Since this board is supposed to be about other sports at ATM, I'm not going to continue arguing about the difference between a promise, a lie, or when someone "changes their mind". But the fact that you don't know the difference is surprising to me. If we can get back to tennis, I think most of the changes in college tennis( 6 game sets in doubles, shortened or no warm ups, allowing the crowd or players to yell at opposing players, etc.) are designed to increase interest, attendance, and fan participation. The big 12 seems to be more aggressive than the rest of the country. I was sitting behind the ucla women yesterday while the baylor and usc men were playing and they were talking a lot about the yelling and heckling at opposing players. Both usc and baylor team members were hanging on the fences and being pretty obnoxious toward the end of the match. I'm sure tennis traditionalists really have a problem with this, but it seems to be the direction college tennis is going...

I was at the match yesterday and I thought the officials did a pretty good job of "crowd control'

I thought Baylor did a really nice job with the tournament. Their facilities are first class. To digress a bit, having the soccer, tennis, softball and baseball fields in one central location is really nice. Couple that with a uniform and consistent architectural style -red bricks and green trim - the visual effect is very impressive and appealing. Their minor sports facilities are really much better than ours in that respect. But back to tennis

Personally I don't care for the heckling during a point. I go to matches because I enjoy the sport itself.
The last thing I want to experience is being around a bunch of loud mouthed jerks trying to out do themselves in their obnoxiousness.

I don't care for shortening the doubles point matches to 6 games. I think doubles is fast paced and exciting.
I don't care for playing let balls either. 9 times out of ten you're rewarding a player for not making a good serve. I have mixed emotions on playing no add. It really does add a certain amount of suspense to perform on one single point and does speed up the game. Of course after several deuce points the tension really starts to mount also along with a need for being fit. Since I enjoy watching the games, less is not necessarily better for me. If you want better crowds you don't schedule matches that conflict with basketball or baseball games. You can be rowdy and cheer for you team and players under current rules and have a great time.

i think i'd rather watch 18-22 yr old americans than the tennis today, we have a 20 yr old and (2) 21 yr old freshman on our roster and a 24 yr old senior (all foreigners). I think you can blame it on the need to win and the coaches finding holes in the current rules, the American kids graduate high school at 17 or 18 and have to enter college, the foreigners dont. Baylor and Oklahoma play all foreign players, and the majority of Ncaa tennis is going to this, this also leads to lower attendance and then schools dropping tennis.

Jett Cash....London.....redshirt freshman I think is 20; Max Lunkin.....Moscow.....sophomore is 20; Arthur Rinderknech.....Paris is 19....freshman , although he was here last year, and for reasons known only to the NCAA was not cleared til this year...Jordan Szabo....Australia is 23, a senior and has been here four years....Jordi Arconada .....San Juan is a freshman, and while I don't know how old he is, I think he is probably 18 or 19. In looking over other SEC teams rosters our percentages look fairly typical of other schools....Mississippi State on one extreme has no American players..Alabama on the other end of the spectrum has no foreign players. The young men who represent the Aggies are top quality and great representatives of our University.....they are following in the footsteps of many other great foreign players we have had, many whom still live in this country and are great supporters of all things Texas A&M.

quote:

---

And the majority of Ncaa tennis is going to this

---

Um, NCAA tennis of 15 years ago called. They want to remind you it has been "going to this" for a good many years.

For the record:

I hate the new scoring system they are trying to implement. And the ITA went behind the coaches and players backs doing it. Now that it has been tabled for discussion, I doubt it happens.

I hate the idea of heckling during point. Tennis isn't football. It isn't basketball. It's called a sport for kings for a reason. I see no reason to make heckling legal. Tennis is never going to have big crowds like they are envisioning. And I think we should all be fine with that and leave it how it is.

My son played on a college team with two Brits, a Swede, two South Africans and one other American back in the mid 90s.

You couldn't find a better group of kids. One of them stayed in the US and has become a very successful businessman. The others have returned home and all lead productive lives in their respective countries.

They learned a lot about the US and their fellow students learned lot from them. It was a win -win for everyone. Just a different perspective on the foreign player issue.

I think the point is, if they went to the new Junior College rule of only allowing 1 foreigner to play, it would help American tennis as well as increase attendance figures. We went from leading the country in attendance 10 years ago, to having less than 50 people at a lot of the matches this year. We have gone from cheering "USA" at the baylor matches to doing the same as them, I remember a lot of you complaining about the make-up of their teams not being a representation of the university population. And a lot of you complaining about your tax dollars at state universities, educating foreign players who have no intention of graduating.

UVA vs OU for the championship. UVA beats BU 4-2. OU beats TCU 4-3.

Thanks for that update.

Welcome!

Before we knew anything about the draw, Coach Denton thought UVA could likely win it all if it was not terribly hot. Looks like we will see.

Interesting. I was at our match against UVA. They looked good! They are very young as well. Only have 1 Senior.

There is no doubt that Coach Boland has done an amazing job at Virginia. As many know my undergraduate degree is from UVA and if you look at their history in tennis prior to Brian it is awful. Sadly he has beat us on a number of players, most recently Mitchell Frank, who incidentally helped us with AJ. Will be pulling for them tomorrow, but speaking of great jobs, John Roddick has done a special job at OU. Hoping my schedule will allow me to get to Waco,for what should be a great match.

What exactly are you talking about? A&M is majority American players.

Oh and the top 2 attendance leaders for men's tennis were TCU and Texas Tech. Both of whom have more international
Players than American ones. Not everyone goes to tennis matches for xenophobic reasons

Take a look at the last 3 years recruiting, 1 american last year, 3 foreign, 2 years ago, 1 american walk on, 2 foreign. After next year we will have 1 american playing in our top 6. Tech has 5 recruits from the state of Texas. My point was our attendance, it has gone down every year for the last 5 years, yet our team is ranked higher every year. Years ago we had tailgating before every home match, now we get less than 50 people most matches and no student body support.

Cass actively promoted attendance. I doubt attendance issues have anything to do with the number of foreign players.

This might actually be a situation where being in the SEC hurts attendance. We don't have any rivalries like we had with Baylor and Texas to fire up the fan base and show off the product to people that ordinarily might not be tennis fans.

I agree SA68ag.

I've never attended a match at Tech, but because of proximity I attend several TCU matches every year. Besides being an awesome venue to watch tennis and never charging at the gate, they do a ton of things to get bigger crowds. They always give away free pizza and have events for kids between doubles and singles play. Theres also several "play" areas for kids. They have music playing throughout their matches and sometimes have live music. Coach Roditi even sends out a mass email urging people to come before every home match. It's no coincidence that they lead the nation in attendance.

Down goes OU. UVA wins the Championship, 4-1.

we ran into a real buzz saw that was peaking at the right time. Congrats to UVA.

Well if we weren't going to win it, glad the wahoos got it done. Need for our young guys to work hard this summer. We might be pretty good next year.

Let's not get into the if we weren't going to win it at least we lost to the team that won it. The match was a complete anialation! Virginia, TCU, OU, Baylor were all in another level than the Aggies.

I knew that was going to be one of you guy's responses. You are correct, but that was also several months ago. There were about five teams that took it up a notch or two since then and the longhorn/Aggies were not one of them. Don't get me wrong, they had a very good year-the best yet under the longhorn leader. Which ain't saying that much. But, to start making it sound like maybe we could have just won is just one of the many reasons I love getting you guys dander up. Deep down, I know you guys no that you all are completely full of it when you think Denton has a real team that is truly competing for national titles. But please, keep humoring me because I am quite sure that i enjoy it far more than you Denton lovers do.

Not to change subjects again, and all yall's fun with Rick, but here is the heckling rule copied and pasted directly from the rule book:

• Non-participating team members must have exemplary sportsmanship. All cheering must be positive and directed at their own team members. They may receive automatic point penalties for comments to or about the opposing team.

What our players have gone to is way beyond these rules and borders on ridiculous. Doesn't matter what country you come from, you represent Texas A&M when you step on the court.

I agree Cass did promote tennis more, but I think a good influx of watchers was because of the local player, Cody Hubbell. The locals came to watch and got hooked into it. However, after he left, the gradual decline started.

Nice comeback by Jeremy yesterday....plays a very good player from Wake today....hope for the best....Shane and Harry open doubles this afternoon against a team from Baylor....we shall see...

Jeremy is currently cruising at 6-2, 3-0. If he wins this round, he will be an all american

Wow...Very nice...thanks for the update....