@truehawk93 KU doesn’t have to be the best team in the tournament, just the better team on floor 6 times.

@loyolstud88 Blue blood killer is cute, come back when you beat one.

@Kcmatt7 Self knows exactly how to coach young guards. They just don’t become finished products right away. Mason and Graham each took until their third years to become elite guards.

KU and Beaty need to do everything in their power to keep Tony Hull because as long as he’s at KU, that pipeline KU now has into New Orleans is going to stay open until for KU until Hull is no longer here. Louisiana is just an entirely different culture from the rest of the country and these guys aren’t joking about the family atmosphere having a huge influence on their decisions. I know @wissox and anyone else including myself who have spent a significant portion of time in Louisiana will 100% back up this claim about the loyalty of Louisiana people being accurate and Hull has the loyalty of HS coaches and players all over the New Orleans area specifically.

Landing Tyriek Starks was the beginning. The connection with Hull was made during this recruitment because Starks played at Warren Easton under Hull. Reggie Mitchell then leaves for Arkansas and KU has a need for a new RB coach. Beaty takes a calculated risk by bringing in Hull in an attempt to get some players out of Louisiana. Almost immediately, Hull gets commitments from Mike Lee and Malik Clark (Clark is also from Warren Easton) and then gets Lee to enroll a year early at KU. In his 1st year, Hull also lands Travis Jordan and Takulve Williams both from the New Orleans area as well. In a little over a year on the job, Hull brings in 4 Louisiana players, one of whom gets a chance to play early. Getting players from Louisiana to visit KU is a big enough deal which hiring Hull allowed KU to at least talk to players in Louisiana. Seeing Mike Lee emerge on the scene however is a game changer for KU in Louisiana. Without the success Mike Lee had last year, KU does not land any of the Louisiana recruits that committed yesterday, at least not early like they did. They probably go home and tell their younger teammates about how nice KU is and that keeps the line of communication open with Louisiana prospects for Tony Hull. Lee’s success is a game changer because it shows these kids that they can come in and be successful very early on at KU instead of having to sit and wait behind other 4 and 5 star guys at LSU.

If Daylon Charlot comes in and has early success and if Tyriek Starks wins the QB job, the floodgates will be fully open for KU to talk to any recruit in Louisiana they want to and to have a legitimate chance to sign those players as well.

What KU did yesterday in getting commitments from Jason and Harris (3rd and 4th best players in Louisiana with offers from LSU, Alabama, and basically everybody in the SEC) is something that has definitely caught a lot of people off guard including everyone who follows KU football. We knew Hull would allow KU to talk to some players out of Louisiana, but to actually land commitments from players the caliber of Jason and Harris is something I don’t even think Tony Hull thought was possible at this stage in the game.

Don’t be surprised to see KU land possibly 3, maybe even more recruits out of Louisiana this year. Warren Easton has a couple of 3 star prospects who we know Hull has a relationship with and there’s a DE out of Baton Rouge that KU is the favorite to land.

Man who run behind car get exhausted

Man who walk through airport turnstile sideways going to Bangkok

Man who eat many prunes get good run for money

Wife who put husband in doghouse soon find him in cathouse

These are just for you @jaybate-1.0

TCU is significantly better than any 16 seed KU will face. Whatever league KU’s 16 seed comes out of, TCU is good enough to go undefeated in that league.

Lightfoot is also playing way out of position as well. He’s being forced into being a low post player on both ends of the floor when he’s never had that role before. The guy is a stretch 4 and is being exploited in major mismatches because he’s never guarded the position before.

Clay Young has been better on the defensive end because he was a post at his JuCo even at his size. He understands the role and what’s required of the role much better than Lightfoot does.

I’m not going to rip in Lightfoot for this because none of it is his fault. He didn’t make Coleby transfer, he didn’t make Whitman transfer, he didn’t make Preston sit out because of a car. We all know Lightfoot isn’t ready for this role, but he’s the only option at this point.

This situation is why Self is trying to get DeSousa enrolled early and it’s why Sosinski was added to the team. KU needs to work on developing Sosinski over the next 3 weeks which KU only has 3 games during that stretch. Work him into the rotation this week, let him make his debut against Nebraska, give him some big minutes against Omaha as a trial run, and if that goes well, let him sub for Azubuike against Stanford and see how that goes before Texas on the 29th.

If the Preston situation gets resolved in a positive manner by that time, then swap Sosinski out for Preston. Either way, KU needs to find a way to get Lightfoot back to the stretch 4 spot because him as a low post player doesn’t work.

Graham absolutely willed this team to victory in the second half today. Really didn’t think this would happen about a month ago.

@Gorilla72 West Virginia is 8-9 this season. They are really bad team this year and they’re going to be without Konate again I believe so they won’t have any rim protection. This is Huggy’s worst team in a long time.

It’ll end up being Dotson eventually. His issue though is that he doesn’t have anyone to teach him how to be a leader at this level. That was also why Mason and Graham struggled early on as well.

When Self got here, he already had Aaron Miles who learned how to lead from Hinrich. Russell Robinson came in and learned from Miles how to be the leader. Robinson in turned showed Sherron Collins the ropes who then mentored Tyshawn Taylor. This is where the breakdown in that line happened. In 2010, KU landed Josh Selby and Royce Woolridge. Selby obviously had his issues and should’ve stayed another season at least. Woolridge was always a project player and never panned out. Woolridge was likely supposed to take the reigns from Taylor after the 2011-2012 season as either a junior or RS sophomore.

The 2011 class was a disaster because Self for whatever reason never had a plan for the Morris twins leaving early even though it wasn’t much of a secret that was a possibility. Still Self landed Naadir Tharpe out of that class after it became apparent Woolridge was never going to develop and Tharpe was supposed to be next after Taylor at the point. The transition from Taylor to Tharpe is where the line of PG’s at KU was broken because of Tharpe’s issues.

In 2012, KU didn’t land a PG and 2013 is when KU landed Mason who spent one year under Thapre who wasn’t a leader in any capacity and KU lost 10 games that year despite having Wiggins, Embiid, and Selden as well.

When Mason took over as a sophomore with Graham as a freshman, that’s when KU had was really hurt because Mason and Graham were having to learn for themselves how to lead a high level college basketball because they didn’t have anyone to mentor them. Mason was under Tharpe for a season, but when the guy who’s supposed to show you how to be a leader gets kicked off the team, Mason didn’t have anyone to teach him.

The 2015 class ended up a disaster with Diallo and Bragg not making it past year 2 (or 1 in Diallo’s case) along with Vick who might go down as the biggest disappointment among 4 players under Self along with Elijah Johnson (I don’t share you opinion on EJ and never will).

As Mason and Graham keep learning and getting better, there should’ve been another PG in either the 2016 or 2017 class to develop and take the reigns after Graham left in 2018, but it didn’t happen so Self had to get what he could which led to bringing in Charlie Moore in 2017 as a transfer and hoping he could land PG 2018 to develop. Obviously, Self landed Dotson in 2018 who’s the highest rated PG Self has landed since Sherron Collins and looks like he’ll be a great PG one day and already is the best freshman PG KU has had since Collins.

The problem though is Dotson doesn’t have a mentor to show him how to take control of his team. Dotson is learning on the job how to lead his team and there will be bumps along the way. KU lost 9 games in Mason’s first year as a starter. This group has 3 wins over current top 15 teams all on neutral courts so the potential is definitely there whenever the light comes on.

Hopefully this core comes back in tact next season and gets 3 years together because I could see a lineup in 2020-2021 of Dotson, Grimes, Agbaji, Garrett, and McCormack being a serious title threat. It’s also not unreasonable or unrealistic to see that line up in a couple of seasons with 4 juniors and a senior in the starting line up.

This group has huge upside, they just have to go through the same growing pains Mason and Graham and that group had to go through because there isn’t anyone to show this group how to lead. Hopefully Self lands another top level PG in the 2020 class that can sit behind Dotson for a tear and learn under a junior Dotson before taking over in either 2021 or 2022.

@FarmerJayhawk is about all there is in regards to options. There’s no one blanket option that’s going to work across-the-board. Since the TEA here in Texas at this point has no plans to work in their offices until January, but still expect teachers to show up everyday even if they’ve been exposed and only stay home if they have any symptoms until they get test results back. If a teacher tests positive and has to miss a bunch of time and go over however many sick days they have, then you don’t get paid for those days you miss after you’ve run out of days.

The TEA is also planning on moving forward with their standardized testing this year even though most schools will likely have shutdowns at some point and will be playing catch up from last year since most teachers I know reported only about 1/3 of students actually did any work last spring because word got out quickly that they couldn’t be retained for not doing that work. A lot of teachers are pretty pissed off at the TEA because of their hypocrisy in handling the situation.

My personal thoughts are the TEA needs to invest in technology to get every district to a 1:1 ratio in regards to technology whether it’s through Chromebooks or tablets or something so kids have access to technology at least. Most politicians on both sides are only really focused of the needs of students, but not on the needs of teachers in regards to reopening plans and that’s going to bite people in the ass when schools have a Covid outbreak and have to shut back down. It doesn’t matter if it’s 5 days a week or alternating days, having in person learning at this point, at least here in Texas and probably most of the south, is just going to result in a cycle of outbreaks, shut downs, and returns and be far more disruptive than starting online.

My district specifically this week sent out emails to parents giving them the option of sending their kids to school for in person learning or staying home. What they didn’t do is provide any details on what protocols will be in place to attempt to minimize the risk of an outbreak. The district hasn’t even sent a plan to teachers about what on campus instruction will look like and I’m 2 weeks out from having to return to campus to start prepping for football, if it happens. Without an answer to that, I don’t know if I have 2 or 3 weeks of summer left and my campus athletic coordinator doesn’t know yet either. That’s an answer that needs to be made known as well because of how much money in stipends is involved.

My savings account prefers on campus with sports because no sports means about $7,000 in salary reduction for me which is a significant amount of money to have in limbo at this point.

If you’re going to ask me which one would be the least disruptive, I would go with online because then there’s at least consistency there and has the lowest risk of disruption in learning. That said, lower socio-economic school districts like mine that simply don’t have the resources to get 1:1 technology at this point make going online impractical and not feasible.

Realistically, the decision needs to be district by district and in the case of larger school districts, school by school in regards to what’s best for those populations.

@FarmerJayhawk Based on my personal experience, I straight up disagree with an alternating day schedule being the best option for the reasons I mentioned.

@jayballer73 Two other P5 schools have already made their decisions. That’s going to impact the SEC more than the SEC impacts them so expect the SEC to announce a conference only schedule when they make their announcement.

There’s also been plenty of talk of moving football to the spring this year so bet on that for P5 conferences before anything gets officially cancelled because again there is too much money at stake for P5 conferences to cancel revenue sports at this point.

@FarmerJayhawk said in Differentiating fact from opinion on COVID-19:

@Texas-Hawk-10 said in Differentiating fact from opinion on COVID-19:

@FarmerJayhawk said in Differentiating fact from opinion on COVID-19:

@kjayhawks said in Differentiating fact from opinion on COVID-19:

@benshawks08 I’m not sure what to think as a parent. My son needs the structure badly with his autism and we all continue to work. It would be impossible for his daycare to have dozens of computers and try to online stuff much. He hates doing it to boot. I keep hearing about having every other day between grades. I’m lucky because our district may have 500 kids in it from pre-K to 12th grade total. Not sure what the right answer is but it has negatively effected him and he is losing progress because of this. The first 6-8 years are huge for autism kids and what he is losing at this point, he may never recover from. Small children won’t wear mask or social distance, you’d have better luck training a monkey to mow your yard. That being said it needs to be safe. It is a lose lose for us at this point.

I’ve been following this for quite awhile now, in part as a education scholar and in part as an interested instructor. I think we’re down to the least bad option. I’ve come down to we basically have to run schools basically as I went to kindergarten; alternating MWF/TU weeks. Basically have to quarantine teachers during the year. I hate it with almost every fiber of my being but I can’t find a better option. Entirely open to suggestions.

Alternating days doesn’t work either because those plans that have been proposed still call for teachers on campus every day so teachers can’t help kids on their days off campus. You also run into issues of childcare for younger kids in single parent households or where both parents have to work outside the home.

One district here in Houston has already announced they’re going to be online only this year, but I’m fully preparing to have about 9 months of no social life or be able to see my mom who’s in her early 70’s because exposure is going to happen and districts here have pretty much said unless you’re showing symptoms, show up and if catch Covid, tough luck because you aren’t getting any extra sick days if you need them.

This school year is going to be an absolute show this year because there is no good option. They are all plans with significant issues that can’t realistically be solved.

I think it could work. I didn’t even have full time kindergarten in Kansas. Half the grade went MWF one week, TU the next. If you incorporated the online element, you could conceivably pull it off so long as you give folks some runway to plan. I don’t like it, but I think both the full bore everyone in person or nobody in person are unacceptable. It keeps buses less full, and classrooms more spaced out so you mitigate risk to the most people while still getting some in person instruction.

It’s still a plan because you’re now asking teachers to do two jobs. If students go alternating days to reduce class sizes, who helps students with questions about their assignments when those kids are off campus? Is it the teacher of record who would presumably be in a classroom teaching the other half of students supposed to take even more of their own time to answer those questions? How do special education students receive their services online? How does a kid who can’t afford the technology to work from home acquire that technology when the school district doesn’t have enough devices to have a 1:1 ratio? What do you do for the kid that’s too young to stay home alone, but doesn’t have a parent or guardian that can accommodate their schedule or afford child care?

Alternating days is not a viable solution for this issue because what’s going to happen with that plan is an insane amount of burnout among teachers from being overworked which will lead to much more reduced level of education than either of the other two options.

@jayballer73 FCS schools and lower divisions do not profit off of athletics at all so it’s not a big deal to those schools to cancel because it actually saves money. This is why many FCS programs take games against P5 schools because those checks help subsidize a big chunk of their athletics budget.

This is also why the P5 schools at this point are moving to conference only instead of cancellation. The TV deals with ESPN, CBS, and Fox are far too valuable to give up for P5 schools. Football will get postponed to the spring before it gets cancelled because of the amount of money involved from TV networks.

@hawkfan01 said in T-Mobile Center taking over for Sprint Center in downtown KCMO:

@Texas-Hawk-10

@Texas-Hawk-10 said in T-Mobile Center taking over for Sprint Center in downtown KCMO:

@Kcmatt7 said in T-Mobile Center taking over for Sprint Center in downtown KCMO:

Realistically, does Sprint Center actuall make money for KC? Factoring in maintenance and operating costs, it seems like Sprint Center should operate in the red for the city due to the lack of a professional team (NBA/NHL) calling the building home.

I don’t know about currently, but for a long time, the Sprint Center did make money for KC. It was actually wildly profitable for AEG so the profit sharing agreement kicked in (I think anything above 15% kicked into a profit split). Sprint Center at one time was somewhere around one of the 10 busiest arenas in the world. Not having a pro sports team was a good thing. All the suite and club suite revenue went to the building operator versus if we had a pro team, they would have gotten all the money. Plus, without a pro team taking all the plum dates, KC gets all these concerts and other events that used to pass us by. I don’t know this, but I actually think the former President of AEG (Tim Leiweke) used KC as his model case for his current business where he’s literally building (primarily) concert arenas.

Pro teams don’t take dates away from major concert tours. Most arena tours are booked far enough in advance to be able to promote the shows that it’s usually the NBA and NHL that have to schedule around those shows.

The way it usually works when a team plays in a city owned facility is the franchise has to pay the city to play their games in that venue with some kind of lease agreement. This is why franchises coming up at the end of a lease agreement will usually try to leverage a city for a new stadium or threaten to relocate. This is what happened here in Houston with the Oilers. Bud Adams (I don’t care that he’s a KU alum, f*** him) got the city to pay for a bunch of renovations to the Astrodome and then turned around a couple of years later and tried to get a new downtown football stadium built and only offered to pay 25% of the costs. The city voted it down and Adams reached an agreement to move to Nashville and people boycotted Oilers games their final year here.

@Kcmatt7 said in T-Mobile Center taking over for Sprint Center in downtown KCMO:

My point is just that people will still just call it the sprint center because it was named that first.

I know about the merger.

I know why people accept millions of dollars for meaningless naming rights to complexes.

Just feel like I need to clear that up, apparently.

Because hearing the sponsor’s name 100 times a game is clearly meaningless for business.

Also, most people will adjust just fine within a few months to the new name. You wanna know how I know that? Because it’s happened here in Houston twice in past 20 years. Enron lost the naming right to the Astros stadium within the first year or two of the stadium opening and was replaced by Minute Maid. Didn’t take people long to adjust to that. We also had our NFL stadium go through a name change a pretty recently from Reliant Stadium to NRG Stadium and the vast majority of people here have no issues with the name change anymore and this was in the past 3 years.

@Kcmatt7 said in The "crap on Trump" thread:

@Texas-Hawk-10 said in The "crap on Trump" thread:

@Kcmatt7 said in The "crap on Trump" thread:

Trump squeaks it out at best. No landslide possible. Biden is closing in on a sure victory. One swing state and Biden wins. Potential for Trump to lose in embarrassing fashion.

Just the way the polls look. Not my opinion in any way. It looks like the most Trump could get is 316. His margin for error is tiny. Biden has the potential to 378 with current polls the way they look.

Trump has taken a nosedive in the polls. He will need a repeat of 2016 to win. And I just don’t think he has that same momentum. People HATED Clinton. I don’t think there is the same hate for Biden…

Biden has enough skeletons in his closet and is going up against someone that will ruthlessly exploit those skeletons when campaign season starts. Plus Biden still has to make through debates with Trump as well and since he isn’t very eloquent either, debate season could be a gold mine of outrageous sound bites from both Trump and Biden. This is the year for the Libertarian and Green Parties to open up their wallets to promote their candidates strongly and try to get them included in the debates this fall.

Sure. A long ways to go.

But as of today it still looks like Trumps margin for error is razor thin. It was razor thin 4 years ago and he pulled it off.

I don’t agree on the third party this year. I did 4 years ago (voted Johnson myself).

I don’t mean that a 3rd party would win this year, but with the outright disgust so people have with both mainstream parties right now, this is the year for a 3rd party to push to get invited to the debates and increase their profile to start giving themselves a better chance in the future. If the Libertarian or Green Parties don’t take advantage of the situation being laid out in front of them this year, they may never get a better chance to break into the main stream and become real players in state and national level elections.

@Kcmatt7 You do know the name change is because T-Mobile bought Sprint right?

@Kcmatt7 said in T-Mobile Center taking over for Sprint Center in downtown KCMO:

This is why naming rights are stupid.

Unless you’re the first, nobody is calling it right.

If I asked you where the Hy-bee arena was you’d have to google it. (It’s Kempers name).

Naming right help ease the burden on tax payers because a lot of that money is used to maintain and renovate facilities as needed instead of passing bonds for it.

I’d much rather see cities tell team owners that if they want a new stadium/arena to find a corporate partner to help fund it and give them naming rights than forcing tax payers to foot the bill.

I despise the Cowboys with a passion, but I respect Jerry Jones for not holding the city of Dallas hostage for a new stadium. He went and bought the land AT&T Stadium sits on and financed the stadium himself and it really is the best stadium in football and possibly the world.

Realistically, does Sprint Center actuall make money for KC? Factoring in maintenance and operating costs, it seems like Sprint Center should operate in the red for the city due to the lack of a professional team (NBA/NHL) calling the building home.