The unofficial online home for fans of the Kent State University Golden Flashes. Part of Collegiate Sports Nation (CSN).

So where would anyone like to start....I believe I alluded to this issue a couple of months ago and now you can read about it at....kentwired.com.


Amazing all the public back patting and congrats on a job well done for meeting your ticket sales goals before the final game. Showing ticket sales numbers all along the way, that didn't exist. Receiving a bonus for increased sales that didn't really exist.

So if 23,000 tickets were purchased by IMG money and an additional 15,000 were purchased by NADC booster money for a total of 38,000 what the heck was the person in charge of ticket sales doing?

You can't make this stuff up folks...

It says down towards the bottom of the article that 10 or 11 MAC schools all do this. So while the back patting is comical, I don't see much here in the lines of being unethical. I am guessing if the payment was made after the season it was to not put excess funds towards tickets if we didn't need to. That certainly could toe the line, but the NCAA refused to comment if it was a practice that was accepted or not. The writer has always been looking for negative stories to write and you clearly have an agenda against JN and this administration.

Don't start bagging on football or the Polish Hammer is going to appear out of nowhere and kick your ass!

You can ignore the facts and a pattern of mistruths by shooting the messenger and crying about an agenda, but it doesn't change the fact that all is not well inside the Kent State Athletic Department.

I like you because you can put a positive spin on everything and that is a great attribute. Sometimes the facts are just the facts and the truth from time to time hurts. Because a writer exposes the truth it doesn't mean he is always looking for negatives. All he did was expose actions that at best were not above board and honest, especially to those in the public. Coming out publicly and pounding your chest in the media week in and week out about how your ticket sales are way ahead of schedule when in fact they were not is much worse than comical, it's a lie. Using $188,000 of donated and athletic money for the purchase of tickets instead of going to facility upgrades and operations is embarrassing and whoever was ultimately in charge of ticket sales should be held accountable not rewarded.

My agenda is to shed some light on some of the things going on at KSU. If some people keep falling under the treads then maybe that isn't a coincidence.

Hey DOC follow the $$$. It all stays in the athletic dept house. We got $$ from IMG contract and that $$ goes to ticket sales. Its like paying your kids allowances by using money from your wives paycheck rather than yours. If Kent wanted to invest in facilities it could have used either general fund $$$ or $$$ from ticket sales. Its all the same just different sub funds. Called FUND Accounting to us accountants.

And before you harp on bonuses they say the phantom tickets were backed out of TK and JN's bonuses.

If you havent figured it out the NCAAA is dirty and all the member schools play the "game" and that to outsiders may look phishy but dont hate the players (kent) hate the game (NCAA)

ksu315...I would say it's more like paying your mortgage out of your kids allowance because somebody didn't go to work and do their job!

You are right it is all the same money...foolishly spent.

IMG money it said was backed out...not the additional 15,000 purchased from NADC donations that normally go directly to athletic programs. I'm somewhat familiar with how it works, I'm not an accountant..but I did stay at a Holiday Inn last night.

Except when you pay the mortgage, the money goes to the bank, not back into your account. It's not like we are buying the tickets from Ticketmaster.

The bonus should have been given back.

Or used to buy tickets!

Yeah the money from the program buys tickets in the program and goes right back in. But in the meantime Nielson and company looked like heroes generating such new interest in the program with gge 90Ksu...I didn't need an article to see right through all the smokes and mirors, but the news validates the fraud running our department. Funny thing is that we thought we met our goal due to Nielson's hard work and great weathrf allowing us to play Akron at home in front of a large crowd. Who knew 90Ksu was really 45Ksu?

Doc is wrong on the NADC involvement in 90K. He may be wrong about many other facts, but I can only speak to his distorted discription of the NADC involvement.

The NADC collectively donates money onto a pool each summer. Coaches make requests for dispersment. Football asked for money to support 90K and members unanimously agreed it was the biggest priority. To imply it was a shady deal or was mid communicated is incorrect. Besides, programs are granted or not granted money from this pool ever year. Plenty of years football gets nothing. Most years, in fact.

Doc asked where one might start. How about here. Maybe he could tell us why 90K was necessary in the first place.

At no time did I say the NADC involvement was as you say "shady". Don't type words in my mouth. The fact is the fund raising group purchased $75,000 worth of tickets, 15,000 total. You however imply that the coaches asked the NADC to purchase the tickets. I'm not sure that is accurate. I'm gonna guess that it was TK, who is in charge of ticket sales, who made the request on behalf of football, am I close?

I have no problem with the NADC purchasing the tickets, it's just a shame that KSU had to use money that could be used for other program improvements rather than for tickets that someone failed to sell. I have a problem with the people in charge taking credit for selling 15,000 tickets when all they did was request that donated money be used to purchase them and then not disclose that. That's the "shady" part.

90ksu is necessary because the NCAA mandates the minimum ticket sales and attendance requirements. By all means do what you have to do to meet those requirements, but don't lie to everyone and insinuate you busted your butt selling tickets when that never happened. Don't praise a campaign in the media for it's success when it is now obvious that it failed miserably.

I guess all we need to do is ask the people who took the money for the tickets to give it back so the athletic dept. can put it to some other use.

Oh....

I think this was already mentioned, but since people in this thread seem to repeat the same thing, I'll jump on board; THE DEPARTMENT SOLD THE TICKETS TO THEMSELVES! They gave themselves a bunch of $10 bills. So, they lied to you and hurt your feelings... So what? We are talking about the NCAA, not the Salvation Army.

They lied to me, but they didn't hurt my feelings. They also lied to corporate sponsors, alumni, faculty, potential season ticket holders, students, members of the community, potential business partners, potential advertisers and their own administrators and coaches....but I'm cool with that.

When some one knocks on my office door and wants to sell me an ad in the program or work out a corporate sponsorship and sites the numbers from the 90ksu campaign I should be impressed and sign right up because my ad will be seen by 90,000 plus or should I tell them to take their smoke and mirrors else where?

I understand the ticket buying, it's the bonuses paid (if true) that is really troublesome.

People are getting bogged down in the details of this, but the important point is that this is yet another example of how pathetic the football program is. The actual attendance figures reported in the article are sad. Once again, we're throwing good money after bad. When a program has to essentially fake attendance figures, it's time to fold up shop.

Interesting comment on Twitter, with a link to the story, from Butler's Sports Information Director:
> This is why the @horizonleague has passed up the MAC & several other peer conferences in men's basketball quality: ow.ly/axrWi

All teams report fake attendance. When the basketball team says it sold all the chairbacks but hardly anybody sits in them it's fake attendance. If your an advertiser, your not having as many people see your advertisement as the numbers say. However, I think anybody that does not research what's going on more than that either doesn't care or is pretty stupid. If I was going to advertise based on 90,000 tickets sold I think I would ask the question how many people were actually in the seats. Remember that old Roman phrase "let the buyer beware". However, none of that excuses the bonuses being paid. It's probably not illegal but it is not a good use of the departments money.

(04-26-2012 08:25 PM)DrKahmansense Wrote:  At no time did I say the NADC involvement was as you say "shady". Don't type words in my mouth. The fact is the fund raising group purchased $75,000 worth of tickets, 15,000 total. You however imply that the coaches asked the NADC to purchase the tickets. I'm not sure that is accurate. I'm gonna guess that it was TK, who is in charge of ticket sales, who made the request on behalf of football, am I close?

I have no problem with the NADC purchasing the tickets, it's just a shame that KSU had to use money that could be used for other program improvements rather than for tickets that someone failed to sell. I have a problem with the people in charge taking credit for selling 15,000 tickets when all they did was request that donated money be used to purchase them and then not disclose that. That's the "shady" part.

90ksu is necessary because the NCAA mandates the minimum ticket sales and attendance requirements. By all means do what you have to do to meet those requirements, but don't lie to everyone and insinuate you busted your butt selling tickets when that never happened. Don't praise a campaign in the media for it's success when it is now obvious that it failed miserably.

Once again, you dodge when challenge with facts:

If you don't have a big problem with ticket buying, why do you continue to bring it up?

No one I know "took credit" for 90k. The Athletic Director at KSU will give anyone who asks a list of people who contributed. And they did.

If 90K failed miserably, why did the NCAA back off the spring '10 threat to withdraw D1 status?

(04-26-2012 09:37 PM)DrKahmansense Wrote:  They lied to me, but they didn't hurt my feelings. They also lied to corporate sponsors, alumni, faculty, potential season ticket holders, students, members of the community, potential business partners, potential advertisers and their own administrators and coaches....but I'm cool with that.

When some one knocks on my office door and wants to sell me an ad in the program or work out a corporate sponsorship and sites the numbers from the 90ksu campaign I should be impressed and sign right up because my ad will be seen by 90,000 plus or should I tell them to take their smoke and mirrors else where?

I donated. No one lied to me.

What about those promotions? The $5 or 2-for-1 prices. Someone, the Ath Dept, had to front the money for those promotions. Its like a coupon at the grocery store. Someone has to eat the difference for the cost of the product.

FlashFan...everybody took credit for the success of 90ksu. Pull up some of the archived articles...some folks may have needed Tommy John surgery from patting themselves on the back so often. It was done publicly on many occasions and all the while the campaign at a minimum fell 38,000 tickets (of 90,000) short maybe more. I would say just over 50% of a goal is failing miserably.

You need to also understand the NCAA created a rule (attendance) that less than a year after they voted it into affect could not be enforced without changing the entire landscape of the NCAA football divisions. More than half of the MAC would be dropped to FCS. So they backed off and put in years and years of exemptions and probation and double secret probation so that the board members who voted it in would be dead before they ever had to enforce it on anyone. In other words they realized that there were too many intangibles that could not be controlled by the Universities when it came to attendance (ticket sales) so they put in about 10 years of wiggle room. So you will never see a University lose status because of this trust me. No one backed off.

(04-28-2012 06:41 PM)DrKahmansense Wrote:  FlashFan...everybody took credit for the success of 90ksu. Pull up some of the archived articles...some folks may have needed Tommy John surgery from patting themselves on the back so often. It was done publicly on many occasions and all the while the campaign at a minimum fell 38,000 tickets (of 90,000) short maybe more. I would say just over 50% of a goal is failing miserably.

You need to also understand the NCAA created a rule (attendance) that less than a year after they voted it into affect could not be enforced without changing the entire landscape of the NCAA football divisions. More than half of the MAC would be dropped to FCS. So they backed off and put in years and years of exemptions and probation and double secret probation so that the board members who voted it in would be dead before they ever had to enforce it on anyone. In other words they realized that there were too many intangibles that could not be controlled by the Universities when it came to attendance (ticket sales) so they put in about 10 years of wiggle room. So you will never see a University lose status because of this trust me. No one backed off.

So who cares? We aren't losing status and you are a whiny baby. Let it die.