rma

Albany had an unbelievable turnaround from last year to this year and hosted a home playoff game. The stands were empty. If UB were to stupidly drop to FCS they might as well just play at Kunz because even less people will show up.

Go away troll.

All three were "up and coming" with either no head coaching experience or no D1 experience. GH3 was on a national championship team his first year as an assistant and spent 15 years on the staff of a Hall of Fame coach. His resume as a coach was no better or worse than Oats, Hurley, or even Witherspoon at the time of hire.

How does this compare to the resume of Bobby Hurley or Nate Oats before they were hired here? Completely agree.

When we retire his #46 officially, will it be painted on the track or.....

Tipoff is actually at 4:20pm

I liked the idea of the big screen with ESPN on, but the location of it made no sense.

I initially thought that article was written by AI, but all the AI detection sites said it was human written. I don't know any human that would think Cole Snyder would start at Florida State so I'm going with really good AI.

Could be the second SUNY -> SUNY QB transfer for UB if he goes to SUNY Syracuse.

Sorry to go a little bit off topic here but this was tried again at the Bonaventure game, modified to be “Go Blue” “Go White”. It went slightly better, considering one of the DJ’s was leading it, but was still pretty rough. I was very worried that it was going to turn into a SBU chant considering it’s quite a decision to try something new with opposing fans around. But alas neither team had much to cheer for during that game outside of some poster dunks and a rivalry (disputed?) win. Suggestion if anybody reading this is in charge of anything…coordinate with the cheerleaders. Announce beforehand that “We need your help, Alumni Arena! Watch the cheerleaders to cheer on your Bulls!” then don’t try to say anything and let the crowd take over See how the cheerleaders show the signs and move them to indicate when to say the words? And they don’t have anybody over the PA to cause ambiguity? Now this is making me wish I went back down to Virginia Tech this year.

Do you want Tripathi in charge of hiring a new AD, or would you take the field? Tripathi is 72, almost 73. As of 2016, only 11% of university presidents were 70+. I think the immediate future for the athletic program is not amazing (unless you are a volleyball/soccer fan) until there’s clarity about who is running the school in the future. I don’t trust Alnutt to make future hires. I don’t trust Tripathi to make a good AD hire. There’s no vision for the athletics program that the school had under Bill Greiner. White (who was a Tripathi hire) had a vision but little institutional/community support, and more bitching from the local columnists than support for a flagship athletics program vision. Remember when UB made the big dance for the first time *ever* and all that was in the news was the NYBI logo? Oats had a vision of success but did not get the support from the school (see: lack of student rec center years later). Both have moved on. Wonder what Danny White thinks of Jerry “women can’t have opinions about football” Sullivan these days. Probably doesn’t think much about him….

So he made the wrong hire, or should have told his basketball coach to recruit a point guard and a guy that can play center/forward? He fired the guy everyone wanted him to fire. UB basketball is rebuilding but it’s too early to say Alnutt made a bad hire here, which seems to be the implication. There’s enough working against MA to say he likely will not be here longer than his contract without poor basketball results. ETA: The guy a lot of people (including me) had at/near the top of their list is #280 in the NET with a better roster.

Under the new rules (assuming the tiebreakers are broken in logical ways) we would have made the MAC Championship game last year. I really don’t think there’s going to be much of a difference in competitiveness of the game. Any given Saturday (or Tuesday, Wednesday, etc)…remember 2008?

A lot of their fans don't consider UB as a rival. They consider Niagara and Canisius as rivals because they've had longer history with those schools. Unfortunately for them, they're 0-3 this year against those two schools in basketball this year, with a men's basketball game against Niagara their only chance to avoid the sweep. To be fair their women's basketball team is in a complete rebuild as well, and lost one of their important freshman commitments to UB. I appreciate their dedication to men's basketball though. Mark Schmidt is being paid somewhere around $1.8 million per year now, and their next highest paid coach (as of 2021, latest data available) is their now-fired women's basketball coach who made ~$182k. Schmidt makes 6x what their (2021 interim) university president did (UB comparison: $800k Tripathi, $675k Linguist, $425k GH3, $250k Burke). Pretty much all of their school's athletic resources go to men's basketball and yet they've had similar recent (i.e. post 1970's) success as UB in terms of making the NCAA tournament and winning conference championships. Head to head in the non-men's basketball sports that both schools compete in, you'd find the "rivalry" is pretty lopsided, especially in recent years. I applaud the Bonnies in their win. They've invested so much into that program that it's good to see their money hasn't been completely wasted.

Some Bonnies fans sat in the seats next to me where the STHs that normally sit there have had those seats for a decade. STHs got there a little late and shooed the Bonnies off to the 300's where they belong. Lack of students there sucked, especially for a student tee shirt giveaway day. Some aspects of in arena production seems to have gone downhill. Mics off, media timeouts completely mishandled. I do appreciate the ability to use a credit card at the concession stands and see replays on our video board.

Yes, injured.

This is true but missing context. Southern runs the air raid offense and only rushed for 137 yards per game last year. This year their QBs combined for 3,579 yards passing (12 games), last year it was 4,289 (13 games). Did he have a great season and one better than he had at UB, absolutely. Can you compare his passing stats 1:1 with his time at UB? Not completely.

They should know by now that we aren’t interested.

Sit 1 play 1?

Name one other FBS stadium that has worse sight lines and scoreboard than UB Stadium. UB Stadium is the worst and getting people to UB Stadium when they are used to Ralph Wilson Stadium (one of the worst in the NFL, but still much better than UB) is a hard ask. UB can get people to big games, Army 2018 is the example, but in order to get more people inside consistently you need to be better than “the worst”. Your ability to put up with the worst stadium in FBS, from the sidelines presumably, is different than most other people that are watching the game from a mile away in the stands. Most other people are going to be more casual fans and if the experience sucks they aren’t going to come back. There’s a lot of people that are complaining (and not going) to home Sabres games because of arena issues there. No hot water in the upper level being an issue. People outside of these boards aren’t complaining because if the stadium sucks you just…don’t go and continue your September through November only following the Bills. Go on two bills drive and ask those people what they think of UB Stadium. The soccer lines on the field of Gillette are scrubbed from the field of play for football games so I don’t know why that would be relevant. When the Oakland Raiders played during baseball season I remember it was a huge hit with fans to see the dirt infield during football games. I’ve been to all four of the stadiums you listed and all of them the sight lines are better, and they have added seating closer to the field of play after removing the track. The track is awful to have but the sight lines need to be improved as well. I’m going to UB games regardless but a lot of people will not. BSF is 100% correct and if the admin just thinks that people will continue to show up without any major fan renovations in decades then there’s a real issue.

Next Bull In

I replied to you on Twitter but here's a more comprehensive view of my take of his performance: Accomplishments: Kept Felisha Legette-Jack in Buffalo for 3 more years. It was reported by credible sources, but never 100% confirmed, that in 2019 Penn State offered Jack. Alnutt got the support to get her one, two, three contract extensions and one final offer after the 2022 season that she was never going to accept. There's no doubt in my mind that if the Syracuse job did not open up, she would still be here. Oversaw upgrades to S-A facilities. He did not get a lot of the work done on fundraising it, but the field house was started and completed under his watch. The football team is upgrading their training facilities from a garage, and the Nan Harvey Natatorium can finally be renamed back to Nan Harvey Field and is capable of holding softball competitions instead of deep sea fishing competitions. The UB football locker room is at the P5 level now after not being renovated in a long time. Made a good Olympic hire, and made a commitment to another good Olympic hire. Scott Smith (Alnutt hire) has done an an amazing job with UB volleyball, a team that was a perennial doormat. This year UB volleyball (co-)won the MAC East for the first time ever and was the #2 seed in the MAC volleyball tournament. UB beat Big East DePaul and SEC Mizzou in straight sets, both of which finished their season .500 or better in conference. Alnutt also got longtime UB soccer coach Shawn Burke on a multi-year contract shortly before UB got their first ever team win over an Ohio State program. I'm personally not a fan of multi-year contracts for coaches (specifically football and basketball) but if there's no chance of him getting fired in that timeframe (there is not) he earned it. Got the UB Athletics Hall of Fame Back into annual inductions. I'm not exactly sure what happened here, but late in the Danny White years the annual inductions into the UB Hall of Fame ended. I don't know if Alnutt specifically started it back up, but under his watch it is back, which is good to see. Tiny, minor, upgrades to the fan experience. Things like beer sales, a food truck in UB stadium, and better football concession stand food this year are a good start. Concession stands are also cashless (in contract to other Big 4 programs) which makes things go faster. The Coca Cola fan zone this year was nice for the few people that were there, and I liked that it had a big screen showing other college football games. There's a lot of UB fans that are UB (the school) fans and don't follow other college football. I'd like to see some more college football fans at UB games that are rooting for UB. Hard to do in the northeast outside of Pennsylvania though. Not really much of an accomplishment, but one thing that I did like about him is he seemed to be one of the most visible ADs in recent times. He is at a lot of UB athletic events. One year he was out selling 50/50 tickets before a football game because it was during a break and there was no team to sell them. During the MAC tournament in 2018-19 he was out with a very non-donor UB crowd. The anti-Danny White. Shortcomings: I could beat to death the Whitesell hire but you all can do that better than me. But my problem with the coaching search was that in both instances the coaching search was being done through agents and on Twitter. Whichever search firm we used sucks. Candidates that didn't get offers said in public that they were declining it. When Leipold left we had this. Regardless of if the searches were a mess or not it looked messy to outsiders. During the Danny White years, all of the searches and hiring processes would have been quiet if not for an enthusiastic niece. Bobby Hurley was leaked as the hire an hour before he was introduced as the new head coach. I really can't complain about the Linguist hire because I was a huge fan of it when it happened. But the nonstop rotation of coordinators is concerning. Lack of upgrades to the fan experience. I listed above the small upgrades. These move the needle a tiny bit, but there's still large capital improvements that need to happen. Alumni Arena needs air conditioning. Our scoreboard is an abomination, which over two years ago was "first and foremost." What happened since then? We still have a track stadium that has a football field, and next year UB is set to be the only FBS football team that plays in a track stadium. Even worse than football in a track stadium (on a field with soccer markings) is soccer on a football field (with football markings) in a track stadium. Shawn Burke deserves a ton of credit for getting some of the top soccer talent in WNY despite the stadium situation. Which brings me to... No facilities master plan. In the Athletic article I linked Alnutt said “We have a master plan that’s been put together and we’re going to go public with in the near future” and so far the "near future" is more than 26 months. The most recent master plan is almost 10 years old and includes facilities for varsity programs that do not exist anymore. Since that Athletic article was posted the Bills secured a new stadium location and got $850 million of taxpayer money. And New York taxpayers paid for about half ($20 million) of the Syracuse Dome renovations. It seems like everything is the Wal-Mart/downgraded version of what it was during Danny White. Nothing in particular that's huge, but a lot of small stuff. The UB Hall of Fame, though it has been revived, went without inductees for a few years under Alnutt. Gameday: Things like not being allowed to bring outside food into Alumni Arena, that seemed to never be a rule or enforced previously. I complained previously on here about being told that I had to sit in my men's basketball seats for a women's side of a doubleheader. Advertisements. Awesome, we're running TV ads during football games to get people to UB Stadium! Not so fast my friend, the ad that is being run as recently as Thanksgiving day was for the CMU game almost 2 months ago. The football season is over. I thought this was just a network screwing up but I've seen the ad on multiple networks multiple times. As I am typing this now, watching the Ohio State-Michigan game, the same ad aired AGAIN (now twice in the same commercial break)! What the hell. This year during the first couple football games we tried something new and innovative by having a shout from both sides of the stadium (think WE ARE! PENN STATE! or LET'S GO! MOUNTAINEERS!) but it's clear that both whoever planned that and the PA announcer had never experienced something like that. The PA announcer said all three sides of it multiple times-so nobody knew if you were supposed to say what he was saying or say it afterwards. And "Go Blue, Go White, Go Bulls!" is much harder to execute than "Let's Go! Buffalo!" It's small, but another example is the cheap crap they gave away to STH last year as a concession for having only 5 games. One of them was a license plate cover. A year later it's pretty faded. I'm sure there's a ton more. The merchandise situation has not improved. I really want a UB football jersey that is more recent than the one I have signed by TG. I refuse to buy the cheap AliExpress crap that is being sold because I can get one from AliExpress for half the price. If you don't want to deal with NIL find out some way to sell Mack jerseys. Or for basketball I think a lot of people would buy a good quality 5, 33 or (WBB) 24 jersey. The retro bull shirt was great but the roll out took too long to get it online. I shouldn't have to be buying shirts and shipping them to UBFan members, though I gladly did. I think there was a lack of due diligence done on the Becky Burke hire. I'm speculating a bit here but it's an absolutely terrible look when your new coach only has one returner from the previous coach, seemingly on purpose (another cryptic tweet from a WBB mom the day her daughter went into the portal). Then one player quits during the season citing mental health in a now-deleted instagram post. And all of your coaches leave, one not loving basketball and wasn't happy. And most of your roster leaves after that first season (toxic environment?). This seems to be similar to what happened at USC Upstate too. Not a lot of that roster stuck around. It also says quite a bit that only one (1) player followed Burke here. The new Bills stadium is going to price out a ton of western NYers from live football. I've always touted UB as the family and budget friendly alternative to the Bills and Sabres. UB will never replace the Bills, but you will have Bills season ticket holders that will move to attending a few games a year. Bills fans that might attend 3 or 4 games a year might drop to 1 or 2. Ticket prices are already up. There has to be a way to get people that are now watching the Bills from their couches on Sunday into UB Stadium on Saturday to watch live football. But you can't do that with a track stadium and a scoreboard that is worse than the one in RWS over 20 years ago. Time is of the essence and I really don't have a ton of confidence in Alnutt to not fumble the opportunity out of the endzone for a touchback. It really sucks listing all this stuff out, but right now there's people that care. And that's much better than not having people that care.

If the Buffalo Bills moved to San Antonio, would the population in Buffalo decline? The answer is no to both questions, but people like football so that's why us taxpayers are paying $850 million (UB's annual operating budget) to a billionaire to build a new Bills stadium. And the same reason why UB students pay $265 a semester to subsidize athletics.

Taking a look at Big 4 Women's basketball sweeps 2023-24: Buffalo 2022-23: No Sweep 2021-22: N/A (Buffalo won vs Niagara/Canisius, DNP Bona. Bona beat Canisius in their only Big 4 game) 2020-21: N/A (Buffalo won vs Bona/Canisius, DNP Niagara. Niagara did not play any Big 4 games) 2019-20: Buffalo 2018-19: Buffalo 2017-18: No Sweep 2016-17: Buffalo 2015-16: Bona 2014-15: Buffalo 2013-14: Bona 2012-13: Bona 2011-12: Bona 2010-11: Bona 2009-10: Bona 2008-09: Bona