It struck me as rather odd that Coach O'Shea would mention this message board in particular. Honestly, this is about as tame as it gets compared to the Power Schools. The reference to small town was particularly interesting (implying that people don't know how to spend their time) in that how many people who post here actually live in Athens or another small town?

The reason TOS moniker got any traction was for his many forays into possible coaching vacancies around the country. Truth be told Coach O'Shea had a pretty charmed life. Coach Hunter got to be Ohio's head coach after many years of being a head coach at Division III Wittenberg. I met him on a few occasions while I was coaching high school basketball. He would stop by the locker room after a game, exchange pleasantries with the coaching staff, inquire about a particular player and be on his way. Talk about a grind the day before one of your own games!

Coach O'Shea came our way after never being a head coach, and then left to take the helm of a burgeoning Division I program at Bryant. There was no pressure at Bryant as one can see by his final record there. Honestly, most other coaches would have been shown the door many years earlier. We give him his first chance, he tries to leave at every possible turn and then he takes a swipe at us? I would have chosen my words quite differently about my past employers and their fans.

Groverball, do you read any Power School Message Boards? This is about as tame as it gets. I recall even reading a thread in that school up north's message board sometime ago, that you can tell how unseriously the MAC and other mid-major message boards take themselves by the fact that they are too polite! I don't like talking trash-not my thing, especially since I once coached at the high school level. Please read my previous post again. I can't think of too many coaches that have led a more charmed life than Coach O'Shea. Do you have any idea what the Power School Message Boards would be like right now if a previous head coach had shown interest in seemingly every job opening that came down the pike, and then took a swipe at the school who gave him his first chance?

What do any other message boards have to do with his comment? He wasn't comparing BA to any message boards, he simply said BA is/was "pretty tough." And as JH commented, he seemed to be saying it with a smile. If you like comparisons, than all he personally has to compare are Bryant and OHIO and BA comes off as "pretty tough" compared to Bryant, right?

No apologies necessary. (This is a polite MAC board.) :)

That's pretty funny. We are famous.

I've always been amazed there are posters who didn't believe coaches, players and administrators were aware of this site.

If you ran a business, and there were people talking about your business, wouldn't it be worth staying aware of what they were saying at some level? For coaches and administrators who are (somewhat) mature adults, they likely take an approach similar to what TOS mentioned with "I need to say away from that" and just like coaches in the past would tell players "don't read the papers" they likely preach similar advice to players about the message boards.

Some players are probably level-headed enough to avoid the temptations of reading what people are saying about them online or at least not take it to heart. However, I don't think the average 18-22 year old kid has that level of maturity.
It's particularly concerning to me on the recruiting boards. It takes a 17 year old kid 5 seconds on Google to find out what fans at schools are saying about him. I think most kids would rather play for supportive fanbases rather than fanbases that trash their intelligence or ability.

This is the same guy that quit taking phone calls on a call in radio show. Enough said.

He was referring to when he used to coach here. We must have had higher expectations back then. I just looked at Akron’s and Cleveland State’s, ours is very tame compared to Akron’s. It also sounded like he was taking a shot at us. He said especially when you are in a small town like and then the interviewer cut him off. Maybe we should layoff the tos to Monmouth State for a while.

Looks like Ole Miss is in the market:

http://www.espn.com/mens-college-basketball/story/_/id/22...

I once received a blank email sent from O'Shea's Iphone. Always wonderd what that was about. Did he mean to send an email and then thought "nah"? Butt dial? I guess I'll never know. I will say this about TOS. He, and his staff, treated our Rollie Merriman very well.

They used our recruiting grid to help land Jeremy Fears. Got an email from an assistant coach as I already had one Ohio commit listed as a PG. The email told me that commit would never play PG and to move him to SG. Said they had a PG recruit coming in over the weekend and it was down to Ohio and Purdue. They were going to print our recruiting grid and show how open the PG spot was and then print Purdue's which had a logjam. On Monday, the Fears commitment was announced.

I never thought anyone paid attention to BobcatAttack until Tom Boeh introduced himself to me at a Green & White Banquet. Good times. 

Cool story. I always assumed BA has a big following among players, families, coaches, etc. It is what it is.

Congrats to Bryant that tos is retiring. Anytime you have a coach that makes 400k plus that can’t put together a team that could beat the top high school in the state complain about pressure and message boards is a victory. They don’t have to buy him out or continue to pay for mediocrity. Michigan fans went to the AD’s house, and he is complaining about a message board. If you want to play in the highest division and make the big money, than you need to perform. The students pay a general fee that goes towards athletics so they deserve to have a say, they are stakeholders.