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Mac Commissioner Rick Chryst talks the Daily Chronicle about the Mac.
http://www.daily-chronicle.com/articles ... orts04.txt

A good question could have been the following.


When will the MAC get a clue and let their AD's schedule their own out of conference football games?

Jeeeesh..................he didn't even mention what a "tool" we have for a comish!!

I can say without feeling bad at all that I hope he dies in his sleep tonight. Or at least chokes on whatever pole he's smokin tonight.




The comment about the week night games and there not being any difference between them and the weekend almost made blood shoot out my ears.

Idiotic Chryst quote of the month:

"An at-large selection into the NCAA's is such a defining characteristic of this conference."

I'm laughing so hard my eyes are watering. I can't tell if I'm crying or not.

The Niz wrote:The comment about the week night games and there not being any difference between them and the weekend almost made blood shoot out my ears.

Yeah, he really showed his ass on that one. He spends the whole interview saying the diplomatically correct (and boring) things, then drops that when a "we understand the inconvenience weeknight games can cause, but there's a great opportunity for exposure for our conference that we might not have access to otherwise. we've at least made an effort to minimize the effects of the occasional mid-week game by clustering them together." would have sufficed.

It really ruined his point in the next paragraph about how if we don't try to capitalize on Wednesday games now, we may be looking through the window when the ACC or Big East starts playing that night, too.

Of course, I'd also wish if we were going to sell our soul for exposure, it would reach more than 10,000 households...

No one asked the obvious question...."Are you and/or the person who handles football scheduling retarded?"

I used to respect Chryst but anymore, he doesn't seem to have a clue.

Does anyone remember when Chryst was hired?

Just curious to compare how things are to how things were when he got here. The things I do know:

2003 was a football high water mark. The quality of play in the conference has gone WAY down in the last 4 years.

During the 90s MAC basketball was a very good mid-major. We occasionally got multiple bids, NCAA tourney victories were not uncommon, and there were a lot of players put into the NBA. Now we're a one bid conference that hasn't had a win in the tourney in a couple years. Overall play is lousy throughout the conference, and I cannot remember a drafted player since Kaman?

We used to only have one bowl tie-in, now we have 3.

The bottom of our football teams consistently rank among the worst teams in the country, this has probably been the case for awhile though.

Since the NCAA started stricter attendance tracking we have had multiple teams struggling to meet the 15k barrier. As a whole the conference is pretty much the worst attendance conference in D1A.


Now, I'm not sure exactly when Chryst got the job, so I don't know how steep the dropoff in conference quality has been during his tenure, but I really don't see what the hell Chryst has done good for our conference. Yeah, we have more bowl bids, but that's mainly due to the fact that there are far more bowls than their used to be.

He seems to harp about how great these weeknight games are for exposure all the time, but he's full of s**t. If they were getting us that much exposure we shouldn't be struggling so much to maintain attendance should we? If they were getting us that much exposure to recruits and future players, wouldn't it stand to reason that our overall on the field/court products wouldn't be suffering so mightily?

Seriously, I don't know when he got the job, but for the last 5 years the quality of the MAC has gone into the relative shitter. Both of our cash sports have dropped off so severely from what they were when I was in school, it's not even funny.

I looked it up...Chryst got the job in May of 1999. The primary "achievements" listed include wider TV exposure (Fox Sports, ESPNU, ESPN+ and other new cable outlets greatly increased the capacity which created a higher demand for programming) and more bowl bids (there are more bowls).

I'm not "defending" Chryst on some of his comments, but he DOES have a point re: some of the weeknite games... I saw VA. TECH at least twice during the week last year... (One for SURE against BC)...so he might have a point that, unless the MAC is willing to do these games, some of the other MAJOR conferences might take some dates...

Weakest part of this argument is that not all MAC games have been on either ESPN or ESPN 2... While I have some of the other ESPN channels, I had to pay extra for them...started with the CMU game of a couple of years ago that I wanted to see but couldn't , so called in and got them to hook me up.

And Hambb, While I'd agree that the league isn't as strong as it was in 2003 in terms of the TOP teams who knocked nearly everyone off that ONE weekend (except for that da... Columbus Tech), I think you could make a point that most of the traditional "bottom feeders" have improved. Since most of us recruit the same kids...this could explain why some of the traditional powers have slipped a bit... Kids can play at KSU or Buffalo earlier in their careers instead of being redshirted at BG, Miami, UT, et al.

Chryst is the Dakich of commissioners. Great at the begining, but then things unravel

San Diego Falcon wrote:Chryst is the Dakich of commissioners. Great at the begining, but then things unravel

Wow, good one.

what a moron. the entire dialog about NIU playing 3-4 wednesday games proved his idiocy more than anything else. of course it makes a big difference and affects schedules. has he forgotten that these are college students, who take college classes during the week? the whole five day turn around bit? who cares, that's not the main point! i agree with everyone who has said that this conference has taken several steps back in recent years. i don't believe we can blame it all on Chryst, because a lot of it's probably cyclical, but he certainly hasn't helped matters either.

It isn't first come first served. If the ACC/Big East were willing to play on weekdays, we'd be off as soon as our contract was up.