Some quotes from Warren Buffett that can be taken to heart as guidance for Arkansas State.

“Your premium brand had better be delivering something special, or it’s not going to get the business.”

What is the something special Arkansas State can deliver? Cheap entertainment? In the Division I world, yes Arkansas State games are cheap but that apparently isn’t a compelling product. Successful brands in college athletics deliver history and tradition, we don’t have that to sell. Other than a gimmick here or there that might draw a few fans, we’ve got to find a way to stand-out from other programs. That means being a champion. Not just hanging around .500. You have to produce championship rings and banners.

“I always knew I was going to be rich. I don’t think I ever doubted it for a minute. “

It’s often said you can’t sell others until you sell yourself. Arkansas State must have a culture change. We have to be a program that not only wants to be highly successful, we have to expect it and demand it.

“I don’t look to jump over 7-foot bars: I look around for 1-foot bars that I can step over. “

Mr. Buffett just nailed my philosophy on scheduling. Winning the tough battles against the best is fantastic, but the odds are always against success there. Find challenges you can meet and defeat become bigger and stronger and the size of the challenge you can meet and defeat increases as well.

“We enjoy the process far more than the proceeds. “

There is no such thing as getting to the top in college athletics. Once you reach the pinnacle for one game or one season, players graduate, coaches retire or are hired away, or someone figures out a better way to do what you are doing. Take time to sit back and be happy about what you have accomplished and in that instant someone has sped past you. An athletic department has to be constantly growing and evolving and attracting more people to it. While championships are the goal, merely reaching them will lead to your fall unless you continue to set higher and tougher targets once you’ve mastered that one.

“There seems to be some perverse human characteristic that likes to make easy things difficult. “

No doubt about this one. Winning in college is pretty simple. The team with the best talent tends to win against the team with less talent. Do what it takes to attract better players and most anyone can look good. The best talent seems to like to go someplace where they can win. Choosing between winning programs geography, post-season access and TV appearances seem to be the difference makers. Post-season access and TV appearances tend to follow wins. Once you break the bad cycle and start winning, much of the rest just follows along.

“Chains of habit are too light to be felt until they are too heavy to be broken.”

It takes time to build up a base of regularly attending fans and once you have them you have a window of time to hold on to them before they lose interest. We saw it post-Lacewell as it took a few years of bad football to finally drive fans away, we saw it in basketball as well. We have to hook fans and get them into the habit of season tickets and donations because then we have time to screw up for a couple seasons before we lose them again.

“The important thing is to keep playing, to play against weak opponents and to play for big stakes.”

A Wal-Mart analogy. For years Wal-Mart avoided the appearance of competing against Sears then the largest retailer in the world. They fought under-capitalized mom and pop stores and small chains instead until they had become the largest retailer in the world and had Sears reeling. In sports, think UNLV basketball vs. the Big West or Memphis basketball vs. C-USA. They built good teams and had the “big showdowns” for the conference title but while they were busy being dominant in a small pond they built national contenders.

“Should you find yourself in a chronically leaking boat, energy devoted to changing vessels is likely to be more productive than energy devoted to patching leaks.”

Programs in trouble rarely abandon direction easily. They would rather make a tweak or two than try something totally different.

The BCS has been “busted” four times. Utah 2004 and 2008, Boise State 2006, and Hawaii 2007. Under the current auto-qualifier rules at the very least Marshall in 1999 and Tulane in 1998 would have been “busters” as well.

Utah is an old hand to Division I, playing at the highest level of NCAA competition since 1938. Hawaii has been Division I since 1974. Boise State stepped up into the highest level in 1996.

Utah had Urban Meyer as head coach for two seasons including the BCS buster year of 2004. His two seasons saw a change in Utah scheduling. The Utes continued to play an all Division I-A (now FBS) schedule but they switched from playing 5 home 6 away to 6 home and 5 away. This year it was a 6-6 split with one FCS.
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At the end of the 2007 I was about as frustrated as a fan could be with Arkansas State basketball. The then Indians had finished 16-15 against Division I competition. That in and of itself was not what was frustrating.

The team had dropped three games to teams rated 250 or worse in the RPI.

While there are many intangibles that can be used in evaluating a team’s performance, at some point the numbers that results produce have to matter.

If you can avoid terrible losses, and just win the ones you should and only lose to decent teams, it might not get you into the NCAA Tournament, but it sets the stage to make it possible for the league to get a good seed or multiple teams.

The Red Wolves have now played 8 of the 9 Division I non-conference opponents set for this season as well as two league opponents and the numbers are very encouraging.

Arkansas State’s three losses have been:
AT #84 Ole Miss
AT #122 Missouri State
AT #109 UALR

There isn’t a bad loss in there, ASU has lost what it is supposed to lose.

More importantly Arkansas State is winning the games it is supposed to win. The best win based on current RPI numbers is over 133 Ball State but it was a road win.

Arkansas State has faced three teams in the sub-250 range and won all of them winning at Indiana State and at home over Mississippi Valley State and Southeast Missouri State.

After that 2006-07 season Arkansas State was 177 in RPI, greatly hurt by those three terrible non-conference losses despite being over .500 vs. Division I teams. Last year’s team staggered to a 272 rating.

This year Arkansas State is currently 124. That’s not a number that puts the Red Wolves on the NCAA or even NIT bubble but it is a very good improvement. The team is on track to finish at least in the top half of Division I for the first time in years and possibly in the top 40%.

Arkansas State may not be playing great basketball right now, but its certainly playing good basketball based on the numbers.

A few comments in the wake of the end of the season have caught my eye. Steve Roberts told the Lafayette paper ASU had played under a misconception thinking 6 was good enough to get a bowl. Dr. Lee saying ASU had done all it could to promote itself as an attractive bowl pick. There is the idea that ASU played a tough schedule. We play too many “money games”. We aren’t in a good recruiting area.

Let’s start looking at these ideas.
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The 2008 Red Wolves can still reach two goals this season if they can reverse the three game slide they are on.

They can reach a bowl game and they can be conference champs.

The formula to become conference champs is very simple. Win the next three games and hope either Troy or Middle Tennessee beat Louisiana Lafayette. That doesn’t get ASU past the tie-breakers but it is worth a share of the title. Right now there are potential two, three and four-way tie scenarios that Arkansas State could be involved in. The Red Wolves can’t win a four-way tie, most three-way tie scenarios aren’t good and a two-way tie with Troy would be good, with ULL… bad.

Still salvaging a share of the league title with or without winning tie-breakers would be an accomplishment for a team that has been some place been dreadful and atrocious in the fourth quarter in conference games. Arkansas State has given up 15 unanswered to hold on against ULM, and gave up 14 and 10 unanswered against ULL and FIU in the process of losing nine point fourth quarter leads. A three game win streak would go a long way to washing out that bad taste.

A bowl game remains within reach as well.

Unless a lot of improbable things happen there will be a number of bowls scrambling to find teams for their games. When a bowl can’t get a team from its primary partners they have to take an available 7 win or better team before a 6 win team. The supply of vacant spots is basically guaranteed to be larger than the supply of unattached 7 win teams.

If the Red Wolves slip up and only win six, a bowl game becomes less probable but still possible. St. Pete, PapaJohns.com and Independence have all agreed to give first priority filling vacancies to the Sun Belt. While they can’t select a 6-6 Arkansas State over any seven win team, you would expect they wouldn’t select a 6-6 team from any league other than the Sun Belt over Arkansas State.

POSSIBLE BOWL VACANCIES
Poinsettia (San Diego): Pac-10 will not meet its obligation unless Stanford gets eligible and the winner of the Arizona State - UCLA game gets eligible. Stanford has to win at 6-4 Cal to get eligible. Arizona will State would have to win at 6-4 Arizona if they beat UCLA. UCLA would have to beat USC if they beat Arizona State.

Hawaii: Needs one of Stanford, Arizona State and UCLA to get eligible

Motor City (Detroit): Big 10 will not meet its obligation unless Illinois wins at 8-3 Northwestern

Texas (Houston): Big XII can’t have a team unless Colorado beats Nebraska AND only one Big XII team makes the BCS.

Independence (Shreveport): Big XII won’t have a team unless Colorado wins at Nebraska -OR- only one Big XII team makes the BCS.

Independence (Shreveport): SEC can’t have a team unless Auburn beats Alabama -OR- Arkansas beats both Miss. St. and LSU -OR- SEC sends one to BCS.

Papa Johns (Birmingham): SEC can’t have a team unless either both Auburn and Arkansas win out -OR- one wins out and SEC sends two to the BCS.

The Red Wolves need a strong finish for several reasons.

First and least important is the reason I mentioned back on August 31st. The Texas A&M win doesn’t mean much without context making it a good win and context is provided by what happens in the 11 games other than Texas A&M. Middle Tennessee has the most impressive win of the year by a Sun Belt team, defeating 5-2 ACC member Maryland but with the Blue Raiders 1-3 in conference play the win doesn’t register. A weak finish means ASU’s win over Texas A&M doesn’t register.
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The Democrat-Gazette talks about how Leonard was recruited heavily by the Cajuns. Whoever cut and pasted for the web got the radio/tv information mixed into the article so you’ve got wade past that in mid-paragraph.

The Cajuns think they could have 25,000 at the game today. They have played the reverse of ASU’s schedule starting the year with five of six on the road. Article looks at the local economic impact of home games.

Log Cabin-Democrat has the Arkansas AP pre-game write-up.

Lafayette paper has an article on the back-up QB who may or may not start today. Just as a reminder history buffs. We first saw Desormeaux in 2005 when he stepped in for an injured Jerry Babb.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution has its best and worst of the season so far. ASU gets a mention in worst performance by a new head coach.

Saturday, other obligations forced me to miss the ASU-ULM game. I had to be in Dallas instead. I didn’t want to waste good weather so I hitched a ride with Harry from GoMeanGreen.com and headed to Denton soon as I got free of what I was in town for.

Thanks to Harry I was able to roam the sidelines and have some observations I hope you will find useful.

No shocking news here. The Cajuns are a big play team. Michael Desormeaux isn’t the best passer in the conference but he isn’t in an offense that asks him to be the best passer. His passing role is to keep defenses honest enough to win the game on the ground. He taught UNT some honesty Saturday. Three TD passes accounted for over half of his passing yards. Two of them were nearly identical plays. Play action with that odd little backpedal he does, Jason Chery slanting a bit to his left after blowing past the man covering him and just running under the ball and taking it to the house. Two absolutely fantastic plays if you aren’t there bleeding UNT green. His other TD reception was again a case of blowing past his man but there was less field to work with.
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Here’s Big XII replay’s less than enthusiastic recap of the season opener.

And another view of the ASU TD.

Through week five of the college football season only two of Arkansas State’s opponents have winning records, Alabama and Texas Southern.

Kansas State 45 LA Lafayette (1-3) 37
Rice 77 North Texas (0-4) 20
Florida International (1-3)35 Toledo 16
Oklahoma State 55 Troy (2-2) 24
Alabama (5-0) 41 Georgia 30
Texas A&M (2-2) 21 Army 17
Texas Southern (3-2) 45 Concordia 27
Florida Atlantic at Middle Tennessee, Tuesday, September 30
Louisiana Monroe (1-3) Idle
Southern Mississippi (2-2) Idle