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Where does your school rank among richest and poorest Power 5 college football programs? New revenue figures for all 65

New Post has been published on https://tattlepress.com/ncaa-football/where-does-your-school-rank-among-richest-and-poorest-power-5-college-football-programs-new-revenue-figures-for-all-65/

Where does your school rank among richest and poorest Power 5 college football programs? New revenue figures for all 65

On Wednesday, we posted the Big Ten football revenue figures. Today, we present all 65 of the Power 5 schools, ranked from the most modest to most extravagant, for the 2019-20 fiscal year (generally 07/01/19 to 06/30/20).

These are annual university athletic department figures mandated by the U.S. Department of Education and its Equity in Athletics Data Analysis (EADA) arm. The headings represent the revenue derived from each university’s football operation before expenses, as listed by athletic directors of each school in their annual reports. These figures do not include the massive annual payouts from conferences’ broadcast contracts. (They ranged widely between $28 million outlays for lower-tier ACC schools to $56 million per Big Ten institution.)

In each brief capsule, I’ve detailed expenses and net profit for football, plus some occasional various factoids, sometimes on other sports.

To emphasize: these are revenue figures relating to the 2019 football season and the 2019-20 basketball season, not last season. So, they do not reflect the broad fiscal distress of the COVID-wracked and, in some cases, stunted 2020 football season, but do include decrease in funds from the lack of a 2020 NCAA men’s basketball tournament.

Because some irregularities in the reporting by various athletic directors is inevitable, the reports may include caveats and discrepancies between one school and another. We can’t control that. All we can do is pass on the parallel figures as they are posted in the EADA report.

Here, then are all 65, bottom to top, with number of ranking spots risen (+), fallen (-) or maintained the same (=) from the 2018-19 fiscal year, in parentheses.

#65 West Virginia $19 million (=)

Neal Brown’s rookie season as head coach was the first losing one in six years for the Mountaineers (5-7); they went winless in the Big 12 at home. Exactly what WVU does with its bookkeeping is a riddle, but it seems an anomaly considering home crowds at Mountaineer Field that hover between 50-60K. Both the football and men’s basketball programs recorded a deficit in the EADA report ($3.2M and $2.1M, respectively).

#64 Wake Forest $24.7 million (-1)

No mystery here as announced crowds at Truist Field, even for a competitive 8-5 team, commonly ranged around 25-30K; that’s barely Conference USA level. Wake was also one of only three Power 5 schools to fabricate a balanced ledger – identical figures of $24,698,755 for revenue and expenses – indicating a true deficit compensated with general funds.

#63 Georgia Tech $28.2 million (-15)

A similar sad story here as native Georgian Geoff Collins came from Temple to relieve longtime triple-option proponent Paul Johnson and the Jackets sank into a 3-9 morass. Football eeked out a $1M profit and tumbled farther in one year than any program in the rankings. Men’s hoops ran a deficit of slightly over $1M.

#62 Boston College $31.8 million (-1)

Seeing an ACC pattern here? This was the dreary 6-7 season that got Steve Addazio fired after seven years in Chestnut Hill. After an encouraging start, the tone was set in week 3 with a stunning rout home loss to 20-point underdog Kansas. BC football managed a $5.1M profit. Men’s hoops barely broke even (+$128K).

#61 Rutgers $32.9 million (+3)

Like Wake Forest, RU cooked its books to represent a balanced budget when it’s clear the football program is running at a deficit. Football revenue and expenses are listed as identical totals – $32,874,357; men’s basketball, the same – $8,249,544.

#60 Vanderbilt $33.4 million (+2)

The only private school in the SEC routinely brings up the rear in the nation’s most competitive football conference. The Commodores went 3-9 in since-fired Derek Mason’s sixth year and managed a $4.2M profit. Men’s basketball apparently ran a deficit, reporting identical expense and revenue figures of $14,072,415.

#59 Missouri $34.7 million (-4)

This was the final year of Barry Odom’s 4-year tenure, as an encouraging start dissolved in mid-season. It’s never been easy at Mizzou even though Gary Pinkel worked minor miracles for a while. Tiger football cleared a $6.1M profit while men’s basketball made $1.7M.

#58 Oregon State $35.6 million (=)

It’s become more apparent in the past seven years just what a perfect fit Mike Riley was here. Since he left for his incongruous mission to Nebraska, the Beavers have returned to their familiar spot in the Pac-12 basement. Actually, Jonathan Smith did an admirable job with 5-7 (4-5 P12) in 2019 and OSU managed a decent $13.7M clearance. Wayne Tinkle’s hoops program barely broke even ($212K profit).

#57 California $36.1 million (+3)

Justin Wilcox’s defensive-minded Bears weren’t always enthralling to watch, but they tenaciously hung in games and finished 8-5 (4-5 P12) including four road wins at Washington, Mississippi, Stanford and UCLA. Cal football cleared $4.9M; men’s basketball made $2M.

#56 UCLA $37.5 million (-6)

The Chip Kelly hire began looking like a serious misstep as the Bruins stumbled to 4-8, though they did play perhaps the toughest non-con schedule in the nation. UCLA football managed a $5.2M profit while the once-proud Bruin hoops program foundered with a $474K deficit.

#55 Pittsburgh $37.9 million (-2)

Heinz Field is exponentially nicer than old gray Pitt Stadium, but it’s not easy luring a university community down the hill from Oakland to watch a just-OK team play opponents from Tobacco Road. Pat Narducci has done all he can. Panther football lured consistent announced crowds of 40-45K and cleared $5.4M. Meanwhile, the struggling basketball program, blessed with a gorgeous campus venue and much more attractive conference opponents, managed just an $800K clearance.

#54 Arizona $39 million (-7)

This is a lost program trying to survive at a basketball school and was enduring the throes of Kevin Sumlin’s imminent demise. At least Wildcat football spent less than almost any Power 5 program ($21.7M) and so cleared a $17.3M profit. Men’s basketball made $6.5M.

#53 Duke $39.7 million (-2)

Rivaling Kentucky, Indiana and Kansas, this is the arguably most severe example of basketball overshadowing football. And so, it provides a window into just how much more important football is fiscally to college athletics. David Cutcliffe’s Devils went 5-7 (3-6 ACC) and yet the football program still cleared more profit ($14.5M) than Mike Krzyzewski’s basketball behemoth ($13.4M) which grossed among the most of all college hoops programs in the nation ($33.4M!)

#52 Mississippi State $40 million (+5)

This was the second and final abortive season for Joe Moorhead in ill-fitting Starkville. With crowds at Davis Wade Stadium consistently in the mid-50K range, interest was there, but the wins weren’t. Football cleared $9.5M while men’s basketball ran a deficit indicated by identical cooked expense/revenue figures of $7,373,585.

#51 Kansas $40.6 million (+5)

The ill-fated Les Miles experiment never got airborne with a 3-9 (1-8 B12) inaugural record, succeeding only in helping to get Steve Addazio fired at BC with a surprising early road upset. Jayhawk football managed to clear $18.6M while Bill Self’s much more celebrated hoop program profited only $5.5M.

#50 Stanford $40.9 million (-6)

The Cardinal’s first losing season in the decade-plus David Shaw era (4-8, 3-6 P12) and since the early Jim Harbaugh tenure (2007-08) dropped Stanford six spots. Football cleared $13.2M while men’s basketball made $1.3M.

#49 Syracuse $42.6 million (-4)

The beginning of the descent of the the once-promising Dino Babers regime at The Cuse FB began here with a 62-20 rout loss at Maryland and has not lost downward velocity. The Orange football program did manage $14.9M in profit while Jim Boeheim’s basketball operation made $8.7M.

#48 Virginia $43.4 million (+11)

One of the big success stories in major college football has been Bronco Mendenhall’s rehab job at UVA. The Cavs won the ACC Coastal, gave heavily favored Florida (-14) a fight in the Orange Bowl (36-28 loss) and finished 9-5. In so doing, Virginia football jumped 11 spots and made a $15.8M profit. Meanwhile, Tony Bennett’s defending national champion basketball program cleared just $2.4M.

#47 Washington State $44 million (-4)

This is a notorious black hole that was kept relevant for a decade only by Mike Leach’s black magic. In his final season before fleeing for Starkville, Leach’s Cougars fell to 6-7 (3-6 P12) and WSU fans began to drift away from tiny Martin Stadium. Football still cleared an admirable $21M above a prudent $23M expenditure. Wazzu hoops ran at a $118K deficit.

#46 Kentucky $44.5 million (+3)

After the landmark 2018 for Wildcat football as Mark Stoops got UK into double-digit wins with the upset of Penn State, 2019 wasn’t quite so successful (8-5, 3-5 SEC) but football interest continued to expand with a decent $13.9M profit – more than John Calipari’s hoop program ($11M). Women’s basketball ran a whopping $5.2M deficit.

#45 Maryland $44.7 million (-6)

Terrapin football listed just $21.4M in expenses, lowest total in the Big Ten and one of lowest in P5, to total a $23.3M profit. It’s always been a basketball school and Mark Turgeon’s men’s hoops program took in $14.1M in gross to clear $5.5M.

#44 Kansas State $45 million (-4)

It’s been an arduous effort for K-State in attempting to extricate itself from the Bill Snyder era, but North Dakota State emigree Chris Klieman made an admirable effort in his 8-5 (5-4 B12) rookie season that included a jaw-dropping upset of 23-point favorite Oklahoma. KSU football cleared $19.2M while men’s hoops made $2M.

#43 North Carolina State $47.6 million (-2)

A very down year (4-8, 1-7 ACC) for Dave Doeren’s generally overachieving program still made $24.3M in profit. Men’s basketball cleared $5.6M.

#42 Texas Tech $47.7 million (-7)

The first year under Matt Wells after Kliff Kingsbury took off for the NFL Cardinals was the worst in Lubbock in nearly three decades (4-8, 2-7 B12). Gross revenue dipped $3.5M and TTU plunged seven spots. Because of an extremely frugal overhead of just $21.6M, the program still cleared $26.1M. Men’s hoops about broke even (+$545K).

#41 North Carolina $48.7 million (+11)

With the possible exceptions of Dick Crum and Bill Dooley, Mack Brown is the most popular football coach UNC has ever had. And his return from retirement to Chapel Hill at age 68 was a big deal. Kenan Stadium sold out all six home dates and the Heels responded with a bowl season for the first time four years. UNC football cleared $18.2M which topped the much more popular basketball program ($17.1M) exp: $30.5M.

#40 Louisville $48.9 million (-2)

After the general embarrassment of Bobby Petrino’s second stint here that ended in his team quitting on him (and vice versa) at the close of 2018, interest was at a nadir. But Scott Satterfield, imported from a distinguished run at Appalachian State, was the right antidote. His first season went 8-5 (5-4 ACC) and his team fought. Louisville football cleared $24.2M. Meanwhile, Chris Mack’s basketball program gathered a phenomenal $40.7M gross (tops nationally) and profited $20.8M.

#39 Arizona State $49.7 million (+15)

The surprising turnaround of Sun Devil football gained full steam in Herm Edwards’ second year with an 8-5 season that contained three wins over top-20 opponents (@Michigan State, @Cal, Oregon). ASU football leapfrogged 15 spots and added $10.7M in revenue from 2018-19 and cleared $17.7M, regaining all the ground lost at the end of the Todd Graham regime. Bobby Hurley’s hoops program made $1.5M.

#38 Virginia Tech $50.3 million (-8)

Justin Fuente’s program began to take on water and notably lost to UVA for the first time in eons. Football managed $14.7M in profit. Basketball made $1.5M.

#37 Colorado $50.5 million (+9)

Mel Tucker’s only season before he took off for Michigan State was uneventful after a 3-1 start with wins over Colorado State, Nebraska and @Arizona State that got the locals enthusiastic enough to start showing up. Then it petered into 5-7 (3-6 P12) and Tucker was out the backdoor. Football jumped nine spots by clearing $27.8M. Hoops made $2.7M.

#36 Purdue $51.9 million (-5)

When paired with expenses of just $23.8M, football cleared $28.1M in profit. Men’s basketball cleared $6.9M on $15.2 gross. Oddly, Purdue women’s basketball listed a whopping gross of $6.5M and a $2.1M profit. Matt Painter’s men’s program cleared a substantial $8.7M.

#35 Iowa State $52.1 million (-1)

Matt Campbell has done wonders in Ames, turning a perennial loser into a ranked force in the Big 12. The Cyclone football program made a $22.7M profit while hoops cleared $4.1M.

#34 Mississippi $53 million (+3)

This was the final year of the Matt Luke Experience. He was hired over as a former interim for Hugh Freeze who was deposed after his calls to an escort service. Now it’s Lane Kiffin in charge. If you see a pattern here, well… Ole Miss football only cleared $12.6M due to a hefty $40.4M overhead (no hooker jokes, please). Men’s hoops made $396K on a tiny gross of $10.2M.

#33 Southern California $53.4 million (+3)

USC once was a perennial top-20 moneymaker but has spiraled during the Clay Helton era. After an 8-5 (7-2 P12) fifth season, he barely kept his job thanks to a strong finish and USC’s ongoing fiscal pain, some of it related to NCAA probation, some to the hefty buyout with which dismissed AD Lynn Swann extended him. Trojan football cleared $17M. Andy Enfield’s hoops program listed a $500K deficit. Women’s hoops nearly broke even.

#32 Oklahoma State $53.5 million (+1)

Boone Pickens Stadium continued to fill or come close to it routinely as Mike Gundy’s Pokes played an entertaining if not always victorious (8-5, 5-4 B12) brand of football. OSU football cleared $29.1M. Hoops made $4.1M.

#31 Indiana $56.5 million (+1)

This was the year Tom Allen’s Hoosiers began to make a move with an 8-5 (5-4 B1G) season and respectable bowl showing against Tennessee (23-22 loss). Indiana football made a $27.1M profit. Basketball is still king here, though. Even during another non-NCAA season for since-fired Archie Miller, IU hoops cleared $12.3M, among the tops nationally for men’s basketball.

#30 Baylor $56.6 million (+12)

This is the season that got Matt Rhule an NFL job. His Bears were a phenomenon, rising from 1-11 to 11-3 and a decent Sugar Bowl showing against Georgia (26-14 loss) in three years. McLane overflowed to 100.8% of capacity as Baylor roared to 9-0 and eventually #8, losing two heartbreakers to Oklahoma. BU football cleared $21.2M. Interestingly, Scott Drew’s Baylor basketball program, a year prior to its national championship season, actually lost money. A deficit was indicated by identical revenue/expense figures – both $9,790,607.

#29 Miami (FL) $59.5 million (=)

Manny Diaz wanted the job at Miami so badly that he reneged on Temple after already accepting the position there. He just didn’t know the Canes would come after him four weeks prior. The jury remains out on him. This first season was The U’s first losing one in a dozen years since the Randy Shannon regime. Miami rolled up a whopping $48.9M in expenses, so it only cleared $10.6M. Jim Larranaga’s basketball shop indicated a deficit with both expenses and revenues an identical $9,209,237.

#28 Northwestern $59.5 million (-4)

This was the last-place sandwich for Pat Fitzgerald (3-9, 1-8 B1G) between two B1G West titles. NU football listed a $26.4M profit off $33.1M in expenses. Basketball grossed a paltry $9.1M with $9.7M in expenses, leaving a deficit (about $600K).

#27 Texas Christian $61.2 million (-5)

The two-decade Gary Patterson regime finally began to show some wear with only the third losing regular season in his tenure (5-7, 3-6 B12) on the heels of 7-6 and 6-7 in the prior three years. Horned Frog football cleared $20.1M in profit. Jamie Dixon’s men’s hoop program posted $890K in the red. Raegan Pebley women’s program listed a hefty $5.7M gross with only a $1.3M deficit.

#26 Minnesota $61.8 million (=)

This was the dream season for Gopher football with the 9-0 start and the 11-2 (7-2 B1G) finish including the exciting upset of Auburn in the Outback Bowl. P.J. Fleck’s program made $27.6M profit during the breakthrough season, weighed down by expenses of $34.2M. The clearance was down a smidge from 2018. Basketball made $6.4M on $14.8M gross.

#25 Utah $62.6 million (=)

If Kyle Whittingham isn’t the most underrated and underappreciated coach in college football, he’s on the short list. The Utes reached the Pac-12 title game (losing to Oregon) and finished 11-3 (8-2 P12) after an Alamo Bowl loss to Texas. UU football cleared $30.8M while men’s hoops made $500K.

#24 Clemson $63.1 million (+3)

You might think after all the recent national success, Clemson football would pull down more profit than it does. But it’s still a small-market program with a relatively average alumni base and no significant national cachet of adoration (such as, say Duke basketball or Notre Dame football), so the economic ceiling has about been reached. Dabo Swinney’s team again reached the national title game before losing to Louisiana State. But the profit after a whopping $55.9K expense outlay (no doubt, exacerbated by travel) was a mere $7.2M. Men’s hoop profit was $1.4K.

#23 Illinois $65.6 million (+5)

Though Lovie Smith managed a shocking upset of Wisconsin with his Illini as a 30-point dog, 2019 only prolonged the inevitable – his firing at the end of last season. The Illini cleared $38.9M on $26.7M expense. Basketball made just under $10M in the black on $21.5M in revenue.

#22 Michigan State $68.9 million (-4)

This was Mark Dantonio’s swan song, a dreary 7-6 (4-5 B1G) season. A hefty football expense tab of $44.0M (4th-highest in the B1G) drained what ended up as a modest profit of $25.9M (12th). Tom Izzo’s basketball program cleared $8M on a $20.2M gross.

#21 South Carolina $69.2 million (+2)

This season was before Will Muschamp was finally taken out back like Old Yeller, but it probably made the trip inevitable – a 4-8 (3-5 SEC) mess that included home losses to North Carolina, Appalachian State and Clemson (38-3). But big 80,250-seat Williams-Brice Stadium still filled to 97% of capacity and Gamecock football still cleared a substantial $35M. The men’s basketball program made $2M. Dawn Staley’s well-followed women’s program collected a very respectable $3.1M gross but also bled $6.9M in expense for a $3.8M deficit.

#20 Arkansas $70.3 million (-3)

Chad Morris was fired after just two seasons in relief of Bret Bielema because of this 2-10 (0-8 SEC debacle. Razorback football burned through a hefty $43.6M but still somehow made $26.7M profit. Men’s hoop clearance was a healthy $8.8M.

#19 Florida State $71.1 million (+2)

Not to sully Mike Norvell who bears no responsibility, having not arrived yet from Memphis. But through the college athletic fiscal data I’ve seen since beginning this report four years ago and including 2019-20, this has to be the least efficient college football program of them all. Among other condemnations of the Willie Taggart era, his program posted a mind-bending expense ledger of $67.8M, tops nationally and 16% higher than runner-up Alabama – which sort of earned the right. His FSU program did not, going 6-7 on the heels of 5-7, culminating in his dismissal. That expense total left a profit of just $3.3M which is insane for a top-20 grossing program. Seminole hoops almost cleared as much – $2.6M.

#18 Oregon $77.6 million (+2)

Speak of the devil, this is the place from whence Taggart arrived, after just a single 7-6 season. Mario Cristobal has been a clear upgrade and 2019 was the Ducks’ best year (12-2, 9-1 P12) since the post-2014 national title game appearance. Autzen Stadium filled to the brim and Oregon football bagged $44.9M in profit. Dana Altman’s hoop shop cleared a much more modest $286K.

#17 Texas A&M $78.1 million (+2)

We keep bumping into Taggart connections. This is the program his FSU predecessor Jimbo Fisher left for. He won a little more (8-5, 4-4 SEC) and spent a little less ($40.6M), leaving $37.5 in profit for A&M. Men’s basketball clearance was $1.3M.

#16 Iowa $81.4 million (=)

Kirk Ferentz’s program went 11-3 and came within three narrow losses of the College Football Playoff. Iowa football made a $39.7M profit on $41.7M in expenses. Fran McCaffery’s basketball program cleared $2.6M on $11.2M gross.

#15 Wisconsin $87.4 million (-2)

Paul Chryst’s program went 10-4 (7-3 B1G), reached Indy and enjoyed the second-largest percentage profit margin in the Big Ten – a $58.1M profit nearly doubling the $29.3M expenses. Bucky hoops had a big year with a $19.5M gross and $10.9M profit, also 2nd-highest in the B1G.

#14 Tennessee $91.6 million (-2)

If they played a Dysfunction Bowl, this program would have a prearranged spot lately. But no matter what the suits who run it do, it keeps spitting out money. And, though his teams weren’t very good, since-removed Jeremy Pruitt wasn’t a particular spendthrift. Vol football expenditures reached $38.1M which left a tidy $53.5M profit. Men’s hoops made $6.4M. Women’s hoops grossed $3.2M and ran a mere $2M deficit.

#13 Washington $91.7 million (+2)

This was the final season for the highly respected Chris Petersen who decided he’d had enough of the rat race and abruptly retired at age 55 with two Bear Bryant and one Bobby Dodd award. The Huskies weren’t very good (8-5, 4-5 P12) but the fans always turn out in Husky Stadium and UW football made a whopping $53.3M profit. Basketball cleared $1.9M.

#12 Florida $94.9 million (+2)

Dan Mullen has proven to be a quiet overachiever everywhere he’s been. Back at UF, where he worked as Urban Meyer’s OC, he assembled an 11-2 (6-2 SEC) team his second season that won the Orange Bowl and finished #6. Gator fans filled the Swamp at a 96% rate and the program cleared $57.3M. Men’s hoop profit was $1.6M.

#11 Louisiana State $95.1 million (=)

This was the stunning national championship season led by Ohio expatriate Joe Burrow. The Tigers had recruited at an elite level for years but had not reached the pinnacle since Nick Saban’s 2003 team. This one went a perfect 15-0 (9-0 SEC). LSU football cleared $53.7M. Meanwhile, the men’s basketball program of disgraced but not dismissed Will Wade ran a $497K deficit.

#10 Nebraska $95.8 million (=)

The slog of Scott Frost’s non-revival continued, but the faithful fans just kept showing up through a 5-7 (3-6 B1G) traipse. Nebraska football’s $64.2M profit on $31.6M expense ranked behind only Michigan. Fred Hoiberg’s first UNL basketball operation generated a $2.6M profit above hefty expenses of $10.9M.

#9 Auburn $97.7 million (-2)

Gus Malzahn seemed to walk a career tightrope here for 9 years, this being his next-to-last with a 9-4 (5-3 SEC) team that beat Alabama but lost to Minnesota. AU football cleared $51.7M while Charles Barkley’s old hoop program managed to profit $500K.

#8 Notre Dame $97.9 million (-4)

An ugly and inexplicable 31-point loss in the rain at Michigan pocked an otherwise very good 11-2 season. Other than USC, the home schedule wasn’t up to par and Irish football revenue dipped $17.6M from 2018-19. But when you’re hovering in 9-figure-gross territory, it’s not exactly a cataclysm. Men’s basketball, now part of the far-flung ACC, listed a deficit of $4.7M (travel?) and women’s basketball was worse ($5.0M).

#7 Penn State $101.7 million (-1)

James Franklin’s football program made a $51.1M profit on $50.6M expense during the 11-2 (7-2 B1G) Cotton Bowl season. Gross hoops take was a modest $3M profit on $10.5M gross over $7.5M expense. Notably, the women’s basketball program significantly lowered overhead, paring its expense ledger to $4.6M in the first year under Carolyn Kieger after a whopping $6.2M in the final year under Coquese Washington. That left a shortfall of just $3.5M rather than the $5.1M in 2018-19 which was largest that year in the Big Ten.

#6 Oklahoma $101.9 million (+2)

Lincoln Riley’s Sooners had a big year until they ran into the LSU massacre (63-28) in the CFP semis at the Peach Bowl. Still the 12-2 (9-1 B12) season reaped a whopping $60.4M profit, among the very top in the nation. Lon Kruger’s hoop program ran a $1.2M deficit.

#5 Alabama $110.1 million (+4)

Nick Saban has earned the right to expense the occasional miscellaneous payment, right? Six national titles will grease that wheel. Bama football listed $58.5M in expenses after its 11-2 (6-2 SEC) season that ended in the Citrus Bowl. That still left $51.6M in clearance, which will do. Nate Oats’ first Alabama basketball program did well on the court and off, clearing $5.3M.

#4 Ohio State $115.5 million (+1)

Ryan Day’s first full season was a hit as he took the Buckeyes to the CFP and a narrow semifinal loss to Clemson in the Fiesta Bowl. OSU football’s $62.9M profit had to clear $52.6M in outlay, tops in the league. Chris Holtmann’s basketball program pulled $22.0M in gross with an $11.5M profit.

#3 Michigan $125.8 million (=)

Nothing new in Ann Arbor. Jim Harbaugh’s team kept underachieving (9-4, 6-3 B1G) and U-of-M’s formidable alumni network and massive stadium kept feeding the coffers. The $81.1M profit dwarfs everyone else in the Big Ten, just barely missing the $81.4M school record of 2017. Men’s basketball cleared a healthy $10.3M on $17.8M gross.

#2 Georgia $134.5 million (=)

Only four of the 14 programs in the nation’s most important college football conference totally own their states (Georgia, LSU, Arkansas and Missouri). But UGA and LSU are the only two that matter, and Georgia has the urban epicenter of the league (Atlanta) in its backyard. That’s one big reason Bulldog football is such a cash cow. Kirby Smart’s team went 12-2 (7-2 SEC) and was probably the best left out of the CFP, courtesy of a blowout loss to LSU in the SEC championship. It set program records for gross and profit (a monumental $86M), easily blowing past the 2018-19 totals. UGA hoops cleared $1.3M.

#1 Texas $144.4 million (=)

But even Georgia has a ways to go before it can challenge the 10-gallon hats in Austin. What makes Longhorn football’s continued dominance atop the financial list is how mediocre its on-field product has been for years – really all the way back to the mid-’00s Mack Brown years of a decade and a half ago. The 2019 season was no different as Tom Herman’s penultimate team went 8-5 (5-4 B12) and lost to every formidable opponent. But UT has its own network for a reason – lots of fervid and loyal alumni with lots of expendable income. The Longhorn football profit total of $104.9M didn’t quite measure up to 2018-19′s record ($112.9M). But nobody else is in the neighborhood.

More PennLive sports coverage:

• Which are richest (and poorest) Big Ten football programs? Here are fresh revenue figures

• The bowls were never in danger from a playoff, and reaction to the 12-team CFP proposal is proof.

• “Hey, Jones!”: Did Bo know about Michigan doc? Is Pulisic USMNT savior? What we know so far suggests: Yes.

• Why expanding College Football Playoff to 12 teams is just a big, fat hustle that serves the status quo.

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Simmons First National - Changes Senior Leadership Roles

Pine Bluff, AR (STL.News) Simmons First National Corporation (NASDAQ: SFNC) (the “Company” or “Simmons”) announced changes to certain senior leadership roles in order to position the Company for continued success in executing its key strategic priorities.  The following changes are effective as of April 26, 2021: Bob Fehlman has been named president and chief operating officer of Simmons First National Corporation and Simmons Bank.  In these roles, he will continue to report to George A. Makris, Jr., Simmons’ chairman and CEO.  Fehlman joined Simmons more than 30 years ago and most recently served as senior executive vice president, chief financial officer, chief operating officer, and treasurer with responsibility for the overall financial management and operations of the Company.  Areas under his supervision included accounting, financial planning, investments, tax, bank operations, IT, risk, and legal.  He also provided critical support for merger and acquisition activity, analyst and investor meetings, and leading the Company’s capital management. Succeeding Fehlman as executive vice president, chief financial officer, and treasurer is Jay Brogdon.  Prior to joining Simmons, Brogdon worked at Stephens Inc. from 2008-2021, where he most recently served as managing director in the investment banking division.  In this role, Brogdon advised community banks and financial services companies primarily located throughout Simmons’ footprint.  Prior to joining Stephens, he served four years in audit and enterprise risk services at Deloitte.  Throughout his career, Brogdon has advised clients on over $15 billion of successful transactions, including mergers and acquisitions, public offerings, and private placements of debt and equity securities. In his new role, he will report to Bob Fehlman. Brogdon holds a Bachelor of Business Administration degree in accounting and business management from Harding University, where he was a 4-year letterman on the men’s basketball team. Active in the Little Rock community, Brogdon serves as a deacon at a local church, board member of Spark of Life, and volunteer basketball and baseball coach for numerous youth teams. “The changes announced today are a direct result of the success and growth we have experienced at Simmons over the past several years and reflects our need to continue to add depth and bench strength to our senior management team as we look to execute our key strategic priorities designed to grow our franchise,” said George A. Makris, Jr., chairman, and CEO of Simmons. “Bob has been instrumental in ensuring the financial strength of the Company, particularly during challenging economic periods, that has us well-positioned to continue to expand in our footprint while also continuing to meet the evolving needs of our customers,” said Makris.  “We’re also very pleased to have a high-caliber person like Jay join our team.  In addition to being very familiar with Simmons, Jay brings a wealth of knowledge and experience to our senior management team that should serve us well into the future.” Additional changes include the promotion of Steve Massanelli to senior executive vice president and chief administrative officer of the Company and Simmons Bank.  Massanelli joined Simmons in 2014 as a chief administrative officer and, in 2018, added the responsibility of investor relations officer.  Massanelli will continue to have responsibility for a wide array of day-to-day duties, including mergers and acquisitions due diligence and integration, corporate real estate services, corporate security, records management, and corporate insurance.   Massanelli will continue to report to George Makris, Jr. Simmons also announced Sabrina McDonnell as executive vice president, chief customer experience officer reporting to George Makris, Jr. In this role, McDonnell will oversee marketing and brand experience, product development, and private client departments with responsibility for developing initiatives to stimulate growth in market share and customer relationships.  McDonnell has 20 years of experience in the financial services industry, having previously served as executive vice president, chief administrative officer for Landmark Bank.  Her previous experience also includes serving as president and chief operating officer and senior vice president, retail banking at First National Bank & Trust. McDonnell holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in business administration from Drury University, an MBA from the University of Missouri, and attended the Graduate School of Banking at the University of Wisconsin. Ed Bilek has also joined the Company as executive vice president, director of investor relations.  Bilek has more than 30 years of experience in the financial services industry, most recently serving as director of investor relations and corporate insurance at BBVA USA.  Prior to that, he served in a variety of capacities, including head of U.S. shareholder relations for BBVA and director of investor relations for BBVA USA, and director of external communications.  His previous experience also includes serving as director of investor relations at Compass Bancshares, Inc. and as manager of SEC, regulatory and shareholder reporting at KeyCorp, Inc.  Bilek holds a Bachelor of Business Administration degree in accounting from Baldwin-Wallace College.  He will report to Bob Fehlman. Read the full article

[orbemnews]

'I'm angry and I'm hurt' | Social media post shows 5 teachers holding up racial slur It started as a game of human Scrabble. The photo shows faculty from the Christian School District rearranging letters to form the word “coons” O’FALLON, Mo. — The St. Charles County branch of the NAACP and several parents are calling for change after five teachers were pictured on social media holding up a racial slur. “I’m angry, I’m hurt because I trust you with my child,” said one parent with a child in the Christian School District. It started as a game of human Scrabble. The photo shows faculty from the Christian School District rearranging letters to form the word “coons.” Someone then posted it to social media, parents said it was even on the school district’s website. However, Principal Jake Ibbetson told 5 On Your Side Wednesday that wasn’t the case. He said the photo was never posted to the school’s website or any of the school’s social media accounts. “They were running around trying to spell raccoon, but they didn’t have the R and the A,” said Pastor Raymond Horry who has two children enrolled in the district. “I don’t believe it that five Caucasian teachers, not one of them knew that. Maybe one didn’t know it, maybe two didn’t know it, but all 5 didn’t know it?” Pastor Horry has two sons enrolled in the O’Fallon, Missouri, private school. He, along with other parents, said they’re speechless at how a slur like this one could be used by educators. “He absolutely told me, ‘Mom, I’m tired of it, do what you need to do because this is not fair and I’m tired of feeling like this,'” said one parent quoting her conversation with her teenage son. But John Smith, a graduate of Christian High School and a current basketball coach stood behind the educators saying this was not who they are. “This isn’t our school this was a mistake,” Smith said. “Everybody in the world makes mistakes, everybody in the world has faults and this is just a little fault that we’ve had. This is not our school. I truly believe that they did not know what they were posting.” In a statement, the district said they are investigating and will take the appropriate disciplinary actions after their investigation is complete. They also added this. “We recognize that this ill-informed action caused hurt and offense to many students and families in our school and in the wider community. We offer no excuse as to why this word was used. In a statement to families last night, we apologized for the incident and sought their forgiveness. We also ask that of anyone who has been impacted by this picture.” “It’s a blanket statement, it’s the same thing, we always have to forgive them for their transgressions because they don’t know how to handle racial issues,” said one parent. 5 On Your Side also spoke with the St. Charles County NAACP. The branch’s president said they will be reaching out to school leaders. Source link Orbem News #angry #Holding #Hurt #Media #post #Racial #Shows #Slur #Social #teachers

[dipulb3]

Josh Hawley's ploy to be a pro-Trump hero results in withering blowback

New Post has been published on https://appradab.com/josh-hawleys-ploy-to-be-a-pro-trump-hero-results-in-withering-blowback/

Josh Hawley's ploy to be a pro-Trump hero results in withering blowback

Mere hours later, some of those same Trump supporters would be marauding through the Capitol in a violent scene that will now be forever tied with the senator’s attempt to overturn a free and fair election.

Hawley is now a pariah among many of his colleagues, openly derided and mocked in his home state and a source of shame for longtime political supporters who helped propel him to his position.

If the photo of Hawley striding into the Capitol captured how the senator thought this week would go, it was a photo taken hours later, one of a masked Hawley sitting alone in the House chamber once the Capitol complex had been secured, that encapsulated how the week actually went.

“Sen. Hawley was doing something that was really dumbass and I’ve been really clear about that in public and in private since long before the announcement he was going to do this,” Republican Sen. Ben Sasse told NPR on Friday. “It was a stunt, and it was a terrible, terrible idea, and you don’t lie to the American people. … Lies have consequences.”

To be sure, Hawley’s decision to be the face of the baseless Republican challenge to the election has endeared him to the pro-Trump base of the party, a powerful force if the Missouri Republican does run for President. But Trump’s hold on the party is an open question after the chaotic riot he fomented on Wednesday, leading any Republican who hoped to be the heir apparent to his political fortune in a precarious position.

Hawley — whose office did not respond to requests to speak to the senator about his week — announced on December 30 that he would object during the Electoral College certification process, defying Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. Nearly a dozen other Republican lawmakers, including Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, later announced that they, too, would object.

Because of that — along with the pervasive view that Hawley was doing it as a way to brandish his credentials with pro-Trump Republicans ahead of a 2024 presidential run — Hawley has borne the brunt of the blame for kicking off the actions that led to thousands of Trump supporters storming the Capitol complex on Wednesday afternoon and forcing both the House and Senate to go into emergency lockdown.

And the response has been fierce and personal.

David Humphreys, a major donor to Hawley’s political rise, decried the senator in the wake of the insurrection, calling him a “political opportunist” and blaming his “irresponsible, inflammatory, and dangerous tactics” for sparking the riots. And to cap his criticism, Humphreys called for the Republican lawmaker to be censured.

Hawley also lost the support of his one-time mentor this week, when former Sen. John Danforth — a man whose support was central to Hawley winning his 2018 Republican primary — said supporting the Republican lawmaker was “the worst mistake of my life.”

“Supporting Josh and trying so hard to get him elected to the Senate was the worst mistake I ever made in my life,” Danforth said in a statement to the St. Louis Today. “Yesterday was the physical culmination of the long attempt … to foment a lack of public confidence in our democratic system.”

And in the wake of the insurrection, which took the lives of five people, multiple newspapers in Hawley’s home state either blamed the senator for the chaos or called on him to resign his seat.

“No one other than President Donald Trump himself is more responsible for Wednesday’s coup attempt at the U.S. Capitol than one Joshua David Hawley,” wrote the editorial board of The Kansas City Star, a paper that endorsed the would-be senator in the 2018 Republican primary. “Hawley’s actions in the last week had such impact that he deserves an impressive share of the blame for the blood that’s been shed.”

And the St. Louis Post Dispatch editorial board mocked Hawley, accusing him of having the “gall to stand before the Senate Wednesday night and feign shock, shock at what happened.”

“Hawley’s tardy, cover-his-ass condemnation of the violence ranks at the top of his substantial list of phony, smarmy and politically expedient declarations,” they wrote. “Hawley’s presidential aspirations have been flushed down the toilet because of his role in instigating Wednesday’s assault on democracy. He should do Missourians and the rest of the country a big favor and resign now.”

Hawley responded to the violence on Capitol Hill with a short statement: “The violence must end, those who attacked police and broke the law must be prosecuted, and Congress must get back to work and finish its job.”

But the damage, both to the Capitol and to Hawley, had long been done. And as anger at the senator smoldered, it began to extend beyond the Senate chamber and into the business world.

Simon & Schuster, the book publisher that was set to publish Hawley’s forthcoming book, announced Thursday that they would no longer distribute the book, an extraordinary move that seemingly made to prevent protests against the company.

“After witnessing the disturbing, deadly insurrection that took place on Wednesday in Washington, D.C., Simon & Schuster has decided to cancel publication of Senator Josh Hawley’s forthcoming book,” the company said in a statement. “We did not come to this decision lightly.”

Hawley slammed the decision as a “direct assault on the First Amendment” — the Yale Law School graduate ignoring the fact that the First Amendment restricts the government from infringing on free speech, not private companies.

Hawley’s stock had fallen so low that even professional basketball coaches took the chance to dunk on the senator

“(Josh) Hawley’s a joke,” San Antonio Spurs coach Gregg Popovich said during his pregame address on Thursday, saying both the Missouri senator and Cruz let their “self-interest, their greed, their lust for power outweigh their love of country or their sense of duty to the constitution or to public service.”

When the Senate reconvened, Hawley continued his objection, speaking as the Senate debated the results from Arizona and later objecting to the results from Pennsylvania.

As Hawley spoke from the Senate floor — “What we are doing tonight is actually very important,” he told his colleagues — the 2012 Republican presidential nominee, Utah Sen. Mitt Romney, sat stoically behind him glaring into the back of Hawley’s head.

Romney, a usually composed political, rose to speak shortly after and his anger at colleagues like Hawley was evident.

“What happened here today was an insurrection, incited by the President of the United States,” Romney said. “Those who choose to continue to support his dangerous gambit by objecting to the results of a legitimate, democratic election will forever be seen as being complicit in an unprecedented attack against our democracy.”

[ledenews]

Hays' Challenge is #MakingAnImpact

Apparently, it is possible to break your Twitter account. Jeremy Hays experienced this recently with both his professional, @FadeawayFit, and private, @Hays_31, accounts. Three times. In one evening. The sheer number of mentions was overloading the system. Hays, a basketball skills coach and trainer both locally and regionally through his company Fadeaway Fitness, started the #beatthetrainer movement on Twitter and Instagram, initially as a way to get some of his clients some extra work in whilst they wait out the stay at home orders issued in states like Ohio and West Virginia. Oh, you thought he’d give you a break? Anyone who’s had the opportunity to work with Hays knows he pushes his clients to the max from the first minute they step on his court to the last. He knows unutilized and underutilized skills get rusty and regress through lack of use. He’s not about to let that happen. So three weeks ago, Hays posted his first skills challenge video, a regiment of five right hand dribbles, six right hand side to side dribbles, the same from the left side, then five crossovers, five betweens, five behinds and closing it out with 10 pushups. Two videos later, he closed his posting with his time, challenging people to beat him and dropping the #beathetrainer hashtag to close. Little did he know it was about to blow up and reach far beyond his client base. “I never really started this to make it a challenge,” Hays admitted. “I figured I would put out a video for my clients to do at home once the quarantine started. It would give my clients around here and those that follow me on social media something to do. A few days later, O put out a second drill, and then a third. At that moment, I decided to give it a name and challenge people. That’s where the #beatthetrainer video challenges began.”

And So It Begins

Hays was happy to see of his clients, like St. Vincent 7th grader and West Virginia Thunder AAU member Alexis Bordas taking part. Bordas’ talents are well known locally, but soon, she wasn’t the only named player taking part. The Western Pa. Bruins AAU girls basketball organization already followed Hays on Twitter when its Twitter page took notice of the challenge and shared it with their team members, all of whom jumped at the chance to try and beat Hays’ time. First Love Christian Academy’s basketball Twitter account followed suit. A private school in nearby Washington, Pa., Hays’ is First Love’s athletic performance coach. So naturally his players had to get involved. But it just kept growing and growing. “I had no idea that it would really take off like it has,” Hays said. “The Western PA Bruins AAU Organization really follows me on Twitter and they really helped me start all this! One of their coaches shared my first #BeatTheTrainer challenge video to the athletes within the program and my phone started getting a bunch of Twitter notifications of these girls posting their videos and times and tagging me in them.” From there, other bigger women’s basketball Twitter profiles started sharing the videos as well—many from outside the Valley. The West Virginia Thunder, Capital City Comets and the Colorado Basketball Club all got involved. As did Wisconsin Flight Elite. Two of the top sophomores in the country in Kamy Peppler from Wisconsin and Katie Ambrose from Florida have been daily participants. Peppler, the No. 4 ranked player in the 2022 class in Wisconsin, has already verbaled to UW-Milwaukee. Ambrose, who moved from Missouri to Florida for her eighth-grade season, had a tryout with the U16 U.S. national team last summer and has a number of offers already. 

Just a few of the hundreds of examples of participants in the #BeatTheTrainer challenge Hays orchestrated.

Participants from All Over

Hays double checked Tuesday and, thus far, he’s been tagged in videos from approximately 41 states in the U.S., along with athletes in Mexico, Canada, Japan, Brazil and Spain. “It’s all been pretty crazy the rata that these videos have taken off,” Hays said. “One specific night, I broke my Twitter three different times due to the volume of activity my accounts were receiving. It’s a pretty good problem to have.” Hays has slowly increased the difficulties as the challenges have progressed, but not to the extent they are unperformable. He wants to make sure that all athletes can take part, not just the elite level players. “If I do something that’s entirely too hard for someone, a beginner may really struggle and not even want to try,” Hays admitted. “This really was a fun way to keep kids moving and working on their basketball skill development in a positive, fun, competitive way.” The main idea, whether they can beat the trainer or not, is to improve their skills and get better. That’s why Hays says this process has been super rewarding. He’s bringing the community closer together during a time of need when any ounce of positivity is treasured. “It’s a pretty awesome feeling that I’m doing something that’s bigger than myself.” Another stat Hays noticed is that the response and participation of the videos has been overwhelmingly female driven. He credits that to the number of girls’ organizations promoting it in the beginning, but also in the girls’ willingness to stay dedicated to craft. “I commend all of them. It really shows the mindset of these athletes who are supper dedicated in their craft that they will get better at any cost,” Hays said, noting that while his First Love players have all joined in, the breakdown has been roughly 80 percent boys to girls in participation.

Going Forward

Hays said in talking with Bordas, one of his top clients, that the #BeattheTrainer challenge can involve more than just ball handling. He’s working on adding in shooting challenges, fitness challenges, anything to do with the developing basketball athlete. That will be critical at a time when players normally would be hitting the AAU tournament circuit hard, showcasing their skills for college coaches and scouts and getting it much-needed game-atmosphere work. Hays is ready to get back to work in the gym, but given the success of these challenge videos, he plans to incorporate them going forward. “I’m ready to hit the ground running with all my Fadeaway Fitness Training Sessions and Camps and Tournaments, but for now the #BeatTheTrainer video challenges have gone way better than expected,” he noted. “So, I would like to continue these videos year round” He’s not the only one. Running through his list of recent followers to the Fadeway Fitness Twitter page, Hays has noticed around 400 college coaches not tuning in. That’s definitely upped the visibility quotient, not only for Fadeaway Fitness, but for the respective athletes participating. Read the full article

[magzoso-tech]

New Post has been published on https://magzoso.com/tech/us-colleges-turning-students-phones-into-surveillance-devices-tracking-locations-of-hundreds-of-thousands/

US Colleges Turning Students' Phones Into Surveillance Devices, Tracking Locations of Hundreds of Thousands

When Syracuse University freshmen walk into professor Jeff Rubin’s Introduction to Information Technologies class, seven small Bluetooth beacons hidden around the Grant Auditorium lecture hall connect with an app on their smartphones and boost their “attendance points.” And when they skip class? The SpotterEDU app sees that, too, logging their absence into a campus database that tracks them over time and can sink their grade. It also alerts Rubin, who later contacts students to ask where they’ve been. His 340-person lecture has never been so full.

“They want those points,” he said. “They know I’m watching and acting on it. So, behaviorally, they change.”

Short-range phone sensors and campuswide Wi-Fi networks are empowering colleges across the United States to track hundreds of thousands of students more precisely than ever before. Dozens of schools now use such technology to monitor students’ academic performance, analyse their conduct or assess their mental health.

But some professors and education advocates argue that the systems represent a new low in intrusive technology, breaching students’ privacy on a massive scale. The tracking systems, they worry, will infantilise students in the very place where they’re expected to grow into adults, further training them to see surveillance as a normal part of living, whether they like it or not.

“We’re adults. Do we really need to be tracked?” said Robby Pfeifer, a sophomore at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, which recently began logging the attendance of students connected to the campus’ Wi-Fi network. “Why is this necessary? How does this benefit us? . . . And is it just going to keep progressing until we’re micromanaged every second of the day?”

This style of surveillance has become just another fact of life for many Americans. A flood of cameras, sensors and microphones, wired to an online backbone, now can measure people’s activity and whereabouts with striking precision, reducing the mess of everyday living into trend lines that companies promise to help optimise.

Americans say in surveys they accept the technology’s encroachment because it often feels like something else: a trade-off of future worries for the immediacy of convenience, comfort and ease. If a tracking system can make students be better, one college adviser said, isn’t that a good thing?

But the perils of increasingly intimate supervision – and the subtle way it can mold how people act – has also led some to worry whether anyone will truly know when all this surveillance has gone too far. “Graduates will be well prepared . . . to embrace 24/7 government tracking and social credit systems,” one commenter on the Slashdot message board said. “Building technology was a lot more fun before it went all 1984.”

Instead of GPS coordinates, the schools rely on networks of Bluetooth transmitters and wireless access points to piece together students’ movements from dorm to desk. One company that uses school Wi-Fi networks to monitor movements says it gathers 6,000 location data points per student every day.

School and company officials call location monitoring a powerful booster for student success: If they know more about where students are going, they argue, they can intervene before problems arise. But some schools go even further, using systems that calculate personalised “risk scores” based on factors such as whether the student is going to the library enough.

The dream of some administrators is a university where every student is a model student, adhering to disciplined patterns of behaviour that are intimately quantified, surveilled and analysed.

But some educators say this move toward heightened educational vigilance threatens to undermine students’ independence and prevents them from pursuing interests beyond the classroom because they feel they might be watched.

“These administrators have made a justification for surveilling a student population because it serves their interests, in terms of the scholarships that come out of their budget, the reputation of their programs, the statistics for the school,” said Kyle M. L. Jones, an Indiana University assistant professor who researches student privacy.

“What’s to say that the institution doesn’t change their eye of surveillance and start focusing on minority populations, or anyone else?” he added. Students “should have all the rights, responsibilities and privileges that an adult has. So why do we treat them so differently?”

Students disagree on whether the campus-tracking systems are a breach of privacy, and some argue they have nothing to hide. But one feeling is almost universally shared, according to interviews with more than a dozen students and faculty members: that the technology is becoming ubiquitous, and that the people being monitored – their peers, and themselves – can’t really do anything about it.

“It embodies a very cynical view of education – that it’s something we need to enforce on students, almost against their will,” said Erin Rose Glass, a digital scholarship librarian at the University of California San Diego. “We’re reinforcing this sense of powerlessness . . . when we could be asking harder questions, like: Why are we creating institutions where students don’t want to show up?”

SpotterEDU chief Rick Carter, a former college basketball coach, said he founded the app in 2015 as a way to watch over student athletes: Many schools already pay “class checkers” to make sure athletes remain eligible to play.

The company now works with nearly 40 schools, he said, including such universities as Auburn, Central Florida, Columbia, Indiana and Missouri, as well as several smaller colleges and a public high school. More than 1.5 million student check-ins have been logged this year nationwide, including in graduate seminars and chapel services.

SpotterEDU uses Bluetooth beacons roughly the size of a deck of cards to signal to a student’s smartphone once a student steps within range. Installers stick them on walls and ceilings – the less visible, Carter said, the better. He declined to allow The Washington Post to photograph beacons in classrooms, saying “currently students do not know what they look like.”

School officials give SpotterEDU the students’ full schedules, and the system can email a professor or adviser automatically if a student skips class or walks in more than two minutes late. The app records a full timeline of the students’ presence so advisers can see whether they left early or stepped out for a break.

“Students today have so many distractions,” said Tami Chievous, an associate athletic director at the University of Missouri, where advisers text some freshmen athletes if they don’t show up within five minutes of class. “We have to make sure they’re doing the right thing.”

The Chicago-based company has experimented with ways to make the surveillance fun, gamifying students’ schedules with colourful Bitmoji or digital multiday streaks. But the real value may be for school officials, who Carter said can split students into groups, such as “students of colour” or “out-of-state students,” for further review. When asked why an official would want to segregate out data on students of colour, Carter said many colleges already do so, looking for patterns in academic retention and performance, adding that it “can provide important data for retention. Even the first few months of recorded data on class attendance and performance can help predict how likely a group of students is to” stay enrolled.

Students’ attendance and tardiness are scored into a point system that some professors use for grading, Carter said, and schools can use the data to “take action” against truant students, such as grabbing back scholarship funds.

The system’s national rollout could be made more complicated by Carter’s history. He agreed earlier this year to stay more than 2,500 feet from the athletic offices of DePaul University, where he was the associate head basketball coach from 2015 to 2017, following an order of protection filed against him and allegations that he had threatened the school’s athletic director and head basketball coach. The order, Carter said, is related to NCAA violations at the program during his time there and has nothing to do with SpotterEDU.

Rubin, the Syracuse professor, said once-thin classes now boast more than 90% attendance. But the tracking has not been without its pitfalls: Earlier versions of the app, he said, included a button allowing students to instantly share their exact GPS coordinates, leading some to inadvertently send him their location while out at night. The feature has since been removed.

For even more data, schools can turn to the Austin, Texas-based start-up Degree Analytics, which uses Wi-Fi check-ins to track the movements of roughly 200,000 students across 19 state universities, private colleges and other schools.

Launched by the data scientist Aaron Benz in 2017, the company says in promotional materials that every student can graduate with “a proper environment and perhaps a few nudges along the way.”

Benz tells school administrators that his system can solve “a real lack of understanding about the student experience”: By analysing campus Wi-Fi data, he said, 98% of their students can be measured and analysed.

But the company also claims to see much more than just attendance. By logging the time a student spends in different parts of the campus, Benz said, his team has found a way to identify signs of personal anguish: A student avoiding the cafeteria might suffer from food insecurity or an eating disorder; a student skipping class might be grievously depressed. The data isn’t conclusive, Benz said, but it can “shine a light on where people can investigate, so students don’t slip through the cracks.”

To help find these students, he said, his team designed algorithms to look for patterns in a student’s “behavioural state” and automatically flag when their habits change. He calls it scaffolding – a temporary support used to build up a student, removed when they can stand on their own.

At a Silicon Valley summit in April, Benz outlined a recent real-life case: that of Student ID 106033, a depressed and “extremely isolated” student he called Sasha whom the system had flagged as “highly at-risk” because she only left her dorm to eat. “At every school, there are lots of Sashas,” he said. “And the bigger you are, the more Sashas that you have.”

A classifier algorithm divides the student body into peer groups – “full-time freshmen,” say, or “commuter students” – and the system then compares each student to “normal” behaviour, as defined by their peers. It also generates a “risk score” for students based around factors such as how much time they spent in community centers or at the gym.

The students who deviate from those day-to-day campus rhythms are flagged for anomalies, and the company then alerts school officials in case they want to pursue real-world intervention. (In Sasha’s case, Benz said, the university sent an adviser to knock on her door.)

Some administrators love the avalanche of data these kinds of Wi-Fi-based systems bring. “Forget that old ominous line, ‘We know where you live.’ These days, it’s, ‘We know where you are,’ ” Purdue University president Mitch Daniels wrote last year about his school’s location-tracking software. “Isn’t technology wonderful?”

But technical experts said they doubted the advertised capabilities of such systems, which are mostly untested and unproven in their abilities to pinpoint student harm. Some students said most of their classmates also didn’t realise how much data was being gathered on their movements. They worried about anyone knowing intimate details of their daily walking patterns and whereabouts.

Several students said they didn’t mind a system designed to keep them honest. But one of them, a freshman athlete at Temple University who asked to speak anonymously to avoid team punishment, said the SpotterEDU app has become a nightmare, marking him absent when he’s sitting in class and marking him late when he’s on time.

He said he squandered several of his early lectures trying to convince the app he was present, toggling his settings in desperation as professors needled him to put the phone away. He then had to defend himself to campus staff members, who believed the data more than him.

His teammates, he said, have suffered through their own technical headaches, but they’ve all been told they’ll get in trouble if they delete the app from their phones.

“We can face repercussions with our coaches and academic advisers if we don’t show 100% attendance,” he said. But “it takes away from my learning because I’m literally freaking out, tapping everything to try to get it to work.”

Campus staff, Carter said, can override data errors on a case-by-case basis, and Rubin said a teaching assistant works with students after class to triage glitches and correct points. SpotterEDU’s terms of use say its data is not guaranteed to be “accurate, complete, correct, adequate, useful, timely, reliable or otherwise.”

Carter said he doesn’t like to say the students are being “tracked,” because of its potentially negative connotations; he prefers the term “monitored” instead. “It’s about building that relationship,” he said, so students “know you care about them.”

But college leaders have framed the technology in exactly those terms. In emails this year between officials at the University of North Carolina, made available through public-records requests, a senior associate athletic director said SpotterEDU would “improve our ability to track more team members, in more places, more accurately.”

The emails also revealed the challenge for a college attempting to roll out student-tracking systems en masse. In August, near the start of the fall semester, nearly 150 SpotterEDU beacons were installed in a blitz across the UNC campus, from Chapman Hall to the Woollen Gym. The launch was so sudden that some students were alarmed to see an unknown man enter their classroom, stick a small device near their desks, and walk away.

Unclear what was happening, the dean of UNC’s journalism school, Susan King, had someone yank a beacon off the wall after learning of a commotion spreading on Facebook. She told The Post she faulted “stupidity and a lack of communication” for the panic.

Carter said the frenzy was due to the school’s need for a quick turnaround and that most installations happen when students aren’t in class. (In an email to UNC staff, Carter later apologised for the mass installation’s “confusion and chaos.”)

A UNC spokeswoman declined to make anyone available for an interview, saying only in a statement that the university was evaluating “streamlined attendance tracking” for a “small group of student-athletes.”

But campuswide monitoring appears to be on its way, the emails show. The school is planning to shift to a check-in system designed by a UNC professor, and an IT director said in an email that the school could install beacons across all general-purpose classrooms in time for the spring semester. “Since students have to download the app, that is considered notification and opting-in,” one UNC official wrote.

Chris Gilliard, a professor at Macomb Community College in Michigan who testified before Congress last month on privacy and digital rights, said he worries about the expanding reach of “surveillance creep”: If these systems work so well in college, administrators might argue, why not high school or anywhere else?

The systems, he added, are isolating for students who don’t own smartphones, coercive for students who do and unnecessary for professors, who can accomplish the task with the same pop quizzes and random checks they’ve used for decades. “You’re forcing students into a position,” he said: “Be tracked or be left out.”

Some parents, however, wish their children faced even closer supervision. Wes Grandstaff, who said his son, Austin, transformed from a struggling student to college graduate with SpotterEDU’s help, said the added surveillance was worth it: “When you’re a college athlete, they basically own you, so it didn’t matter what he felt: You’re going to get watched and babysat whether you like it or not.”

He now says he wishes schools would share the data with parents, too. “I just cut you a $30,000 check,” he said, “and I can’t find out if my kid’s going to class or not?”

Students using Degree Analytics’ Wi-Fi system can opt-out by clicking “no” on a window that asks whether they want to help “support student success, operations and security.” But Benz, the company’s chief, said very few do.

That is, until last month at VCU, which recently launched a pilot program to monitor a set of courses required of all freshmen. Students said they were frustrated to first learn of the system in a short email about a “new attendance tool” and were given only two weeks before the opt-out deadline passed.

Students quickly scattered the opt-out link across social media, and the independent student newspaper, the Commonwealth Times, sowed doubts about the program’s secrecy and stated mission, writing, “Student success my ass.” The university declined to make an official available for an interview.

One student who opted out, VCU senior Jacie Dannhardt, said she was furious that the college had launched first-year students into a tracking program none of them had ever heard of. “We’re all still adults. Have a basic respect for our privacy,” she said. “We don’t need hall passes anymore.”

The opt-out rate at VCU, Benz said, climbed to roughly half of all eligible students. But he blamed the exodus on misunderstanding and a “reactionary ‘cancel culture’ thing.” “We could have done a much better job communicating, and the great majority of those students who could opt out probably wouldn’t have,” he said.

Joanna Grama, an information-security consultant and higher-education specialist who has advised the Department of Homeland Security on data privacy, said she doubted most students knew they were signing up for long-term monitoring when they clicked to connect to the campus Wi-Fi.

She said she worries about school-performance data being used as part of a “cradle-to-grave profile” trailing students as they graduate and pursue their careers. She also questions how all this digital nudging can affect students’ daily lives.

“At what point in time do we start crippling a whole generation of adults, human beings, who have been so tracked and told what to do all the time that they don’t know how to fend for themselves?” she said. “Is that cruel? Or is that kind?”

© The Washington Post 2019

[blackkudos]

James B. Parsons

James Benton Parsons (August 13, 1911 – June 19, 1993) was an American attorney who in 1961 became the first African American to serve as a United States federal judge in US District Court, being appointed to United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois. He served as chief judge from 1975 to 1981, assuming senior status in August 1981, and serving until his death in office.

Early life, education and career

James Benton Parsons was born in 1911 in Kansas City, Missouri; his family moved to St. Louis, where his father was an evangelist and missionary with the Disciples of Christ Church. The family subsequently lived in Lexington, Kentucky; Dayton, Ohio; and Bloomington, Indiana; before settling in Decatur, Illinois. Parsons wanted to be a lawyer by the time he was in junior high school. He was named "class orator" for Decatur High School class of 1929, the "first race student" to receive this honor. He was on the basketball team at Decatur High coached by Gay Kintner, and also in the school band and orchestra. He earned a B.A. from Millikin University in 1934.

He first started working as acting head of music at Lincoln University (Missouri). He met Nathaniel Dett, a former teacher at Lincoln, who had returned for a guest performance. Dett subsequently offered Parsons a job at Bennett College, a historically black college in Greensboro, North Carolina, where he was director of music. He wanted Parsons to re-score some of Dett's chorales. By 1939, Parsons had become director of instrumental music for Greensboro's Negro public schools, as the state had a segregated public school system. Under his direction, the band at Dudley High School became known throughout the state for its expert musicianship and precision marching.

World War II military service

During World War II, Parsons enlisted in the United States Naval Reserve in May 1942. Serving as a Musician MUS1, he directed the U.S. Navy B-1 Fleet Band. The band was organized from a core of members of the bands at Dudley High School and North Carolina A and T University. B-1 was composed of the first African Americans to serve in the modern Navy at a rank higher than messman. It was one of more than 100 bands of African Americans organized by the Navy during the war; the other bands all trained at Camp Robert Smalls. B-1 trained at Norfolk and was stationed at Chapel Hill, North Carolina, where it was attached to the Navy's pre-flight school on the University of North Carolina campus.

In May 1944 the band was transferred to the US Naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, where it was stationed at Manana Barracks. This held the largest posting of African-American servicemen in the world. While there, Parsons was selected for a panel of judges that was convened by the Navy to investigate the 1944 riot in Guam among Marines. This experience furthered his interest in studying law. Throughout his service, Parsons directed B-1, but he mustered out of the Navy in 1945 as a Musician 1st class, never having made the officer's grade. He and his men believed that he had earned that.

Graduate and professional degrees

After the war, Parsons used the GI Bill to earn his M.A. from the University of Chicago in 1946, followed by a J.D. from the University of Chicago Law School in 1949.

Law practice

Parson was in private practice in Chicago, Illinois from 1949 to 1951, also serving as an assistant corporation counsel during that time. He was appointed as an assistant United States Attorney of the Northern District of Illinois, serving from 1951 to 1960. He was a judge on the Superior Court of Cook County, Illinois from 1960 to 1961.

On August 9, 1961, Parsons was nominated by President John F. Kennedy to a seat on the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, which had been vacated by Judge Philip L. Sullivan. Parsons was confirmed by the United States Senate on August 30, 1961, and received his commission the same day. He was the first black person appointed to the Federal bench in a District Court, which under Article III is a life term.

Parsons advanced to serve as chief judge of the District Court from 1975 to 1981, assuming senior status on August 30, 1981. He served in that capacity until his death in 1993 in Chicago. Parsons was buried at Greenwood Cemetery in Decatur, Illinois.

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Dossier vs. Arizona State football program revealed

New Post has been published on https://tattlepress.com/ncaa-football/dossier-vs-arizona-state-football-program-revealed/

Dossier vs. Arizona State football program revealed

The dossier of documents sent to the Arizona State compliance department and the NCAA enforcement department on May 31 begins with a blunt message about allegations of NCAA improprieties in the ASU football program.

“I am writing this letter to inform you about recruiting violations that are occurring at Arizona State University in their Football department. My objective is…providing enough information to assure you if Arizona State football is looked into, there will be violations found.”

From there, the letter provides, sometimes in meticulous detail, allegations of a series of potential NCAA violations. It specifically names 10 Arizona State “individual staff members to investigate” and lists 13 “illegal recruiting prospects” who visited campus during the COVID-19 dead period.

Overall, there are more than a dozen allegations in the dossier, which was viewed by Yahoo Sports this week. Some of the allegations are specific and have documented receipts and screenshots of emails the dossier cites as evidence of ASU staffers allegedly arranging trips for prospects to visit campus. Others are more general and do not have direct proof about a recruit visiting campus or a coach entertaining a parent at a restaurant in the dead period. ASU has confirmed the NCAA is investigating the allegations.

The dossier also includes a picture that’s alleged in the documents to be head coach Herm Edwards purportedly leading a top 100 recruit from the Class of 2022 around ASU’s weight room. Yahoo Sports could not independently verify the identity of the photo’s subjects, who have their backs to the camera.

Starting in the spring of 2020 and lasting until June 1, 2021, no school could host recruits on campus because of the NCAA-mandated dead period prompted by the COVID-19 pandemic. It was legal for recruits to visit on their own and walk campus, which ASU assistant coaches claimed to Yahoo Sports some of the recruits did. What irked rivals throughout the Pac-12 and around college football was how brazen Arizona State was in allegedly breaking the rules because of the confluence of the competitive advantage and health risks during the pandemic.

Story continues

In totality, the breadth of the evidence and potential investigative leads provide significant building blocks for an NCAA case against Edwards and ASU. The volume of recruits named will give the NCAA the ability to offer immunity to the players and their families.

Arizona State head coach Herm Edwards is facing an NCAA investigation into potential recruiting violations. (Mark J. Rebilas/USA TODAY Sports)

While NCAA investigations are notoriously slow and generally ineffective because of the lack of subpoena power, the enforcement staff will have the powerful tool of being able to leverage the eligibility of players for the truth. Also, multiple former staff members have told Yahoo Sports that they are happy to cooperate with the NCAA, a rarity for an organization that often gets stonewalled by the code of silence many adopt in the sport.

ASU’s time in the crosshairs is unfolding amid a backdrop where one Pac-12 coach (David Shaw) and another league athletic director (Oregon State’s Scott Barnes) have publicly criticized ASU’s reported behavior. ASU’s lack of any announcement of specific personnel decisions tied to the allegations, silence from president Michael Crow and the lack of contrition in public comments by athletic director Ray Anderson — “It can’t be something that bogs us down,” he told azcentral.com — have set a compelling stage.

Crow and ASU declined comment to Yahoo Sports on Wednesday, saying the NCAA has asked them not to speak amid the investigation.

The most detailed part sent to the NCAA is documentation of flights for recruits that were alleged to have been arranged by three ASU assistant coaches: Chris Hawkins, Prentice Gill and Adam Breneman. That includes screenshots of emails that show Regina Jackson, the mother of star quarterback Jayden Daniels, allegedly helping book more than $1,100 in flights for recruits and the adults accompanying them on a recruiting trip from Florida, according to the documents. Daniels himself is not implicated with any wrongdoing in the document and Jackson denied any involvement helping ASU.

Anderson’s public ambivalence toward the allegations amplified the stakes at a university whose nine major NCAA violations in its history are more than any other school in the Power Five.

A picture and a group text chain

On the official Arizona State football calendar for coaches, Feb. 7 is clearly marked: “COACHES OFF.”

Still, the dossier of allegations includes a photo that is said to be of head coach Herm Edwards touring a top 100 recruit around the ASU football weight room. The picture provided to the NCAA and viewed by Yahoo Sports is taken from a distant stairwell. Neither Edwards nor the recruit are directly facing the camera, but the image captures a subject of Edwards’ stature wearing a maroon bucket hat Edwards often wears.

In the backdrop of the picture on an oversized weight room television is a women’s basketball game between Notre Dame and Louisville, which tipped off Feb. 7 at 2 p.m. at the Yum Center in Louisville.

The picture epitomizes the challenge facing Arizona State as it tries to navigate NCAA scrutiny while attempting to push through with its season. The Sun Devils return 20 starters and are trendy picks to win the Pac-12 South. 

Nothing highlights the potential NCAA risk of that more than a recruit appearing to meet with Edwards. There is another specific allegation in the dossier of a recruit, who ended up signing with ASU, meeting with Edwards and two other assistant coaches in his “private office.”

The manner in which the picture and dossier emerged should also be of concern to ASU officials. Sources told Yahoo Sports that a group of nearly a dozen staffers communicated regularly on group text about the allegedly illicit activities in the program.

The point of the group text wasn’t to accumulate allegations and pictures with a time stamp. Rather, it was used as a real-time exclamation of the disbelief of what was happening in the program, a source said. That disbelief was accentuated as staffers saw coaches who weren’t participating in the alleged behavior pushed out of their jobs or had responsibilities stripped away as associate head coach Antonio Pierce gained power.

“That group text wasn’t necessarily to bring to the NCAA, but it was a way to say, ‘Look at how blatant they are being about it,’” said a source. “It was a way we scoffed at it, like, ‘Can you believe these guys?’”

As another source told Yahoo Sports: “It didn’t even seem like they wanted to hide it. It was so pervasive.”

Oct 19, 2019; Salt Lake City, UT, USA; Arizona State Sun Devils head coach Herm Edwards reacts in the first quarter against the Utah Utes at Rice-Eccles Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Kirby Lee-USA TODAY Sports

Emailed receipts of plane ticket purchases for ASU recruits

There appear to be two layers to the alleged illegal visits that NCAA investigators will likely have to examine.

The first is the actual visits and any potential complicity of Edwards and the coaching staff in encouraging recruits to come to Tempe and escorting them through the facility at a time when that was explicitly barred at every program.

The second is how the players who came on the alleged visits paid for the travel, including plane tickets, meals and the hotels or other places that they stayed.

The documents provided to the NCAA offer a glimpse of some of the ways ASU coaches allegedly helped bring players to campus. The players listed in the documents who are alleged to have taken illicit visits to ASU during the dead period are from New York, Pennsylvania, California, Missouri, Texas, Nevada, Florida, Indiana and Nebraska.

Some are enrolled at ASU. Others committed to other schools or remain uncommitted. Some are committed to ASU in upcoming classes.

The most specificity in the documents comes with a group of three recruits who hail from Florida in the Class of 2022. All are highly regarded with offer sheets from blue-blood programs.

There are documents that show at least five tickets alleged to have been purchased by Regina Jackson, star quarterback Jayden Daniels’ mother, for the recruits and their guardians in March 2021. The tickets are emailed to Jackson directly from two different airlines and the receipts show the same credit card tied to the purchases.

Included in the dossier is an email forwarding a ticket for the guardian of one of the recruits. The email is from Jackson to an email address for Chris Hawkins, the ASU defensive backs coach. Hawkins then forwarded the ticket to the guardian. There are receipts explicitly listing the names of two recruits on their tickets with their flight locator numbers, and both are purchased by the credit card that the documents tie to Jackson.

In a phone interview Wednesday, Hawkins said he did not deny knowing the recruits were going to be in the area. He denied paying for or helping arrange the trip: “I’ve never paid a kid. I’ve never paid for a flight. I’ve never done any of that. I made $100,000 last year. I was the lowest-paid [Power Five] coach in America. I didn’t have the money to be paying players or paying for flights. I live check-to-check. I’m not one of the big guys yet.”

According to the document: “This image shows the credit card of Regina Jackson and the name, ticket number, for [a recruit]. Different ticket number than [another recruit] but same credit card as the other two.”

In multiple phone interviews Wednesday, Jackson denied any part in paying for the recruits to come to campus. She said in March she received notifications that her Google email account — the same one listed in the documents — “was compromised.” Then Jackson said she called her credit card company and canceled the charges after being notified of the flight charges on her card. “It’s unfortunate,” Jackson said. “My credit card company notified me of the charges and they sent me a new card. They charged everything back because they realized it wasn’t me.”

Jackson also said her Google account had no record of sending Hawkins an email and that the two know each other but don’t communicate via email. She added that she didn’t know the recruits or their families. “I did not support or help or do anything like that,” she said in reference to helping ASU recruit.

Jackson’s presence could prove a unique test of NCAA rules. While the history of college sports is rich with stories of parents accepting extra benefits, it’s exceedingly rare that the parent of a star player is linked to providing them.

Also included in the documents are email screenshots of Adam Breneman, the tight ends coach who was a graduate assistant at the time, sending a plane ticket from Philadelphia to Phoenix to a recruit on July 24, 2020, for a flight on July 25. The screenshot includes an email to the Google address of the recruit, who enrolled at a school in a different conference.

Included in the documents is a screenshot with a specific credit card number the documents allege is tied to Breneman. Breneman declined to comment to Yahoo Sports.

There’s also a screenshot of an American Airlines itinerary of a flight from St. Louis to Phoenix that’s emailed to the address of wide receivers coach Prentice Gill on Dec. 4, 2020. The email is for a ticket in the name of a recruit from Missouri, who was scheduled to fly to Phoenix later that day with a layover listed in Oklahoma City.

Gill told Yahoo Sports on Wednesday he did not get an email from American Airlines on that day: “I’ve never bought a kid anything. I’ve never given a kid money. I’ve never done any of that. I didn’t purchase his ticket. I didn’t pay for anything. I do know that he came to Arizona. He came and visited, he did. He told me that.”

What will NCAA do with allegations?

The NCAA would appear to have a chance at an effective case against ASU. Attorney Stu Brown, a veteran of NCAA probes who is not affiliated with the ASU investigation, said generally that the NCAA “tends to believe a student athlete or prospective student athlete more easily than they believe coaches, administrators or boosters.”

The 13 players listed in the document are believed to be only a portion of the total number who actually visited ASU, giving the NCAA a wide swath of athletes to interview — and use their eligibility as leverage for the truth.

“I think this would hit all those marks for the enforcement [staff] being the kind and the number of witnesses from which they would like to elicit testimony,” Brown said.

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How to Deal with REJECTION (Kurt Mueller)

FROM TODAY's EPISODE:

Training our brains to deal with rejection

How to separate our identity from rejection

How to keep ourselves from becoming bitter after rejection

  RESOURCES:

Listen to Kurt's Podcast: flip-podcast.com

Podcasting Together: www.heatherparady.com/podcastingtogether

Join our Private Facebook Group: https://bit.ly/2lPut5A

  KURT's BIO:

Impacting lives and helping clients build a lifetime of financial security since 2012, Kurt spent most of his early years in St. Louis, Missouri. Kurt is the oldest child and has 2 younger sisters and 1 brother. His brother is currently battling a very aggressive form of Leukemia and this inspired Kurt to become more involved with the local Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. During his childhood, he lived in American Samoa for 3 years, as well as Saudi Arabia for 3 years. When Kurt returned to the United States, he attended The Citadel and graduated in 2005 with a BS in Political Science. He earned his Master’s of Science degree in Biosecurity-Emergency Preparedness from St. Louis University in 2009. 

In 2003, Kurt met his future wife to be during a trip to Rock Hill, SC and they were engaged in September 2005. In 2006, on a warm April day on Edisto Beach, Kurt tied the knot with his beautiful wife, Megan, who is a Barnwell, SC native. Megan has been working as an Anesthetist at Augusta University since 2011. They have two sons, Drake, 6 and Gage, 3 and reside in North Augusta, SC. Kurt continues to coach his oldest son's YMCA teams including soccer, t-ball and basketball.

Kurt transitioned into the financial world after discovering his passion for helping others with financial planning. He changed his career path in January 2012 and never looked back. As Kurt’s career progressed, he expanded his financial knowledge by obtaining his CLU designation in May of 2016, the ChFC designation in October of 2017 and the CFP designation in November of 2018.

Today, Kurt's passion lies in helping others plan for their financial future and develop into tomorrow's leaders. He considers himself a GO-GIVER and is passionate about giving back to the CSRA community that has welcomed him with open arms. He currently serves as a board member for the United Way of Aiken County and the Midland Valley Area Chamber of Commerce.  Kurt volunteers his time mentoring at Belvedere & Mossy Creek Elementary School in North Augusta. In addition to the local chambers, Kurt is involved in a men's fitness group known as F3 and recently spearheaded an expansion of the group to True North Church in North Augusta. He is a 2017 graduate of Leadership Aiken County and Leadership North Augusta. In an effort to give back to his Alma mater, Kurt is an active member of the local CSRA Citadel Club.

From May-October 2017, Kurt volunteered his time as Executive Chair for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society Light the Night Walk. Recently, he was asked to serve as the Executive Chair of the American Heart Association Heart Walk from October 2017-February 2018 and gladly accepted the challenge to help such an impactful local charitable organization.

Kurt also created the North Augusta Professionals networking group in May 2016 in an effort to re-define the way networking is done in the CSRA. The group prides itself on being very inclusive of everyone and encourages its members to ENGAGE with their community, help each other GROW one another's business and INSPIRE others to do the same.

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Private basketball Coaches in Missouri | Basketball Training St Louis, MO

Practice in your style and know your strengths – we offer youth basketball training in groups and individual sessions at Larry Hughes Basketball Academy. We also provide private basketball coaches in Missouri

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Wilma Rudolph

Wilma Glodean Rudolph (June 23, 1940 – November 12, 1994) was an American track and field sprinter, who competed in the 100 and 200 meters dash. Rudolph was considered the fastest woman in the world in the 1960s and competed in two Olympic Games, in 1956 and in 1960.

At the 1960 Summer Olympics in Rome, Rudolph became the first American woman to win three gold medals in track and field during a single Olympic Games. A track and field champion, she elevated women's track to a major presence in the United States. As a member of the black community, she is also regarded as a civil rights and women's rights pioneer. Along with other 1960 Olympic athletes such as Cassius Clay (who later became Muhammad Ali), Rudolph became an international star due to the first international television coverage of the Olympics that year.

The powerful sprinter emerged from the 1960 Rome Olympics as "The Tornado, the fastest woman on earth". The Italians nicknamed her La Gazzella Nera ("The Black Gazelle"); to the French she was La Perle Noire ("The Black Pearl").

Biography

Wilma Glodean Rudolph was born on June 23, 1940 in Saint Bethlehem, Tennessee, prematurely at 4.5 pounds (2.0 kg), the 20th of twenty two siblings; her father, Ed, was a railway porter and her mother, Blanche, was a maid. Rudolph contracted infantile paralysis (caused by the polio virus) at age four. She recovered, but wore a brace on her left leg and foot (which had become twisted as a result) until she was nine. She was required to wear an orthopedic shoe for support of her foot for another two years. Her family traveled regularly from Clarksville, Tennessee, to Meharry Hospital (now Nashville General Hospital at Meharry) in Nashville, Tennessee, for treatments for her twisted leg. In addition, by the time she was twelve years old she had also survived bouts of polio and scarlet fever.

In 1953, after her treatments were over, Rudolph chose to follow in her sister's footsteps and began playing basketball. While playing for her high school team, she was spotted by Tennessee State track and field coach Ed Temple. Being discovered by Temple was a major break for a young athlete. The day he saw the tenth grader for the first time, he knew he had found a natural athlete. Rudolph had already gained some track experience on Burt High School's track team two years before, mostly as a way to keep busy between basketball seasons. Rudolph joined Temple's summer program at Tennessee State and trained regularly, racing with his Tigerbelles for two years.

By the time she was sixteen, she earned a berth on the U.S. Olympic track and field team and came home from the 1956 Melbourne Games to show her high school classmates an Olympic bronze medal that she had won in the 4 × 100 m relay.

In 1959, Rudolph won a gold medal in the 4 × 100 m relay at Pan American Games (with Isabelle Daniels, Barbara Jones, and Lucinda Williams) and an individual silver in the 100 m. The same year she won the AAU 100 m title and defended it for four consecutive years. During her career, she also won three AAU indoor titles.

At the 1960 Summer Olympics in Rome she won three Olympic sprint gold medals: in the 100 m, 200 m and 4 × 100 m relay. As the temperature climbed toward 110 °F (43 °C), 80,000 spectators jammed the Stadio Olimpico. Rudolph ran the 100 m dash in a phenomenal 11 seconds flat. However, the time was not credited as a world record, because it was wind-aided. She also won the 200 m dash in 23.2 seconds, a new Olympic record. After these wins, she was being hailed throughout the world as "the fastest woman in history". Finally, on September 11, 1960, she combined with Tennessee State teammates Martha Hudson, Lucinda Williams and Barbara Jones to win the 4 × 100 m relay in 44.5 seconds, setting a world record. Rudolph had a special, personal reason to hope for victory—to pay tribute to Jesse Owens, the celebrated American athlete who had been her inspiration, also the star of the 1936 Summer Olympics, held in Berlin, Germany.

Following the post-games European tour by the American team Rudolph returned home to Clarksville. At her wishes, her homecoming parade and banquet were the first fully integrated municipal events in the city's history.

Rudolph retired from track competition in 1962 at age 22 after winning two races at a U.S.–Soviet meet at Stanford University.

She got a job teaching second grade in her childhood school. Conflict forced her to leave the position. She moved to Indianapolis to head a community center. Then she moved to St. Louis Missouri, then Detroit, Michigan, and then returned to Tennessee for a time in the late 60s before moving again to California. She then lived in Chicago.

Awards and honors

Rudolph was United Press Athlete of the Year 1960 and Associated Press Woman Athlete of the Year for 1960 and 1961. Also in 1961, the year of her father's death, Rudolph won the James E. Sullivan Award, an award for the top amateur athlete in the United States, and had a private meeting with President John F. Kennedy in the Oval Office.

She was voted into the National Black Sports and Entertainment Hall of Fame in 1973 and the National Track and Field Hall of Fame in 1974.

She was inducted into the U.S. Olympic Hall of Fame in 1983, honored with the National Sports Award in 1993, and inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame in 1994.

In 1994, the portion of U.S. Route 79 in Clarksville, Tennessee between the Interstate 24 exit 4 in Clarksville to the Red River (Lynnwood-Tarpley) bridge near the Kraft Street intersection was renamed to honor Wilma Rudolph.

Career and family

In 1963, Rudolph was granted a full scholarship to Tennessee State University where she received her bachelor's degree in elementary education. After her athletic career, Rudolph worked as a teacher at Cobb Elementary School, coaching track at Burt High School, and became a sports commentator on national television.

Rudolph was married twice. On October 14, 1961, she married Willie Ward, a track star at North Carolina College at Durham, only to divorce him 17 months later. In summer 1963 she married her high school sweetheart Robert Eldridge, with whom she already had a daughter born in 1958. They had four children: Yolanda (b. 1958), Djuanna (b. 1964), Robert Jr. (b. 1965) and Xurry (b. 1971). She divorced Eldridge after 17 years of marriage, and returned to Indianapolis where she raised her children and hosted a local TV show.

Death

In July 1994, shortly after her mother’s death, Rudolph was diagnosed with a brain tumor. On November 12, 1994, at age 54, she died of cancer in her home in Nashville. Rudolph also had throat cancer. She was interred at Edgefield Missionary Baptist Church in Clarksville, Tennessee. At the time of her death, she had four children, eight grandchildren, and many nieces and nephews. Thousands of mourners filled Tennessee State University's Kean Hall on November 17, 1994, for the memorial service in her honor. Others attended the funeral at Clarksville's First Baptist Church. Across Tennessee, the state flag flew at half-mast.

Nine months after Rudolph's death, Tennessee State University, on August 11, 1995, dedicated its new six-story dormitory the "Wilma G. Rudolph Residence Center". A black marble marker was placed on her grave in Clarksville's Foster Memorial Garden Cemetery by the Wilma Rudolph Memorial Commission on November 21, 1995. In 1997, Governor Don Sundquist proclaimed that June 23 be known as "Wilma Rudolph Day" in Tennessee.

Legacy

In 1994, Wilma Rudolph Boulevard was the name given to the portion of U.S. Route 79 in Clarksville, Tennessee.

In August 1995, the Wilma G. Rudolph Residence Center was dedicated at Tennessee State University. The six story building currently houses upper class and graduate women. It is furnished with a computer lab, beauty salon, cafeteria and provides Wi-fi in each room.

The Woman's Sports Foundation Wilma Rudolph Courage Award is presented to a female athlete who exhibits extraordinary courage in her athletic performance, demonstrates the ability to overcome adversity, makes significant contributions to sports and serves as an inspiration and role model to those who face challenges, overcomes them and strives for success at all levels. This award was first given in 1996 to Jackie Joyner-Kersee.

A life-size bronze statue of Rudolph stands at the southern end of the Cumberland River Walk at the base of the Pedestrian Overpass, College Street and Riverside Drive, in Clarksville.

In 2000, Sports Illustrated magazine ranked Rudolph as number one on its listing of the top fifty greatest sports figures in twentieth-century Tennessee. A year before, she was ranked as 41st greatest athletes of the 20th century by ESPN.

Following the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Berlin in 1994, Berlin American High School (BAHS) was turned over to the people of Berlin and became the "Gesamtschule Am Hegewinkel". The school was renamed the "Wilma Rudolph Oberschule" in her honor in the summer 2000.

On July 14, 2004, the United States Postal Service issued a 23-cent Distinguished Americans series postage stamp in recognition of her accomplishments.

In 1977, a made-for-TV docudrama titled Wilma (also known as The Story of Wilma Rudolph) was produced by Bud Greenspan; it starred Shirley Jo Finney, Cicely Tyson, Jason Bernard and Denzel Washington in one of his first roles.

In 2015, UK film Production Company Pixel Revolution Films was commissioned by Positive Edge Education Ltd to produce three short inspiration dramas to be screened in schools, Wilma Rudolph’s story was chosen to be one of the films. Written and directed by Ian and Dominic Higgins, the film was titled Unlimited.

Wikipedia