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CDAK

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Posts posted by CDAK

  1. 25 minutes ago, Cairn Horn88 said:

    Okay, so what exactly does this have to do with baseball?

    It has everything to do with baseball! No, not really, but the Opportunity Vanderbilt initiative has a direct effect on Vanderbilt baseball because of NCAA scholarship rules.

    Unlike football and basketball, the two “head count” sports (there are more, but those are the two in which Vanderbilt competes), baseball is considered an “equivalency” sport by the NCAA. What that means is that instead of simply counting the number of student-athletes who are getting financial aid related to athletics (or were “recruited” athletes who are getting any sort of financial aid from the university), the NCAA counts the total amount of athletic aid received by players in the sport. In football, if a team had two players who are getting a 50 percent scholarship, that would count as two scholarships against the 85-scholarship limit. In baseball, it would count as one scholarship against the limit of 11.7.

    Where things get tricky with baseball and other equivalency sports, though, is in deciding what financial aid counts toward the scholarship limit. That’s a two-step process: first, the NCAA determines if a student-athlete is a “counter” for scholarship purposes. In equivalency sports, that means that some portion of the student-athlete’s financial aid is athletic aid. Once you’re a counter, all of your financial aid from the university is counted toward the scholarship limit, regardless of whether it’s athletic aid or not. But if you’re not considered a “counter” — meaning that you aren’t on an athletic scholarship — none of your financial aid counts toward the limit, even if you’re getting your entire cost of attendance paid for.

    That latter part is, more than likely, the basis of the complaints from other baseball programs. Vanderbilt can simply give a player a full ride through need-based grants, and they get a player on a full ride without it counting against the scholarship limit. That seems like it would be kind of a big deal, right?

    Well, the reality is that grants covering the full cost of attendance are actually pretty rare. Here’s a handy brochure (a few years old, but it gets the point across) about the Opportunity Vanderbilt program, and while there are certainly students getting something close to the full cost of attendance, they’re the exception and not the rule. And they’re mostly coming from the lower end of the income scale. (As that relates to college baseball, you’re not really supposed to talk about this — but probably the majority of college baseball players come from affluent families ... you know, the same parents who have had their kids on travel baseball teams since they were 10. Relatively few of them are in the income range where Opportunity Vanderbilt is knocking $60,000 off the cost of attendance.)

    The other issue here is that if a player is also getting a baseball scholarship, any financial aid they’re getting from Opportunity Vanderbilt gets counted against the scholarship limit. This actually puts Vanderbilt in something of a tricky spot if a player is, say, getting an aid package around $40,000 or so: that puts the player in a position where he’s still paying what he would pay to attend a state school, but a state school might be able to put him on scholarship and make his cost of attending even lower than what Vanderbilt can.

    Probably too much info....but..fyi.

    I at least appreciate it. It’s interesting. It doesn’t seem like a huge advantage for Vandy and it’s Vandy-specific, and not applicable to all private schools.

  2. 2 hours ago, Cairn Horn88 said:

    Real cost of attendance: 
    Vanderbilt - $0 unless your family makes $250k+  
    Oh, and they have a no-loan policy at Vanderbilt. It's literally Cost of Attendance Minus EFC is what they ask you to pay. If you can't pay it, they gift it.  

    https://admissions.vanderbilt.edu/vandybloggers/2010/08/need-based-financial-aid-at-vanderbilt/

    For an average Southern middle class family, Vanderbilt is actually the second cheapest college option. As you can see on the chart below, the average cost is $7,300. Vanderbilt baseball can give a 1/6 scholarship and cover that.  

    Image: http://www.thecollegesolution.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/denison.jpg


    Household AGI under $100k - You pay nothing.  
    Household AGI under $175k - You barely pay anything.  

    You only pay full price if your household AGI is over $250k.  

    Its the same model that the Ivy League, Duke and Stanford have used for years. They are calling it Opportunity Vanderbilt.  

    Add that to the fact that athletes have lesser academic qualifications than standard students at Vanderbilt, and its an attractive place - especially for athletes in minor sports. I mean, they aren't letting 15 ACTs in like some schools, but if you are good enough and want to play at Vanderbilt, a 23-24 type ACT is good enough.  

    Vandy has a lot of academic scholarship $$ to offer and with good coaching, this has provided them with an advantage that public schools are not necessarily able to match.  Vandy wants smart kids who can play baseball.

    Thanks for sharing. That’s an awesome policy if you’re a Vandy student. They’re not skirting NCAA rules to give academic scholarships to baseball players. They’re giving every student a free ride whose parents make less than 100k. I doubt many private schools have the money to do that.

  3. 12 minutes ago, Augustus said:

    If you're a hotshot prospect, and you've got an offer from schools like LSU, Florida, etc, are you gonna choose Vandy just because they have more scholarships to offer?

    Like I said, it's only one piece of a huge puzzle.

    I suspect you're right that it's not something that's happening at every private school with a baseball program, but I don't doubt that it's benfited TCU and Vandy tremendously in recent years.

    I think scholarship money is a huge piece of the puzzle that often dwarfs other considerations.  And yes, I wouldn't hesitate to pay less at Vandy, Duke, Stanford, Rice, and TCU than paying more at LSU, Florida, Arkansas, Florida State, and Mississippi State.  But yet, other than Vandy, the public schools all outrecruit and outperform the privates.

    (Edited to add that TCU did outrecruit some of the public schools this year at least)

  4. 13 minutes ago, Cairn Horn88 said:

    I read somewhere that Vandy gave out about 10 more scholarships than other schools.  I will see if I can find a link.

    I would buy that there are a few (like 2 or 3) private schools that bend the rules to hand out more scholarships with Vandy being the ringleader.  But I am interested in the link if you find it.  I don't think it's commonplace across private schools as Augustus suggested.

  5. 8 minutes ago, Augustus said:

    Why hasn't Texas football dominated the Big 12 since its inception?  They outrecruit every other conference team consistently--according to the bloggers and Longhorn fans.

    I'd suggest because, for the small private school baseball teams, it's not just a function of how many players are on scholarship, legit or not.

    Even with ability to scholarship some extra players, they're still battling the the same disadvantages against the bigger, more resourceful and historically better programs.

    And then there's the coaching factor.  An abundance of talent doesn't guarantee success.

    It's just one factor among many, but it has given schools like Vandy a chance to compete at a high level, as they have for several years now, including a national championship and at least one top-ranked recruiting class.  But it's not the only piece of the puzzle.

    How successful would Vandy have been recently if they lacked that advantage?  I don't know.

    There are dozens (hundreds?) of private schools competing in college baseball.  Your analogy to the performance of one school is a bad one.  One school can be an outlier.  

    You also didn't address recruiting.  You addressed only performance.  Why aren't the private schools recruiting better if they have all these extra scholarships to hand out?

  6. Just now, Augustus said:

    Well if you don't think being able to scholarship more players is an advantage, then why do you think there are scholarship limits?

    Can you provide any metrics or data showing that they actually scholarship more players? 

    And if they are actually able to scholarship more players, why aren't they recruiting better?  I think there are 3 private schools in the top 25 recruiting rankings this year.  https://www.perfectgame.org/Rankings/Recruiting/Rankings.aspx

    And why aren't they performing better?

  7. 2 minutes ago, Augustus said:

    TCU and Rice have profited, as well.

    Dominating the sport isn't the benchmark.  The fact they've been as competitive as they've been is a result of being able to scholarship more players through other means. It's allowed them to compete on a national level with programs with vastly more resources and support.  

    What is the benchmark? 

    The top 16 seeds this year included exactly one private school, Vanderbilt. https://www.ncaa.com/news/baseball/article/2019-05-26/16-regional-hosts-selected-2019-di-baseball-tournament

    The last private school to win a CWS, Vanderbilt in 2014.  Before that, Rice in 2003. https://www.ncaa.com/news/baseball/article/2019-06-16/ncaa-college-baseball-bracket-2019-printable-college-world-series

    I'm skeptical that private schools have any advantage.  

  8. 41 minutes ago, Augustus said:

    He's got an enormous advantage being at Vandy, as do other coaches at private schools.

    People say that, but when you ask why, they refer vaguely to scholarship advantages.  I'm not sure I buy it.  Who are the other private school baseball powerhouses?  Stanford? TCU?  They aren't exactly dominating the sport.  It's the big public schools, particularly those in the south and southwest.  And Vandy.

  9. 1 hour ago, Cairn Horn88 said:

    This is somewhat unlike Tech to be this ragged.  Tad knows better than to lose the first game.

    I think Tadlock is 2-6 in Omaha

  10.  

    38 minutes ago, The Ace of Aces said:

    We often are thought to be Canadians when traveling. It has benefits because American bus tour grey hairs are the absolute fucking worst. 

    Why do they think you're a Canadian?  Do you say "eh" a lot, repeatedly ask for poutine or walk around with a Canadian flag?

  11. Maybe some of you cultured globe trotters will start getting flight shamed.  https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/the-flight-shame-issue-comes-home-to-rick-steves/

    A single round-trip flight between Seattle and, say, Rome, emits about 3.5 tons of CO2 per person — the same as nine months of driving in the average U.S. car, according to the EPA.

    The carbon cost of flying is so steep that in Europe it’s led to a new movement that the Swedes call “flygskam.” It translates as “flight shame.” The premise is: fly less, or even, don’t fly at all.

  12. The detective played by Felicity Huffman in When They See Us wrote an op-ed in the WSJ.  Unsurprisingly, she disputes some of the info presented in the show.  There is some interesting info in her op-ed, but she agrees with the decision to vacate the convictions.  So, still a tragedy even if the writer/director took some factual liberties. https://www.wsj.com/articles/netflixs-false-story-of-the-central-park-five-11560207823

     

    Spoiler

    At about 9 p.m. April 19, 1989, a large group of young men gathered on the corner of 110th Street and Fifth Avenue for the purpose of robbing and beating innocent people in Central Park. There were more than 30 rioters, and the woman known as the “Central Park jogger,” Trisha Meili, was not their only victim. Eight others were attacked, including two men who were beaten so savagely that they required hospitalization for head injuries.

    Reporters and filmmakers have explored this story countless times from numerous perspectives, almost always focusing on five attackers and one female jogger. But each has missed the larger picture of that terrible night: a riot in the dark that resulted in the apprehension of more than 15 teenagers who set upon multiple victims. That a sociopath named Matias Reyes confessed in 2002 to the rape of Ms. Meili, and that the district attorney consequently vacated the charges against the five after they had served their sentences, has led some of these reporters and filmmakers to assume the prosecution had no basis on which to charge the five suspects in 1989. So it is with filmmaker Ava DuVernay in the Netflix miniseries “When They See Us,” a series so full of distortions and falsehoods as to be an outright fabrication.

    It shouldn’t have been hard for Ms. DuVernay to discover the truth. The facts of the original case are documented in a 117-page decision by New York State Supreme Court Justice Thomas Galligan, in sworn testimony given in two trials and affirmed by two appellate courts, and in sworn depositions of more than 95 witnesses—including the five themselves. Instead she has written an utterly false narrative involving an evil mastermind (me) and the falsely accused (the five).

    I was one of the supervisors who oversaw the team that prosecuted the teenagers apprehended after that horrific night of violence. Ms. DuVernay’s film attempts to portray me as an overzealous prosecutor and a bigot, the police as incompetent or worse, and the five suspects as innocent of all charges against them. None of this is true.

    Consider the film’s most egregious falsehoods. “When They See Us” repeatedly portrays the suspects as being held without food, deprived of their parents’ company and advice, and not even allowed to use the bathroom. If that had been true, surely they would have brought those issues up and prevailed in pretrial hearings on the voluntariness of their statements, as well as in their lawsuit against the city. They didn’t, because it never happened.

    In the first episode, the film portrays me at the precinct station house before dawn on April 20, the day after the attacks, unethically engineering the police investigation and making racist remarks. In reality, I didn’t arrive until 8 p.m., 22 hours after the police investigation began, did not run the investigation, and never made any of the comments the screenwriter attributes to me.

    Ms. DuVernay depicts suspects Yusef Salaam and Korey Wise being arrested on the street. In fact, two detectives went to the door of the Salaam apartment on the night of the 20th because both had been named by other rioters as attackers in multiple assaults.

     

    The film claims that when Mr. Salaam’s mother arrived and told police her son was only 15—meaning they could not question him without a parent in the room—I tried to stop her, demanding to see a birth certificate. The truth is that Mr. Salaam himself claimed to be 16 and even had a forged bus pass to “prove” it. When I heard his mother say he was 15, I immediately halted his questioning. This is all supported by sworn testimony.

    Ms. DuVernay would have you believe the only evidence against the suspects was their allegedly forced confessions. That is not true. There is, for example, the African-American woman who testified at the trial—and again during the 2002 re-investigation—that when Korey Wise called her brother, he told her that he had held the jogger down and felt her breasts while others attacked her. There were blood stains and dirt on clothing of some of the five. And then there are the statements of more than a dozen of the other kids who participated in the park rampage. Although none of the others admitted joining in the rape of Trisha Meili, they admitted attacking male victims and a couple on a tandem bike, and each of them named some or all of the five as joining them.

    Nor does the film note that Mr. Salaam took the stand at his trial, represented by a lawyer chosen and paid for by his mother, and testified that he had gone into the park carrying a 14-inch metal pipe—the same type of weapon that was used to bludgeon both a male schoolteacher and Ms. Meili. Mr. Reyes’s confession changed none of this. He admitted being the man whose DNA had been left in the jogger’s body and on her clothing, but the two juries that heard those facts knew the main assailant in the rape had not been caught. The five were charged as accomplices, as persons “acting in concert” with each other and with the then-unknown man who raped the jogger, not as those who actually performed the act. In their original confessions—later recanted—they admitted to grabbing her breasts and legs, and two of them admitted to climbing on top of her and simulating intercourse. Semen was found on the inside of their clothing, corroborating those confessions.

    Mr. Reyes’s confession, DNA match and claim that he acted alone required that the rape charges against the five be vacated. I agreed with that decision, and still do. But the other charges, for crimes against other victims, should not have been vacated. Nothing Mr. Reyes said exonerated these five of those attacks. And there was certainly more than enough evidence to support those convictions of first-degree assault, robbery, riot and other charges.

    It is a wonderful thing that these five men have taken themselves to responsible positions and community respect. That Ms. DuVernay ignored so much of the truth about the gang of 30 and about the suffering of their victims—and that her film includes so many falsehoods—is nonetheless an outrage.

    Ms. DuVernay does not define me, and her film does not speak the truth.

     

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