(12-06-2021 09:51 AM)cidbearit Wrote:  

(12-06-2021 09:20 AM)emu steve Wrote:  

(12-06-2021 08:47 AM)cidbearit Wrote:  

(12-06-2021 08:44 AM)emu steve Wrote:  

(12-06-2021 08:38 AM)cidbearit Wrote:  It's going to be interesting to see how EMU manages the 12/15 early signing day considering the team and all the coaches will be in Alabama doing Bowl prep and running practices. Does the signing day, at least for the coaches, become a distraction to bowl prep? It looks like the team will be touring the Airbus factory during the day on the 15th. Perhaps the players go on the tour and the coaches stay behind and do the signing day stuff from a conference room in their hotel. The logistics will be interesting.

Lest I be wrong, doesn't EMU have signing day, finals, and the bowl game ALL in the same week?

That is not an ideal calendar. Common Sense tells me that. I have the EMU Steve 3-bag theory as such:

Ask a person to carry a bag of groceries and a healthy person can successfully do it say >99.5% of the time.

Ask the same person to carry 2 bags of groceries (one in each arm) and the success rate drops.

Ask the same person to carry 3 bags of groceries (at one time) and the success rate drops significantly.

Or try not to bite off more than you can chew.

In this case, the calendar conspires against EMU. Will C.C. and the player personnel staff and recruiting coaches stay in Ypsi until the evening of Dec 15 while the coordinators are down in AL handling the last minute practices, walk thrus.

Add one more item to that bag for the Seniors...that Sunday after the game (12/19) is EMU's commencement. Will the team do a special "on the road" commencement for the Seniors as they have in the past?

Thanks.

I really wish that EMU could have gotten a better bowl date. Not all schools have finals and graduation next week.

I wish bowl organizers and ADs would try to factor that in. It isn't the Nth out of a list of N factors. It should be near the top.

Wishing we had drawn the QL bowl to ameliorate the problems I just mentioned (and yes, most of our students out for semester break would be closer to Detroit than Ypsilanti).

A couple years ago we were in a bar Downtown getting prepped for EMU's appearance in the QL bowl. The owner was behind the bar pouring beers and they were getting slammed. I asked him why he hadn't scheduled more staff that night with the bowl game going on, and he said that because it was Eastern they didn't anticipate the crowd they had (it was SRO in that bar and all the others in the area).

There are a load more EMU alums in the Metro-Detroit region than I think most people realize. It will be interesting to see if WMU draws like that. I think because EMU has such a strong commuter base, they have a significantly larger base of alumni immediately in the Metro area than a Western or Central does.

I don't believe EMU publishes statistics on the residence of their students (my undergrad school, Wayne State, does) so we don't really know.

That said, it is widely believe that EMU does not draw students well from the U.P., northern half of the lower peninsula, probably the western part of the lower peninsula, etc.

I believe CMU and WMU draw students well from across the state. I just don't see that many students from K'zoo, Grand Rapids, Midland, Saginaw, Traverse City, etc. come to EMU.

I'd bet most end up at CMU or WMU or a GLIAC school like Ferris, Saginaw Valley, etc.