Over at Ball State, coach Tracy Roller has been working hard to improve her team. Notes her Ball St. bio:

She has a 115-66 record at Ball State in her six seasons and has guided the Cardinals to three appearances in the Women’s National Invitation Tournament (WNIT). This season the Cardinals received the automatic bid from the Mid-American Conference into the WNIT and hosted SEC foe Kentucky in the second round at Worthen Arena.

The Cardinals have also set a single season attendance record this season as they have welcomed over 20,000 fans to Worthen Arena for games this season. Ball State has seen two of the top three single game crowds in school history happen this season with a school record 4,711 fans in the regular season finale against Eastern Michigan and 3,581 fans for the second round WNIT contest against Kentucky.

This season, Coach Roller was willing to do whatever it took to promote her team and meet a 1000 season subscriber goal. So she dipped into her own pockets and came up with a fabulously wacky scheme:

Roller will spend each day at the intersection of McGalliard Road and Bethel Avenue high above Central Indiana Orthopedics. The seventh-year head coach will be stationed on a scissor lift, rain or shine, from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. each day until Cardinal fans meet the goal of 1,000 season tickets sold.

In its early stages, the stunt was working -- sales had almost doubled from last year (407 to 756) even as ticket prices had gone up 160%. Goofy, but who's to argue with success?

Well, the Ball State Athletic Director, that's who. Seems AD Tom Collins sent deputy athletic director Ken Brown to tell Coach Roller that she was done. Why? Well, seems Mr. Collins was suddenly concerned about her safety, what with the weather and all. (Yah huh) And now that practice has started, seems he wanted her focused on her team. (Really? You think she's not?)

Oh, and in case those weren't convincing enough, he had a third reason. The boys were having a homecoming party. "I wanted to focus today, at two o'clock, on the football team."

I mean, it's not like he could have said, "Coach, our football team has a big game on Saturday, could you step down for a day?"