Foregone Conclusion

Why?  Why?  Why?  Mike Anderson, Mizzou's head basketball coach recently announced that he would not be accepting a job offer from the University of Oregon to be their head coach.  This past weekend, Coach Anderson met with officials from UO, but made a statement today that he would remain in Columbia.  C'mon, MA! How could you even consider taking over a program you beat by 37 points on December 5th?!

Aside from the money, it is hard to determine why it would be worth the time.  Currently, Coach Anderson makes around $1.5 million per year, but could earn over $2 mil based on the incentives in his contract (he'll make about $1.7 mil based on this past season).  Oregon reportedly offered about $800,000 more as a base salary.  I realize that a figure like that is nothing to sneeze at, but Oregon?  Really?!  Oregon basketball is about as hopeless as the Chicago Cubs.

Over the past two seasons, Anderson's teams have won 54 games with four wins in the Big Dance. That is impressive.  The current recruiting class is ranked as high as 11th by many scouting experts.  Clearly, Mike Anderson knows what he's doing.  He and his coaching style have made a good program even better, so I certainly don't fault any other program for approaching our coach.  But MA is building something here.  Entertaining an offer from a lesser program sends the wrong message.  It gives me the impression that when Alabama (Anderson is from the state of Alabama. In fact, Mizzou hired him away from University of Alabama-Birmingham) fires its coach next year, MA will be gone.  I wonder if next year's crop of recruits think the same thing...

The Mizzou Men's Basketball program is a program that is coming off two straight years in the tournament, and an Elite Eight run a season ago, and overachieving in 09-10 resulted in close loss in the second round of the Big Dance.

This program appears to approaching a level that many programs strive for, and I realize that a raise is a raise, and $800k is a huge raise by any measure.   But who likes to start a difficult project over from scratch before the initial task is even completed?  That's what he would've been doing if he'd taken the job at Oregon - starting over.  He would've been hitting the reset button and taking a step backward.  Although Mizzou loses the Battle of Rich Alumni, Oregon's basketball program is nowhere near the prestige that Missouri holds.

(Even Phil Knight's Nike money doesn't compete.)

Ultimately, I think he would've just been getting paid to lose.  $2.5 million to recruit against (and lose to) Arizona, Cal, UCLA and Washington. It's hard to recruit good players to play basketball at Oregon.

The Pac-10 is a lesser conference than the Big 12.  The Pac-10 had only two teams make it to the NCAA Tournament last month.  The Big 12 had seven.  That means that the Big 12 had six times as many teams earn a chance to compete for a National Championship.  Mizzou is a better team in a better conference.

Oregon basketball averages 7800 fans, while Mizzou brings about 13800 to each home game.  A bigger fan base means that more games will be televised. More exposure means more revenue and better recruits.

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There just is no comparison.

Duck! Duck! Goose!

Let me start by apologizing for my unsanctioned absence from the blogosphere.  Though I've been unemployed for exactly one month, I've been unusually busy. On to today's entry...

A day or so ago, Faith and I decided that it would be fun to visit our favorite spot to feed fish.  There's a man-made pond in Glen Carbon that is home to some of the largest Koi I've ever seen.  We make a handful of trips each year to this spot.  We like to relax and feel the breeze and watch the fish wrangle food from each other. This week has some rather uncharacteristic scheduling conflicts, so my little princess and I decided that today after school would give us a great opportunity to hang out and do some fish-feeding.  So this morning as I prepared her breakfast and packed her lunch, I also gathered a sack of unwanted bread-type items from the cabinet: old dinner rolls, the last few Cheez-Its, the end pieces of a couple of loaves of bread, etc.

We both were excited about what we had planned since it had been seven or so months since we'd last been to the pond.  I was happy that the middle of my day had passed so quickly, and that it was time to pick her up from school.

As the school bell rang, Faith ran out of the doors, and grabbed my hand to head to the car.  She double-checked with me that I had brought the bag of soon-to-be-fish-food because she wanted to go straight there. I answered yes, and she began gabbing about some of the things that had happened during her day.  We hopped in the car, let the windows down, and continued to talk as we rode.  Little did we know that our innocent plans were about to be derailed by a team of rogue birds.

I noticed as we got close to the pond that there were more ducks and geese milling around than usual. They were strutting around, nibbling at the grass, and waiting...

As I parked, I noticed a few of them noticing me.  Something felt weird. I hurried around the car to open Faith's door, and we moseyed down the ramp toward the dock.  As we strolled, so did a few ducks... accompanied by a few geese. As Faith and I walked hand-in-hand, we noticed a few geese up ahead.  They stood there like tough-guy gate-keepers.  I felt like I was in a dark alley somewhere. Conflict was brewing...

(I was NOT feeling lucky today.) 

About 15 feathered bullies closed in on us, eyeing my bag of goodies, and my heart began to race.  Faith looked up at me with an intimidated and concerned look. She hugged my waist tightly. I made eye contact with a rebel mallard. It felt like High Noon at the OK Corral, but I wouldn't be calling any bluffs.

As we slowly and cautiously turned to head back to the car, I yelled "Run!  Get to the car!" Faith took off to the car and reached safety as I bolted to the other side and got in too.

They followed us to the car!  Honking and quacking, they had us surrounded. There had to be more than 20 geese and ducks honking, quacking and flapping their wings in anticipation. It was like a twisted horror movie.  Here we are, in the middle of the afternoon, trapped in my car at a pond by a posse of poultry.  And beside ourselves with fear.  Never have I been so afraid of a toothless animal as I was with that pack of grissled geese overly aggressive ducks.

In a last gasp of desperation, Faith suggested a diversion.  She advised me to toss some crumbs across the street in order to clear a path to the pond.  These birds were hip to our game.  As I tossed bits of old dinner roll, one at a time, the ducks and geese took turns retrieving the morsels.  This gaggle of roughians weren't letting us out of that car.

I concluded that I wasn't in the mood to get punked by a team of roughbeaks.