I always like hearing about other MAC towns and facilities, so I thought I'd share some thoughts on Western, the game and Kzoo.

I've only been to half of them, but I suspect Waldo is one of the better stadiums in the MAC. It's not as nice as Akron, but it has a lot going for it. It's truly four-sided, with the home and student sides, then suites and stands built into the side of their IPF and bleachers on the other end zone. I counted 22 suites. All-told, it shows well, especially with a good crowd. On the downside, the bathrooms were Peden-esque, and getting there was interesting. The entire main grandstand is built into a hill, so getting food or reaching a bathroom means climbing all the way to the top of the stands if you're on the home side. It's a long way from the front row. No chairbacks, except rentals. Food choices were pretty average. The one novelty was fresh elephant ears and funnel cakes. Video board was bad. Peden-sized and not functioning well.

The homecoming atmosphere was really solid. I saw they announced around 20k, and I am pretty sure that's actual and not tickets sold. Same crowd in Athens would be an announced sellout based on tickets sold. Fans were extremely friendly - it took a while to sit because three people stopped me to welcome me and chat. One gave me a free program. The band started out pretty strong with a pregame show and played loudly and well throughout the game, but their halftime show was the worst I've seen since Tennessee's band did the Patti Page show. It was a western-themed snoozefest. The students/alumni in the student section were engaged and reasonably loud. They didn't leave either - even when the blowout was in full swing. That said, the weather was perfect on homecoming and they still didn't fill the place. Mostly a good showing though.

I didn't explore every part of Western's campus, but I wasn't a big fan. It's divided into several non-contiguous parts and lacks the charm, architectural continuity and history we tend to love about Ohio. It's not ugly, but I'm sure no one visits for the first time and falls in love with the place based on looks.

In contrast, Kalamazoo is a really nice small city with a classic and historic downtown that offers lots of good food, local shopping and plenty of breweries. Bell's is great, but I found a couple smaller places that were pumping out good brew. Michigan is an awesome state for beer.

Elephant ears? Someone get on this at Peden ASAP.

The Michigan-MSU game started at 3:30, and I heard plenty of murmuring from Western fans from that point on. Many were following it on their smartphones. All the Michigan MAC schools face the same B1G problem that the Ohio ones do. I also heard someone mention that there are a fair number of Notre Dame fans in Kalamazoo too, as South Bend isn't very far away.

Regardless of what you or I might think about the Rowing theme And WMU suggest a book called "The Boys in the Boat."

It is an account of a rowing team who won the 1936 Olympics 8-man rowing gold medal. My wife and I listened on AudioBooks while traveling and I have read excerpts from written book. Both were interesting in soon any ways. Sports, history, personal and team achievement.

Fascinating.

I was at the game. I think the rowing thing was great. The team has bought into it, the students have bought into it, it's obviously working. Nothing silly about it. It's called bringing the team together as a unit and fighting for something together. Fleck is a leader and I agree with you that he will not be there long.

D.A., I think you are onto something. I always talk about what I call the "structural problems" relating to getting a lot of really good football players to Athens. I think you have touched on some of them. Obviously, the school is great if you don't mind not having malls or being near an urban area. But, face it, many inner city players have no desire to go to small town USA no matter what. That is why they chose Toledo, Akron, etc.

Fleck is doing great with recruiting because he's young, energetic, attractive and a little crazy. We, on the other hand, are boring...both in our coaching staff and style of play. Seriously, Frank seems nice but his interactions with players always seem awkward or a little forced.

Fleck is like a crazy new uniform for your team...folks with good taste are repulsed but the kids tend to like them.

D.A., I agree with what you have said here. I have made the point privately to others that while I think Frank is a good coach, his greater contribution to the Ohio program, by far, has been the building of a football culture, and facilities at Ohio. Clearly when he leaves the stage will be set for the program to be continue to compete.

Note that building the culture is actually the more difficult task. If you get a good coach, he comes, and a few years later is hired away. He isn't there long enough to build the culture up, nor the facilities.

I have long used my own measure to track Ohio's recruiting, and it shows that Ohio's recruiting has mostly improved year by year, with a few exceptions. What I haven't done is to use the same measure on other MAC schools, to see how Ohio's class measures compared to them. I will try to do that this weekend. What I expect to find is that until the last few classes Ohio was in the bottom half of the MAC according to those measures, but has been slowly moving up, and that the last couple classes are now in the top 1/3 of the MAC.

If that's what I find, it won't come as any great surprise to me. In particular I expect to find that the top rated schools from a recruiting standpoint on a pretty consistent basis are WMU, CMU, Toledo, NIU, and BG (not necessarily in that order). Solich's record against those 5 schools is:
CMU 1-6
WMU 1-2
NIU 2-1
Toledo 0-3
BG 4-6
Total 8-18

His record against the rest of the rest of the MAC is 38-14. I think when he has close or equal talent, he usually wins, but when the other team has superior talent, he usually loses.

I will see what my numbers say when I apply the same method to all the MAC schools, but I think Ohio's classes since the IPF was announced are still not quite top-of-the-MAC, but are no longer well behind the leaders.

With the new Academic Center announced, I'd expect to see even more improvement in the recruiting classes for 2016 and beyond. Athens will still be more remote/rural than some of the competitors, but no longer behind on a facility basis.

Alan, to the extent parents are involved in the decision making process, the parents, I presume, are interesting in their child getting a real college education. With the recent news from North Carolina, it seems that some schools still try to slide students through by signing them up for easy courses where they get inflated grades. Ohio, with the new academic center, is emphasizing the importance of these students getting an actual education, including providing them the tutoring they need, when they need it, and saving them time by making that place to study convenient.

I think the new academic center will attract student athletes by showing the importance of education to the process. I don't see anything negative about the center, and a lot of positives.

I guess, let me turn it around and ask you, why would you think it wouldn't matter? Do you think academics don't matter to recruits and their parents?

Interesting opinions out there. I'll propose a question...

If PJ Fleck was Ohio's coach, do you think he'd have the ability to draw such stellar recruiting classes to Athens? Or are we limited by some other factors that will never allow us to recruit at that level??

To me, I think he might just be able to. Sure, WMU may have some additional bells and whistles...but I refuse to believe that we are that far behind. What more do we really need? I don't believe for a minute that recruits give a darn about concession stands or fan amenities. That's just us. We have a brand new locker room BTW...help me out here.

Good question, and one which we can't really be sure of the answer. Here's another. If Fleck has come to Ohio a decade ago, what would his classes have looked like, before Ohio had upgraded the facilities?

Agreed, note I was referencing what has happened over the last ten years, not commenting on the present state. Regarding present state, I believe we have gotten some of our infrastructure up to top tier OF THE MAC level. There is nothing we have that exceeds some of the MAC's best programs. Then you are left to duke it out over things like you cite above, as well as the items in which we are still deficient.

Didn't someone on this board have a gal in Kalamazoo?