Posted: December-23-2009 at 3:03pm | IP Logged	Tweet

I think this was an easy choice. First coach to ever lead a non-BCS conference school to the first non-BCS automatic berth since the warped program's inception...a coach who's team in my opinion is 2nd best in the nation (Alabama is #1) and who's team would give "BAMA" a better game than Texas is going to give them.

Congratulations to Gary Patterson!

http://sports.espn.go.com/dallas/ncf/news/story?id=4767779

By the way...what year was the BCS's inaugural season, and what team was it's first National Champion?

NO CHEATING, NO GOOGLING, DO NOT PASS GO DO NOT COLLECT $200...THIS IS NOT YOUR ROOM, LOL!

Posted: December-23-2009 at 3:24pm | IP Logged	Tweet

It was 1998.... and the winning team wore orange & white.... best I remember....

Posted: December-28-2009 at 8:03pm | IP Logged	Tweet

Where I said, "I'm not giving one dime to the ETSU athletic department as long as Stanton's president of the university."

I need to clarify what I mean. It's not that I don't want to give money to support ETSU athletics. It's as long as Dr. Paul Stanton is ETSU president, and his lack of support for football, then I will not spend one dime of my money to help support ETSU athletics ... until football is brought back.

Sure, it costs money to field a football team. But, it's ... you could say, advertising for ETSU. You've got public exposure for your school when you field a football team.

Posted: December-28-2009 at 8:51pm | IP Logged	Tweet

RW.... I'm sure that you remember reading and hearing about the Carrie Underwood concert fiasco last year.  When you speak of not contributing another dime (through ticket purchases or otherwise) to ETSU athletics as long as Stanton is there.... think about this one, too. Since 1972 I have contributed religously to the ETSU Alumni Fund..... never failed to give a goodly amount.... until I read the news story below. For 2008 and 2009, instead of a nice contribution as I had given for the previous 36 years, I simply sent a copy of this news story in my contribution envelope instead of a check. My thinking? If they can't count better than this, and they don't have better accounting abilities than this, and don't have any more common sense than this story indicates, ETSU certainly will not miss my annual contributions.

******************************

ETSU Overspent for Recent Carrie Underwood Concert

by Daniel Gilbert, Bristol Herald Courier

JOHNSON CITY, Tenn. (05/09/08)– The cost to bring Carrie Underwood to East Tennessee State University worked out to an eye-popping $41,077 per song, or $7,120 a minute for the time she played.

But the $534,000 price tag raised nary an administrator’s eyebrow until April – weeks after the country starlet and klieg lights had come and gone – when officials realized they had overdrawn their concert fund account by $209,000.

University officials have frozen the account, funded by student activities fees, and are borrowing money from internal cash reserves to cover outstanding fees until new activities revenues accrue. They credited the miscalculation to "human error" and said they have taken steps to fix the problem, but offered few specifics.

A spokesman declined to comment on whether disciplinary action had been taken.

"Someone misread a [computer] screen, and thought there was more money available than there really was," said David Collins, vice president of finance and administration. "We’ve gone over again how to read the screen. It’s a new accounting system, and we’re all still learning."

The upshot of the accounting error is, after settling the debt, about $161,000 will be available to bring in performers for student concerts in the coming academic year. That amount is down from the $726,601 spent in 2007-08 on Underwood and band, the All-American Rejects, and roughly half of the budget for concerts in the two previous academic years, according to university records.

"We anticipate having concerts, but not on the scale of Carrie Underwood," said Joe Sherlin, dean of students in the Office of Student Affairs.

University administrators said their method of accounting failed to dock expenditures from the concert fund, creating an illusion of a higher balance.

"The problem was that the accounting was not up to snuff," said Steven Bader, chief student affairs officer, who is ultimately responsible for signing off on student activities expenditures.

There also appears to have been a communications breakdown between Bader’s office and the university’s financial administrators, who generally review contracts.

"We probably should have caught it," said Collins, whose staff normally verifies account balances before an expenditure is approved. "We relied too much on Student Affairs. We didn’t watch the balances. Quite frankly, it shouldn’t have slipped through, but it did."

The Carrie Underwood concert cost nearly as much as four concerts from the two previous academic years, including Ludacris, the Goo Goo Dolls, Dierks Bentley and David Spade.

Some 8,000 people attended the concert at the Memorial Center, which was free to students and faculty members.

ETSU students pay $20 in activities fees for both the fall and spring semester – part of a push to bring big-name entertainers to campus that began with a student-approved fee hike in 2005. Three-quarters of the revenues are shunted into a superfund for a major event twice a year, and the rest goes into a general account for bankrolling projects by student organizations.

Student government officers – in concert with a faculty supervisor – exercise the financial purse strings of the activities funds. There is no limit, beyond what is in the account, to what can be spent on a single event, Sherlin said.

The normal process for bringing in a performer begins with a student poll in which students indicate their artist preferences. ETSU officials could not immediately provide numbers on how many students voted this year, but the student newspaper reported that 1,900 students cast ballots in the poll that included Underwood – the top vote-getter. A university spokeswoman said 13,389 students were enrolled last fall.

Student government representatives work with school administrators and a booking agency to settle on a performer within their price range. Representatives with Underwood’s booking agency, the Nashville-based Creative Artist Agency, said the singer’s fees vary widely, depending on the venue, and declined to quote a base fee for a university concert.

The high-dollar event generated some controversy on campus.

"For $400,000 – the amount paid for Carrie Underwood’s recent concert – ETSU could have easily had two or three [or more] less-famous musical acts, or even some kind of progressive music or performance series," wrote student Mira Gerard in the East Tennessean on April 3. "Something like that would represent the alternative to what we all can get by turning on our radios and watching TV."

But the depleted activities’ fund did not seem to trouble T.J. Mitchell, who was elected president of student government just a week after the concert, and whose administration will now be saddled with that debt.

"Students certainly got their money’s worth," said the rising senior, a chemistry major, of Underwood’s concert. "You always try to look at the positive side of these things. There’s nothing you can do about it now."

Staff Writer Brent Carney contributed to this report.

Posted: December-29-2009 at 9:11am | IP Logged	Tweet

I remember that like it was yesterday. They're so smart over there that everyone in the city enjoyed a positive financial impact except them. Go figure.

Stanton has it in for ETSU football. Nothing has ever been more obvious to me. However the problem doesn't end there and I absolutely hate to say this but here goes:

ETSU's football fan base was the most apathetic I'd ever seen anywhere. I have been to a boatload of college campuses for college football games. When Marshall played in the FCS, it was literally like another home game when we came to Johnson City. Green on one side, then Green book-ends on the ETSU side. We out-numbered their fans by at least 25% every time we played there.

Why is this? I really honestly believe it's because:

• The fans don't know how to support their team through thick and thin. Part of this is because of the fan and the other part is marketing. It just seems like ETSU stopped marketing the program when they weren't any good. Out of sight out of mind. I''ll never forget the year Marshall brought Pennington and Moss into the dome. Down something like 21-10 with practically the entire 4th qtr to play, the ETSU fans started pouring outta there like we were up by 40!
• The football/basketball facility known as "The Dome" is the worst facility in college athletics and should've been torn down long, long ago. People aren't going to pay their money to go to a football game where the players disappear when they run below the yd line numbers. They will also not pay for a ticket when you have to sit 1/2 way up the stands to see a basketball game.

The poor design of the dome has cost the AD tens of millions of dollars. No way would I ever buy a season ticket to any sport held in the dome, period. I think it is an embarassment to the university.

Basketball should be played in the arena behind Science Hill HS (whatever they're calling it now)...talk about a home court advantage...the fans are literally on top of the court and not a bad seat in the place. If I were the visiting team, I'd be intimidated. Please don't give me the off campus locale either...there are still many teams whose arenas' aren't on campus.

As for Marshall RW, I didn't see the Holliday hire coming, but neither Jim Donnan or Bobby Pruett had head coaching experience when they were hired. Several successful coaches on the sidelines today had no head coaching experience. Heck, look at what Jim Caldwell is doing at Indy. I think the Doc will be fine...I laugh every time somebody says they shouldn't have hired him because he came from a "rival" school. You actually have to beat a team a time or two for it to become a rivalry. Marshall-WVU is nothing more than Tennessee-Vandy to me...they'll win one out of about every 30 or so, LOL!