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The troll title worked. 😉 Where is this tunnel located?

Also, most have left the site and moved to “PackFansNation.”

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Grey: A 2 minute pass suggests that sometimes they practice in the football facility. I didn’t look much though.

Here’s a good video that shows a “behind the scenes” from this past season:
Oregon State video

I am not behind the scenes of our baseball team, but I tend to doubt we have anything remotely similar with respect to investment — facilities, locker room, stadium, videography, etc.. We may though, and I’m happy to be corrected.

There are 297 D1 baseball teams that all want to win conference and national titles. Of those 297, how many really have the resources to win it all? People like to cite Coastal, but even they invested (albeit on their own scale):
Coastal Carolina investment

NC State’s fans want to win like the fans of those other 296 programs, and cite our obvious long drought. They look at the coach and think that is the cause. Maybe it is, but maybe he’s just a symptom, or maybe he reflects the whole lack of investment we make? I don’t know that answer, but that’s the AD’s job. I suspect she might be happier with outputs relative to inputs (ultimately the bottom line) than the casual, 3 week a summer fan who complains after we don’t win it all.

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66pack:

Here’s a look at OSU’s stadium:

Compare and contrast that with the Doak.

Here’s information on OSU’s coaching salaries:
The OSU baseball coach now has a deal that runs through the 2022 season, according to the contact obtained by The Oregonian/OregonLive. Casey, who won two College World Series titles at OSU in 2006 and 2007, is set to make at least $5.5 million over the next six years.

The 57-year-old has been given a $50,000 raise for each of the remaining four years on the deal, earning $800,000 for the coming year, $850,000 in 2018, $900,000 in 2019 and $950,000 in 2020. His annual salary will increase by another $50,000 over each of the next two years of the extension, concluding at $1.05 million in the final year.
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The amended deal also features a deferred compensation account that will be credited with $13,889 each month starting in June 2016. Casey would receive the full balance upon completion of the contract or if terminated without cause. The balance would be forfeited if he voluntarily ended the agreement or was terminated for cause. Per terms of the current deal, the account could net Casey as much as an additional $1,013,897.

In addition to Casey, Oregon State renewed the contracts for associate head coach Pat Bailey ($120,000) and pitching coach Nate Yeskie ($110,000). Both one-year deals feature raises of $30,000 from each prior agreement. The 2017 season will be Bailey’s 10th and Yeskie’s ninth at Oregon State.

We pay Avent less than 1/2 of that.

Don’t get me wrong. I’d like us to be winning titles too and I don’t think Avent is going to do it. I recognize that just may not be in the cards given the current reality of our baseball program.

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SaccoV: I hear what you are saying but would suggest that if inputs are measured against outputs, then I’m not so sure that Avent is underachieving…………. Everything that I see says we’re paying in the bottom 3rd of the league to run our baseball program, yet are getting top 3rd results. How is that underachieving?

If I’m an AD, if I can run a non-revenue sport on the cheap, if it stays clean, graduates kids, gets better results than what I am spending, then that is an absolute no brainer. Why would I shake that up — particularly if it guaranteed that I would have to spend more, and might or might not actually yield better results?

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13OT: I agree with you regarding football and baseball and maybe women’s basketball. I do not agree about men’s basketball. There are some expectations there, maybe not ones that reflect the top 20 input$ in nearly every metric, but there are some minimal expectations.

I have always thought the best way to change those expectations would be for men’s basketball to get back to performing like the input$ suggest it should. Do that and our fan base will get another taste of winning (in something meaningful) and expectations (and input$) will go up for football.

Baseball is going to be what it is. Run a clean program and make the post season, while doing it on the cheap is the model. It is what it is, and honestly is smart business. Oregon State winning another title is going to do very little for the university, and they invested heavily to get it. This is why I believe the yearly Avent debate over a 2 week period is nothing more than a blip on the radar for the administration.

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Great assembly of the results. Honestly probably the best I have seen.

Would you be willing to do a similar analysis on the input$ the program has? Only by judging inputs vs outputs would one really be able to make an informed decision.

My stinking suspicion is that while Avent is the baseball version of HWSNBN with respect to the outputs, he is probably doing it with bottom of the conference inputs. Unlike HWSNBN, who was regularly squandering a king’s ransom, I suspect Avent is probably punching above the program’s weight. Make no mistake. I was adamant that HWSNBN needed to go, and still don’t regret that despite the years of wandering in the desert with Lowe and Gott. I am just not quite as convinced on Avent.

I doubt Avent is ever going to break through and win anything substantial. I just wonder if our program is really set up to do so. Tanner is the perfect example of a guy that wasn’t great by this analysis, but then went to a place with big time input$ And was able to break through. Did Tanner suddenly become better overnight, or was he unable to reach his full potential here? I think that is the question AD Yow has to ask….

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Greywolf wrote:

I’m going to go spend my energy creating the karma for Quavaris Crouch to commit. Maybe Derrick McLendon, DE too.

I like the sound of that. On some level, it’s not the X’s and O’s, but the Jimmies and Joes.

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Greywolf wrote:

You can disabuse yourself of the notion that $$$ people or anybody else is giving Debbie Yow an ultimatum. The only person who can do that is Randy Woodson. $$$ people couldn’t get Lee Fowler fired, for goodness sakes, how in the heck do you think they can get Yow fired?

As for your “trifecta” story, that dog won’t hunt. The best “fans” can do to “run a coach off” is through heavy doses of vitriol like SFN gave HWSNBN and Doeren.

We can agree to disagree on whether or not what didn’t happen because it didn’t play out that way. Only a handful of people know, neither of which are us, and those that did know then would surely spin it now.

Employment is a bit like a marriage. When things go bad, they can be really nasty (up to one spouse killing another), but things can improve, people kiss and make up and then it is human nature to forgive and forget. Shrugs.

I still go back to my original ask. If you focus on the now, then I’ll focus on the now. Stop making statements like our horrible fans almost ran DD off (which in this last post you’re saying clearly can’t happen), and I’ll let it drop.

DD may have left, but it wouldn’t have been due to the fans. It would have been to:
1) Reset the clock
2) Add $$$ to his bank account
I wouldn’t have blamed him at all if he had left for either reason. He ultimately has to do what he feels best for his career and his family.

The sun would have risen the next day. We would have still fielded a team, with some chance that it was better and some chance that it was worse. To me the program is bigger than any one coach or player.

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Greywolf wrote:

ryebread wrote:

Rye: Not interested in NC state football history. That was then, this is now. Debbie Yow is not firing and hiring out of a history book. Get real.

Rye, seriously. Get your head out of your past and enjoy what’s possibly the greatest recruiting class we ever had. No more speculation about Doeren getting fired. Didn’t happen. Ain’t going to happen.

If you think that Yow was going to survive a “DD or you” type ultimatum from the $$$ people, then I believe you are the one who needs to “get real.” DD was her guy. Gott was her guy as well. Gott was imploding. Had DD hit that second trifecta, Yow’s seat would have gotten red hot. She’d have made very short work out of him, particularly given the lack of a long standing personal relationship like she had with Gott. If she gave Gott the boot mid-season, she’d not have hesitated with DD.

To your point about the today, then I agree that we should focus on today. No more saying things like “our fans are running off DD” or revisionist garbage, and I won’t remind you of why DD might not have been here. Deal?

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Grey: go back and check the last 50 years of NC state football history. No head coach has survived hitting the trifecta twice. They can survive it once, but cannot again. Doing it twice is typically a sign that the program is just not healthy. I don’t think DD would have survived it either. Hey, what do I know? Doesn’t really matter because he pulled a rabbit out of his hat.

At the same time if he hits the trifecta again, I think he’ll be gone. He’ll likely avoid the chance by not scheduling ECU and we can cite that schedules are set years in advance.

I think we should play ECU every other year or so. The programs that have really established themselves have little trouble handling their little brothers.

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Grey:

I think we are in agreement about the state of things today. Let’s agree to keep things there and we’ll be good. 🙂 I admittedly opened a can of worms but wasn’t going to take that “NC State fans ran off DD” garbage. The media will pick that up and run with it.

In my lifetime the NC State fans have run off exactly one revenue sport coach — HWSNBN. Goodness knows Fowler was never going to fire him, but he was a survivalist enough to know that if raised HWSNBN’s salary to match or exceed ASU’s offer, then he’d have quickly been shown the door. He chose self preservation. Can’t say I blame him as he was never again getting a job that good (just like HWSNBN won’t either).

The spot the narrative could hold up is if DD’s on field performance continues at its current clip (5-7 to 8-4) for another 3-4 years. At that point we’ll push towards a decade with mediocre results, with a coach that doesn’t really connect with the fan base, whose admin support will be getting shaky (Yow will be retiring) but who has what some insiders think are “seeds of greatness.” All this stuff about DD and Bilechek and structure, etc. all remind me of how some close to the program spoke of HWSNBN. The reality is that the Desert Buddha didn’t have “it” and never was going to. In the next 3-4 years, DD will show if he does.

I do think there are a couple of things that are different. The first is that this is football at NC State, not men’s basketball. The inputs are different, as are the reasonable expectations. We are a .500 football program historically. If DD keeps it clean, connects with the fans and goes 6-6 to 8-4, then he can be here as long as he’d like.

The second is the coaches under and around him. If he actually turns into a CEO, lets these guys do their jobs, and manages to keep them around, we should be in good shape. Hux and Roof are both seasoned, upper third DCs on their own. If they can mesh, they should put out a good product. Drink is young and pass happy, but as long as Ledford is giving him the OL, Des some RBs and DD gives him a a high level metric like “50/50 play distribution” or “50/50 yardage distribution” or “75% TD % in the red zone, don’t care how many downs it takes” then that should be enough to keep him grounded and pointed in the right direction. This is the best staff we have had since Amato’s early years, so I hope we can keep them around. The right staff can turn NC State into a solid, consistent top 25 team, which would far exceed our inputs.

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Gray: I have never claimed to have insider information. As you say, anyone who is not the Chancellor, the AD or a handful of big money donors, and DD really knew that situation. DD may not have known it either. Some of those may have a strong desire for revisionist history based on a current situation.

I will say that I have history on my side on this one. Heck, we fired a beloved alum after the second pass at the trifecta. There is absolutely no way we would not have fired a guy from the Midwest, who was viewed as a bit of a gamble, who had called out the fans, whose recruiting had seemingly stalled out, who lost to an ECU team with a first year coach which then in turn proceeded to lose almost every game afterwards. Nope, sorry. He was toast if he lost to UNC. I fully expected us to lay an egg and for the walking papers to come swiftly.

The reality is that day Charlie Brown actually kicked the football, or Toby got his date with Pam. Pick whichever analogy you want. Maybe it was the day that the Mississippi River ran north, and we had a seismic shift in the football alignment in the state of NC. Maybe it is a little simpler and DD finally decided to stop playing scared (though he did go back into his shell in the second half). Whatever it was he won.

I don’t think for a second that he didn’t know that was make or break. I don’t think for a second he wasn’t darn serious about the jobs he was chasing. He was chasing jobs that really weren’t good fits because he knew how thin that line was. He had a high water mark year last season, beating FSU and UNC and still only finished 8-4. There’s a lot there for DD yet to prove.

The good news is that the most important part of managing is staffing, and DD seems to be doing that well. Do that and keep them all fed, and DD doesn’t have to be all that good. Things will take care of themselves. That’s why I hope we paid $$$ to those good assistants.

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Fastback68 wrote:

How many here believe DD had a hard contract in hand for 4.5mm a year??

DD flirted with some other offers to get the deal he wanted. One can call that gauging the market. Shrugs. He wanted some leverage, seemingly got it, and got the deal he wanted. Had he also walked because we decided he wasn’t worth it, I’d have been fine with that as well. The sun would have risen the next day.

Yow’s job is to try to put him in a contract that is advantageous for NC State, while keeping him minimally satisfied. If she paid him $100 more than the minimum to keep him, then she’s frankly a bad business person. I see this reality in business every day. I’d much rather her be tough in negotiations than giving him a sweet heart deal with a big buy out. Yeah, he’d sign that in a second. Yow could retire with her guy in place and left that problem for the next person. I applaud her for not taking the easy way out.

Let’s be honest about this. Two seasons ago DD had to beat UNC in the last game of the regular season, or he was gone. No NC State football coach has EVER survived a second season where he lost to ECU, lost to UNC AND had a losing season. They get one mulligan on this trifecta (and DD got his), but they never survive round two of that. Had he lost to UNC, that’s what would have happened, and he’d have been gone. Despite that, he wasn’t 3-4 games into this year and Yow was trying to extend him. I thought that was pretty good faith move by NC State and Yow.

I also didn’t think it was a bad move by DD to chase other offers. Maybe one of those bites and he gets out of town on his own terms? What I thought was odd though were the jobs he was pursuing. NC State is about as far “south” in football culture where DD is really going to be a good fit. He is a much better fit for a Big 10 school, and I fully expect him to end up at one of those if he continues on an upward trajectory. If that happens and he does end up at a Big 10 school, then I’ll be fine with it. He’ll have clearly left NC State football in a much better place than he found it.

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Greywolf wrote:

If the fans knew what DD was accomplishing, we would knock off the lame jokes and put-downs. We almost ran him off last year.

I’m fine with the rest of the post, but take issue at this. Yow clearly tried to get him under contract (prematurely in my mind) and he didn’t sign. Then DD flirted with both Ole Miss and Vandy. He was the one who was out fishing. We tossed him a bit more cash and he stayed. I said at the time (and still believe) that for every $1 we gave DD, we hopefully gave those key assistants like Kitchings and Ledford each $1 as well.

He’s signed and we have him some time. I hope it works out for the best. I will let what happened in the negotiation be in the past, as long as others do the same. The narrative about us running off DD is seemingly disingenuous.

Recruiting is on an uptick, and the staff looks to be a good one. Let’s see what we can do to hold it all together in order to actually break through. Historically that just hasn’t happened at NC State. The closest we’ve come in my lifetime is Sheridan. We still haven’t gotten the program back to where Sheridan had it, despite significantly better facilities and spending (relative to peer institutions). The next step is a team that is ranked 15th – 25th the entire season. I think we can do it, and this should be the year.

Also, it looks like 85% of the posting of this community is over at Packfansnation now. Any chance we can take the thread over there?

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Grey: I’m with you regarding football recruiting. Win and 5 stars will come. It is important for the program to ride a Senior Finley into the rankings all season. That is the nex step, even if it is 15-25 all year. That’s really where Sheridan had us year in and year out, and that is the high water line for our program in my lifetime. It would be nice to get back there, but first we have to do it once.

Like you I really like McDonald. There was a reason Syracuse was so
Mad when he left. I saw an immediate improvement in our route running the next year, and I think we’ve seen the bump in recruiting.

Ironically I feel better about the position coaches on offense than defense. Our DL haul (particularly with all the playing time we’ll be offering) will be telling.

I also agree about Thunder Dan. I hope we can keep it up because S&C kind of seems to cycle. We started really strong with Stroud but I think he left and we weren’t the same in the final years of Amato. TOB’s S&C was awful. Then we picked up with the Arkansas hire, but it fell off before Thunder. Let’s hope Thunder can sustain it.

I also think football recruiting is less exact than basketball. Yes there are clearly 5 stars that are flops in basketball but they are much rarer. The kids are so much better vetted, thus the ability to put a predicted value on a player by the shoe companies. Football evaluation is much tougher, more distributed and the players are only playing at certain times of the year. I trust what my eyes tell me and that is that the talent level in many positions is going up.

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Glad you are right on this one grey. Hopefully they pick up some things from what clearly is the best run NFL franchise.

I tend to agree that we should pick some critical recruiting areas and hit them hard. I’d probably target:
– As much of NC as possible but really focusing on Durham and east
– Charlotte Metro
– Tidewater area
– S. Georgia/N. Florida
– Atlanta metro
– Miami
– DC Metro

There’s enough talent from this segment alone to win big. I feel the same way about basketball as well.

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gray: As always, I hope you are right.

While I get that the kids aren’t playing right now, the recruiting rules changed this year:
https://247sports.com/college/football/recruiting/ContentGallery/Recruits-who-committed-to-Power-5-schools-this-week-118418443

During the past week alone – beginning May 19 and ending May 25 – there were 28 players from the class of 2019 committed to Power Five college football program, including 27 high school prospects and one junior college prospects. Of the high school players who committed this week, three were rated as five-star prospects and six were rated as four-star prospects, according to the 247Sports Composite. The lone junior college commitment of the week came from one of the top overall JUCO prospects in the country, per the Composite.

The list of Power Five schools that secured at least one commitment this week includes (in alphabetical order): Alabama, Arizona, Auburn, Baylor, Iowa State, Kansas State, Louisville, Maryland, Michigan State, NC State, Northwestern (2), Notre Dame, Oregon (2), Penn State (3), Purdue, South Carolina (2), Stanford, Tennessee, Texas, TCU, USC, Virginia and Washington.

I wouldn’t be opposed to recruiting more in the northeast. We’re trying to build a mid-west Big 10 styled team. There are some kids in the northeast that Penn State, Michigan, ND, BC, Syracuse, etc. have gotten for years that fit that mold and have been good football players.

Dare to dream. Maybe it’s both?

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You may be right on that one. The ACC may be permanently in bed with ABC/ESPN. I think if the ACC wanted they could break it if they added ND, and I cannot see how being dead last in per team payouts from the Power 5 leagues is what the schools want.

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My guess is recruiting. If it were just DD, then maybe the Patriots thing holds water. Given it was DD and his two top assistants, then I suspect it is just looking at players.

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Some things seem obvious to me:
– Decision to go to ESPN and play second fiddle to the SEC was a poor one.
– ESPN/ABC is over paying, so that SEC money is bound to come down. It also means that renegotiating with ESPN/ABC probably isn’t going to “find” more money.
– Nice find on ND. If they’re indeed “down” on the revenue side because of their deal, then that might create an incentive for them to join the ACC as a full member.
– It would stand to reason that if the ACC added ND and another school, then that would effectively render the current deal with ESPN as invalid and open up another round of negotiation. Of course that crazy future viewing rights thing may cover ESPN, but I doubt that would stand up in court.
– If the ACC break with ESPN/ABC were to happen, it would seem to make sense to pursue NBC (Comcast) to be their “only” college league. Given they’ve not got a NFL division or a real presence in major college sports, one would think NBC would pay a premium.
– The key for the ACC would be to get the per member payout up. I’m not convinced these mega-leagues have been great for per school revenue. That would have to be the focus.
– I am not convinced that a 15 team league is that appealing. It seems like 16 by adding another team (S. Florida / Texas, as I doubt it is UConn due to the bad blood and Navy due to a general mismatch). That per member payout has to cover both new teams.
– If we go to 16, does that mean 2 divisions of 8, or 4 divisions of 4? Seems like it is 2 x 8 with home and home per side, a double round robin on one’s side in basketball, etc.. If one only plays 1/2 the league, is it really a league?
– Time for Swoff to earn that $3M………… I’ll sort it all out for 1/3rd.

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McCallum: Good luck with that white sauce. I’ve had more of that than I would care to admit (used to hang out with some Auburn grads). Alabama managed to take perfectly good NC BBQ sauce and wreck it by adding mayo. It kind of works on fried chicken (sort of like chicken fried steak), but is a quick way to wreck a hog or cow.

Grey: I love your optimism, and our recent recruiting momentum in football may allow you to be the one who says “I told you so” regarding DD. Your posts help keep the site going and I enjoy our debates.

I’m probably somewhere in the middle of the scale between optimist and pessimist. I’m generally optimistic in life, but also try not to ignore glaring data points that are there to counter.

For instance with Sid Lowe, Packi and I knew exactly how it would end the day he was hired. We decided to hope for the best and that Lowe could out recruit his coaching record. Didn’t happen, but we always liked the guy. He was doomed before he started with the assistants he chose.

I had followed Gott prior to his time at NC State, so I knew exactly what we were getting there. He was okay early when he had structure with Harrick and actually listened to Lutz. Those two masked a lot of issues. Once Harrick disappeared leaving Gott on his own, and Lutz was more clearly marginalized, then the trajectory was pretty much what I had expected from day one. That was just a desperate, bad hire. There wasn’t much to ever be optimistic about, only the hope that he didn’t totally screw up our program by the time he was gone (which it sadly appears he’s going to be the gift that keeps on giving).

With KK, I think I made it clear on this site that if it wasn’t Archie, it likely was KK or Wade and I much preferred KK to Wade. Packi can tell you I was a little upset (~20 minutes) that it really wasn’t Archie, but turned optimistic fairly quickly because it was KK. Nothing about the ensuing 14 months has changed my opinion that the NC State men’s basketball program is in the best hands it has been in since V was coaching here.

I was very worried about Wade and kept tabs on his year 1 at LSU. He’s recruiting well, but I knew he would. There are a lot of intrinsic recruiting advantages to LSU basketball that allow for that. The actual on the court results, coaching within the games, post game press conferences, player issues, etc. were a lot of what I was concerned about. Not surprisingly people are sniffing around the recruiting as well. I think we dodged a bullet with that one. It doesn’t mean that Wade won’t be successful at LSU (some of those built in program items may allow for that), but I think he’d have been a really bad hire for NC State. I think had we missed on Archie and hired Wade, I may have taken a BJD styled hiatus for a year.

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I post mostly here and a little on 247. If we all moved to 247, I would post more often there. I see some people on here over there.

I too read BTP, as I think that is currently the best “coverage” for NC State sports online. They seem to have picked up the analytics slant that this site used to have. The forums there are worse than here though.

Henderson’s break out to IPS has seemingly (from the outside) hurt both him and 247. Maybe he’s making a living on the premium/subscription side, but the place seems dead on the free side. The site he left (247) seems to have taken a short term hit, has some reduced participation, but is still the most active NC State sports forum.

This is part of why I think this whole thing really needs to consolidate, and why I won’t be going over to Troll’s site. I appreciate Troll’s efforts to hold this community together, but it’s dead due to lack of content and posts. We just need more critical mass of posters in one spot and more idea exchange. If this site has to die in order for it to happen, then so be it. The political debates really killed this place, and ran off a lot of posters.

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I think we picked up Lockett knowing that Bey was gone. I wish Bey the best.

This is part of why I don’t follow recruiting as much as I used to. Tell me who is on the roster when practice starts and I will tell you my opinion of how we might do. Until then there is too much flux.

Lots of rumors that Bey was a EW recruit. If so his departure hurt us far more than what happens when most “third assistants” leave. Pretty much all the kids close to him left as well.

Have we named our new third assistant, or are we just sliding over left a seat with the DOBO?

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The NC State online sports community is fragmented enough. The last thing we need is another site, and I would hate to see this group disband over a failed migration.

Not sure why the forums here have so many technical gaps. I ran UBB software for years with very little effort. It is highly customizable and has all the features that any forum really needs.

In reality though, this site has been on life support since BJD left. If I gets consolidated, then so be it. I’d suggest migrating to 247 as that is the only semi-functional posting community.

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Not following this one, but can’t understand how that should be illegal. People are going to gamble regardless of whether or not there is a law. Sports is probably about the most obvious thing to gamble on for passive / observable gambler.

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