Wichita St indoor preview and why my alma mater should cut their football team

Track

As the weather begins to cool off and the indoor season grows closer, we’ve continue to grind away at track practice.  This is always a difficult time of the training year for the sprinters and hurdlers because 1) the newness of the fall has worn off and 2) it still seems like a long time until we get our season started.

Two months from today we officially open our season (Jan 9 at Kansas) so we do have a long time until we start but we are only 4 weeks away from our annual Intersquad Meet on Dec 5 at the Heskett Center.  Our Intersquad Meet serves as something to shoot for at the end of the fall and while it isn’t just around the corner it does feel like we’re almost there.  We’ll have our Intersquad Multi in about two weeks so for those athletes it’s almost go time.

This week at practice we talked about how important it is to be ready to go at the beginning of the season.  Research has shown the NCAA champions (and conference champions) run very fast in the first meets of the year.  If that’s true then we must get ready to go in the coming weeks so that when we start our season in two months our performances will be where we need them.

Let’s take a look at our indoor schedule:

 Dec 5 @Wichita St – This is our annual Intersquad Meet where we divide into three teams (Gold, White, Black) and well as having a bunch of alumni (Gray) come back.  I have to imagine it’s the most fun and intense Intersquad Meet in the country.  Someone try to prove me wrong!

Jan 9 @Kansas – Low key season opener, most athletes will run one event (if any) to shake the rust off from the winter break.

Jan 16 @Wichita St – This meet will be for the athletes who don’t travel to K-St the next day.  Only 26 athletes make the K-St meet so this will be an opportunity for a lot of Shockers to showcase their talents at home.  Our opponents will be Emporia St, Friends University and Butler County.

Jan 17 @Kansas St – This is the first ever Wichita St-Kansas St-Kansas Triangular.  Next year will be at KU with 2017 at WSU.  We are very excited for this meet and picking the top 26 athletes to compete will be very tough with our deep and talented team.  Fans of T&F in Kansas should put this meet on their calendar every year!

Jan 23-24 @Nebraska – The first night at Nebraska is more of a small college meet where we have a lot of our younger athletes compete with the following day being a scored quad meet against Nebraska and two other D1 teams on UNL’s banked 200m track.

Jan 30-31 @Northern Iowa – Another great scored meet against UNI, Indiana St and Kent St.  This is will be very significant because 1) we are competing on the facility that the MVC Indoor Champs are hosted, 2) we are competing against our main MVC rival Indiana St and 3) we are competing against my alma mater Kent St!

Feb 7 @Notre Dame – Most of my group will be off this weekend but the distance crew will travel to South Bend to run some fast time trial races on ND’s oversized track.

Feb 14 @Wichita St – The annual Herm Wilson Invitational will include UT-Arlington, Oral Roberts and Emporia St in a scored meet.  This is what we consider our final “team meet” in preparation for the MVC Indoor.

Feb 20-21 @Nebraska and Kansas St – These are just tune-up meets, with most of the athletes either running one race to get ready for MVC or one final attempt to make the MVC team.

Feb 28/Mar 1 @Northern Iowa – MVC Indoor Championships – This is what our team will be focused on getting ready for the whole indoor season.  32 men and 32 women make this squad and it is two days of intense competition for the MVC title!

Mar 13-14 @Arkansas – NCAA Indoor Championships – Only 16 athletes per event make it to this meet. It’s the elite of the elite of NCAA track and if you make it you are a major stud!

So as you can see we have a very exciting indoor schedule this year with lots of scored meets and great competition!  I can’t wait for it to begin!

My alma mater is really bad at football

I happened to notice Kent State was hosting Toledo on Tuesday night on one of the ESPN channels so when I got home I turned on the second half.  Now it’s no secret that my alma mater has been historically terrible in football (the exception being 2012 and some of the 1970’s) but something I saw made me decide to write about it here.

Now understand that Kent State entered this game 1-6 and it was a cold and rainy night but when I turned on the game all I could notice was how no one was at the game.  And I don’t mean they had a small crowd of 10,000 people – I mean NO ONE was at the game.  It wouldn’t surprise me if someone said there were 100 people in the stands.  It reminded me of my college days where I would go to a game and sit among the hundreds of spectators and watch our 0-11 team get manhandled.

But why am I talking about this?

It’s not to point out how bad my old school is in football – in fact I love Kent State and I root for them every week – I’ve even started donating back to my school in the past couple years to the track team now that I have a little change in my pocket.  But the reason I’m talking about this is because I currently work at a school that does not have football and most everyone around here couldn’t be happier about it.

You may or may not know but all but about 20 NCAA D1 schools lose money in football – and many lose LOTS of money, so much in fact that the entire rest of the athletic department suffers and in some cases programs get cut.  Football budgets are so bloated by how much the sport costs to maintain and outrageous salaries that schools like Kent (and the rest of the MAC) feel like they have to keep up with the BCS schools and maybe become the next Boise State (by the way Boise State loses money every year too).  One of the main arguments for having a football team, even though they lose money, is for free advertising on ESPN, Fox, etc. which in turn drives enrollment figures up.  I don’t agree.

All that money that my alma mater loses in football every year, Wichita St uses to invest into our basketball program.  We pay our head coach $2 million/year, our team flies to games in private charter jets, the assistant coaches get PAID (and thus are retained) and the athletic department marketing resources are dedicated to promoting this team that doesn’t cost near as much as a football team.

Most schools in conferences our size (MVC, MAC, Sun Belt) get around 60-70% of their athletic department budget from the university through student fees.  At Wichita State we get less than 30% from student fees.

Guess what else?  All the other athletic department teams are budgeted at the top of our conference and sometimes as high as our local BCS rival schools that we aim to beat.  In terms of track and field we never feel that we take a back seat to anyone.  Our athletes have access to the best facilities, travel budgets and coaches they can get.

So what would my advice be to Kent State?  Drop the football program.  I know those 4-5 weekends where the Golden Flashes play a home game are fun but the benefits of not having the team would greatly outweigh the negative.  And do you know when Kent State had its largest increase in enrollment in the past 20 years?  The year after the BASKETBALL team went to the Elite 8 in 2003.

Cutting the football program won’t be happening and sorry if I have offended any of my fellow Kent Staters.  I’ll still follow and support my alma mater through every 2-9 season they have while rolling my eyes as year after year go by without Kent having an outdoor track facility.  Go Flashes!

“K” Movies

This is the 11th of a 24 part series (if I don’t bore you all to death) where I list movies I own by letter (I don’t have any movies that begin with Q, X or Z but I do have some that start with numbers).  I currently own a small collection of 169 movies (and growing most weeks) on DVD.

Most of the movies I own I had previously seen and enjoyed immensely.  Some are movies that I had not seen but was curious about.  Some were gifts from people with bad tastes in movies.

I own five “K” movies so here is the list from best to worst …..

Movie Name (year made, length, MPAA rating, IMDB rating, Worldwide box office)

The King’s Speech (2010, 118 min, R, 8.1, $414m) – The very entertaining and interesting story of how King George VI rose to the throne and had to overcome his public speaking difficulties for a major speech at the end of the film.  This was the surprise hit in 2010 that won four Oscars and all kinds of awards.  Colin Firth did a great job as King George VI of being very vulnerable yet trying to maintain the dignity of the King of England.

Kingpin (1996, 113 min, PG-13, 6.9, $25m) – The hilarious bowling movie starring Woody Harrelson and Bill Murray who end up competing for a major bowling championship after a long string of unfortunate occurrences for Harrelson.  Made by the Farrelly Brothers (Something About Mary, Dumb and Dumber), this is a great comedy that is some of Murray’s funniest work.

King of Kong (2007, 79 min, PG-13, 8.2, $790k) – No joke, this movie is about two guys who are trying to break the world record on the arcade game Donkey Kong – and it’s great!  I got sent a copy of this movie from a friend of mine who works in Hollywood and worked on the film so I had some special insights to the production.  If you can find it you will definitely enjoy this little documentary about 80’s video games!

Kids (1995, 91 min, NR, 7.0, $7.4m) – This highly controversial movie is described by IMDB like this, “A day in the life of a group of teens as they travel around New York City skating, drinking, smoking, and deflowering virgins.”  This movie will hit you will all kinds of thoughts afterwards and I always tell people they should see it.  It will probably drive most parents crazy as most boys between the ages of 17-20 temporarily lose their minds – this movie shows that fact in disturbing detail.

Kiss Shot (1989, 90 min, PG, 5.0, $??) – I have never seen this movie.  It came in a two-pack with the Jesse Owens Story (who came up with that idea?).  I think it has Whoopie Goldberg in it who probably never saw it either.

All of these movies (except Kiss Shot) are really, really good and I recommend them all.

Next week

Our cross country team travels to Peoria, IL, for the NCAA Midwest Regional Championships and I’ll review my “L” movies.  There are seven great movies that start with words like Liar, Lincoln, and Last!

Until then thanks for reading and Go Shocks!