RE: NCAA- FBS Revenue
Reality is that we need to double our athletic budget if we want to stay relevant and be attractive to other conferences. Look who's around the 40-50 million mark. Almost all AAC schools. Now how we do this is another matter. I have no doubt that we have the alumni base to do it, but it's a task that an AD will have to accomplish.
We need a culture change at USM. Our fans are pretty apathetic all around. We need that to change. Period. That starts with seriously investing in basketball. We need our AD to set the standard of being competitive on a national level in all sports. Who cares if we don't have basketball history. Screw that mindset. We can be competitive and have shown that in the past. It's about getting better facilities that we can recruit to and coaches that can win games with good athletes. But it doesn't stop there. We have plenty of games that are a driveable distance for football. There's no excuse for us not to sell out the visiting side of La Tech. There's no excuse for us not to travel in large numbers to UAB. That's impressive to other conferences, when you're bringing 10,000 to visitors stadiums.
But all of that is going to come when we change the mindset and culture surrounding USM athletics. Right now, it's run at a high school level and we're trying to compete with the big boys. And we as a fanbase have taken a high school mentality of 'eh, it's just a game I'll watch it online/on tv' instead of going to support. Now I won't pretend that we don't have good reasons for not traveling to away games (home games are another monster that has to be addressed), but many are sitting at home doing nothing. Why not go support the Eagles? Tech and UAB and to an extent Middle are not far away at all. We should be excited for another chance to watch our team. And yes, I know having a successful team encourages fans to travel, but in our best years we don't travel well.
Home games should be sold out. Period. We can talk all day about how it's the people we're playing and no one is interested in watching us play Sam Houston Institute of Technology, but that's the reality we're in. And if we ever want to get out of it, we have to sell that small stadium out. Yes, small. Because in college football, 37k is not a large stadium. It shouldn't even be difficult to sell that place out. Same goes for basketball, though there are a lot more problems that need to be addressed here, as stated above.
We have four revenue sports. Two are making money (I'm assuming football makes money). Both basketballs are putting us in the red. Has to change.
If I were the new AD, I'd challenge our fans to step up. At a crucial time like this in the college athletics landscape, if we don't step up our support, we'll be left behind again and never allowed to rejoin the table. We can complain all day about playing FXU and Charlotte, but we'll be playing far worse teams if we don't do something now. We need these to happen yesterday:
1. Increase athletic budget to 46 million. Yeah, sounds impossible and is not something that can be done in three months, but we have the alumni base to do this if we energize the fanbase and show them the crucial need for it. I truly believe our people will respond to a challenge, especially one of such great significance to our athletic future.
2. Renovate Reed Green. Should have been done years ago. Get the money raised, sell the naming rights to Coke, do whatever you have to do to get that place updated. It will help recruiting and excite our fans that we have a basketball arena not stuck in 1986.
3. 25k season tickets for football. This is hard, but it shouldn't be. As stated, we have the alumni base in a 150 mile radius to double or triple this. This comes down to a failure to reengage our alumni back with the university after graduation. Go meet with people face-to-face, explain why it's so important, and most will at least buy one (many will buy more for their family). And guess what happens when a family buys season tickets. "Hey Jeff, dude we bought season tickets. You should too, we'll tailgate this Fall. Yeah, it's gonna be great." I get how impossible 25k feels, especially with what our current numbers are, but this should have been reached in 2000 or before. We have the alumni, now get them back.
4. Raise coaching salaries to be competitive with the current landscape of college football. I'm not saying pay our coaches like Saban, but we should be able to offer a competitive salary that will allow us to keep good coaches and assistants. We currently can't, which is why we're such a stepping stone to mid-tier P5 schools. When we are offering good money and success, many would rather stay than jump at their first chance to lose in a P5 conference. They'll wait for the bigger schools to come calling, and if they do, then they left us better than they found us. And this is for every single major sport.
I get those seem impossible. But we have to do it if we ever want to get out of this craphole. I'm sure BDR and Ace are preparing their reaction pics as I type, but I'm serious. Most of these can be done if we solve #1. #2, like I said, give Coke naming rights for a few years to fund it. Construction needs to start on that thing in the next few months.
(This post was last modified: 03-17-2017 09:34 AM by EagNBran.)
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