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This is a good day for Liberty!

"Liberty Director of Athletics Jeff Barber was recently named to the NCAA Division I Football Championship Committee and Football Issues Committee. His four-year term will begin on Sept, 1, 2010 and continue through Sept. 1, 2014."


http://www.libertyflames.com/index.cfm? ... 05&TeamID=

Good for Liberty, but the best news is Jeff Bourne from JMU taking over the CAA slot for the UMass AD. W&M will always detest that guy for his role in the committee's selection of Maine over W&M for the 2008 field.

Tribe4SF wrote:Good for Liberty, but the best news is Jeff Bourne from JMU taking over the CAA slot for the UMass AD. W&M will always detest that guy for his role in the committee's selection of Maine over W&M for the 2008 field.

What exactly was his role?

UMass AD was the Chair of the committee and had no vote in a matter dealing with his own conference.

So what exactly was his role?

Tribe4SF wrote:Good for Liberty, but the best news is Jeff Bourne from JMU taking over the CAA slot for the UMass AD. W&M will always detest that guy for his role in the committee's selection of Maine over W&M for the 2008 field.

Maine deserved to be there just as much as W&M!!! Get over it!

danefan wrote:

Tribe4SF wrote:Good for Liberty, but the best news is Jeff Bourne from JMU taking over the CAA slot for the UMass AD. W&M will always detest that guy for his role in the committee's selection of Maine over W&M for the 2008 field.

What exactly was his role?

UMass AD was the Chair of the committee and had no vote in a matter dealing with his own conference.

So what exactly was his role?

He thinks that W&M wins over VMI and Norfolk State and loss to NC State trumped Maine's wins over Monmouth and Stony Brook and loss to Iowa.

Or maybe it was W&M's 11 game schedule that trumped Maine's 12 game schedule.

Or maybe W&M losing their last 2 games trumped Maine winning 6 of their last 7.

Of course there was also the head to head.......it ended in a 0-0 tie that year since they didn't play each other.......I can't remember, was that the year that W&M canceled the game?

danefan wrote:

Tribe4SF wrote:Good for Liberty, but the best news is Jeff Bourne from JMU taking over the CAA slot for the UMass AD. W&M will always detest that guy for his role in the committee's selection of Maine over W&M for the 2008 field.

What exactly was his role?

UMass AD was the Chair of the committee and had no vote in a matter dealing with his own conference.

So what exactly was his role?

I agree - how did the guy have a role if he needs to excuse himself when the decision is made? Sour grapes from W&M on this one.

mainejeff wrote: He thinks that W&M wins over VMI and Norfolk State and loss to NC State trumped Maine's wins over Monmouth and Stony Brook and loss to Iowa.

Or maybe it was W&M's 11 game schedule that trumped Maine's 12 game schedule.

Or maybe W&M losing their last 2 games trumped Maine winning 6 of their last 7.

Of course there was also the head to head.......it ended in a 0-0 tie that year since they didn't play each other.......I can't remember, was that the year that W&M canceled the game?

Guy brings up some great points... anyone gonna respond in W&M's favor?

Are there more than two W&M fans who actually believe this crap? Anyone who thinks UMass would waste one cent of political capital convincing the 9 other committee members to squeeze in Maine over W&M is completely delusional. They're not even from our primary conference. We'd sooner help someone from another conference get in the playoffs and bank that quid pro quo for when UMass needs help. Maine has no capacity to do us any favors, so there's no reason to help them. The reality is W&M couldn't get 5 out of 10 ADs to pick them over Maine, 9 of which were completely devoid of any self-interest in the choice. If anything would sway them, it's that Maine is more expensive to include in the playoffs than W&M.

(I actually agree that W&M had a slightly better argument than Maine that season, but this anti-North paranoid garbage made me indifferent to W&M's exclusion.)

LastMinuteman wrote:(I actually agree that W&M had a slightly better argument than Maine that season, but this anti-North paranoid garbage made me indifferent to W&M's exclusion.)

And just what is that "slightly better argument" all-knowing one?

Not to resurrect the endless thread from AGS, but I was persuaded by W&M's slightly better performance against common opponents. Note the use of the word "slightly". No great injustice was done by choosing Maine (certainly none worth the resulting bitching), but put in that position I would have chosen W&M. I did not lose any sleep over the Committee's choice. If you don't want your playoff spot decided by a difference of opinion on tiebreakers, don't lose 4 games.

The tie breaker in the comparison should have been W&M's victory at UNH, while Maine lost to UNH at home. McCutcheon was contacted by W&M the previous winter, and asked if teams that chose to play an 11 game schedule would be punished, or have it held against them when selections were made. He assured the W&M AD that it would not, and then cited Maines extra win (over Iona, who had dropped football before selections were made) as the deciding reason. Anyone who thinks McCutcheon didn't participate in that selection process is being naive. You only rule yourself out of the process when your school is being discussed, not when your conference mates are under consideration.

People can call it sour grapes, but everyone in the W&M athletic department believes that McCutcheon threw us under the bus, and so do I. I'm glad he's gone from the committee.

mainejeff wrote:

danefan wrote:
What exactly was his role?

UMass AD was the Chair of the committee and had no vote in a matter dealing with his own conference.

So what exactly was his role?

He thinks that W&M wins over VMI and Norfolk State and loss to NC State trumped Maine's wins over Monmouth and Stony Brook and loss to Iowa.

Or maybe it was W&M's 11 game schedule that trumped Maine's 12 game schedule.

Or maybe W&M losing their last 2 games trumped Maine winning 6 of their last 7.

Of course there was also the head to head.......it ended in a 0-0 tie that year since they didn't play each other.......I can't remember, was that the year that W&M canceled the game?

How convenient that you fail to mention common opponent New Hampshire. Keep rolling your eyes, and maybe we'll all get lucky and they'll stick facing the back of your head.

LastMinuteman wrote:Not to resurrect the endless thread from AGS, but I was persuaded by W&M's slightly better performance against common opponents. Note the use of the word "slightly". No great injustice was done by choosing Maine (certainly none worth the resulting bitching), but put in that position I would have chosen W&M. I did not lose any sleep over the Committee's choice. If you don't want your playoff spot decided by a difference of opinion on tiebreakers, don't lose 4 games.

Or play 12 instead of 11 in a 12 game season.

Tribe4SF wrote:The tie breaker in the comparison should have been W&M's victory at UNH, while Maine lost to UNH at home. McCutcheon was contacted by W&M the previous winter, and asked if teams that chose to play an 11 game schedule would be punished, or have it held against them when selections were made. He assured the W&M AD that it would not, and then cited Maines extra win (over Iona, who had dropped football before selections were made) as the deciding reason. Anyone who thinks McCutcheon didn't participate in that selection process is being naive. You only rule yourself out of the process when your school is being discussed, not when your conference mates are under consideration.

People can call it sour grapes, but everyone in the W&M athletic department believes that McCutcheon threw us under the bus, and so do I. I'm glad he's gone from the committee.

It had nothing to do with the fact that you LOST YOUR LAST 2 GAMES and failed to schedule 12 games in a 12 game season. And don't give me any B.S. about finding an extra game.......if GD Maine can do it than a rich school located in Williamsburg, VA sure can!

mainejeff wrote:

Tribe4SF wrote:The tie breaker in the comparison should have been W&M's victory at UNH, while Maine lost to UNH at home. McCutcheon was contacted by W&M the previous winter, and asked if teams that chose to play an 11 game schedule would be punished, or have it held against them when selections were made. He assured the W&M AD that it would not, and then cited Maines extra win (over Iona, who had dropped football before selections were made) as the deciding reason. Anyone who thinks McCutcheon didn't participate in that selection process is being naive. You only rule yourself out of the process when your school is being discussed, not when your conference mates are under consideration.

People can call it sour grapes, but everyone in the W&M athletic department believes that McCutcheon threw us under the bus, and so do I. I'm glad he's gone from the committee.

It had nothing to do with the fact that you LOST YOUR LAST 2 GAMES and failed to schedule 12 games in a 12 game season. And don't give me any B.S. about finding an extra game.......if GD Maine can do it than a rich school located in Williamsburg, VA sure can!

Are you really that challenged, Jeff? We chose not to play 12 games because we didn't want to, AND because we were assured by McCutcheon that it would not cost us at selection time. It did, and we hold McCutcheon responsible.

Tribe4SF wrote:

mainejeff wrote:
He thinks that W&M wins over VMI and Norfolk State and loss to NC State trumped Maine's wins over Monmouth and Stony Brook and loss to Iowa.

Or maybe it was W&M's 11 game schedule that trumped Maine's 12 game schedule.

Or maybe W&M losing their last 2 games trumped Maine winning 6 of their last 7.

Of course there was also the head to head.......it ended in a 0-0 tie that year since they didn't play each other.......I can't remember, was that the year that W&M canceled the game?

How convenient that you fail to mention common opponent New Hampshire. Keep rolling your eyes, and maybe we'll all get lucky and they'll stick facing the back of your head.

I certainly think that we SHOULD compare common opponents!

W&M beat UNH by 4 and Maine lost to UNH by 4.

W&M lost to JMU by 24 and Maine lost to JMU by 14.

How convenient that you left out JMU..........

Tribe4SF wrote:

mainejeff wrote:
It had nothing to do with the fact that you LOST YOUR LAST 2 GAMES and failed to schedule 12 games in a 12 game season. And don't give me any B.S. about finding an extra game.......if GD Maine can do it than a rich school located in Williamsburg, VA sure can!

Are you really that challenged, Jeff? We chose not to play 12 games because we didn't want to, AND because we were assured by McCutcheon that it would not cost us at selection time. It did, and we hold McCutcheon responsible.

You had to ask the UMass AD before you finalized your schedule and the UMass AD tells you that scheduling 11 games is just as good as scheduling 12 games???......

I guess you Bill & Mary guys aren't that smart........

Tribe4SF wrote:People can call it sour grapes, but everyone in the W&M athletic department believes that McCutcheon threw us under the bus, and so do I. I'm glad he's gone from the committee.

That's the sound of the W&M athletic department scapegoating the UMass AD to draw attention away from the fact that they didn't schedule a 12th game like almost everyone else did. Their story doesn't even make sense. How can one man on a committee of 10 assure anyone what's going to help or hurt come selection time? And how would that even work if he could make that assurance? Do they just pretend everyone else played only 11 games too? Which game do they throw out? Should they have pretended that Maine went 8-3 instead? I'm sure what McCutcheon said was something more along the lines of playing an 11 game schedule wouldn't prevent W&M from getting equal consideration come selection time. An 11 game season can be more impressive than a 12 game season, and I think that was actually true in 2008 W&M vs. 2008 Maine's case. But if Team A and Team B have identical results through 11 games, and only Team A is playing a 12th game, of course the outcome of that 12th game is going to matter. In what kind of bizarro world would the 12th game not matter? Every game matters. And the W&M athletic department knows that. The only bus McCutcheon threw them under was when he said Maine's extra win tipped the scales in their favor, leaving the people responsible for W&M's schedule no defense against criticism. He should have been more politically sensitive than that. End result is you have otherwise smart people claiming McCutcheon told them the committee was going to pretend that everyone only played 11 games, as part of some yankee conspiracy to help Maine out. The only time UMass would help Maine is if Maine was on fire and UMass had been planning on peeing in Maine's general direction anyway. It's not often that our mutual objectives come together like that. As for W&M, didn't UMass just re-schedule its non-conference games to help W&M out of being stuck with an opening week bye? Does W&M not put any forethought at all into their football schedule? They didn't do very well in the CAA re-scheduling sweepstakes either. I suppose it's possible that McCutcheon promised W&M that the federal committee on aviation won't take the extra distance into account on the 3 weekends they fly to New England, but scheduling issues appear to be a recurring theme at W&M.

Tribe4SF wrote:

mainejeff wrote:
It had nothing to do with the fact that you LOST YOUR LAST 2 GAMES and failed to schedule 12 games in a 12 game season. And don't give me any B.S. about finding an extra game.......if GD Maine can do it than a rich school located in Williamsburg, VA sure can!

Are you really that challenged, Jeff? We chose not to play 12 games because we didn't want to, AND because we were assured by McCutcheon that it would not cost us at selection time. It did, and we hold McCutcheon responsible.

Well then you should be glad that they didn't pick you for the playoffs...

mainejeff wrote:

Tribe4SF wrote:
Are you really that challenged, Jeff? We chose not to play 12 games because we didn't want to, AND because we were assured by McCutcheon that it would not cost us at selection time. It did, and we hold McCutcheon responsible.

You had to ask the UMass AD before you finalized your schedule and the UMass AD tells you that scheduling 11 games is just as good as scheduling 12 games???......

I guess you Bill & Mary guys aren't that smart........

You fucked up... you trusted us!

I just LOVE how a thread about some kudos coming to Liberty gets HIJACKED into a vendetta against UMASS.

Egad!

LastMinuteman wrote:

Tribe4SF wrote:People can call it sour grapes, but everyone in the W&M athletic department believes that McCutcheon threw us under the bus, and so do I. I'm glad he's gone from the committee.

That's the sound of the W&M athletic department scapegoating the UMass AD to draw attention away from the fact that they didn't schedule a 12th game like almost everyone else did. Their story doesn't even make sense. How can one man on a committee of 10 assure anyone what's going to help or hurt come selection time? And how would that even work if he could make that assurance? Do they just pretend everyone else played only 11 games too? Which game do they throw out? Should they have pretended that Maine went 8-3 instead? I'm sure what McCutcheon said was something more along the lines of playing an 11 game schedule wouldn't prevent W&M from getting equal consideration come selection time. An 11 game season can be more impressive than a 12 game season, and I think that was actually true in 2008 W&M vs. 2008 Maine's case. But if Team A and Team B have identical results through 11 games, and only Team A is playing a 12th game, of course the outcome of that 12th game is going to matter. In what kind of bizarro world would the 12th game not matter? Every game matters. And the W&M athletic department knows that. The only bus McCutcheon threw them under was when he said Maine's extra win tipped the scales in their favor, leaving the people responsible for W&M's schedule no defense against criticism. He should have been more politically sensitive than that. End result is you have otherwise smart people claiming McCutcheon told them the committee was going to pretend that everyone only played 11 games, as part of some yankee conspiracy to help Maine out. The only time UMass would help Maine is if Maine was on fire and UMass had been planning on peeing in Maine's general direction anyway. It's not often that our mutual objectives come together like that. As for W&M, didn't UMass just re-schedule its non-conference games to help W&M out of being stuck with an opening week bye? Does W&M not put any forethought at all into their football schedule? They didn't do very well in the CAA re-scheduling sweepstakes either. I suppose it's possible that McCutcheon promised W&M that the federal committee on aviation won't take the extra distance into account on the 3 weekends they fly to New England, but scheduling issues appear to be a recurring theme at W&M.

The point of asking McCutcheon about penalizing teams for only playing 11 games was to determine if 12th game would be an advantage comparative to the committee's historic criteria for selecting teams. At the top of those criteria is the committee's own power ranking, which closely resembles the GPI, closely followed by record against common opponents. In eliminating both Liberty, and Jax State, the committee stuck to those criteria, ignoring 8-2 FCS records by both Liberty, and Jax State. When the decision came down to W&M and Maine, the priorities changed. W&M was ranked higher in the power ranking, and had a better record against common opponents. Even Jack Cosgrove was apparently confused by the decision because he cited the committee's higher power ranking of Maine as a key factor in his first response to the Black Bears selection. He must have assumed that was the case, because he was incorrect. It certainly would have been reasonable to assume that an extra win would be a deciding factor if the other primary criteria didn't differentiate the teams, but that is not what happened.

As to this years CAA schedule, none of the schools had any input to the schedule. There were too many variables to consider everyone's wants, and the CAA staff accomplished the task on their own. I don't know if UMass was asked to reschedule a game to be able to host W&M on September 4, but the league's task in setting the schedule was extremely difficult. Which of UMass's three non-conference games did they reschedule? The three flights to New England are only an inconvenience for fans, as I understand the league will help with the extra cost. The charter air travel is easier on the team than bus rides.

I'll draw my part in this threadjack to a close by saying the only part of the 2008 decision the Tribe won't leave behind is McCutcheon's part in it. Go Jeff Bourne!

I'll draw my part in this threadjack to a close by saying I can't wait until Sept.25th!

Tribe4SF wrote: I don't know if UMass was asked to reschedule a game to be able to host W&M on September 4, but the league's task in setting the schedule was extremely difficult. Which of UMass's three non-conference games did they reschedule?

I believe UMass moved both the Holy Cross and Stony Brook games to open up the first weekend for W&M (originally scheduled for Holy Cross). Wasn't that difficult since Holy Cross also had Northeastern on their schedule, so they had an open weekend, and while that was tentatively scheduled as the date of the UMass-SBU game, I think SBU was still waffling between two dates. So, it's not like we made huge sacrifices, but there was still an accommodation. UMass was not originally scheduled to have a bye on the opening weekend, and I doubt we would have chosen a difficult conference game as our opener if not for the needs of W&M and the CAA. I'm sure there was some quid pro quo. Maybe that's how we got to bypass playing Villanova.

Anyway, back on topic.