(03-01-2011 01:10 PM)FIUFan Wrote:  

(03-01-2011 12:55 PM)MTPiKapp Wrote:  That's shortsighted and sour grapes. One, you want to be in the running? Sponsor more sports. WKU is the only school that sponsors all 20 and we sponsor I believe 17. What's stopping you or anyone else from doing the same? The Buba's(not Bubba's cup) is an "all-sports championship" putting more weight into sports like football and basketball would be putting importance on those sports based on societal perception, when to a collegiate athletic program, all sports should be viewed equally. Now before you mistake that, of course some sports will get a larger budget, but that's out of necessity just as much as it is out of societal perception. If you want to have a true "all-sports championship", you have to include all sports and making one sport count more than another based on popularity or number of scholarships or anything other than inherent difficulty to win, would invalidate the whole process. As the system exists today, weighing sports by number of participating schools is the only way to do anything resembling weighing by inherent difficulty to win.

As far as trading football championships/bowl games for 10 Buba's cups, I just don't get that at all. Perhaps if we're talking about winning the Buba's cup but finishing last in football all ten of those years, I might see your point. Here at Middle Tennessee, we prefer to win Buba's cups and go to bowl games. Beyond that, while football may be the most important sport in regards to conference realignment, don't think other conferences won't look at the overall athletic program and their success in their conference. Olympic sports are important to the big conferences, if they weren't you would have schools like Vandy in the SEC or Baylor in the Big 12 etc.

It's not Sour Grapes . Is that scoring system really representative of the athletic programs in the conference. Are you saying that WKU is 3X's better than ULM because they have an underwater basket-weaving program? If so, you can have the Buba, because it ain't a race to me if everybodies playing by different rules.

I'd say that WKU is probably about 3x better than ULM.

(03-01-2011 01:49 PM)theboro Wrote:  I'd say that WKU is probably about 3x better than ULM.

(03-01-2011 02:27 PM)FIUFan Wrote:  

(03-01-2011 01:49 PM)theboro Wrote:  I'd say that WKU is probably about 3x better than ULM.

If it's so funny, compare the two heads up across the board... What does ULM have on WKU outside of football? I'm not saying theboro is necessarily right, but I am saying that he's probably much closer to being right than you are giving him credit for. WKU, despite their football woes, is a considerably better athletic program than ULM. Three times better? I dunno, I'm not really sure how you quantify the gap personally.

(03-01-2011 02:45 PM)MTPiKapp Wrote:  If it's so funny, compare the two heads up across the board... What does ULM have on WKU outside of football? I'm not saying theboro is necessarily right, but I am saying that he's probably much closer to being right than you are giving him credit for. WKU, despite their football woes, is a considerably better athletic program than ULM. Three times better? I dunno, I'm not really sure how you quantify the gap personally.

OK. I don't want to signle out WKU...so I guess MTSU, given our Buba scoring, is 2 1/2 times better than UL. Whatever, just showing, imo, that there are just too many inconsistencies to consider this Trophy a fair comparison of the programs.

(03-01-2011 02:45 PM)MTPiKapp Wrote:  

(03-01-2011 02:27 PM)FIUFan Wrote:  

(03-01-2011 01:49 PM)theboro Wrote:  I'd say that WKU is probably about 3x better than ULM.

If it's so funny, compare the two heads up across the board... What does ULM have on WKU outside of football? I'm not saying theboro is necessarily right, but I am saying that he's probably much closer to being right than you are giving him credit for. WKU, despite their football woes, is a considerably better athletic program than ULM. Three times better? I dunno, I'm not really sure how you quantify the gap personally.

Well it is true (or at least close to it) that WKU has 3x the budget that ULM does.

(03-01-2011 02:51 PM)FIUFan Wrote:  

(03-01-2011 02:45 PM)MTPiKapp Wrote:  If it's so funny, compare the two heads up across the board... What does ULM have on WKU outside of football? I'm not saying theboro is necessarily right, but I am saying that he's probably much closer to being right than you are giving him credit for. WKU, despite their football woes, is a considerably better athletic program than ULM. Three times better? I dunno, I'm not really sure how you quantify the gap personally.

OK. I don't want to signle out WKU...so I guess MTSU, given our Buba scoring, is 2 1/2 times better than UL. Whatever, just showing, imo, that there are just too many inconsistencies to consider this Trophy a fair comparison of the programs.

The thing is, the cup is simply a ranking of where the programs rank in regards to playing all sports offered by the Sun Belt. Playing more sports, will give you more opportunities to score points, but it doesn't make your program inherently better. The thing is, MT and WKU sponsor most sports and are in the top half of the league in the majority of them.

(03-01-2011 01:10 PM)FIUFan Wrote:  Are you saying that WKU is 3X's better than ULM ...

I don't believe the relationship between Bubas Cup points and program quality is linear.

(I'll give you time to crack your algebra books)

Just for sake of comparison, if we used the SEC's formula for all sports trophy (total points earned divided by total number of sports sponsored, but with each sport starting at a total of 12 points) we would have the following results. This is helpful to balance out teams that might not offer as many sports. BTW, I have no agenda with posting this (read: not discrediting MTSU's current lead). Using this formula MTSU wins last year and will likely be on top after this year is finished.

1 DENVER (10.75)
2 MT (10.57)
3 WKU (9.61)
4 NT (8.88)
5 ASU (8.14)
6 FIU (7.31)
7 FAU (7.06)
8 TROY (6.08)
9 USA (5.75)
10 UALR (5.57)
11 ULL (5.00)
12 ULM (4.21)

(03-01-2011 12:15 PM)theboro Wrote:  

(03-01-2011 09:28 AM)FIUFan Wrote:  Weight the Bubba by the number of scholarships each sport offers. Then we'll see a real champ.

Cross Country: Men's and Women's, Indoor Track: Men's and Women's and Outdoor Track: Men's and Women's, are all the same sport, yet those combined sports are worth 6 times the points as is FOOTBALL.

Until they change this, the Bubba will always be a Track and Field Trophy.

Every year we've won the cup, if you take away our points and give any other school first-place points for sports we offer and they don't, we still win.

You can make it excuses or you can decide to start competing in a sport, not just offering it.

Luckily for us, WKU blows donkey nuts in golf and tennis so we'll probably be able to hang on and win this thing, even though it's going to be a looooong year in baseball and softball.

Don't expect that to last very long. Someone can correct me if I'm wrong, but we recently hired our first full time golf coach and our first full time tennis coach is coming shortly. Previously, those sports were coached by part time coaches.

I know this........ if any school other than WKU or MT wins the Cup, it'll be plastered all over this board-- and probably should be. That means you have had a very successful year in the SBC.

For me, it allows me to follow & be proud of other sports at MT when some sports are in the toilet (see MT baseball this year, softball every year).

Bet the Cajun fans enjoy those softball points every year.