Eric Steger wins the IGA Match Play Championships

Yesterday Ball state went 1-1 in the semi finals of the Indiana Golf Association Match Play Championship. Today Eric Steger won his finals match at The Trophy Club in Lebanon Indiana.

Steger won this fifth match of the tournament, needing extra holes for the first time, defeating Erich Johnston, of Fort Wayne in 21 holes. This is the second IGA tournament the Ball State Junior has won this month.

In ten tournaments he has finished eighth or better eight times. The Match play victory places Sterger 1.25 points behind Erich Johnston in the IGA John K. David Player of the Year standings.

Grading the Rankers, Mid-American Media

Today, during the Mid American Conference Football media event at ford field the MAC News Media Association preseason poll was released.

In the East Buffalo received 155 points followed by Temple (144), Akron (128), Ohio (116), BGSU (101), Kent State (51) and Miami (33) according to the MAC media members. In the west Central Michigan was picked to win division, capturing 154 points Western Michigan was close behind with 126 points, followed by Northern Illinois (103), Toledo (71), Ball State (58) and Eastern Michigan (34).

For the championship game Central Michigan lead with (18), followed by Western Michigan (4), Buffalo (2), and Temple (2).

MAC News Media Association

	Correlation	2008 Grade
East	67	56
West	89	79
Overall	78	68

Mac Media barely passes last year, they did relatively poorly in both the East and West divisions. They do line up pretty well with other publications in the West for this coming year but like everyone else they have their own take on the East.

MAC Media (2009)

West	East
Central Michigan	Buffalo
Western Michigan	Temple
Northern Illinois	Akron
Toledo	Ohio
Ball State	Bowling Green
Eastern Michigan	Kent
	Miami

Mac Smack (2009)

West	East
Central Michigan	Temple
Western Michigan	Buffalo
Northern Illinois	Bowling Green
Ball State	Akron
Toledo	Ohio
Eastern Michigan	Miami
	Kent

Add another vote for Buffalo to make an appearance to the Championship game so far 60% of the polls I have seen have Buffalo winning (the other 40%, Including MAC Smack have Temple) . Last years Western Champ, Ball State, does better here than in Van Delay's but 5th place still seems low. The Cardinals are a team that I think can finish as high as Third if Kelly Page comes along and the Offensive line plays even marginally well.

I am surprised at how poorly some publicans are placing the Falcons? While a new coach usually means some growing pains Bowling Green only has new leadership because Greg Brandon was foolish enough to call out students after an already heart breaking loss. Outside of 2006 the Falcons have not had a losing season in more than six years finishing First and Second in the East division the past two seasons. They are a healthy Program with a somewhat favorable schedule finishing lower than third would be a very big surprise (BTW the last time the Falcons were picked this low they finished tied for first in the East and went to a Bowl).

Speaking of Bowling Green the MAC Media Poll had them winning last year, one of the few that did not have Miami Winning in 2008. Though not hurt as badly as some by Miami having Kent at 4th cost them some 2008 points.

MAC Media 2008

West	East
Central Michigan	Bowling Green
Ball State	Miami
Western Michigan	Buffalo
Toledo	Kent
Eastern Michigan	Temple
Northern Illinois	Ohio
	Akron

Mid American Conference 2008

West	East
Ball State	Buffalo
Central Michigan	Bowling Green
Western Michigan	Temple
Northern Illinois	Akron
Toledo	Ohio
Eastern Michigan	Kent
	Miami

So far here are the polls I have seen for their east and their scores:

	Sporting News	The Quad	VanDelay	MAC Media
2008 Grade East	61	40	57	56
2008 Grade West	96	79	92	79
Correlation East	75	83	50	67
Correlation West	89	100	68	89

MAC Media Shook up the Rankings a bit, another vote for Toledo over Ball State moves the Rockets into fourth and the low pick for the Falcons drops them along into 4th.

West	Score	East	Score
CMU	1.20	Buffalo	1.40
WMU	1.80	Temple	2.20
NIU	3.20	Ohio	3.60
Toledo	4.40	BG	3.80
Ball State	4.60	Akron	4.40
EMU	5.80	Miami	6.20
		Kent	6.60

As always if anyone out there knows of a preview for which I can get the 2009 and 2008 data please give me a shout..

--

The Criteria for grades is as follows: Correspondence Score:

• Penalty Points: For every spot off a team is between predictions a single point is taken off (Example: SN picked Central to win the West, I picked them second so that's minus one per team, or I picked Temple to win the East and SN pick them to finish third that would be minus two).
• Total Points: The total points is the maximum number of penalty points for a division, for the 6 team west that is 18 points and for the 7 team east that is 24 points.
  
• Score: The penalty points are taken from the total points (18 for the west, 24 for the east) and then a simple percentage is calculated. For the west there were two penalty points (one for CMU and one for WMU) so that's 16 points out of a possible 18 or 88.5%

Mac-Smack Prediction Grade:

• Predict the Conference Champ: 10 points, if your predicted champ finishes second, 5 points.
• Predict the Worst Team in the conference 6 points, if your predicted worst finisher places second to last, 3 points.
• For each team in the west if you predict correctly their place 14 points, if you are one place off 12 points, two places off 9 points, three places off 5 points, four places off 1 point.
  
• For each team in the east correctly predicting correctly will get you 12, one place off 11, two places off 8 three places off 5, four places off 2, five places off 1.

Ball State Golf at the IGA Match Play Championships

Eric Sterger's strong summer of Golf continues, after winning the Indiana Golf Association Public Links tournament in June Sterger along with six other Ball State golfers advanced to the round of 32 and then passed two of those golfers to the final eight. In the final eight they are making their presence felt and due to fortunate seeding if Sterger and Ross Cosat continue their strong play they may face eachother for the title

In his quarter final match Steger defeated first seed Seth Fair and Cosat defeated Justing Tereshko to advace to the final four where they will face Chase Wright and Erich Johnston respectivly. Sterger clinched after the 17th round while Cosat requied one tiebreaker round to clich his enterance to the quarterfinals.

The semifinals are just starting so tonight or tommorow I will update as to where the pair ends up.

--

Update: Sterger wins his semi final 2 & 1 Cosat loses 2 & 1...

Grading the Rankers, VanDelay Sports

The folks over at VanDelay run about one of the best sources of MAC info out there and they have released their 2009 MAC football predictions. Its been awhile since I did a 'grade the rankers' and this is one of the few I can find which is complete for 2009 and for which I can find their 2008 predictions. For those of you who are not familiar with VD's MAC blog what it lacks in appearance it more than makes up for with content and organization.

VanDelay's Pigskin Preview

	Correlation	2008 Grade
East	50	57
West	68	92
Overall	59	75

VanDelay did pretty well last year as pretty much everyone gets a pass on the east because in addition to Miami falling flat any number of plays from any number of games shuffles around the top 4-5 teams.

VanDelay Sports (2009)

West	East
Central Michigan	Buffalo
Western Michigan	Ohio
Toledo	Akron
Northern Illinois	Temple
Eastern Michigan	Bowling Green
Ball State	Kent
	Miami

Mac Smack (2009)

West	East
Central Michigan	Temple
Western Michigan	Buffalo
Northern Illinois	Bowling Green
Ball State	Akron
Toledo	Ohio
Eastern Michigan	Miami
	Kent

The Pigskin preview stands out in several ways:

Most noticeably they have Ball state at the cellar of the MAC West, you have to love Coach English of the Eagles and Toledo's Beckman but to see either of those teams eclipsing Ball State this season is way out of whack with what most people, myself included, were expecting. They were one of the publications calling for Ball state to take it all last year so maybe they have a pulse on the cards but I would be surprised if BSU falls short of 7 wins and amaze if they fall short of 6.

In addition to Ball State falling off they have the Huskies falling below Toledo making them the only preview not to have NIU following after some iteration of Western and Central Michigan.

On the east side they are thus far the only publication that has had Temple lower than 3rd in the east and have Ohio finishing higher than anyone else at second. Looking at temples favorable schedule its hard not to seem them coming in first or second in that division.

Miami cost Van Delays 22 points last year (10 for division crown and 12 for placement) 25 if you count that their terrible season kept Ohio from finishing second to last but they fared about as well as everyone else in 2008.

Pigskin Preview 2008

West	East
Ball State	Miami
Western Michigan	Buffalo
Central Michigan	Kent
Toledo	Temple
Northern Illinois	Bowling Green
Eastern Michigan	Ohio
	Akron

Mid American Conference 2008

West	East
Ball State	Buffalo
Central Michigan	Bowling Green
Western Michigan	Temple
Northern Illinois	Akron
Toledo	Ohio
Eastern Michigan	Kent
	Miami

So far here are the polls I have seen for their east and their scores:

	Sporting News	The Quad	VanDelay
2008 Grade East	61	40	57
2008 Grade West	96	79	92
Correlation East	75	83	50
Correlation West	89	100	68

With four sets of data its also probably worth putting up the average team rankings.. each teams score is their average ranking...

West	Score	East	Score
CMU	1.25	Buffalo	1.50
WMU	1.75	Temple	2.25
NIU	3.25	BG	3.50
Ball State	4.50	Ohio	3.50
Toledo	4.50	Akron	4.75
EMU	5.75	Miami	6.00
		Kent	6.75

If anyone out there knows of a preview for which I can get the 2009 and 2008 data plaease give me a shout..

--

The Criteria for grades is as follows: Correspondence Score:

• Penalty Points: For every spot off a team is between predictions a single point is taken off (Example: SN picked Central to win the West, I picked them second so that's minus one per team, or I picked Temple to win the East and SN pick them to finish third that would be minus two).
• Total Points: The total points is the maximum number of penalty points for a division, for the 6 team west that is 18 points and for the 7 team east that is 24 points.
  
• Score: The penalty points are taken from the total points (18 for the west, 24 for the east) and then a simple percentage is calculated. For the west there were two penalty points (one for CMU and one for WMU) so that's 16 points out of a possible 18 or 88.5%

Mac-Smack Prediction Grade:

• Predict the Conference Champ: 10 points, if your predicted champ finishes second, 5 points.
• Predict the Worst Team in the conference 6 points, if your predicted worst finisher places second to last, 3 points.
• For each team in the west if you predict correctly their place 14 points, if you are one place off 12 points, two places off 9 points, three places off 5 points, four places off 1 point.
  
• For each team in the east correctly predicting correctly will get you 12, one place off 11, two places off 8 three places off 5, four places off 2, five places off 1.

Vitek Earns GLSCL All-Star Game MVP Honors

For the second time this month a player from the Mid American conference became the all star MVP in a summer wooden bat league. Last week it was Buffalo's Jacob Rosenbeck in the New England Collegiate Baseball League.

This week its Ball State third baseman Kolbrin Vitek bringing home the hardware after the Great Lakes Summer Collegiate League.

The first team All MAC junior hit a second inning solo home run which adds to a very impressive season with for the struggling Lake Erie Monarchs.

Vitek has been to the plate114, hitting an astounding .386 and contributing to his on base percentage of .450. His team leading four home runs and six triples contribute to a .711 slugging percentage which is nearly double any monarch with more than three at bats.

The numbers are no surprise to Ball State fans who watched him put up an average of .389 and a slugging percent of .736 last season for the Cardinals.

More MAC Baseball

More mid-american baseball news today, this time its Miami.

Miami: The Red Hawks currently have 19 players in six different wooden bat summer leagues.

• Great Lakes Summer Collegiate League (7)
• Coastal Plain League with (5)
• Prospect League with (4)
• Cape Cod League (1)
  
• Northwoods League (1)
  
• Chicago Suburban Baseball League (1)

Jon Edgington (.337 with 16 RBI), Brad Gschwind (Pictured left, .282 with 16 RBI) and Kyle Weldon (.278 with 11 RBI's) we all selected to the GLSCL All-Star game.

Matt Rosinski did noit make the All Start game but has been impressive with a team-high-tying 10 appearances for the Stark County Terriers, going 1-1 with a 5.25 ERA and one save in 12.0 innings of work.

Jamaal Hollis in the coastal plains league has a 4.61 ERA in 12 appearances, with his three saves ranking second on the team he has an impressive 26 strikeouts in just 13.2 innings of work. Also in the CPL are Jordan Jankowski, Chase Stewart, Tyler Melling, and Ryan Curl.

Other rehawks in Summer action are r Kyle Donawerth and Samuel Dawes of the Prospect League, Adam Weisenburger in the Northwoods league, Brandon Meister plays in the Chicago Suburban Baseball elague, finally Adam Eaton of the Cape Cod League has yet to see action due to injury.

Zips Vollyball gets 9th AVCA Academic Award

The American Volleyball Coaches Association Academic Award was established in 1992/93 so for a team to have won nine of them in 17 years speakes volumes of that programs attention to academic success. The award is presented to collegiate and high school volleyball teams that displayed excellence in the classroom during the school year by maintaining at least a 3.30 cumulative team grade-point average on a 4.0 scale or a 4.10 cumulative team GPA on a 5.0 scale.

Whats even more impressive than winning it every other year (on average) is the recent performance winning it five out of the past six years (2004, 2005, 2006, 2007 and now 2009)

Seven of the 71 teams receiving the Team Academic Award this season represent the MAC (Akron, Ball State, Bowling Green, Central Michigan, Eastern Michigan, Toledo and Western Michigan).

MAC Baseball Players making the most of the summer

Before vacation I talked about how Ryan Mace of Kent was owing in the summer leagues, as the weeks wear on more and more MAC players are getting noticed. Buffalo and Western Michigan both have numerous players representing them in various summer all star games.

Buffalo: Third Baseman Jacob Rosenbeck one of 15 UB players seeing action this summer was named Most Valuable Player of the New England Collegiate Baseball League All-Star Game. His two hits and game tying RBI were enough to secure the honor.

In 32 games with the Holyoke Blue Sox his .311 batting average is ties him for second on the team, he is joined on the Blue Sox by fellow Bull Rob Lawler.

The Melville Millionaires of the Western Major Baseball league also have two UB players in Kevin Crumb (second on the team with his 3.83 ERA) and Brian Lattanzi.

Western Michigan: The Bronco's put up four All Star players in their respective leagues. Casey Webber received his first all-star nomination while Chris Lewis, Kyle Galbraith and Brian Stroud repeated as all-stars for the second summer in a row.

The Chillicothe Paints were fortunate to have first year Bronco Casey Webber who ranks third in the Prospect League with a 0.98 ERA (four earned runs in 36.2 innings pitched) and 50 strikeouts. On July 11, Webber fanned 14 batters in a seven-inning, complete game effort.

The Battle Creek Bombers (Northwoods League) Have Chris Lewis who is batting .333 with 35 RBIs (second best in the league for both categories).

NIU gets a home and home with Kansas

Director of Athletics Jeff Compher announced that after months of work he has secured a home and home series with the Kansas Jayhawks. In 2011 the Huskies will travel to Lawerance with the Jayhaks coming to DeKalb in 2012. Its been six years since Northern Illinois has hosted a BCS team and more than 20 since they last played Kansas.

This is just another item in a string of good news for the Huskies as they bounce back to form after a disappointing 2007 season by going to a bowl game in Jerry Kills first season.

Jerry Kill is from Kansas and is looking forward to the series both for the hig profile home game in 2012 and the chance to go play in Kansas in 2011

"Bringing a team like Kansas to DeKalb for a home-and-home series is huge for our program and great for our fans. For me and the guys on our staff, not only do we get to play them here at Huskie Stadium, but when we go to Kansas, we get to go `home' where we were born and raised, where many of us coached before and have a lot of friends and family, so that is a neat aspect of this deal."

Compher has indicated he considers such home and homes with automatic BCS teams in the future a high priority for the Northern Illinois football program.

"It's always a challenge, knowing that we have to schedule our non-conference opponents many years out, but this is a scheduling philosophy (home and home series) that we want to continue over time."

MAC-Smack hitting the beach

Taking a vacation with the wife and kids, everyone have a nice week...

Ashley Vogl appointed as Director of Volleyball Operations

The newly created post of Director of Volleyball Operations was given to ex-player Ashley Vogal yesterday. Colleen Munson was very high on having someone who had been through the Bronco's program take up the responsibility:

"Having gone through our program as a student-athlete for five years, she knows what we do. Now, she will help organize and orchestrate behind the scenes to make the experience of the current student-athlete what her experience was and enable them to just focus on volleyball."

The position touches every aspect of the Volleyball program; community outreach, acting as an alumni liaison, and working with the Marketing Office to promote the team. She will also be a resource for the coaching staff to use in handling their administrative activities like, recruiting, travel arrangements, and organizing Summer Camps.

The position is not just a first job for Vogl it is a chance to give back to a program which she took great joy in being a part of:

"I thought this was a nice way to give back to something that has given me so much. I appreciate the coaching staff for giving me this opportunity to stay involved in the program."

Temple Football Team Receives Levy Service Award

The TU Football Team received the 2009 Philadelphia Sports Congress Robert P. Levy Community Service Award. The team put in more than one thousand hours of community service last summer, signed up a record six hundred and thirty bone marrow donors, donated their per diem to Susan G. Komen for the Cure, Team members routinely visit St. Christopher's Hospital and the Ronald McDonald House, and helped the homeless of Philadelphia though their numberous thanks giving food drives.

Coach Golden could not have been more proud of his squad:

"On behalf of Temple University, our Athletic Department, and our football program, all of our staff and coaches, and ultimately our student-athletes who have chosen a mission outside of oneself, we humbly, humbly accept this award and thank the Wanamaker folks and the Philadelphia Sports Congress"

Later that night Temple was, rightfully, honored at the Philadelphia Phillies' game.

Mace Named Great Lakes Pitcher of the Week

Ryan Mace was named the Great Lakes Summer Collegiate League (GLSCL) Pitcher of the Week on the back of six shutout Innings, yielding only three hits, for the Canton Terriers as they defeated Southern Ohio.

Mace is absolutely owning GLSCL opposition but the win ofver Southern Ohio was his first decision. In 16 innings of work this season Mace has allowed just six hits in and a .111 opponent batting average.

Ball State Golf dominates the IGAPL

(File this under a bit dated but worthy of mention) Ball state Golfers made their presence known at The Indiana Golf Association Public Links tournament. Three Ball state golfers finished in the top 12:

The Tournament was won by Ball State Junior Eric Sterger who completed a six under par second round, including three birdies on the last five holes, to overcome a four stroke deficit to brooks snider. Sterger more recently finished seventh at the Indiana Amateur Golf Championship.

Eric Sterger:

Par	5	4	4	3	4	4	3	5	3	35	4	4	3	5	4	4	3	4	5	36	71
Round 1	4	4	4	3	3	4	2	5	3	32	5	3	2	4	4	5	3	4	5	35	67
Round 2	5	4	4	3	4	3	3	4	2	32	4	4	3	4	3	4	3	4	4	33	65

Ball state Senior Ross Cosat who, the back of a strong second round placed seventh.

Ross Cosat:

Par	5	4	4	3	4	4	3	5	3	35	4	4	3	5	4	4	3	4	5	36	71
Round 1	5	4	4	4	4	4	3	4	2	34	4	3	3	4	4	4	4	5	5	36	70
Round 2	4	4	4	3	4	3	3	5	3	33	4	3	3	4	4	4	3	4	5	34	67

Finally sophomore Zac Treash finished in twelfth at three under par.

Zac Treash

Par	5	4	4	3	4	4	3	5	3	35	4	4	3	5	4	4	3	4	5	36	71
Round 1	4	5	4	4	4	4	3	5	2	35	4	4	2	4	4	4	3	4	5	34	69
Round 2	5	4	4	3	4	3	3	5	3	34	5	4	3	4	4	4	4	4	4	36	70

Northern Illinois picks up a new Basketball Director of Operations

Yesterday Northern Illinois named former George Mason Basketball Director of Operations Kent Dernbach to the same post for the Huskies Mens basketball team. Mens coach Richard Patton, now with a complete staff, lauded Dernbach:

"Kent comes to us from a program just a few years removed from making an appearance in the Final Four. Now, with he and coach (Todd) Townsend, we have two guys on staff that can really relate to our players about that process. I'm very pleased with the make-up of my staff heading into next season."

Dernbach will be responsible for the academic progress of athletes, team travel management, supervision of the team managers, assisting in the recruiting process, and maintenance of compliance documents with the NCAA and Mid American Conference.

Grading the Rankers, The Quad

One of the more followed preseason previews has been Paul Myerberg's "The Quad Countdown" Hosted by the New York Times. I have seen updates relating to this list on just about every MAC team board I spend any time reading. They are in depth, lengthy and in general a fun read. They just placed Western Michigan at 56 and this, through process of elimination, lets me look at their 2009 rankings compared to Mac Smack, and the Sporting News.

The Quad Countdown

	Correlation	2008 Grade
East	83	40
West	100	79
Overall	92	60

As with Sporting news I will start by looking at the correlation between The Quads predictions for the Mid American Conference and those posted on MAC Smack

The Quad Countdown (2009)

West	East
Central Michigan	Temple
Western Michigan	Buffalo
Northern Illinois	Ohio
Ball State	Bowling Green
Toledo	Akron
Eastern Michigan	Miami
	Kent

Mac Smack (2009)

West	East
Central Michigan	Temple
Western Michigan	Buffalo
Northern Illinois	Bowling Green
Ball State	Akron
Toledo	Ohio
Eastern Michigan	Miami
	Kent

The West seems to be an easier pick this year teams breaking in new quarterbacks never do too well in preseason predictions so Ball State is going to drop (in the previews who knows what happens when the game is played). NIU losing so much of its defense drops them down along with the Cardinals leaving WMU and CMU to contend. Right off the bat most publications are going to have the same 1-2, and 3-4 pairings this means the same 5-6 pairing and in those EMU will more often than not be on the bottom.

In the east the high correlation score is due to parity more than anything else. While I disagree with three of the seven teams we are, most one or two off on these instance, this keeps the score high. When the season is played the difference between first and fourth (or even fifth) could be one division loss and some tie breakers.

Paul Myerberg had a very difficult time picking the east last year. He Picked last place Miami first (as did most publications) and third placed Temple to finish last.

The Quad Countdown 2008

West	East
Central Michigan	Miami
Ball State	Ohio
Western Michigan	Bowling Green
Toledo	Buffalo
Eastern Michigan	Kent
Northern Illinois	Akron
	Temple

Mid American Conference 2008

West	East
Ball State	Buffalo
Central Michigan	Bowling Green
Western Michigan	Temple
Northern Illinois	Akron
Toledo	Ohio
Eastern Michigan	Kent
	Miami

So far here are the polls I have seen for their east and their scores:

	Sporting News	The Quad
2008 Grade East	61	40
2008 Grade West	96	79
Correlation East	75	83
Correlation West	89	100

I altered the scoring guidelines as the east has more teams than the west. Obvious I know but I neglected to consider that thus creating a maximum score of 113 in the east division. I went back and fixed the Sporting News post from yesterday. the new guidelines are:

--

The Criteria for grades is as follows: Correspondence Score:

• Penalty Points: For every spot off a team is between predictions a single point is taken off (Example: SN picked Central to win the West, I picked them second so that's minus one per team, or I picked Temple to win the East and SN pick them to finish third that would be minus two).
• Total Points: The total points is the maximum number of penalty points for a division, for the 6 team west that is 18 points and for the 7 team east that is 24 points.
  
• Score: The penalty points are taken from the total points (18 for the west, 24 for the east) and then a simple percentage is calculated. For the west there were two penalty points (one for CMU and one for WMU) so that's 16 points out of a possible 18 or 88.5%

Mac-Smack Prediction Grade:

• Predict the Conference Champ: 10 points, if your predicted champ finishes second, 5 points.
• Predict the Worst Team in the conference 6 points, if your predicted worst finisher places second to last, 3 points.
• For each team in the west if you predict correctly their place 14 points, if you are one place off 12 points, two places off 9 points, three places off 5 points, four places off 1 point.
  
• For each team in the east correctly predicting correctly will get you 12, one place off 11, two places off 8 three places off 5, four places off 2, five places off 1.

Morning Links and Stuff 6/7

NIU has named a replacement for outgoing soccer coach Steve Simmons in the person of Eric Luzzi. Luzzi had been simmons top assistant for the past three seasons and seemed the natural choice to keep the program on its current trajectory.





Eastern Michigan placed two golfers in the top 20 at the Pengrowth Glencoe Invitational with the tandem team of Nicholas Banfield who placed 12th and Brad Larente (Pictured left) who finished in 19th.





Bowling Green Basketball coaches have been stockpiling awards of late LaMonta Stone was ranked 15th by college insider among all basketball assistant coaches and womans head coach Curt Miller (left) was put on the list of the top Mid-Major head coaches in NCAA Division I by the National Women's Basketball Insider website.

Ball State being investigated for Title IX Violations

The Indystar reported last week that Ball State is the target of an Title IX investigation triggered by a complaint filed in march 2008

The investigation itself took place on the Ball State campus a little over a month ago (6/8 - 6/10) and was run by a four member team. The U.S. Department of Education, Office for Civil Rights dispatched the team to go over program budgets, resource access (e.g. the weight room), and the sizes of locker rooms.

The team gathered data and left with no word on the status or when Ball State will learn the outcome of the investigation.

"They came in and did (the investigation), and then they left," Ball State athletic director Tom Collins said. "We're cooperating with them, and we haven't heard back from them since they left."

The exact nature of the complaint has not been made public but usually when an audit is being performed and the question of general budgets comes up nothing is off limits.

"They were very vague when they were here, so I don't know where (the investigation) is right now," Collins said. "We're cooperating fully. The ball's in their court. We respond to them when they have questions for us, but again, the ball is kind of in their court."

A reasonable assumption is that coaching salaries have something to do with this investigation:

"According to the Equity in Athletics Disclosure Act (EADA) of 2005-06, Ball State University's then nine full-time female coaches made $730,757, with the average salary of $81,195.23. All nine were coaches of women's sports, and the only male that coached a women's sport was then coach Randy Litchfield. The eight male coaches, including Litchfield, made $974,022, with the average salary of $121,752.75. Coaching salaries also include benefits, bonuses paid by the university and related entities and other compensation and benefits paid by a third party, according to the EADA." -- BSU Daily News

Grading the Rankers, Sporting News

Mid Summer is a time of fireworks, camping, trips, and of course College Football prognostication. From now until mid august there will be an increasing number of people, publications, and organizations telling how they think college football teams will fare.

Rather than just post their predictions I thought I would compare them to mine and dig up their 2008 results and apply an objective grade¹.

Sporting News
	Correlation	2008 Grade
East	75	61
West	89	96
Overall	82	79

Ill start by comparing sporting news 2009 picks to the MS picks published last month along with a correlation score I'll explain below:

Sporting News (2009)

West	East
Western Michigan	Buffalo
Central Michigan	Bowling Green
Northern Illinois	Temple
Ball State	Ohio
Toledo	Miami
Eastern Michigan	Akron
	Kent

MAC-Smack (2009)

West	East
Central Michigan	Temple
Western Michigan	Buffalo
Northern Illinois	Bowling Green
Ball State	Akron
Toledo	Ohio
Eastern Michigan	Miami
	Kent

On the West MS and Sporting news have nearly identical outcomes for the 2009 season Agreeing on the placements of all but Central and Western Michigan. October 17th is the big difference as I have CMU beating Western and I have to assume sporting news sees that game going the Bronco's way. In east there is far more discrepancy, I'm going to assume that this will be seen with other publications as their is so much parity. The only two teams not really in the running are Miami and Kent, and even one of them winning the division would not be Earth Shattering.

So how did sporting news do in 2008? not too shabby in the west but like many Miami and parity burned them in the east.

Sporting News 2008

West	East
Ball State	Miami
Central Michigan	Temple
Western Michigan	Bowling Green
Toledo	Buffalo
Northern Illinois	Ohio
Eastern Michigan	Akron
	Kent

Mid American Conference 2008

West	East
Ball State	Buffalo
Central Michigan	Bowling Green
Western Michigan	Temple
Northern Illinois	Akron
Toledo	Ohio
Eastern Michigan	Kent
	Miami

In the west NIU surprised allot of people last year and Toledo fell way short of expectations but other than that sporting news nailed the division getting a Mac-Smack prediction score of 95, in the east they did pretty poorly (even beyond Miami they were way off on Buffalo and Akron) getting a 67.

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The Criteria for grades is as follows: Correspondence Score:

• Penalty Points: For every spot off a team is between predictions a single point is taken off (Example: SN picked Central to win the West, I picked them second so that's minus one per team, or I picked Temple to win the East and SN pick them to finish third that would be minus two).
• Total Points: The total points is the maximum number of penalty points for a division, for the 6 team west that is 18 points and for the 7 team east that is 24 points.
  
• Score: The penalty points are taken from the total points (18 for the west, 24 for the east) and then a simple percentage is calculated. For the west there were two penalty points (one for CMU and one for WMU) so that's 16 points out of a possible 18 or 88.5%

Mac-Smack Prediction Grade:

• Predict the Conference Champ: 10 points, if your predicted champ finishes second, 5 points.
• Predict the Worst Team in the conference 6 points, if your predicted worst finisher places second to last, 3 points.
• For each team in the west if you predict correctly their place 14 points, if you are one place off 12 points, two places off 9 points, three places off 5 points, four places off 1 point. For each team in the east correctly guessing will get you 12, one place off 11, two places off 8 three places off 5 four places off 2, five places off 1.