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!

Two victories, I might be Dazed and Confused, and Kent State beats Akron

The indoor track season is like a roll of toilet paper.  The closer to the end you get, the faster it goes.

Track

Things are happening fast and furious for our track program!  Besides being in the middle of the indoor season, we have our signing period starting this Wednesday.  That means that there aren’t many days off (an occasional Sunday evening) and as we get closer to our conference meet everything rises in the level of intensity and focus.

Starting off with recruiting, we are sending out several national letters of intent this week for our recruits who want to sign right away at the beginning of the signing period.  Once the signing period begins on Wednesday, we can sign athletes at anytime the rest of the year.  Lots of kids these days have public signings where they invite some press, family, and friends to make a nice event out of it.  It always makes me think back to my own recruitment in high school and how I arrived at deciding for Kent State.  Even though I was the first athlete from my high school to earn a Division I scholarship, my signing wasn’t a major event.  We did it at my family’s dining room table with zero fanfare.  There was a picture in our local newspaper but it was just me acting like I was signing something for the sake of an article.

We probably won’t have an official announcement of our recruits for a couple weeks but you can follow us on twitter @WichitaSt_TFXC as we will be able to let people know who we sign on there when we get their papers.  This is a special time for these young athletes, I know it was a decision that changed my life forever, and it was definitely for the best.

As for our current team, we had our second and final home indoor meet of the season – the Varsity Apartments Invitational.  This has become a terrific meet with great competition from several other quality Division I programs.  Fortunately we were able to win both the men’s and women’s meet and took some strong steps forward in our development as a team.

Our men’s team, which we have known is very strong, easily won the meet.  In fact we outscored second place UT-Arlington 177-103, with Stephen F. Austin in third at 88.  Those are both good track programs so this is further evidence of our strong men’s team.

On the women’s side, we thought it would be a very close meet with SFA.  Our ladies really stepped up this weekend and we won 169-123 over the Lumberjacks with no one else within 100 points.  Our women’s team has been working hard as the “underdogs” this year and the team chemistry is starting to come together.  Even though it wasn’t a perfect weekend, it was a very positive one for us and a lot of fun for the fans that came out to the meet!

Last year when I walked out of this meet I was very frustrated with how my group was performing.  We were struggling with health as well as team chemistry.  They knew it and I knew it.  One year later I couldn’t be happier as we have truly started to become one as a group and focus on the success of the team.  We ended the meet with great efforts in the 4x400m relay and I can’t wait to see how we perform next week.

This weekend we will face an even tougher opponent – Indiana State.  We will see the Sycamores at the Air Force Academy along with host Air Force and Sacramento State in what should be a fantastic quadrangular scored meet.  Indiana State’s men will be our toughest competitor at the upcoming MVC Championships and their women will be one of several teams we will have to defeat.  This meet at Air Force will hopefully give us some confidence that we can accomplish those goals.

As I walked out of the Heskett Center after two consecutive 14 hour work days of hosting the meet, I turned to one of our coaches and said, “I really enjoy having home meets but I really love when they are over.”  Now we get to be on the road until the second week in April when we host the KT Woodman Classic at Cessna Stadium.  The next four weeks will see us travel to Colorado Springs, CO, Ames, IA, Lincoln, NE, Manhattan, KS, and Cedar Falls, IA.  As Willie Nelson sings … On the road again, just can’t wait to get on the road again …

Movies

I was planning to see the movie “Her” this weekend but it fell through at the last minute.  With the craziness of hosting a home competition I was only able to watch a few late night classics on cable as I was replying to emails or falling asleep in bed.  The movies I caught bits and pieces of were “Higher Learning”, “Dazed and Confused” and “The Comebacks”.  Higher Learning is one of the few movies where the main character is a college track athlete and, like lots of movies that try to show track and field, it was unintentionally funny.  Dazed and Confused is great classic movie about high school kids in the 1970’s.  It had early appearances from actors like Matthew McConaughey and Ben Affleck amongst several others.  Great, great movie.  If you haven’t seen it I recommend catching it the next time it’s on Comedy Central.  The Comebacks is a really bad movie that spoofs many other sports movies.  I always enjoyed movies like Airplane and Naked Gun back in the day, and while The Comebacks had some parts that made me laugh I wouldn’t say that many people would like it.  RIP Leslie Nielson!

ESPN does a great job with the 30 for 30 documentary series.  I watched the one about Mary Decker in their Nine for IX series, very good stuff.  I also watched a couple of their short films, "Juding Jewell" about the Atlanta Olympics bombing incident and "The Great Imposter" about Barry Bremen, the guy who would sneak into professional sporting events as a player, coach, umpire, etc.  I have linked them at the end of this blog, both are worth watching if you have 30 minutes.

On a sad note one of the most talented actors of our time, Phillip Seymour Hoffman, died of suspected drug use.  I really liked him in movies like The Big Lebowski, Almost Famous, Capote, and Moneyball.  He always had a great presence on the screen and at age 46 died far too early.

DVD Choice of the Week (from my collection):  I’ve always been a big fan of the horror movie genre so my first choice in that category in this blog will be Audition (1999).  This is a Japanese horror movie made by a director named Takashi Miike.  I heard about this movie while watching a Bravo show about the scariest movie moments so I found it at Best Buy and tried it out.  It starts off very slowly then builds to an incredibly scary and horrifying conclusion that is the worst version of a bad date you can imagine.  Movies like this hardly ever work in the United States because the typical audience member couldn’t sit still long enough through the slow beginning to reach the intense and crazy finish.  It’s all in subtitles but don’t let that scare you away!  The crazy girl in the movie is scary enough!

Everything Else

I need to continue to mention Shocker basketball as they are now one of only two undefeated teams in the nation (Syracuse being the other).  They are now 23-0 and have their toughest road stretch of the season coming up this week at Indiana State and Northern Iowa.  All I can say is they are doing incredible and I hope they keep this undefeated streak going as long as they can.  I was able to attend the game on Tuesday against Loyola when our track team got honored at halftime for their academic excellence.  Koch Arena is one of the special college basketball venues – always a great time!  Congrats to Gregg Marshall and the entire basketball operation for an unbelievable run!

I finished up my taxes this week which is always a good thing.  I know a lot of people that put it off as long as possible but I never understood that because all they are putting off is getting back some of their own money.  I say give me back the money as soon as possible since it’s mine anyways!

One thing you realize when you are consumed for most of the weekend at a track meet is there is so much that happens during weekend that you never even realized.  This weekend my alma mater Kent State defeated rival Akron in basketball on a last second hail mary shot.  I only happened to see it because one of my college teammates posted the video online.  HERE IT IS.  “Fight on for KSU, Fight for the Blue and Gold! We’re out to beat the foe; Fight on brave and bold!  Fight on for victory, Don’t stop until we’re through.  We’re all together, Let’s go forward, K-S-U!”  Always great to beat Akron!

The Super Bowl turned out to be a dud of a game.  We have an annual party at Coach Rainbolt’s house with our coaching staff and families.  I was hoping Peyton Manning would make Richard Sherman look bad but it wasn’t to be.  Congrats to the Seahawks, they definitely deserved to win!

Website of the Week

http://www.ustfccca.org/

This is the website for college track and field provided by the United States Track and Field and Cross Country Coaches Association.  Tom Lewis does much of the work on this site and he does an incredible job of organizing everything there is about all levels of college track.  The weekly results section is where I spend most of my time but it has just about everything a college track fan would need.

Interesting articles and videos to waste your time with

An early version of film critics Siskel & Ebert show where they talk about "Cult Films" 

Can't stop laughing after watching this contemporary dance video

19 hard things you need to do to be successful

30 for 30 short film "Judging Jewell"

30 for 30 short film "The Great Imposter"

On the road again, just can't wait to get on the road again ...

This was written on December 15th but I wasn't able to upload it so here is blog #2 ...

The first semester of school has officially ended and I am now in Orlando, Florida, for the annual USTFCCCA Convention.  That stands for United States Track and Field Coaches ……. something, something, ummmm well it’s our national coaches association.

The past week has been pretty uneventful with the exception of waiting to see how everyone did academically.  It appears, with a few grades still remaining, that we should be ok heading into the indoor season in terms of eligibility.  We always have good grades on our team at Wichita State but with a roster near 130 there are bound to be a few that make you nervous.  Luckily we have rarely ever had a kid come up ineligible, mostly thanks to their hard work and the work of our academic support team.  We’ll get the official word later this week on how everyone did.

I really enjoy traveling.  Today I have been in airports in Oklahoma City, Dallas, and Orlando (I drove to OKC because it saved us about $100 on a place ticket compared to Wichita).  I’m not sure why I enjoy traveling so much but the older I get the more I enjoy it.  As a very young kid I think I traveled more than most.  We would always take family vacations around the country and many of our relatives lived at least an hour away (an eternity for a little kid) but my first taste of weekly travel came when I started racing go-karts around the Midwest when I was 6 or 7.  Racing has always been a big part of our family (my dad raced hydroplane boats with his dad and brothers) and my brothers were heavy into motorcycles.  I was able to race against some current Indy and Nascar drivers back in the day and it will always be a special part of my childhood.

ANYways, back to the traveling thing.  Since going to college at Kent State I’ve pretty much been traveling for much of the year for track and field purposes.  I’ve been in 46 different states (I still need North Dakota, Montana, Alaska, and Hawaii to complete the 50) and half a dozen countries (I need to get that total up).  If you’ve ever seen the movies “Up in the Air” with George Clooney you can get a clue about me.  He’s kind of an isolated guy in terms of family and relationships but has lots of friends and is constantly surrounded by people.  Check it out, great movie.

One thing I love about airports is people watching.  I really, really love people watching and airports are one of the best places to do that.  So is Wichita, Kansas.  Something I don’t understand about airports is people’s rush to get ON the airplane.  I mean, the plane isn’t gonna leave until everyone gets on and I’d rather hang out in the airport then sit in a cramped seat for another 15 minutes.  Also, how about the people who rush OFF the plane, only to wait at baggage claim like everyone else for their bag to come?

So tomorrow starts the coaches’ convention where we will hear lots of terrific speakers and talk about issues surrounding our sport for the next 4 days.  And honestly, there is a lot of socializing.  A LOT of socializing.  Another great part of the week is that I will get to see my parents at the end of the week.  They live near Fort Myers, Florida, and I will head over there Thursday after the convention is over.  This is basically our “Christmas” together and I will head back to Wichita at the end of the week.

Next week I’ll let you know how the convention week went and what movies I’m excited to see over the holidays.  Hint, hint, Ron Burgundy is in one of them.

Back for some blogging (I hope)

I used to do a pretty regular blog back in the Trackshark days but really haven’t been able to in a long time.  With there being a little break in our upcoming schedule I thought I’d try to get back into the groove. If Joe Eby has time to do it then so do I!  I also don’t get to see my family very often and hopefully this can keep them up to date.

I’m not going to give a long, wordy recap the previous 38 years of my life.

In a nutshell …  Years 1-18:  Brown County, Ohio, sports geek, grew up on a farm, was known as the fast white guy.

Years 19-28:  Kent, Ohio, Golden Flash athlete and coach, love my alma mater, best decision I could’ve made, lucky to make lifelong memories and friends.

Years 29-31:  Back to Southern Ohio, coached HS track and was self-employed, finally learned what I wanted to do in life (coach track and field), great experience, humbling.

Years 32-present:  Wichita, Kansas, Shockers, reunited with my former coach Steve Rainbolt, unbelievably lucky to fall into a great job, living the dream in the Great Plains.

Other than that I generally make every decision in life so that it will result in happiness.  Money isn’t a great motivator in my life and neither is the passion to procreate.

Want to know anything else?  Just ask.  This is beginning to feel like an online dating profile.

I’m hoping to be pretty open and honest about what I do and what is going on here in Wichita.  The only thing I am limited by is there are NCAA rules that us coaches have to abide by.  For example I could never mention where I’m going on a recruiting trip.  I also love my job and don’t want to get fired!

Ok so on to more current topics!  We just had our annual end of semester track meet yesterday at the Heskett Center.  This year we called it the Shocker Prelude instead of the Intersquad Meet (one of those NCAA things).  Overall it went very well, I think as a team we looked as good as we could in an early season meet like this.  We had a great atmosphere created by our team and it inspired some good things to happen.  As is always the case with track and field, there were also some below average performances but as long as our athletes use this as a motivator to get better they will be fine.

We’re not sure how good our team will be this year but for the past several years we have always been in the hunt for the MVC Championship on both the men’s and women’s side.  Our men have more returning points and the women are young and talented.  Yesterday gave us an indicator about a few things but we really won’t know how we stack up for at least 6-8 weeks.  The MVC is a very good conference and just looking through some early results it appears this will be another tough year to win a title.  A new team, Loyola, has been added the league and they will give us fits in a lot of places (for me it’s the sprints and relays).

After the meet we had our annual track banquet to honor last year’s seniors and teams.  This is always one of my favorite weekends and last night was no different.  Over 300 people were in attendance and a great time was had by all.  Afterwards we were able to have a fun night with our alumni.  The track season has officially begun!

This week will be low key as our athletes finish up their finals and head home for the holidays.  They have over a month of training on their own so this time will make or break our indoor season.  What other sport would take a month off right before the season begins?  Everyone is in the same boat so we just need to do our job and be ready for practice when we get back in January.

If I’m able to do this weekly then the next time I post I will be on my way to Orlando for the annual USTFCCCA convention.  Since it’s 25 degrees in Wichita today I will definitely be looking forward to that, as well as seeing a bunch of coaching friends from across the country.

Since this past week has been hectic and exhausting, the rest of the weekend will be spent watching football and Shocker basketball.  And sleeping.