[Rest of the story]

JDUB - your number on atheltic expenses is low. LU has invested more resources than just 13 million annually. Not only operationally but in facilities as well.

[Hold My Own]

I think Jerry Jr answered the athletics situation well, I dont like putting numbers and figures out there for everyone to know especially to prove a student of all people wrong

[ODULU]

I support LU's stance on fair and ethical journalism. They don't have to cooperate with a newspaper that allows vulgar or violent comments to be transmitted. I know our local paper would NEVER allow that and it is liberal as heck (affiliated with NYTimes)

[LUconn]

Yeah, I wasn't aware things had gotten so bad. I was thinking it was just the same old stooges posting their ignorance over there. I mean they were full of hate, but they seemed to keep it clean for the most part. For health reasons I had to stop reading them a while back.

[ODULU]

Can I lighten the mood here for a moment and share with you a humorous LU story? Didn't want to create a whole new thread. (maybe the newspaper controversy should have it's own thread)
Anyway....
I went to LU for 1 year (crappy dorm #1). This was before the Vine Center was created and they played in a Hofstra like gym. Back in the day it was easy to get stuck on campus (no theatre in walking distance, and I think the Liberty Way was serious gospel at the time). Anyway some friends of mine found this dive novelty shop that sold junk. There was a back door that the owner would let some people go through. Back in that area there were fireworks, some seriously scary (destroy internal organ/ S&M) sex toys and stink bombs and the like. We stayed away from the scary S&M stuff and bought the stink bombs. Remember we were dumb freshman! The DeMoss Center was the student center/tv/ hang out area, and in the corner was the library. Very small 1 story library connected to the rest of the student center. One of my buddies would walk down an aisle of books and drop a plastic stink bomb. I would follow a few minutes later and crush the stink bomb as I walked out of the library. Now think of the most repugnant odor you have ever smelled!! Think rotten 4 week old eggs soaked in chemical waste, vinegar and vomit… now you get the picture!! We would sit on the inside brick ledge and just watch people run out of there coughing, moaning, gagging and some laughing there tails off. What great fun!! Seriously, if we had video we would own Youtube!!
Now you ask, what does this have to do with Liberty basketball. Well, at one game one of the guys reached in his pocket and found a left over stink bomb. It was given to me. Being the genius that I was, I decided to loft it onto the court at a certain exciting moment (everyone’s hand in the air). The stinker landed right at the foul line. For the next 5 minutes there were ten guys watching nothing but the stink bomb. Fast break after fast break, rebounds… that thing was getting kicked back and forth, but it just wouldn’t break. A guard would be walking up the court and the ten of us shouted, “OHHHHHHH!” because the guy was so close to stepping on it. Everyone kept looking at us like we were idiots bcuz for everyone else in the arena there was nothing exciting about a guy walking the ball up the court. Finally the stinker got kicked about 2 feet in front of the visiting team’s bench…. And finally someone crushed the thing. OMG!! The reaction of the visiting team brings tears to my eyes even today. They were stuck to the bench… had nowhere to go… and they were dying. All of them had tears pouring out of their eyes, buried there face in towels, stomping their feet. They ran out of towels and ran behind the bench to grab more. They were leaning on each other… almost lying on each other dying. Almost every member of the team went from laughing, to fighting dry heaves, back to laughing.
You should have been there!!

[thepostman]

I can see Liberty's side...but I still do not see how refusing to talk to the paper helps anything. I hope things get worked out...and I do agree things need to be filtered on these newspaper sites...but refusing to talk to the paper after a basketball game? I just don't know if that is the right way to go...

but I do trust and respect the administration and just hope it all gets worked out soon...

[JDUB]

I can see Liberty's side...but I still do not see how refusing to talk to the paper helps anything. I hope things get worked out...and I do agree things need to be filtered on these newspaper sites...but refusing to talk to the paper after a basketball game? I just don't know if that is the right way to go...

but I do trust and respect the administration and just hope it all gets worked out soon...

You obviously do not understand business. When you boycott a company it hits them where it hurts... in their wallet. The way that helps is it basically forces them to listen to our side and make necessary changes in order to keep our business, which is vital to them staying afloat. If they don't have anything to write about LU, they lose a bunch of stories and start writing about a bunch of stupid stuff, which will make people quit buying the paper cause they don't want to read stupid crap. So it hits their wallet mulitple ways

[JLFJR]

ODULU,
My Dad would be proud of you. He loved those stinkbombs and was notorious for throwing them around campus. Nobody laughed harder than him watching people react to them. In fact, when he passed, we found three boxes of those things in his desk. I probably shouldn't have told that but, what can I say? He loved to have fun.

[Rest of the story]

JDUB is correct. LU is in a position to wage economic warfare and it will hurt bad!

There was a line in the Lord of the Rings Movies that comes to mind --- “Whether you want war or not, war is upon us!”

[TIMSCAR20]

Well I am glad to hear the "real story" and to hear it from the boys upstairs is kind of cool and makes Flamefans perhaps the best message board ever! Thanks guys.

[TIMSCAR20]

gotcha. I did see a quote from him in our paper actually.. something about Lee having a layup drill kind of game.
I would guess freezing out your (probably) only newspaper outlet isn't effective though.

Since you seem to be the media dude, I have a question. What percentage of people come to the Vines for basketball that are just Lynchburg citizens with no affiliation with LU or the high school?

I would say more than half of the Vines Center lately has been students but when we have a sell out the folks behind me on ourside of press row seem to be from the community. This season the Student half of the Vines has been full for virtually every game since second semester started back on Jan 12.

[TIMSCAR20]

While we have the attention of the "important people on here, and we are talking about the old gym, does anyone remember my dunk vs ETSU?

[ODULU]

ODULU,
My Dad would be proud of you. He loved those stinkbombs and was notorious for throwing them around campus. Nobody laughed harder than him watching people react to them. In fact, when he passed, we found three boxes of those things in his desk. I probably shouldn't have told that but, what can I say? He loved to have fun.

That's great!! Yeah, a bunch of guys made some "terrible towels" for all the b-ball games. We saw him sitting on the other side of the gym walked up to him and reached over to hand him one. He grabbed us by the collar and pulled us way over... me and a my buddy were literally lying on your mom's lap hopeless to get away. And he was laughing his head off. He also came up behind me at the old county football stadium... slapped my hat off from behind. I turned around like, "What the!" He walked away laughing and told me to get a haircut! HA!

[TIMSCAR20]

ODULU,
My Dad would be proud of you. He loved those stinkbombs and was notorious for throwing them around campus. Nobody laughed harder than him watching people react to them. In fact, when he passed, we found three boxes of those things in his desk. I probably shouldn't have told that but, what can I say? He loved to have fun.

That's great!! Yeah, a bunch of guys made some "terrible towels" for all the b-ball games. We saw him sitting on the other side of the gym walked up to him and reached over to hand him one. He grabbed us by the collar and pulled us way over... me and a my buddy were literally lying on your mom's lap hopeless to get away. And he was laughing his head off. He also came up behind me at the old county football stadium... slapped my hat off from behind. I turned around like, "What the!" He walked away laughing and told me to get a haircut! HA!

Man Doc was the master at sneaking up on you and blasting you from behind. He pushed me fully dressed into the shower after a game when I was a freshman. I was so mad because I didn't know who did it but I was ready to get into a fist fight for sure...When I saw it was Dr. Falwell all I could do was laugh.

[ODUfanRazor]

As an ODU fan with absolutely ZERO affiliation with Liberty, I feel I have an outside perspective that I can add to this discussion.

I am all for freedom of speech. I think you should be allowed to say whatever you want, whenever you want, even if it is offensive and crude. If we start limiting what you can say and when, we are headed down the slipperiest slope of all.

With that said, a reputable newspaper, who is just as much a business as it is an outlet for journalism and news, has a responsbility to its readers and customers to provide both sides of an arguement.

However, it does NOT have a responsbility to post hateful, disgusting, crude and obnoxious remarks about a University, especially one that it does quite a deal of business with.

Those idiots who post those things are entitled to their opinion and should be able to express it whenever they wish, but as a newspaper with a responsibility to its readers, they should remove posts and comments that have no value and are simply slander and hatred.

I haven't always agreed with Liberty University and Mr. Falwell over the years, but I agree that comments such as the ones mentioned above have absolutely zero place on a website that is supposed to report the news and give people information. If someone wants to spill hate-filled propoganda such as what was posted, they can very easily start their own website and have at it. People can choose to read it or not read it.

But when you go onto a public discussion forum and spout disgusting nonsense like that, it deserves to be deleted and removed.

Just my 2 cents.

[LUMU11]

This is for whoever felt the need to jump al over my statement earlier. Apparently you misunderstand. I was referring to the NA and LU disagreement being not an athletic issue.That was a short way of saying it was between the execs and NA. Athletically it affects us tho, everyone knows that. Like I said also, and Jon reposted it, I didn't know the whole story at the time and posted my subtle opinion based on what I knew, but made sure to state that I didn't know the whole story.
Having said all that and having a pretty good grip on the situation, I say the chancellor and his ppl most likely did the right thing for school, but it doesn't take away the fact that this creates a huge problem for our athletic programs. But sometimes its not all about athletics.
I'll be sure to be very detailed in al my posts from now on so ppl's panties don't get all up in a bunch and I am understood.

[JMUDukes]

Here is the rest of the story for anyone interested. I have been receiving complaints from a number of students and faculty over the last few months about the irresponsible comments that the News and Advance allows to be posted anonymously on its website. Many of these comments were forwarded to me and I agree that they are out of line. For example, one reader wrote earlier this month that "It is OK to attack Christians (and other believers) simply because they are a danger to the world. Their beliefs have to be treated as viruses and eradicated." This was one of the kinder comments actually and the comments often have nothing to do with the subject matter of the the pertinent article. A small group of LU political enemies seems to be using this free forum to bash LU students, their religious beliefs and even their character without any factual basis. We complained to the newspaper editors several times. Even after all the complaints, the News Advance allowed a reader to post a comment this past week about LU's women that was very similar to the comment that Don Imus made not so long ago about the Rutgers women's basketball team. Actually, it was worse in some ways. We decided to stop cooperating with the newspaper in its coverage of LU and the newspaper deleted the comment. We appreciate their action and regret that we had to take such drastic measures. We will be discussing the matter with the newspaper this week and hope to resolve it quickly. We do not want the newspaper to delete all posts that are negative to LU but we do think there are some boundaries and, while we have no right to tell the News Advance what to post on their website, we also do not have to assist the News Advance in its coverage of LU. We appreciate the relationship that LU has enjoyed with the LNA, especially over the last four or five years, but there are plenty of other news outlets that LU can use to keep the public informed about LU especially in this age of the internet. Regarding the comment that LU administration doesn't understand or care about athletics, I can only say that the eight figure amount we invested in athletics last year speaks for itself. ODU has a great basketball team. I hope Jesse heals soon.

The President of LU posts here?!?

[JMUDukes]

I support LU's stance on fair and ethical journalism. They don't have to cooperate with a newspaper that allows vulgar or violent comments to be transmitted. I know our local paper would NEVER allow that and it is liberal as heck (affiliated with NYTimes)

gotta love the Virginian Pilot /sarcasm

add to the political bias that their HS writers always picked against my football team stupid Jami Frankenberry.

[LUMU11]

Another thing, I was not trying to indicate that the execs don't care about athletics. Since the chancellor apparenlty is on here I will personally apologize to him for that statement. I will say my point was just that sometimes decisions that they make, or in this case are forced to make negatively affect the athletic programs. My insinuation was that I personally wish more thought was given to athletics sometimes and how they can be affected. But I said in my last post sometimes its not all about athletics as is this situation.

[JLFJR]

Thank you, LUMU11. You make some excellent points.

[Hold My Own]

(EDIT: Sorry Jerry, typing while you posted) I doubt he took it personally LUMU11...in your last post you do raise some good points. So many studies have been done where schools want to gain more exposure/students/prestige and the committee's answers to all those problems is athletics, wither it be start a football team or do other things. You cannot put a number on athletics sure 98% of the college programs lose money. They say only the top 20 actually can produce positive cash flow. They obviously do things that you cannot chart or nobody but the top 20 would have them.

[LUMU11]

HMO, I didn't think he did either. I was wrong in my opinion and felt the need to own up to my mistake. I was more referring to the poster that originally jumped on my initial post which I left very brief just bc I didn't know the whole situation. You are correct in your statistics HMO, very few schools make money on athletics. I'm a former college athlete and have several family members who have played collegiate sports and have throughout my life been around collegiate athletics thru ppl I know which is why I tend to think athletically first. So for the original poster who questioned my knowledge, feel free to question me anytime.

[TDDance234]

Probably time to give this one it's own thread, yes?

[HenryGale]

This has been very enlightening...thanks!

[Hold My Own]

TDD- might be a good idea


LUMU11- I didnt want to speak for him but I wasnt sure if he'd be checking back in to respond and I didnt want you losing any sleep that's why I put the parenthesis but didnt want to change the content