Louis was acquitted in the shooting death of a black man. On the dashcam video he is clearly heard saying that he intended to kill the man when they caught him after the police chase. If there was evidence that any of us said we were going to kill someone and that person died at our hand within six months, there would be little chance that we could argue self defense. Any of us, black or white, would likely go to prison for murder. Yet somehow, this police officer was acquitted because he says that he believed the individual was reaching for a gun (the gun found on the scene did not have the victim's DNA on it, but it did have the officer's).
There are dozens of cases like this, but every time something like this happens, the refrain just plays again. split second decision...thought they were reaching for a weapon...feared for my life...ACQUITTAL.
Something had to be done to break that cycle. Not something violent. Not even marching in the streets, where the tensions between black protesters and police have become even more testy. So what to do. Take a knee. Raise a fist. Not in disrespect, but to raise awareness that something is not right.
It cannot be silenced now. A discussion must be had. Things must change.
Frank making a name for himself!
I'm no scientist, so I don't have any research or knowledge to base this on, but other than pain management, I think weed smoking would be either neutral or detrimental to athletes. Smoking, generally isn't good for lung stamina, so I can't imagine that it would help with endurance, etc.
It can be a relaxant, which is good, but too much probably would be like taking too many muscle relaxers.
I don't think its the huge issue its made out to be, but I also don't think it would be helpful to athletes.
Valid points made. Agree to disagree with much respect.:+1:
The protest has always been about police violence against minorities. Kaepernick said that in the beginning, its been repeated many times over. A lot of people have tried to make it about the flag, but that has never been what it is about. It's about police violence.
Martin Luther King, Jr. was brought up by @DoubleDD. I think MLK is actually an excellent example of what is going on right now, but for completely different reasons.
This fivethirtyeight.com ↗ article talks specifically about public opinion of MLK.
Most Americans didn't approve of the Freedom Riders (mixed race groups that rode interstate buses into the south to challenge the lack of enforcement of the Federal ruling that discrimination in busing was illegal) in the 60's. Most didn't approve of the March on Washington in 1963 where King gave his now famous "I have a Dream" speech. I find it funny that @DoubleDD mentions this speech specifically as the "right way" to go about things, nevermind that it was HUGELY unpopular at the time.
And MLK himself, in a 1966 Gallup poll, was viewed negatively by 63% of all Americans.
Sixty three percent of all Americans viewed Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. negatively in 1966
In 2011, 4% of Americans viewed MLK negatively.
History is funny like that. When you stand on the side of equality, history will smile on you long after you are gone.
When you don't, you end up like George Wallace. Many Americans applauded him for standing in the schoolhouse door to prevent integration. I doubt you can find more than a handful of people that would champion that now.
Wallace ended up on the wrong side of history. What he did was popular at the time, but looks absolutely ridiculous now because he was fighting to preserve inequality.
MLK was unpopular at the time, even up to his death and probably for some time afterwards, but he's revered now by people all around the world, of every race, because he was fighting for equality.
Curt Flood was unpopular (vilified and blackballed - hmmm, where have we seen that) after challenging the reserve clause. Although he was an outstanding player, his legacy lives on as the man who had the courage to challenge the reserve clause.
Booing players that kneel may be popular now, but in 30 years, will those same fans be embarrassed to tell their children and grandchildren that they booed Colin Kaepernick and burned the jerseys of players that knelt in the same way that those who hosed down and attacked marchers on the Edmund Pettus bridge in 1965 are now ashamed of their actions? Will an explanation escape them, the same as it does for those who can't explain why they opposed sit-ins at diner counters?
I don't know. I honestly don't. But I am a student of history, and history has taught me that if you are on the side of equality, history will tend to smile on you, while those who stand silently aside, or worse, fight for inequality, are always reflected in that light in the end.
Unfortunately, there are only really maybe 5-6 good kickers at any given time. The rest have some very obvious limitations that will rear their head at the most inopportune times.
The money is everywhere. ShoeCos are paying prospects. ShoeCos are paying agents (both on top of the table and otherwise). ShoeCos are paying schools (they even brag about the size of those contracts). ShoeCos are paying college coaches (both on top of the table and otherwise). ShoeCos are paying AAU coaches (some on top of the table, some underneath).
Agents are paying prospects (under the table). Agents are paying AAU coaches (under the table). Agents are paying college coaches (very hush hush, but it does happen). Agents are working with ShoeCos (wink wink, nod nod).
This is a multi billion dollar industry. ShoeCos have influence. That influence has to go from the top down. They can give the head coaches a nice bonus in the contracts legally. They can throw in some money for the assistants within the contract as well (legally). They can pay AAU coaches legally.
Agents have influence. They can work with ShoeCos (and do all the time). They can work with coaches (who do you think is advising coaches on the draft status of players?).
I don't know if you have ever known any high level basketball (or football) recruits personally, but there's a seedy side to even the nicest, neatest recruitment, and it starts before they even get to high school. I can personally tell you about offers made to friends of mine (better athletes than me, obviously) to attend certain high schools as far back as the mid 90s. I can tell you about offers made recently to get kids to attend certain high schools, play with certain AAU teams, etc. These aren't agents. These are ShoeCos that sponsor local high schools that want to make sure those schools are winning at the HS level. Obviously, I am not going to name names here, but there are schools in the eastern part of this state and throughout the Kansas City area that recruit like colleges - not just private schools, either.
True, but I'm not talking about promoting a scrub. I'm talking about creating a preference for Guy A over Guy B. Let's take Devon Dotson and Ayo Dosunmu, who I mentioned earlier. They are both good players. Both ranked pretty high. Both clearly behind the top guys in the class (Quickley, Grimes, etc.).
Let's say now that ShoeCo decides they want Dotson at KU. You have to make sure that the staff has a preference for Dotson over Dosunmu, because there's little chance that both go to the same school. Now as an evaluator, someone says make sure you highlight Dotson over Dosunmu in your evaluations. Obviously, that's not going to keep KU from evaluating both, but if the video guy is higher on Dotson, the staff is going to probably be higher on him as well. The internal preference will be for Dotson over Dosunmu. Dosunmu will start exploring other options because the "buzz" has KU high on Dotson. The coordinator is at very little risk here because both are good players. Dotson is going to go somewhere and play high level D1 ball. So is Dosunmu. So there's almost no risk of getting canned because ultimately the coordinator helped identify a lower ranked talent to bring to KU. Dotson comes in and plays for 3-4 years, does well, nobody remembers where Dosunmu goes on this site unless he goes to somewhere in conference or Mizzou. He has a good career at Illinois, UConn or Memphis and nobody bats an eyelash.
But that's the difference. ShoeCo picks a guy they want at a prominent program like KU over a lesser national program like Oklahoma State or Illinois. They aren't going to pick bad players because they don't want scrubs being known as "adidas guys" or "Nike guys" or whatever. But when separating two closely ranked players, influencing a small preference could go a long way.
I base a lot of this theory on how some all star teams are/have been selected. A bit of small internal preference changes who gets picked for their HS all conference or all star team vs. who gets snubbed.
since at least the late 80s from what I hear from people I know that live in the area.
Everybody uses external sources to get the names of the top 100 or so players. But once you have those guys and use the scouting services to sort them into tiers, you start the internal evaluation process. That internal process starts with the recruiting coordinator and video coordinator pulling info on the guys they are thinking of pursuing (perhaps 40 or so in basketball).
I never said a player would contact a school. I said the ShoeCo would. Remember, these players have been going to camps since they were 12 or 13, if not younger. If there's a preference that's been established that such and such player is an adidas guy, or a Nike guy, or a Jordan guy, that's known within the circuit.
So you can work both ends of it. Promote a guy to the school, and also promote the school to a certain player.
Right now, in the Class of 2018, KU has two commits and is still pursuing 19 other guys. KU offered 30 players, which means they probably evaluated twice that number. Who do you think is sorting through those 70 guys? That's not an external source and the coaches and assistants aren't doing that while they are coaching. That's up to some of the lower level guys, particularly on lower ranked players. Everyone knows about Zion Williamson. Not everyone is on Jarius Hamilton. Fewer can separate Hamilton from Gabe Brown.
The people down the food chain don't make the decisions, but they can influence the decision maker.
I remember one of my first big meetings as a professional fresh out of school, I was being introduced to people and someone introduced me to the secretary of a company. She was the secretary for the president and basically, if you wanted to talk to the president, you had to talk to her. She was the gatekeeper. There was no getting around her. If you approached the president in person, he would tell you to call her. If you called him on his cell, he would tell you to call her.
If she didn't like you, you had zero access to the president. If she did, you had unlimited access. She was lower on the totem pole, but she could make very powerful people jump through whatever hoops she wanted because she controlled access.
So say you're a ShoeCo and you want to get a recruit to KU. Bill Self doesn't review every single highlight video himself. He doesn't have the time to do that. So the video coordinator or the recruiting coordinator do that and they put together the initial reports. Obviously, that's not going to turn a no talent guy into a KU recruit, but if you're trying to solve the difference between say, Devon Dotson and Ayo Dosunmu (ranked 26th and 29th overall, and as the 6th and 7th best PG in the country), what those initial internal reports about a guy say could make a difference in who the school is pursuing early in the process. If you're ShoeCo that needs Devon Dotson to rise up the ranks, handing the video guys at Big School X and State U a few grand to make sure those highlights are presented to the coaches so that Big School X shows interest and State U sends a coach to watch them play.
Now of course, I'm on the outside, so I don't know what happened with one guy or another. But the possibility was (and still is) there.
No program is safe because every program employs someone that would take a bribe. Every program has a grad assistant, a video analyst, a recruiting coordinator, etc. Those jobs pay crap. Like less than $20,000 in some cases for grad assistants and video analysts at many programs, less than $30,000 for a lot of recruiting coordinators.
If you're making $20,000 a year or less, five grand for a player is a major windfall, but that's no kind of money in the concept of a scheme like this. But five grand to make sure the head coach sees this player's new highlight video first every week is easy. Bill Self, Roy Williams, Coach K, Cal, etc., can't be bought for five grand. But there's someone on that staff that can be. All the ShoeCo has to do is find them.
Tragic.
Senseless.
Duncanville is a historic girls HS hoops powerhouse in Texas. Last season they beat a team 91-1 (blowouts like that are fairly common in girls HS hoops), and two years ago Duncanville was the girls basketball national champions. They have two WNBA players as alumni and are considered the "UConn of girls HS basketball".
These ladies come from a true powerhouse at the HS level where they are used to success at the highest levels. That's a great atmosphere to tap into in trying to build up the KU women's program.