Hey everyone,
Last night I had the opportunity to attend the 100 Club appreciation dinner for basketball. The whole team was there along with the athletic department, coaches and boosters. It was a great night getting to mingle with the players and coaches.

Players are ready
They want to get the games rolling and are hoping we are right there in the stands. They're pumped for the Minnesota game and also just ready for the season to start. Wooten and Stegall said practices were tiring but not necessarily hard. That's a good example of senior leadership in my opinion. These guys set a good tone for the team.

Injuries and Observations
Allison told me his back's giving him problems but he's working on strengthening in the gym. He's still not able to do squats. Cornett is going into surgery in 6-7 weeks for another knee operation. Some very big guys on our team this year. Some will red shirt. Ingle always has nice things to say about everyone on his team.

Waples ready for some football
Dr. Waples requested that Biz and I join him before the week is over to talk about a football vote. I'm excited about getting some ideas in there that hopefully will help the school achieve a program. We're looking at going tomorrow morning and I was wondering if anyone had any ideas they wanted to share or any questions I could ask him.

Billy Knight, Atlanta Hawks GM, Guest Speaker
Ingle brought Billy Knight out to talk. While not the greatest speaker he did talk about how the Hawks and Owls are similar in that they are growing an extremely young team. The Hawks have had the youngest team in the NBA for 3 or 4 years. How they are growing into becoming a solid team and the new players they've brought in with Acie Law and Al Horford. Also pleaded to come to games and offered the facilities downtown for the Owls. Not sure what could come of that, but it's interesting none the less.

Wrap up
That's about it. Saw all the regular people. Assistant coaches, Mark Toma - sports information director, well known supporters of the team. Coach was busy as you would expect all night. I will probably sit down with him if we get an opportunity in the near future instead of taking up his time on a crowded night.

Thanks for the write up..enjoyed the read. Almost time to get things underway for basketball..

Good stuff Nick! I will think about some ideas about football and let you know.

Thanks for the update. I believe Wooten is a great player and appears to be a pretty solid individual.

I hate to see "votes" on things as important to a University as football. Votes most often create division and winners and losers.

On another note, do you know if you faculty supports football?

We have no idea other than a study from a research firm that probably has no business in researching these types of things.

BucDoctor Wrote:On another note, do you know if you faculty supports football?

If you don't know, then I suggest someone finds out and if necessary begins lobbying the faculty/faculty senate. The way you sell it to faculty (some of which believe that football donors, in the absence of football, would donate to academics) is that success in football brings more student applicants. With an increased number of applicants to your university you can raise admission standards and thus bring your faculty better overall students in the classroom.

That said, as I understand App State's applicant pool increased dramatically with their first national championship. I also understand that an Open House at App held in conjunction with a recent football Saturday broke all records for Open Houses for potential students.

I was told (although I have no way to confirm) that JMU's applications doubled the year following their national championship.

Faculty are an important stakeholder and they will need to fullly understand what is in this for them!!!

Just my thoughts.

Thanks for the positive comments BucDoctor. I agree with what you are saying about football....if it is handled correctly it can be a great thing for KSU.

Great Stuff BucDoc

I'll bring up the faculty involvement to Waples. Stakeholders, great word cause that's exactly who we have to answer and appeal to.

Was at Sideline-Barrett tonight with the team. Wasn't publicized so no one showed up. The regulars were treated to the teams though.

Sidelines-Barrett will feed ASun.tv whenever possible. You can go there for games. Owlz, possible story for Sentinel.

I just don't know what the hell is wrong with our marketing. We have new people with great ideas. We have ideas pouring in from everywhere. We have resources available to print banners, write stories in a weekly newspaper, ability to print large magazine format publications, facebook which in theory should be the end-all, and what do we have to show for it? Events no one knows about, empty seats in a 20k plus school for a 4500 gym, and an extremely lacking sense of pride in KSU from the general public.

I'm not getting paid to solve these problems but there are people that have gotten paid to and it's dissappointing this is where we are sitting. This is not a knock on the people who haven't had time to prove themselves. The new staff seems upbeat. It's fair to give them time to adapt to their new surroundings. On deck is a bus for the Auburn game.

I agree Nick and I've been very disappointed by our marketing as well this year. I felt like after the feasibility study was released it had determined that the school needed to generate unprecedented support for athletics which hasn't happened yet. Since the school year started, I've started every week with the mentality that this will be the week they really start marketing heavy and that has continued for every week thus far. However, I have noticed small improvements that show me they are working to change things. On the website they have added a facilities page(which is important to show your commitment to athletics and pride in your facilities), they have added advertisements showing that students get in free to games, an advertisement to follow the Owls on A-Sun tv, and some nice promotions (6 free wings from BWW when we score 83, it may not happen that often but its worth going to a game for). They may not seem like much, but these are steps in the right direction. I'm going to keep the faith and I know everything will eventually work out. I just wish that I wasn't on the edge of my seat waiting.

It's good someone's on the edge of their seat. Some must feel like they're in a lay-z-boy

I often wonder if we really have a marketing director for athletics. It seems like a student working 3 hours a week part time could be doing this stuff lol. Maybe some of the students should express concern to Waples about this. I would be willing to help on a volunteer basis (2-3 hours a week).

We just have 2 new people, actually 3 people filled 2 spots after some vacancies. They have good ideas but we need to give them time. The season's fast approaching and I'm not sure what they have in store. I may ask tomorrow when I go over there about their plans for the season.

Just volunteer your time. If you want to be involved with SC, contact Biz. They need help promoting by posting flyers, talking to people, getting people excited and getting people out to the games. If you want to go through Athletics, they really don't have a program set up as far as I know for volunteers but they could put you to work.

kr983 Wrote:I often wonder if we really have a marketing director for athletics. It seems like a student working 3 hours a week part time could be doing this stuff lol. Maybe some of the students should express concern to Waples about this. I would be willing to help on a volunteer basis (2-3 hours a week).

KR - I would try to talk to one of the assistant coaches rather than go through the athletic department, and say that you are interested in helping promote Kennesaw Basketball. Then they might be able to take you over to the promotions people and help workout a schedule and a game plan. That might be the best plan to really step in and help if that is what you are trying to do.

Just my .02

Excellent point. Talk with Coach Black or even Tony Ingle, Jr., they will definately be very appreciative of any help they can find.

Anyone know if they are going to have a writeup of the 100 Club Banquet on the internet? I have been waiting for an article to come out on that, and still nothing.

I didn't hear of a reporter being there. I don't want you to think I know it all but the above mentioned is pretty much all that happened. It's just not in print if that's what you're looking for.

I guess my point is that there should be an article from the SID's office the morning after with photo's interviews and details. Instead there is nothing....It should have been in the Marietta Daily Journal...it should have probably been sent to the AJC. Instead all we have is an eye witness account from an Atlantic Sun Board Member (a good account, but it shouldnt be the ONLY account in the entire United States).

Just goes to show what we were talking about...how are people supposed to get excited if they don't know what is going on.