Telegraph Projects Mercer's 2015 Football Season

Thanks "visitor". Lol

Wait BearDownMU. I completely agree with "Visitor."

Mr. Shirley has projected 1 (or more) of these games incorrectly. I suspect once he gets called out about this issue, he'll alter the online text soon and fix his 'mistake' claiming something about 'forgetting' a game (or games), even though the original totals add up to 11 & 7. Of course, he won't acknowledge his 'mistake' by announcing his revised projection through the same number of Tweets with which he announced his original projections.

Nah, I'm just kidding. Mr. Shirley would never do any of those things because he's a responsible person who recognizes he is a journalist and, therefore, has a responsibility to the consumers of his content to behave professionally, whether or not he is paid for his work.

Anything is possible.

I appreciate that there appears to be no analysis in much of this other than what you might look up on wikipedia.  Macon's favorite son, Chris Hatcher, did at least get a couple sentences.

On the other hand, I suspect this one article contains more words than The Greenville (SC) News has written about FU, the hometown team, in the past 2 years. Maybe they're waiting until they finish their analysis.

The subject of your post was: "Why I think this article sux," right? So, my post replies directly to your post in that my point is, "At least there IS an article in the hometown paper about the hometown team, in contrast to what I've seen myself and heard Paladin fans complain about since Dan Foster left The Greenville News." Same subject, different angle.

I'm glad you were able to deeply search the archives of that paper and come up with one article that, ostensibly, was about FU Athletics. Although, as I read it, I lost track if it was about FU or the P5, the SEC, the ACC, South Carolina (USC), and, of course, Clemson. Almost 1/2 of the paragraphs were fully about or referred to those programs...par for the course for that paper...as you know.

BTW - When Mr. Shirley said Wofford "lost a lot from last season's team," perhaps he was not referring to the number of players (as the 'commenter' you referenced called out). Maybe he was referring, instead, to lost production. On Defense, Wofford lost their leaders in Total Tackles (66), Unassisted Tackles (44), Assisted Tackles (22), Tackles for Loss (11-29 yds), and Sacks (Co-Leader)(4-19). That's about 1/4 of the tackles on their top 11 and 1/2 of the TFL's and Sacks. On Offense, they lost ball carriers accounting for 90 attempts, almost 600 yards of rushing (more than some entire FCS teams rushed in 2014), and 5 TD's.

So, let's not be so quick to assess the accuracy of Mr. Shirley's statements until we drill down deeply into the stats, as I imagine he did before posting his correct statement regarding Wofford's losses, and his predictions. He is, after all, a fellow Clemson-Alum of mine, y'know.

Did you see any other ACTUAL errors in the story that you want to try to denigrate?


BTW2 - either you or the paper spelled your friend's nickname wrong. I know you're a smart guy, so I'm betting it was the Greenville News that can't spell their own employee's nickname accurately. Surely, you wouldn't misspell the nickname of your good friend and classmate, would you?

Just because he didn't 'show his work,' doesn't mean he didn't do it. My point is that the comments about 'laziness,' not putting time time into his background work on the article, etc. are uninformed and unfair (not atypical for a message board, I know). No one can know what he did or didn't do to develop his opinions/predictions. Perhaps, with the exception of the Wofford prediction, the facts that he did post about each game were the ones that he felt were most relevant to informing his prediction and just happened to be fairly easy to research. I have to admit I questioned his Wofford comment as well, because I took what the Wofford (and Duke, hmmm?) supporter said as 'fact' also, but when I did that deep dive (as, perhaps, Mr. Shirley did), the actual situation may not be as it appears on the surface. The truth is that you don't know how much time he (or I) put into analyzing Wofford's stats/roster.

Unlike the Greenville News article you posted, Mr. Shirley did, at least, stay on topic; rather than spending almost half of his article discussing the SEC, the ACC, UGa, and GT...or his alma mater. Does it make sense that in an article titled ""Next Furman AD must steer through uncharted roads" that I learn which FBS Conferences are in the P5, the elements of what FCOA involves for these conferences, when that decision was made by those conferences, the actual dollar figures (down to the $) of FCOA for Clemson and USC, when these 2 schools will begin paying FCOA, and how much that total expenditure will be for them? None of this is important to FU's next AD and the relevance of the whole FCOA 'thing' is debatable. I would think an article about how the next AD is going to address attendance issues in Football and Men's Basketball, lack of support/connection from/with the Greater Greenville area, recent history (with a couple of exceptions) of lack of on-the-field success in Football and Men's Basketball, the recent near-death of the Men's Golf program, and other issues would be much more relevant in an article about FURMAN and the next AD there. I know these are the issues that are top-of-mind concerns for FU's new President. I understand though. At present, if the Greenville News wants readers, they have to be sure that every sports-related article must be about Cocks and Tigers.