Quote from: 75Fan on May 24, 2023, 02:04:21 PMBest thing he can do is get counseling and work on his game and hit the gym a lot, then come back and drop 50 in 5 straight games and reverse the narrative.....and hire security.

Exactly - hire a professional security team.  Not some buddy that likes to party with you and just happens to always carry a handgun.  

Quote from: 02Racer on May 22, 2023, 05:08:27 PMHe wasn't doing anything dangerous in either incident. Silly and immature but not dangerous.

He was brandishing a firearm in a public nightclub where he and his party had been drinking and presumably so were the other customers in the building.  If it's like any nightclub I've ever been in, there were probably multiple intoxicated people in the proximity.  We'll have to agree to disagree that this was not dangerous.  Firearms and drugs or alcohol are a dangerous combination in my opinion.  You're entitled to disagree and that's fine.    

I have no idea who this congressman is, and since I think almost all politicians at the national level are trash - I don't care.  For the record, I own several handguns and I am a firm believer in 2nd amendment rights.  

However, this is not a 2nd amendment issue.  The NBA has no right to superimpose themselves upon a person's right to own firearms.  They can, however, have a code of conduct policy to which the players and owners must adhere to if they want to remain part of the money fountain that professional sports has become.  The players and owners can decide for themselves if they want to live by that policy and make millions, or they can leave behind the huge paydays from the league and do what they want.  I'm sure someone could argue that Donald Sterling (former Clippers owner) and Marge Schott (former Reds owner) were just exercising their first amendment rights, but they lost their team ownership because of things they said and did that embarrassed their leagues and violated league policy.

Honestly I'm more concerned about Ja being drawn into dangerous situations that may cause him to be harmed than I am worried for his NBA career being affected by this.  He's got a young daughter's welfare to think about and that should be more important than playing basketball.  Hopefully he can continue to do both. I'm done discussing this issue because it starts to enter into the world of politics, and I have a very low opinion of politics in general and politicians in particular. 

He better grow up real fast before someone calls him on his fake gangster persona and it costs him a lot more than his basketball career.  He's playing a very stupid and dangerous game with his life for no good reason.  This isn't a 2nd amendment issue - no one is telling him he can't own firearms or even carry them.  They're telling him you can't play in the NBA while brandishing firearms out in public, and you can't be a paid endorser for Nike and others while doing that, either.  If he wants to be a fake gangster then just quit the NBA and figure out a way to replace that $40 million per year income (good luck with that).  I'm a supporter of 2nd Amendment rights but what he's doing is just dumb and dangerous.  I sincerely hope he gets help and decides to grow up and evaluate what he needs to do to live like a responsible adult.  All of the good things he's done through the years to help others is being overshadowed by these dumb decisions unfortunately.  

RIP to Racer great Glen Green - two time All-OVC and former OVC Player of the Year.  Gone too soon.

https://www.masonbrothersfuneralservices.com/obituaries/Glen-Green-3/#!/Obituary

Quote from: murrayracer2023 on May 09, 2023, 04:27:20 PMSo let me ask you this - if they were so highly recruited why are they both going down a level in program? Semo and Valpo.
Obviously they weren't heavy recruits in the portal.

They got zero meaningful minutes last year - not one.  No one with a functioning brain expected them to be "heavy recruits" in the portal because they got zero exposure here.  The players moving up to bigger programs through the portal are the ones that are making all-conference teams, not guys getting only garbage time minutes.  I don't think anyone on here is saying that Stacker or Edwards would have greatly impacted our season last year, but giving them zero meaningful minutes ensured that they were not going to be back to develop in future years.  I maintain that giving them some minutes when you had starters giving a half hearted effort would have been their biggest influence on the season - motivating our starters to step it up or face dwindling playing time.

Quote from: wallaceracer on May 08, 2023, 04:18:24 PMAnd you'll never convince me that with Stacker and Edwards playing that we would have lost by more than 43 at Indiana State.

Stevie Wonder could see that the team was phoning it in on defense in that game and several others as well.  We got boat raced in 3 straight games by an average of more than 30 points per game.  The coaching staff sent a message that was loud and clear to our bench players during those games - we think so little of you that we would rather continue to give playing time to players that weren't putting out more than a token effort on defense.  Personally I'd rather lose by 60 with players that were giving a full effort than watch players acting like they don't give a crap.  The coaching staff missed a great opportunity to send a message to the players regarding the connection between effort and playing time - and they dropped the ball IMO.   Lack of effort like we saw last year at times will kill my interest in Racer basketball faster than the transfer portal or NIL ever will. 

That should be about the right level for him.  Sadly, he's capable of a lot more but will likely never realize more than about half of his potential.  

Quote from: msugrad1988 on April 27, 2023, 06:42:11 PMMaybe they decided it's time for a change and are willing to spend some money to try and make it happen. I will be curious to see how their team performs this coming season.

I'll be curious to see what happens to their NIL funds in year 2 and 3 after yet another year of not making the NCAA tournament.

And Youngstown hasn't ever even made the NCAA tourney since transitioning to D1 over 40 years ago.  They've spent the last 22 years in the Horizon League and still haven't managed to qualify for the NCAA's once.  

Quote from: murrayracer2023 on April 25, 2023, 01:20:53 PMIn today's era, you guys do realize we would have to pay Ja Cam and Isaiah probably 100k plus after their freshman year to stay. That puts everything into perspective guys.

I think we all realize that we're not going to be able to keep those type of players for their second year regardless of what we are able to pay - because the bigger schools will be able to pay much more.  That's why most of us can't see our interest level being sustained in this environment.  College sports are now officially a business - and I'm pretty sure I don't want my money going to support this business model because I don't believe it's sustainable and I won't get much enjoyment out of it.  I love my school, and I'll always root for the Racers, but I'm not paying thousands of dollars a year into some NIL collective realizing that IF the players we buy turn out to be pretty good - most of them are gone in a year.  Even if I had a bunch of spare money sitting around, I'm not interested in bribing kids to come to our school for a year.  If someone else is, then they can go do it - it's a free country and we all can choose what we spend our time and money on.  It won't be me, though.

The money will start to dry up at the mid major level fairly quickly IMO.  Two or three years of buying players only to see them jump to the highest bidder at the first chance they get is going to turn off a lot of people to the process.  Many of us will lose interest and find other things to do with our time and money - at least I'm betting that's what happens to me.  Considering that a home ballgame for me costs me about 9 hours between the travel time, the ballgame and a pregame meal with buddies, that's a lot of time commitment to something if you're not passionate about the subject.  

It will be interesting going forward to see how the dynamic between boosters giving money to athletic departments vs using their money to purchase players.  The athletic department and NIL coordinators will be competing for booster/corporate donations - in effect both parties will be fishing in the same small fishing hole.  Where is your money best spent - giving to the athletic department for facilities/coaching salaries, etc, or by using your money to buy players?

Best of luck to DJ - he always played hard and was a key piece to McMahon changing the culture and turning things around in his last season here.  But if he's getting $70,000 to play one year for Youngstown (in the Horizon league), that tells you that we're going to need to be in the $500,000 per year range with overall NIL money to be competitive in the MVC.  I'm not sure if that's possible or not.  

Quote from: wkeown on June 03, 2022, 08:24:12 AMHell, I don't care if they even go to class.  It's on the University if they want to risk their "academic reputation" by giving out a diploma to someone who completed their curriculum without a passing grade. But room/board/tuition and maybe even a universally established NCAA athletic stipend has to be the standard - for everybody - and the NCAA has to be able to live with that, but they won't. 

The courts slapped down the NCAA and more or less told the NCAA they have no legal standing in determining a person's amateur status/eligibility.  Even if the NCAA passed a universal stipend for all athletes, they still cannot - because of the court ruling - declare an athlete's eligibility is null and void because he or she accepted cash to promote a brand, business, or for that matter a booster.  Even if they wanted to figure out a way to go back to players not getting bought and paid for by boosters and their companies, the NCAA has no legal basis to do so.

The NCAA has been completely neutered as an enforcing body and at this point is just a cash collector/disbursement organization - not that it's a big change for them.   The NCAA was defending keeping the previous system intact and were completely destroyed by the ruling.  We will never go back to the way things were, so at this point we have to figure out a way to buy the best players we can afford to purchase and have the best coaching staff our money can buy.  In the next several years we will probably see the power conferences make a move to leave the NCAA completely so they can make up their own set of rules governing championships, and sharing (or specifically not sharing) the cash with smaller schools.  

Quote from: 02Racer on April 16, 2023, 08:27:34 AMAbsolute worst possible timing to move to the MVC, coinciding with the advent of NIL and the transfer portal.

I'm not sure about that - the lower leagues in the power structure are being picked clean by the leagues above them.  At least in the MVC the top players are being poached by the power conferences.  At the OVC level any player worth anything is likely to leave to one of the 25+ conferences ranked above them.  It's a bad time in college basketball to be anything except a program with a lot of wealthy boosters.  

My big concern is that we don't have any players worth poaching by the power conferences.  We need an infusion of talent at all positions.  This is a really big off season for the coaching staff to upgrade the talent level of the roster; I just hope they're up to the task.  

Hopefully he's a defensive stopper on the perimeter.  If so he would certainly fill a need.  I'm not crazy about one year players unless you're one piece away from a championship team, but I guess that's the old way of thinking and may not apply in this era of a roster mostly being made up of one and two year players.