The day the NBA died

Born: June 6, 1946
Died: December 8, 2011

The National Basketball Association passed away under duress as a result of strangulation from 25 of the 30 league team owners on Thursday, December 8, 2011. The hands on the throat that applied most of the pressure and led to loss of blood to the brain resulting in death belonged to Cleveland Cavalier’s CEO Dan Gilbert.

The police who investigate crime and the district attorneys who prosecute the offenders are hard at work today laying the groundwork for actions against the perpetrators.

Some would characterize this as a crime of passion. The chain of events leading to death were precipitated by a proposed three-team trade that would have sent Chris Paul from the New Orleans Hornets to the Los Angeles Lakers, and an assortment of other players and draft picks moving to New Orleans and Houston in order to complete the deal. All-Star Pau Gasol and NBA Dream-Teamer Lamar Odom would have moved from the Lakers to the Rockets and Hornets, respectively, as part of the deal.

Eric D. Schulz

Upon word leaking of the impending trade, several small-market owners- led by Gilbert – called the league office, and stated that the proposed trade was a “travesty” and urged NBA Commissioner David Stern to put the deal to a vote of the “29 owners of the Hornets” (the team is owned by the league, therefore the other 29 NBA teams all “own” an equal percentage of the franchise). Other small-market owners rallied behind Gilbert, afraid that the “superstar” team formations that had begun in Miami and New York – and ostensibly would be halted by the new Collective Bargaining Agreement, which was sold to the owners as a move towards a more level playing field among teams – was still business-as-usual. Gilbert mused that if the deal were approved, the NBA would become “five teams, and 25 others all named the Washington Generals”. For those of you unfamiliar with the Washington Generals, it is the long-time opponent of the world famous Harlem Globetrotters. The Generals have only beaten the Globies six times in 49 years, losing over 13,000 games since their last win which came on January 5, 1971.

With his brain both oxygen deprived and with reduced blood flow, commissioner David Stern killed the trade and his league with an unprecedented and never-before-used veto power, citing “basketball reasons” as the rationale for nixing the deal. Never before has the league interfered in trades, as long as they had met the required financial criteria (i.e. salary matching).

Pre-meditated murder with extenuating circumstances are the charges being prepared for filing. Temporary insanity is contemplated as a primary defense motion for Commissioner Stern and the League office.

Services are pending.

Eric D. Schulz is the co-director of strategic marketing and brand management at the Jon M Huntsman School of Business at Utah State University. Prior to joining the University, he spent five years as Vice-President of Marketing for the Utah Jazz (NBA); he previously was VP of Marketing with the XFL Football League, and served as a general manager in minor league baseball. He can be reached at eric.schulz@usu.edu.

Political website in top 20 of Intel competition

Editor's note: A group composed of students, alumni and faculty from the Huntsman School recently launched a political website called Politicit. A unique aspect of the website is the "It" score that it assigns to each candidate. The score is calculated through a software program that utilizes a neural network to calculate how people feel about candidates today.

A handful of Huntsman students, alumni and a professor (the creators of PoliticIt) have made it to the semi-final top-20 round of entrepreneurs in the Intel Innovators Competition! The top five teams from this round will have a chance to win $100,000! Please help our Huntsman family out by doing the following (The person who invests the most points will be a judge for the next round):

1. Click this link: https://apps.facebook.com/intelinnovators/ (You must be logged in to Facebook to participate.)
2. Let Intel Innovators have access to you (safe app that doesn't post any material to your wall unless you ask it to).
3. "Like" it to get your first intel points in the right upper corner.
4. Once you have the first 10,500 points click on the "i" tab.
5. Click on "Pitch Room" tab.
6. Find "Politicit" among the 20 entries by mousing over them to see the names.
7. Click "INVEST"
8. Type "10500" (the points you just earned) into the box and click "INVEST".
9. If you want a chance to earn more points and a better chance for PoliticIt to win, press play on 10 videos. You don't have to watch them all! Just press the play button and you'll see points added for each one to your pool. Repeat the invest step with these new points.
10. You CAN repeat these steps EVERY DAY until Dec. 19, and each day you invest Intel points, you get another chance to win. The top prize will go to the entrepreneur team with the most points.

Progress Hastens

So many things are happening with our building plans that it is difficult for me to report on just one thing each week. This past week, three big things happened. Let me give a brief report of each:

Ken Snyder

First, we are very close to locking down what goes in the building. The architects created a proposal as to where everything will go in the new building. It seems like it will work very well. We made a few changes to their proposals, but we generally really liked what they proposed. Most of the space in the new building will be classrooms. Our two event rooms will have the prime views of the south end of the valley. There will be two main entrances – one at the northwest corner of the complex, and the other at the southwest corner. Both entryways will be two-stories. The café will be near the south entryway.

Second, we showed our plans to President Albrecht. He seemed to like the plan as much as we do. He especially liked the additional new classrooms the project would bring to the campus. The shortage of classrooms on campus is a bigger and bigger problem as enrollments have grown. The classrooms in our building will help bring some needed relief. He also seemed to like the iconic look of the new building.

Third, construction contractor proposals were due last Thursday. Seven firms submitted proposals. A selection committee is now narrowing down the list to the top three or four. One contractor will be selected to work with us and the architectural firm as we work through the process of creating the design documents for the building.

It’s exciting to see this progress. It will be a great building!

- Ken Snyder

Some important skills can't be quantified with a letter grade

I recently read a blog which was sparked by a Twitter conversation about the importance of GPA's in the "real" world.

The blog basically said that while taking classes seriously, working hard and learning are important, you can only be graded on certain aspects of your education.

Once I started studying things that would need to last me for the rest of my life in a vocation (I'm sorry, but the role of the plow in the settlement of Nebraska just doesn't figure into my plans for the future), I started working harder than when I was just doing school work.

Sometimes it is still hard for me to keep that focus in mind, but at least I don't have any more worksheets.

Through my college career, I have learned more than just facts and formulas. I've learned other things that are more abstract, and therefore harder to give a grade to.

Paul Lewis Siddoway

For example, personal skills or social skills.

Whenever I need to do a new task, it really helps to see someone else do it. I play music, and whenever I want to learn something new, the easiest way for me to do that is to see someone else do it; I can see how their hands move.

Teachers give students assignments so the student can not only learn the material, but also so they can learn how they learn best. Good teachers will teach using different methods and give assignments requiring different skill sets. The grades given will help students learn what works and what doesn't, but no kind of teacher can really grade on whether somebody knows their learning style.

Being married, working two jobs, going to school full time and finding time for myself has taught me prioritization and time management. That's something else I doubt I could be graded on. Sometimes you have to sharpen that proverbial saw to push through and get work done. Sometimes you have to do a rush job on a project and you have to know what other things you can or can't procrastinate.

And you have to know how to be a big boy and take accountability for your decisions. Gratefully, I'm pretty sure I have received better grades based on my being honest with my professors.

One of the biggest shortcomings I run into is everyone being so worried about hurting other people's feelings. If I have done a botched job on something, I want to know about it so I can make it better. I don't need you to tell me two good things I did first. I do appreciate "positive" feedback, but only when it's honest. (Being able to tell if it's honest is another un-gradable thing I've learned in college.) And really, if it makes me and my work better, isn't it all positive?

I don't want to say that GPA's aren't important (graduate school, anyone?), but there are other things that are important that can’t be given a concrete grade quite as easily.

- Paul Lewis Siddoway

The Effect of the New CBA on the Utah Jazz & Small Market Teams

Did the Jazz and small market teams get any “wins” in the deal?

Yes. The new deal includes an increasingly painful luxury tax for teams that habitually stray into taxpayer territory, which should keep the Lakers and Celtics of the world from going significantly over the luxury tax line (as the Lakers, Dallas, Celtics, Bulls and several others do nearly every season). This should – at some point in the future – begin to level the salary playing field between the big-market, high revenue teams and the smaller market teams. However, the new luxury tax doesn’t begin to kick in until the 2013-14 season, so until then, it’s business as usual. It will be five years before the real effects of the new, steeper taxes manifest themselves.

Eric D. Schulz

An immediate win the Jazz have available to them is the new “amnesty” clause, which allows each team to waive one player prior to any season and have 100% of that players salary removed from their team salary for cap and tax purposes. This new clause will allow teams to dump players that they signed to big contracts and then had buyer’s remorse – as would have been the case with Andrei Kirilenko and his $17 million dollar annual contract the past couple of seasons. The team still has to pay anyone they dump (unless he’s picked up by another team, in which case they have to pay a portion of the contract instead of all of it). On the Jazz radar for using the amnesty clause this season is Mehmut Okur and his $11 million salary. If somebody shows up to camp way-out-of-shape, they also could be on the radar.

Will the new deal allow small market teams to compete for the NBA championship more effectively?

No. The big market teams will continue to be the only ones you’ll see hoisting trophies at the end of the year. The new deal does nothing to address the “Miami Effect”, with players leveraging their way to the big markets to play with their All-Star buddies. Before this year is out, you will see Dwight Howard, Kobe Bryant, and Pau Gasol as the “big three” in LA; Amare Stoudamire, Carmelo Anthony and Chris Paul headlining the Knicks; Derrick Rose, Carlos Boozer and Tim Duncan on the Bulls; Dirk Nowitzki, Deron Williams, and Brook Lopez headlining the Mavericks; and of course, LeBron, D-Wade and Bosh in Miami. Nothing has changed. The haves will continue to have. The smaller market teams will continue to be have-nots and be in continual rebuilding mode.

Will the Jazz have an easier time signing big-name free agents under the new deal?

No. Utah is not a destination where players want to come and form their “big-three’s”. Once players get to Utah they like it, but it is not a preferred destination, and any free agent player that’s top-tier has multiple options from which to choose. Major markets, with big opportunities for incremental cash from personal sponsorships and endorsements -- along with nice weather and beaches -- win every time.

Will the Jazz be able to make a profit under the new deal?

Only if they keep their player salaries at or near the salary cap – in the $50 - $55 million dollar range. As it stands today, the 2011-12 roster is at about $59 million, and they have to sign at least two more players.

Will the new CBA keep owners from handing out outrageous contracts?

No. In fact, they can give out MORE outrageous deals. The maximum that any single player can make under the old CBA was 25% of the salary cap. Under the new deal, a max contract can be up to 30% of the cap.

The free agent signing period starts next Wednesday, and it will be interesting to see the feeding frenzy. The New Orleans Hornets only have five players under contract. Most teams need to add two-to-four players. It will be a crazy week next week!

- Eric D. Schulz

Eric D. Schulz is the co-director of strategic marketing and brand management at the Jon M Huntsman School of Business at Utah State University. Prior to joining the University, he spent five years as vice-president of marketing for the Utah Jazz (NBA); he previously was VP of marketing with the XFL Football League, and served as a General Manager in minor league baseball. He can be reached at eric.schulz@usu.edu.

Work on the new building will require constructive input

We recently met with the contractors who would like to build Huntsman Hall. We plan to follow an approach that is commonly used on the Utah State University campus and throughout the state when new buildings are constructed. It is called the Construction Management General Contractor process. This is a state-approved approach that allows our contractor to work with the architects as the building is designed to help identify ways we can save money.

Ken Snyder

Proposals, including a cost proposal, management plan, references and statements of qualifications, must be submitted by 12:00 noon on Thursday, December 1, 2011. You can view the bid requirements on the DFCM website.

After we get these proposals, we will narrow the field of prospects down to three to six companies and select the final firm by the end of the year.

We will, of course, be looking at each firm’s track record. Companies that have already delivered impressive results and constructed remarkable buildings will have a competitive advantage. We know some of the top firms in the state want to be a part of this project. Once the design work is done, we will determine the final construction cost of the project.

This is an exciting time. We have a new design concept and we are selecting our contractor. I can almost hear the sounds of construction underway already.

- Ken Snyder

Fill your wallet and feed the hungry!

Wouldn’t you like your end-of-the-year holiday card to serve a better purpose than to be temporarily magneted to a fridge alongside a dozen others?

This holiday season, the Jon M. Huntsman School of Business at Utah State University is offering people the chance to donate to a local charity and win as much as $500 in the Huntsman Holiday Card Contest.

The contest will be held on the Huntsman School’s Facebook page. Contestants will submit their best holiday cards to the page, and for the first 300 votes, the School will donate $0.50 to the Cache Community Food Pantry. The contestant(s) who submits the entry with the most likes will win $500. Second prize will win $200 and third prize will win $100. Entries are to be submitted by Dec. 4 at midnight, and voting will go from Dec. 5 to Dec. 9.

To summarize:

• The contest will be held on the Jon M. Huntsman School of Business Facebook page
• For the first 300 votes on all contest entries, the Huntsman School will donate $0.50 to the Cache Community Food Pantry
• Entries are to be submitted by Dec. 4 at midnight, and voting goes from Dec. 5 to Dec. 9
• 1st prize: $500 2nd prize: $200 3rd prize: $100

For more details, please visit the Huntsman School's Facebook page.