Now that vacation is nearly over, it is time to get back at it. A busy spring semester of traveling, teaching, presenting, and writing is in store.
It all kicks off next week from the NCAA’s Scholarly Colloquium on College Sports, Jan. 12-13, in Atlanta. This serves as a sort of appetizer for the larger NCAA annual convention, Jan. 13-16. This year’s colloquium theme is “College Sports in Recessionary Times: Assessing Challenges and Opportunities”.
Unlike CSRI’s Scholarly Conference on College Sport hosted by UNC-Chapel Hill each April, the NCAA’s colloquium does not include many practitioner points of view. The panel discussions are largely made up of academics and the free paper sessions are almost exclusively academics.
Still, this is an important year for the NCAA as it chooses a new president (Interim President Jim Isch will open the colloquium), wrestles with growing financial inequities, attempts to resolve the issue of what is Division II, and deals with growing congressional unrest about a college football playoff system. It should be an interesting event.
Assuming good reception on my iPhone inside the Marriott Marquis, and assuming no travel snafus on US Airways through Charlotte, I will attempt to Tweet from the colloquium with the hashtag #ncaasc. If not, I’ll try to post updates each day on this blog (using either Posterous or my WordPress iPhone app – assuming I can master these technologies).
One last thing, or zing, is why am I flying XNA to ATL through CLT when Delta flies direct from XNA to ATL? Funny story. I began looking at flights months ago and Delta priced the flight at $1,100 during my desired travel times. US Airways had a similar schedule for less than $300. So… despite my years of Delta loyalty and nearly 200k miles, I am on US Airways. PS – the flight today is $1,400 on Delta. WHAT?!
