I could see literally no scenario in which about to be 73 year old Leonard Hamilton is going to pick up and move across country leaving a job he has had for a long time to take over at Arizona. It isn’t like FSU is some podunk school and he has a rather large buyout. I mean he literally just signed a contract extension last month.
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What happened with Tommy Lloyd?
The big city mid-major can be a tough spot, I agree. You can count on them to get some ink in local paper(s), but it’s a shame that U-D Mercy doesn’t have a TV contract like Oakland, where around half of their games are on local TV.
the rumor is that the Arizona AD doesn’t like him too much. Not as a Plan A anyway. He didn’t have a great interview.
B-but I was assured he had already agreed to a $2.88M-per-year contract! 
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Yup and they really don’t have the support they once had in their heydays in the late 90s when Rashad Phillips was the household name. You can see near sellout crowd when they have a home game but the support has dwindled dramatically due to the location and them not being good anymore. They’re in a tough spot as a mid-major.
Also, I’ve heard that the local coaches doesn’t like Kampe all that much and Kampe has been struggling to get local recruits.
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Do the city coaches like any of the local D1 coaches? Izzo, I suppose. The rest of the D1 level kids have to go somewhere.
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Wonder if Wayne State will become a draw. They’ll be sharing a stadium with the Motor City Cruise. And they’re right in Midtown.
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They added D.J. Harvey (ex-Notre Dame, ex-Vanderbilt) from the transfer portal too. Assuming Antoine Davis and Noah Waterman return, they could be very good next year.
Probably to do with saving money.
Wayne State is D-2. They are not and will not be a draw.
They do have a significantly larger student body than UDM, but that’s the way it goes. Kind of funny and random how some schools are D-1 and some aren’t.
Regarding UDM and EMU, I would suggest that they’re both lousy situations. UDM is an undesirable midmajor in a big city that has no appetite for it. EMU might be the worst D-1 athletic department situation in the country given its facilities, institutional investment, and especially its location almost literally in the shadow of Michigan and sharing a state with several other better-positioned regional schools that actually have their own space.
They’re not attractive within their own conference, and they’re not really attractive to people in their own state. No constituency. Even more than other directional Michigan schools, alums who are sports fans tend to be fans of someone else nearby. Other smaller schools can carve out a “local team” niche (one of the funniest things I saw was a raffle at Ferris State when I went there for a hockey game. The prize of the raffle was season football tickets… to your choice of Michigan or Michigan State.) Ferris, Western, Central, etc, all have other teams they can root for, but they are distinct enough to be able to draw their own local fanbase as well.
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They can’t have a slow start like they did last year but I think it’s more of a function of having nearly a new entire team via transfers. Once they clicked, they played like the best team in the Horizon. I wouldn’t be surprised if they compete for the title.
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Well Indiana is sort of a Southern school anyway
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Grand Valley is quite large for a D2 as well. I think many of the GLIAC schools are larger than many Division 1 schools across the country.
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Yeah, I think it comes down to how long some of these universities have been around. GVSU is pretty big now (~25,000) but has only existed since the early 60s and really only exploded athletically in the past 20 or so years.
(GV alum here)
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They are a dominant D2 program, basically the Stanford of D2 program since they pretty much owned the Director Cup nearly every year. It’s a testament to their growth in athletic department which is spurred by Brian Kelly’s football team winning national championship games.
They likely won’t ever move up into D1 for the foreseeable future.
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Yep, good ol’ Brian Kelly. And yeah, despite everyone and their brother wanting them to move up to D1/FCS, they don’t have the money or the stadium/attendance numbers to do so.
Oakland U. is an interesting case. Not much history and smack in the middle of suburbia, but under Greg Kampe it’s managed to carve out an identity for itself and has a good team every now and then. But can they keep that going after Kampe is gone?
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He means outgoing transfers. More transfers will still happen, and there are definitely a few people on our roster that it wouldn’t be a shock to transfer moving forward, but it really drives home how every school is feeling the effects of the new transfer rules combined with the extra year of eligibility. If Michigan does manage to go without an outgoing transfer this offseason it would be a very interesting occurence.
*Caveat here is I’m not sure that Goodman’s number is fully accurate, some schools like Baylor he says have a player transferring but I can’t find who that is.
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The Baylor player is apparently someone that wasn’t on the roster this year. Tristan Clark. He medically retired preseason and now is in the portal
Some other commenters noted that Alabama has to have someone transfer as they are currently at 14 scholarships
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