Why Bobbi Why?

[PantherLou]

milwsport said:

Constant sniping, showing no appreciation of the sea change in their attitude (and that's what it has been ) can lead them to think that no matter what they do they can't please us so why bother.

I agree with this 100%. I think it is important to realize that the coverage as a whole has improved, and I have made a point of communicating this to Bobbi.

I think we as fans do need to be aware that there is a fine line between constructive criticism and complete whining.

That being said, taking the attitude that we should just be happy with what we've got isn't going to get us anywhere, either.

[nohopspanther]

The squeaky wheel gets the oil, and the Badger and Gold backers b**** a hell of a lot more and they've gotten coverage and improvements over time. It doesn't happen overnight, you have to constantly apply pressure. I've written e-mails thanking the JS for coverage on UWM and the increase of stories. Quantity lacking quality is hardly an acceptable output for a paper that is supposed to be the leader in the region.

[JimmyLemke]

nohopspanther said:

You haven't done much reading.

By Bobbi, I meant that I've never seen Bobbi use the Mid-major top 25.

It seems that people are starting to lean away from bashing Bobbi and starting to move their criticism towards Garry D. Howard.

Can anyone come up with a short history on the man? I don't know a whole lot about him, just met him once, and he talks kinda funny.

I do know he sets tough ass deadlines. Bobbi has skipped asking questions at the away team's part of the press conference so she can type up her article. From what she herself has told me, she has 2 deadlines: one right after the game, and one about 30 minutes after the end of the game. With conferences taking around 20 minutes, it leaves her a 10 minute buffer before her final deadline. Talk about rushed.

[Kroener3535]

From my standpoint its tough to sell everyone on Milwaukee instead of UWM when on our home scoreboard it reads UWM at the cell...

[SRT4driver]

Once again, our school's not trying to get away from UWM. They WANT people to refer to us as UWM, as well as print it, put it on the TV, scoreboard, etc.
It's the "UW-Mil" and "Wis-Mil" they don't want to see placed alongside a UIC or a UW or a BC at the bottom of the TV with the scores...and half of the time, that's what happens.
We Are: UWM for short, Milwaukee in full when there's space or you wanna inform. If the press really thinks their audience is too dumb to figure out what the "UW" part in "UWM" stands for after you've already been saying Milwaukee over and over, then feel free to say the entire name of the school once or twice like our athletics site does. That's it.
Otherwise you get 10 billion different variations of ONE NAME, all over the print and broadcast media, my examples only being a few of them.
Bottom line on why they want only UWM or Milwaukee=Keep It Simple Stupid...but the press is (many times, not always) too stupid to do that.
And I agree, when it comes to the MJS, we need to speak up with both negative AND positive feedback...not just when we feel they've slighted us (and they have a lot) but also when they've been fair to us. I make it a point to do both.

[mcdadenets50]

nohopspanther said:

Quantity lacking quality is hardly an acceptable output for a paper that is supposed to be the leader in the region.

You got it. Let's not equate more (sub par) coverage with a good thing.

[mcdadenets50]

milwsport said:

"It was a nice article but I wish they had mentioned our RPI too" instead of "Why Bobbi Why do you have to be so ignorant" (not the words used here but that seems to be the sentiment)

Many on this board have taken that tact when communicating our thoughts to those (Howard, Manoyan, Roquemore, etc.) at the JS over the years. I have complimented, suggested, and questioned my thoughts to them about a dozen times over the past five years to no avail, in my opinion.

The final straw for me was when I kindly told the powers that be at the JS that I was cancelling my subscription after four years due to subpar UWM coverage. Their reply? That's too bad, you won't be able to read our story on Dylan Page next week. (Who runs a business like that?).

They don't get it or just don't want to get it. I'm done, bring on WSU.

[milwsport]

mcdadenets50 said:

nohopspanther said:

Quantity lacking quality is hardly an acceptable output for a paper that is supposed to be the leader in the region.

You got it. Let's not equate more (sub par) coverage with a good thing.

That's unfair.

Sure there are nitpicks with every article, shoulda said this, don't agree with that, forgot to mention the other thing. But the articles are readable, and are at least decent, sometimes way more than decent.

Keep in mind that every column inch they give to us they are taking away from someone else, and that someone else is b****ing too.

And for those who are forgetting we need butts i nthe seats. EVERY story they write helps us to get those no matter how imperfect some of us may find it to be.

The increased coverage HAS helped us to get more people to pay attention and convince others to attend. They are helping to make UWM a big deal.

There's nothing subpar about that.

[JimmyLemke]

It's good that I'm not being a dork and writing Wisc.-Mil in my columns then.

I think some people on here want equal coverage of Marquette and Wisconsin.

Maybe the problem is that only the beat writer comes to UWM games. Mark Stewart, Michael Hunt, and others have written extra coverage for Marquette and Wisconsin, but mostly Wisconsin. Todd Rosiak does a larger portion of MU than Potrykus does of UW.

If someone besides Bobbi starts writing more than once during the regular season on UWM, I'd be happier. I'm not taking anything away from Bobbi; I enjoy her writing, for the most part. But the additional coverage that other writers can bring, from a different point of view than beat writer, would add a lot to UWM's increasing image in the local paper.

[troggy]

srt4driver said:

Emmett Prosser has mentioned it several times on his blog (calling it "inflated" among other derisive comments). Does that count?
His blog posts lately (Jan. 23-present) regarding the RPI have been somewhat more intelligent, though. It sounds like he was just taking cheap-shots at the RPI earlier in the year because he failed to understand how it works, but is starting to have a better grasp on it lately (heavy emphasis on starting to).
I like how he says "Some of this number crunching is just out of whack. New calculators are needed."
New calculators?!? You mean like the ones that kept a sorry-ass Louisville team in the top 25 weeks and weeks after they should have been booted? No thanks Emmett, but I think I prefer something that takes stupidity & bias OUT of the equation.

For stupidity and bias, it doesn't get much worse than the RPI. At least now they're giving some extra credit for winning road games but that wasn't even the case until last year. Beyond that, the 25%-50%-25% formula that's used is utterly arbitrary and still doesn't take into account how competitive teams are.

Why should a team's RPI rise simply because they play a great team on the road? It doesn't even matter if they lose the game by 50 points. Conversely, why should a team's RPI drop automatically because they happen to play a bad team?

I realize the RPI tries to reward teams that play a good schedule but who you play still has more to do with your ranking than how you play. BAH! That's not accuracy. The Sagarin Ratings aren't perfect (nothing can be) but are considerably more reliable than the RPI.

Todd

[SRT4driver]

I'm sorry, but you obviously haven't looked at the RPI for what it is, and does.
The last paragraph is a good place to START your understanding:
thebracketboard.blogspot.com/2005/09/bracketologyrpi.html
Without the selection committee using the RPI, college basketball's post-season eventually becomes a carbon-copy of college football and the exclusionary BcS series. That being, pretty much NO TEAM from outside the 7 historical power conferences gets an at-large bid. EVAR!!! Gonzaga wouldn't have even made it for the first few years of their current run. It would be 24 automatics, maybe one at-large every few years from outside the 6 BCS conferences & C-USA, and approximately 45 power conference teams, year-in and year-out. And I mean EVERY SINGLE team with a .500 conference record from a BCS conference, as well as handfuls of sub-.500 teams, EVERY SINGLE YEAR!
If you can't see that in distinct black and white, than I want some of what you're smoking.

[troggy]

srt4driver said:

I'm sorry, but you obviously haven't looked at the RPI for what it is, and does.

I've been all through that, several years ago in fact. I know what the RPI's purpose is. I just don't think that it does an effective job because the methodology is so completely flawed.

Without the selection committee using the RPI, college basketball's post-season eventually becomes a carbon-copy of college football and the exclusionary BcS series.

Nonsense, in fact the RPI is heavily slanted to favor BCS type schools. Giving extra credit to road wins the past two years has helped (though even that is a double edged sword, see example below) but the fact that 75% of the formula is derived from whom you play and who they played greatly favors teams from power conferences who can rack up high RPI's from simply playing a good schedule, even if they don't perform especially well against it.

Your point about RPI being a measure of a team's performance relative to its schedule is true but that can certainly be done to much greater effectiveness than the RPI's formula does it. I'm not advocating that no ranking system be used, merely that it be as accurate as possible. Any mathematician will tell you that the RPI's formula is ridiculously flawed.

That being, pretty much NO TEAM from outside the 7 historical power conferences gets an at-large bid. EVAR!!! Gonzaga wouldn't have even made it for the first few years of their current run. It would be 24 automatics, maybe one at-large every few years from outside the 6 BCS conferences & C-USA, and approximately 45 power conference teams, year-in and year-out. And I mean EVERY SINGLE team with a .500 conference record from a BCS conference, as well as handfuls of sub-.500 teams, EVERY SINGLE YEAR!
If you can't see that in distinct black and white, than I want some of what you're smoking.

Again, I disagree in that the RPI actually favors teams from power conferences. I remember comparing the RPI to the Sagarin Ratings three or four years ago and every single Horizon league team was rated lower in the RPI. That's been alleviated a bit by the inclusion of road wins in the formula but that calculation even exposes a huge flaw in the RPI.

It used to be that Team A could go to Duke, get clobbered by 40 points and see their RPI jump by about ten positions because Duke is such a good team. How exactly is this effectively measuring how a team performed relative to its schedule??? Now, it's even worse because a road loss only counts as 0.6 against you instead of as a full loss. So now, you can go to Duke, lose by 40 and see your RPI jump even more than before. Great huh and really accurate.

By the way, I'm a non-smoker.

Todd

[SRT4driver]

Sorry, but compared to every other available criteria that I could realistically see the selection committee using, the RPI is NOT "heavily slanted to favor BCS type schools". I don't disagree that it's flawed, nor do I disagree that there are many better rating systems out there.
What I DO disagree with is the fact that you make it sound possible that the selection committee might actually start using one of these more equitable rating systems, thereby helping us "non-major's" out. In that case, I stand by my previous statement that you are most definately smoking something.
As a "mid-major" college bball fan, I think we are So! Very! Extremenly! Lucky! that a system like this is in place to help decide what would otherwise be a completly arbitrary and biased selection process, that, IMO, would end up WAAAAAYYYYYY more biased towards the big-money conferences than it is now.
End rant.

[milwsport]

One only has too look at how many mid majors are in the top 50 in the RPI to see that it is way better than the FB ratings systems for those schools who are not in BCS conference.

[SRT4driver]

Exactly.
And that's just one of many obvious examples.