(04-06-2016 08:31 PM)nzmorange Wrote:  

(04-06-2016 06:40 PM)Captain Bearcat Wrote:  

(04-06-2016 03:33 PM)nzmorange Wrote:  

(04-05-2016 07:48 PM)Captain Bearcat Wrote:  

(04-04-2016 08:08 PM)DavidSt Wrote:  If the Big 10 was smarter? They should have invited MIT, Johns Hopkins and other AAU schools to the Big 10 in the early 1900's before rules changes to make divisions of colleges and universities. Imagine where these schools would be today in football and all that? All these rule changes have actually hurt the NCAA and the P5 schools more than they think when you have many P5 schools are in the hole on athletics.

Other than Penn, most of the Ivies and other elites schools made voluntary decisions to de-emphasize athletics around the 1920s - look at their win-loss records. So any additions would have had to be before that.

But at that point, the Big 10 was considered a very geographically spread-out conference. The sprawling SIAA had just split into 3 smaller conferences, and the Big 10 didn't want to repeat that mistake. Michigan actually left from 1907-1917 to play a more local schedule. Adding East Coast schools would have been unthinkable.

Besides, MIT & Hopkins were never serious football programs.

The only AAU football powers that were geographically acceptable were Carnegie Mellon, Case, and Wash U. But Wash U was in the Missouri Valley (along with the forerunners of the Big 8), and their football still became so bad that they were effectively kicked out in 1928. Would Carnegie & Case have become like Northwestern/Notre Dame/BYU/USC? Maybe, but odds are more likely that they still would have ended up like Chicago and Wash U (who they share a conference with today).

What you say about the Ivies isn't true.

Cornell won NC's in the 30's, had #1 rankings in the 40's, and heisman finalists in the 70's.

Princeton won the 1950 NC, won the heisman in '51, and had an undefeated team in the 60's

Dartmouth knocked off a #1 Cornell in the 40's, and (from what I understand - albeit I'm not a Dartmouth fan), had the last hurrah of the Ivies in the 70's.

Yale and Harvard were also very relevant until the 70's.

Occasional top-25 rankings for the #1 team in the conference is a far cry from regularly winning national titles, which is what they were doing before 1930. It's difficult to even compare them because they rarely played any out of conference games of note. Dartmouth was ranked #14 in 1970 because they went 9-0 against the Ivies, UMass, and Holy Cross. Princeton finished 1950 ranked #6 (not a NC) by going 9-0 against the Ivies, Williams, and Rutgers.

The non-Ivy private AAUs fared even worse. They dropped from being occasional top-25 to completely irrelevant. Chicago's last winning record was in 1929, and in 1940 they shut down football until the 60s. Case, Wash U, & Carnegie de-emphasized sports about the same time, as did many smaller elite liberal arts powerhouses like Centre College (the Praying Colonels!), Detroit, and Washington & Jefferson (all of which won national titles in the 20s).

1. "Some selectors named Princeton the national champions, most notably the NCAA-recognized Poling System and Boand System." The school claims a NC and there is some legitimacy to the claim. They aren't just making it up. Anyway, whether it's #6 or #1 is irrelevant to the fact that they were nationally relevant. You're confusing selective scheduling with poor performance and/or weak talent. That's not the case. They were snobs, sure, but they were also good at football.

2. A) Cornell had the Heisman runner-up in 1972(?) and Yale, Harvard, and Princeton were all ranked in the at least the 1960's. That's A) 30+ years after you claimed they de-emphasized into irrelevance and B) clearly not a case of the league "occasionally having a top 25 ranking for the number 1 team in the conference." Heck, going back to Cornell, they played the 5th down game against Dartmouth in 1940 as the defending national champions. That's 10+ years after you claimed de-emphasis and implied that W/L records tanked.

B) Keep in mind that part A is building off of your Dartmouth statement, and doesn't otherwise mention any successes that Dartmouth, Columbia, Penn, and Brown had in the 60's (or any other time after the 1920's). Also keep in mind that the Ivy League consists of 8 schools. If 2 are good, that's roughly equal to having 4 good ACC/B1G/SEC schools.

3. The non-Ivy private AAUs may have fared even worse, but they are also 100% irrelevant to my comment. That said, it's also partially misleading. Schools like Colgate fielded competitive programs much later than the 1920's. For example, they were a top 10 team for at least one point in the 1950 season. Granted, they fell apart shortly thereafter, but that's still 20+ years after the 1920's.

At best, your comment is incredibly misleading. At worst, it's incredibly wrong.

My original statement said nothing about "national relevance." I said that they de-emphasized athletics.

The Ivies DOMINATED the sport before 1928. An Ivy won an NC in 54 of the first 58 years the sport was played up to 1928. 7 of the 8 Ivies claimed national titles from 1920-28. After that, they only won 3 more national titles, 2 of them by the same school (Princeton). Clearly, something changed.

They didn't abandon big-time football completely for another couple of decades, but they definitely de-emphasized it. They saw the changes being made to the amateur model and wanted nothing to do with the new pay-for-play models being tried in other conferences. Given their money and prestige, they could have maintained their dominance if they wanted. But instead Ivy Leaguers both in and out of the NCAA, like Dartmouth booster and former player E.K. Hall, were most prominent in calling for a "Sanity Code" as early as 1931 to curb pay-for-play.

It's no coincidence that this was the same time period (late 20s-early 30s) when Wash U was kicked out of the MVC (1928), the SEC left the more academic-focused Southern Conference schools behind (1933), and Chicago, Case, Carnegie, and most of the elite liberal arts schools (pretty much everyone but Wake Forest and Lafayette) stopped being competitive alltogether.

(04-11-2016 03:49 AM)Captain Bearcat Wrote:  

(04-06-2016 08:31 PM)nzmorange Wrote:  

(04-06-2016 06:40 PM)Captain Bearcat Wrote:  

(04-06-2016 03:33 PM)nzmorange Wrote:  

(04-05-2016 07:48 PM)Captain Bearcat Wrote:  Other than Penn, most of the Ivies and other elites schools made voluntary decisions to de-emphasize athletics around the 1920s - look at their win-loss records. So any additions would have had to be before that.

But at that point, the Big 10 was considered a very geographically spread-out conference. The sprawling SIAA had just split into 3 smaller conferences, and the Big 10 didn't want to repeat that mistake. Michigan actually left from 1907-1917 to play a more local schedule. Adding East Coast schools would have been unthinkable.

Besides, MIT & Hopkins were never serious football programs.

The only AAU football powers that were geographically acceptable were Carnegie Mellon, Case, and Wash U. But Wash U was in the Missouri Valley (along with the forerunners of the Big 8), and their football still became so bad that they were effectively kicked out in 1928. Would Carnegie & Case have become like Northwestern/Notre Dame/BYU/USC? Maybe, but odds are more likely that they still would have ended up like Chicago and Wash U (who they share a conference with today).

What you say about the Ivies isn't true.

Cornell won NC's in the 30's, had #1 rankings in the 40's, and heisman finalists in the 70's.

Princeton won the 1950 NC, won the heisman in '51, and had an undefeated team in the 60's

Dartmouth knocked off a #1 Cornell in the 40's, and (from what I understand - albeit I'm not a Dartmouth fan), had the last hurrah of the Ivies in the 70's.

Yale and Harvard were also very relevant until the 70's.

Occasional top-25 rankings for the #1 team in the conference is a far cry from regularly winning national titles, which is what they were doing before 1930. It's difficult to even compare them because they rarely played any out of conference games of note. Dartmouth was ranked #14 in 1970 because they went 9-0 against the Ivies, UMass, and Holy Cross. Princeton finished 1950 ranked #6 (not a NC) by going 9-0 against the Ivies, Williams, and Rutgers.

The non-Ivy private AAUs fared even worse. They dropped from being occasional top-25 to completely irrelevant. Chicago's last winning record was in 1929, and in 1940 they shut down football until the 60s. Case, Wash U, & Carnegie de-emphasized sports about the same time, as did many smaller elite liberal arts powerhouses like Centre College (the Praying Colonels!), Detroit, and Washington & Jefferson (all of which won national titles in the 20s).

1. "Some selectors named Princeton the national champions, most notably the NCAA-recognized Poling System and Boand System." The school claims a NC and there is some legitimacy to the claim. They aren't just making it up. Anyway, whether it's #6 or #1 is irrelevant to the fact that they were nationally relevant. You're confusing selective scheduling with poor performance and/or weak talent. That's not the case. They were snobs, sure, but they were also good at football.

2. A) Cornell had the Heisman runner-up in 1972(?) and Yale, Harvard, and Princeton were all ranked in the at least the 1960's. That's A) 30+ years after you claimed they de-emphasized into irrelevance and B) clearly not a case of the league "occasionally having a top 25 ranking for the number 1 team in the conference." Heck, going back to Cornell, they played the 5th down game against Dartmouth in 1940 as the defending national champions. That's 10+ years after you claimed de-emphasis and implied that W/L records tanked.

B) Keep in mind that part A is building off of your Dartmouth statement, and doesn't otherwise mention any successes that Dartmouth, Columbia, Penn, and Brown had in the 60's (or any other time after the 1920's). Also keep in mind that the Ivy League consists of 8 schools. If 2 are good, that's roughly equal to having 4 good ACC/B1G/SEC schools.

3. The non-Ivy private AAUs may have fared even worse, but they are also 100% irrelevant to my comment. That said, it's also partially misleading. Schools like Colgate fielded competitive programs much later than the 1920's. For example, they were a top 10 team for at least one point in the 1950 season. Granted, they fell apart shortly thereafter, but that's still 20+ years after the 1920's.

At best, your comment is incredibly misleading. At worst, it's incredibly wrong.

My original statement said nothing about "national relevance." I said that they de-emphasized athletics.

The Ivies DOMINATED the sport before 1928. An Ivy won an NC in 54 of the first 58 years the sport was played up to 1928. 7 of the 8 Ivies claimed national titles from 1920-28. After that, they only won 3 more national titles, 2 of them by the same school (Princeton). Clearly, something changed.

They didn't abandon big-time football completely for another couple of decades, but they definitely de-emphasized it. They saw the changes being made to the amateur model and wanted nothing to do with the new pay-for-play models being tried in other conferences. Given their money and prestige, they could have maintained their dominance if they wanted. But instead Ivy Leaguers both in and out of the NCAA, like Dartmouth booster and former player E.K. Hall, were most prominent in calling for a "Sanity Code" as early as 1931 to curb pay-for-play.

It's no coincidence that this was the same time period (late 20s-early 30s) when Wash U was kicked out of the MVC (1928), the SEC left the more academic-focused Southern Conference schools behind (1933), and Chicago, Case, Carnegie, and most of the elite liberal arts schools (pretty much everyone but Wake Forest and Lafayette) stopped being competitive alltogether.

Look at the early schedules. They look very similar and many of the NC's were divided. Did you ever consider that most of the Ivy championships happened when they were pretty much the only teams playing? For example, Yale's entire 1872 national championship season consisted of a 3-0 win over Princeton. That one game was their entire season. Given there are 3 possibilities: a win (NC), a loss (Princeton apparently has an argument for a NC), or a draw (both Yale and Princeton apparently have arguments for co-NCs), how much do those NCs really matter?

And you do realize that Cornell built Schoellkopf Field in 1915, Columbia built a stadium (now defunct) in 1928, Princeton built a stadium (now defunct) in 1914, Yale Built the Yale Bowl in 1914, and Brown built Brown Stadium in 1925, right?

62.5% of the Ivy League built stadiums within 15 years of the time that you said that they de-emphasized. Out of the remaining 3 (Harvard, Dartmouth, and Penn), Dartmouth was the last Ivy to de-emphasize and Penn is the one that you initially singled out as still caring.

Unless you think that either A) massive facility investments aren't a signal of commitment, or B) 0-14 years is too generous of a window to still care abou tthe investment, I fail to see how they're de-emphasizing.

Now, if you want to argue that there were more teams competing as time went on, and the competition was increasingly fierce, I won't argue against you.

So far, basketball, football, hockey and in some cases baseball are getting FCOA. The schools that are not at D1 for affiliate in some sports could be out of the loop, and can not compete. Several D2 and D3 schools got busted for wanted to add more to the cost of attendance type for their athletes. I think this might need to be explore at all levels. D3 schools got busted the most for the past 10 years. Arkansas Tech got busted last year for doing a FCOA program as well for football, basketball and baseball. Plus some other sports.

(04-09-2016 10:25 PM)BruceMcF Wrote:  

(04-09-2016 09:53 PM)jdgaucho Wrote:  Affiliate membership is fine and for the most part benefits both the individual team as well as its conference. Let's just leave it at that, shall we?

And in general has no conference realignment implications, whether its Notre Dame in Big Ten ice hockey or WV or Mizzou in the MAC.

At the moment, the only affiliate membership outside of the Idaho/NMSU thing that I know of that has future realignment considerations is that in 2018, Belmont has the option to join the Horizon League. It currently is an affiliate member in men's soccer, as well as playing Horizon League teams in OOC games in other sports. Are there any others like this currently in other conferences?

UCONN to join Hockey East in all sports.

Could P5 conferences give G5 schools affiliate in football only to help sell more to their networks? PAC 12 could give Boise State, BYU or other MWC schools an affiliate spot, but not for all sports. That way, the P5 conferences who cares about academics don't give them full votes in the conference except for football.

(04-11-2016 11:17 AM)nzmorange Wrote:  

(04-11-2016 03:49 AM)Captain Bearcat Wrote:  

(04-06-2016 08:31 PM)nzmorange Wrote:  

(04-06-2016 06:40 PM)Captain Bearcat Wrote:  

(04-06-2016 03:33 PM)nzmorange Wrote:  What you say about the Ivies isn't true.

Cornell won NC's in the 30's, had #1 rankings in the 40's, and heisman finalists in the 70's.

Princeton won the 1950 NC, won the heisman in '51, and had an undefeated team in the 60's

Dartmouth knocked off a #1 Cornell in the 40's, and (from what I understand - albeit I'm not a Dartmouth fan), had the last hurrah of the Ivies in the 70's.

Yale and Harvard were also very relevant until the 70's.

Occasional top-25 rankings for the #1 team in the conference is a far cry from regularly winning national titles, which is what they were doing before 1930. It's difficult to even compare them because they rarely played any out of conference games of note. Dartmouth was ranked #14 in 1970 because they went 9-0 against the Ivies, UMass, and Holy Cross. Princeton finished 1950 ranked #6 (not a NC) by going 9-0 against the Ivies, Williams, and Rutgers.

The non-Ivy private AAUs fared even worse. They dropped from being occasional top-25 to completely irrelevant. Chicago's last winning record was in 1929, and in 1940 they shut down football until the 60s. Case, Wash U, & Carnegie de-emphasized sports about the same time, as did many smaller elite liberal arts powerhouses like Centre College (the Praying Colonels!), Detroit, and Washington & Jefferson (all of which won national titles in the 20s).

1. "Some selectors named Princeton the national champions, most notably the NCAA-recognized Poling System and Boand System." The school claims a NC and there is some legitimacy to the claim. They aren't just making it up. Anyway, whether it's #6 or #1 is irrelevant to the fact that they were nationally relevant. You're confusing selective scheduling with poor performance and/or weak talent. That's not the case. They were snobs, sure, but they were also good at football.

2. A) Cornell had the Heisman runner-up in 1972(?) and Yale, Harvard, and Princeton were all ranked in the at least the 1960's. That's A) 30+ years after you claimed they de-emphasized into irrelevance and B) clearly not a case of the league "occasionally having a top 25 ranking for the number 1 team in the conference." Heck, going back to Cornell, they played the 5th down game against Dartmouth in 1940 as the defending national champions. That's 10+ years after you claimed de-emphasis and implied that W/L records tanked.

B) Keep in mind that part A is building off of your Dartmouth statement, and doesn't otherwise mention any successes that Dartmouth, Columbia, Penn, and Brown had in the 60's (or any other time after the 1920's). Also keep in mind that the Ivy League consists of 8 schools. If 2 are good, that's roughly equal to having 4 good ACC/B1G/SEC schools.

3. The non-Ivy private AAUs may have fared even worse, but they are also 100% irrelevant to my comment. That said, it's also partially misleading. Schools like Colgate fielded competitive programs much later than the 1920's. For example, they were a top 10 team for at least one point in the 1950 season. Granted, they fell apart shortly thereafter, but that's still 20+ years after the 1920's.

At best, your comment is incredibly misleading. At worst, it's incredibly wrong.

My original statement said nothing about "national relevance." I said that they de-emphasized athletics.

The Ivies DOMINATED the sport before 1928. An Ivy won an NC in 54 of the first 58 years the sport was played up to 1928. 7 of the 8 Ivies claimed national titles from 1920-28. After that, they only won 3 more national titles, 2 of them by the same school (Princeton). Clearly, something changed.

They didn't abandon big-time football completely for another couple of decades, but they definitely de-emphasized it. They saw the changes being made to the amateur model and wanted nothing to do with the new pay-for-play models being tried in other conferences. Given their money and prestige, they could have maintained their dominance if they wanted. But instead Ivy Leaguers both in and out of the NCAA, like Dartmouth booster and former player E.K. Hall, were most prominent in calling for a "Sanity Code" as early as 1931 to curb pay-for-play.

It's no coincidence that this was the same time period (late 20s-early 30s) when Wash U was kicked out of the MVC (1928), the SEC left the more academic-focused Southern Conference schools behind (1933), and Chicago, Case, Carnegie, and most of the elite liberal arts schools (pretty much everyone but Wake Forest and Lafayette) stopped being competitive alltogether.

Look at the early schedules. They look very similar and many of the NC's were divided. Did you ever consider that most of the Ivy championships happened when they were pretty much the only teams playing? For example, Yale's entire 1872 national championship season consisted of a 3-0 win over Princeton. That one game was their entire season. Given there are 3 possibilities: a win (NC), a loss (Princeton apparently has an argument for a NC), or a draw (both Yale and Princeton apparently have arguments for co-NCs), how much do those NCs really matter?

And you do realize that Cornell built Schoellkopf Field in 1915, Columbia built a stadium (now defunct) in 1928, Princeton built a stadium (now defunct) in 1914, Yale Built the Yale Bowl in 1914, and Brown built Brown Stadium in 1925, right?

62.5% of the Ivy League built stadiums within 15 years of the time that you said that they de-emphasized. Out of the remaining 3 (Harvard, Dartmouth, and Penn), Dartmouth was the last Ivy to de-emphasize and Penn is the one that you initially singled out as still caring.

Unless you think that either A) massive facility investments aren't a signal of commitment, or B) 0-14 years is too generous of a window to still care abou tthe investment, I fail to see how they're de-emphasizing.

Now, if you want to argue that there were more teams competing as time went on, and the competition was increasingly fierce, I won't argue against you.

You're right, championships before 1890, or even 1900, probably don't count. And yes, most of them were split.

But they were often split with two Ivies claiming titles - it happened 5 times after 1900. They truly dominated the sport even in the 1900s, 1910s, and 1920s, winning titles in 24 out of the first 28 years of the 20th century. Again, 7 of the 8 Ivies won national titles from 1920-1927.

I'm glad you brought up stadium construction. It's an excellent example of decreased commitment. Before the late 1920s, they invested heavily. But how many of the Ivies built or made major stadium upgrades after 1928?

For comparison, just looking in the Big Ten & other power teams in its region:
Illinois - built a new 55,000 seat stadium in 1923, expanded to 71k in 1930.
Wisconsin - built 12k in 1917, expanded to 29k in 1921, to 39k in 1926, and 45k in 1939
Purdue - built 13.5k in 1924, increased to 23k in 1930
Iowa - tore down a 30k stadium to build a 53k stadium in 1929
Iowa State - expanded to 14k in 1925, 16k in 1930, 20k in 1932
Michigan State -built a 14,000 seat stadium in 1923, expanded to 23k in 1935
Cincinnati built a 12,000 seat stadium in 1924, then doubled to 24,000 in 1936 (they lowered the field level by 12 feet to do so)
Notre Dame tore down a 30,000 seat stadium to build a new 59,000 seater in 1930

Of the schools I looked up, the only ones that didn't expand between 1929-1940 were:
Michigan - expanded to 42k in 1921, to 46k in 1926, built an new stadium of 72k in 1927, and expanded to 85k in 1928
Northwestern - built a 25k in 1926, expanded to 45k in 1927
Ohio State - built 66k in 1922, expanded to 72 in 1944

(I couldn't find anything about Minnesota & Indiana)

(04-11-2016 11:17 AM)nzmorange Wrote:  And you do realize that Cornell built Schoellkopf Field in 1915, Columbia built a stadium (now defunct) in 1928, Princeton built a stadium (now defunct) in 1914, Yale Built the Yale Bowl in 1914, and Brown built Brown Stadium in 1925, right?

62.5% of the Ivy League built stadiums within 15 years of the time that you said that they de-emphasized. Out of the remaining 3 (Harvard, Dartmouth, and Penn), Dartmouth was the last Ivy to de-emphasize and Penn is the one that you initially singled out as still caring.

What is this arguing? "Before they de-emphasized, they cared about it"?

Because "de-emphasized" implies that before the shift, there was an emphasis.

Quote: Unless you think that either A) massive facility investments aren't a signal of commitment, or B) 0-14 years is too generous of a window to still care about the investment, I fail to see how they're de-emphasizing.

But there was a Great Depression that hit the country, and just because it was possible to raise the money to build a new stadium in 1914, 1915, 1925 or 1928 really has zero weight as far as contradicting any claim about what they did in the 1930's. Building a stadium sometime in the previous decade doesn't have much weight in the decision to de-emphasize the sport, and building a stadium over a decade before wouldn't have any weight at all. In either event, it would mostly be a sunk cost, and water under the bridge.

And it was the 1930's ... people who hadn't learned the lessons about sunk costs and not throwing good money after bad in the Roaring Twenties had plenty of opportunities to learn those lessons in the Great Depression.

Quote: Now, if you want to argue that there were more teams competing as time went on, and the competition was increasingly fierce, I won't argue against you.

No, it wasn't just other schools stepping forward with football factories and pay to play ... it was also most of the Ivy League schools de-emphasizing the pursuit of the national championship and the increasingly sordid behavior being engaged in as part of that pursuit.

(04-14-2016 02:13 AM)BruceMcF Wrote:  

(04-11-2016 11:17 AM)nzmorange Wrote:  And you do realize that Cornell built Schoellkopf Field in 1915, Columbia built a stadium (now defunct) in 1928, Princeton built a stadium (now defunct) in 1914, Yale Built the Yale Bowl in 1914, and Brown built Brown Stadium in 1925, right?

62.5% of the Ivy League built stadiums within 15 years of the time that you said that they de-emphasized. Out of the remaining 3 (Harvard, Dartmouth, and Penn), Dartmouth was the last Ivy to de-emphasize and Penn is the one that you initially singled out as still caring.

What is this arguing? "Before they de-emphasized, they cared about it"?

Because "de-emphasized" implies that before the shift, there was an emphasis.

Quote: Unless you think that either A) massive facility investments aren't a signal of commitment, or B) 0-14 years is too generous of a window to still care about the investment, I fail to see how they're de-emphasizing.

But there was a Great Depression that hit the country, and just because it was possible to raise the money to build a new stadium in 1914, 1915, 1925 or 1928 really has zero weight as far as contradicting any claim about what they did in the 1930's. Building a stadium sometime in the previous decade doesn't have much weight in the decision to de-emphasize the sport, and building a stadium over a decade before wouldn't have any weight at all. In either event, it would mostly be a sunk cost, and water under the bridge.

And it was the 1930's ... people who hadn't learned the lessons about sunk costs and not throwing good money after bad in the Roaring Twenties had plenty of opportunities to learn those lessons in the Great Depression.

Quote: Now, if you want to argue that there were more teams competing as time went on, and the competition was increasingly fierce, I won't argue against you.

No, it wasn't just other schools stepping forward with football factories and pay to play ... it was also most of the Ivy League schools de-emphasizing the pursuit of the national championship and the increasingly sordid behavior being engaged in as part of that pursuit.

1. Your point #1 and your point #3 argue against each other if you assume that the Ivies who emphasized the sport and dominated the sport played top tier teams. Given the teams that dominated from the 30's onward weren't on early schedules, you can't have it both ways.

2. Do you honestly think that they de-emphasized the sport the year after they built a brand new stadium (i.e. what you're literally saying Columbia did)? Seriously, step back and think about what you're saying.

If you want to say that they never came back with a serious commitment beyond pre-existing name equity after WWII, I'll buy that. However, claiming that the 7/8ths of League de-emphasized the sport when ~30% of the remaining 7 had built stadiums within the last 3 years is insane, especially when 60% of the remaining 5 had stadiums under 15 years old. And look at the stadiums. You don't built facilities like Scholkopf unless you really, really want to win. The thing is essentially one giant sculpture.

And FWIW, your sunk cost analysis is painfully shallow. You ignore 1) the political realities of major capital investments (for example, but not limited to this point, what do you think happened to the guys who pushed it through? Did that clearly sizable and powerful coalition suddenly disappear?) and 2) the impact that prior investments have on future RoI's. Yeah, the cost itself is sunk, but that doesn't mean the economics of the deal aren's still impacted. Once again, take a step back and think about what you're saying.