(07-24-2023 12:48 PM)Buc76 Wrote:  Not asking for any ut fan to switch their support. The causal ut fan had no other FBS program to support.

Dome opened in 1974 with cap of 14,000. They had capacity crowds for some football and basketball games. ETSU enrollment was half of todsys enrollment. Johnson City and metro has doubled. So what has ETSUs Athlectics done, gone backwards as opposed to what many of our past conference members have done.

There has been only one, to my knowledge, big , all-in fund raising campaign for the money sports....the football stadium. How did that go? Really well.

When you quote Athlectic Budgets at other schools, you are quoting the current budget not the budget when they moved to FBS. Your budget grows with the program.

Your estimate of needed monies to move to FBS is totally overblown. There are no requirements that say you have to start out equal with the top spending schools in your conference or ever have to spend as much as the top spenders.

Example-Vanderbilt, Miss.. 100-125 million
Alabama, GA........175-190 million
Huge gap in budgets within the SEC, same as any another conference. I don't see any of the lower spending schools dropping to FCS.

The problem I see is the naysayers and small-time thinkers. There are tremdous examples of growing instutions and their Athlectic programs all sround ETSU but for some reason facts and successes of these examples are ignored.

No vision, no vision. Nothing gets done when you do the same thing over and over and expect a different result.

Interesting discussion. ETSU would need an annual athletic budget of $30 mil to be up with Ga Southern and $39 mil to keep pace with App State and Marshall - all former SoCon foes. Or, do the average of these budgets - $34.5 mil. As far as stadium expansion — what would 15,000 more seats and a field house cost? Surely at least $20 mil.

No vision, you state, is the problem. I continue to see MONEY as the problem. Show Noland the money, even matching money — and my guess, he would launch an aggressive campaign. But, like all athletic money raising campaigns, academics would have to be protected and continue to be grown, enhanced.

That age old question continues for ETSU athletics — where’s the money?

(07-24-2023 03:45 PM)Buc66 Wrote:  

(07-24-2023 12:48 PM)Buc76 Wrote:  Not asking for any ut fan to switch their support. The causal ut fan had no other FBS program to support.

Dome opened in 1974 with cap of 14,000. They had capacity crowds for some football and basketball games. ETSU enrollment was half of todsys enrollment. Johnson City and metro has doubled. So what has ETSUs Athlectics done, gone backwards as opposed to what many of our past conference members have done.

There has been only one, to my knowledge, big , all-in fund raising campaign for the money sports....the football stadium. How did that go? Really well.

When you quote Athlectic Budgets at other schools, you are quoting the current budget not the budget when they moved to FBS. Your budget grows with the program.

Your estimate of needed monies to move to FBS is totally overblown. There are no requirements that say you have to start out equal with the top spending schools in your conference or ever have to spend as much as the top spenders.

Example-Vanderbilt, Miss.. 100-125 million
Alabama, GA........175-190 million
Huge gap in budgets within the SEC, same as any another conference. I don't see any of the lower spending schools dropping to FCS.

The problem I see is the naysayers and small-time thinkers. There are tremdous examples of growing instutions and their Athlectic programs all sround ETSU but for some reason facts and successes of these examples are ignored.

No vision, no vision. Nothing gets done when you do the same thing over and over and expect a different result.

Interesting discussion. ETSU would need an annual athletic budget of $30 mil to be up with Ga Southern and $39 mil to keep pace with App State and Marshall - all former SoCon foes. Or, do the average of these budgets - $34.5 mil. As far as stadium expansion — what would 15,000 more seats and a field house cost? Surely at least $20 mil.

No vision, you state, is the problem. I continue to see MONEY as the problem. Show Noland the money, even matching money — and my guess, he would launch an aggressive campaign. But, like all athletic money raising campaigns, academics would have to be protected and continue to be grown, enhanced.

That age old question continues for ETSU athletics — where’s the money?

(07-24-2023 04:44 PM)BucDoctor Wrote:  

(07-24-2023 03:45 PM)Buc66 Wrote:  

(07-24-2023 12:48 PM)Buc76 Wrote:  Not asking for any ut fan to switch their support. The causal ut fan had no other FBS program to support.

Dome opened in 1974 with cap of 14,000. They had capacity crowds for some football and basketball games. ETSU enrollment was half of todsys enrollment. Johnson City and metro has doubled. So what has ETSUs Athlectics done, gone backwards as opposed to what many of our past conference members have done.

There has been only one, to my knowledge, big , all-in fund raising campaign for the money sports....the football stadium. How did that go? Really well.

When you quote Athlectic Budgets at other schools, you are quoting the current budget not the budget when they moved to FBS. Your budget grows with the program.

Your estimate of needed monies to move to FBS is totally overblown. There are no requirements that say you have to start out equal with the top spending schools in your conference or ever have to spend as much as the top spenders.

Example-Vanderbilt, Miss.. 100-125 million
Alabama, GA........175-190 million
Huge gap in budgets within the SEC, same as any another conference. I don't see any of the lower spending schools dropping to FCS.

The problem I see is the naysayers and small-time thinkers. There are tremdous examples of growing instutions and their Athlectic programs all sround ETSU but for some reason facts and successes of these examples are ignored.

No vision, no vision. Nothing gets done when you do the same thing over and over and expect a different result.

Interesting discussion. ETSU would need an annual athletic budget of $30 mil to be up with Ga Southern and $39 mil to keep pace with App State and Marshall - all former SoCon foes. Or, do the average of these budgets - $34.5 mil. As far as stadium expansion — what would 15,000 more seats and a field house cost? Surely at least $20 mil.

No vision, you state, is the problem. I continue to see MONEY as the problem. Show Noland the money, even matching money — and my guess, he would launch an aggressive campaign. But, like all athletic money raising campaigns, academics would have to be protected and continue to be grown, enhanced.

That age old question continues for ETSU athletics — where’s the money?

Again you prove my point. Regardless of what I propose or present facts about our successful former conference members, you choose to ignore everything and revert to your standard answer, show me the money and protect education. IMO, you have it backwards. Stay staus quo, don't present and execute a plan for improvement and you will get the same sporadic results, dwindling funding and less support in all areas.


ETSU, to my knowledge, has never presented a vision or comprehensive plan to the general
public for the improvement of the money sports. The fans haven't demanded it and the media never ask about it.

ETSU has achieved successes in football and basketball but has never capitalized on them. They've never had sustainable money sports. Why? Imo, there was never a plan to improve ETSU football and basketball. It was just status quo. The results, occasionally a winning program but not sustainable. Not a formula to grow the fanbse or interest the media and certainly doesn't entice anyone to open there pocketbook.

Dr Nolan has proven beyond any doubts he has the knowledge, the vision and the resolve to continually improve ETSU. He has done way more in 7 yrs than the previous Administrations did in 30 yrs. Don't take my word for it. Take a drive through campus. The beautification, the renovations, the new construction and the many additional academic programs. ETSU has and is going through a modern day transformation.

Athlectic Dept not keeping up with the modern day transformation of Athlectics. IMO, they are regressing.

With Dr Sander, you have a proven AD. but to take ETSUs Athletics, especially the most important ones, the money sports, to the next level, a comprehensive plan must be presented to fans, students and businesses. The plan has to be an exciting, major improvement to attract the money necessary to improve and sustain the money sports.

Think small, be small

Plan big, involve everyone.. grow, grow.
.

(07-25-2023 12:29 PM)Buc76 Wrote:  Again you prove my point. Regardless of what I propose or present facts about our successful former conference members, you choose to ignore everything and revert to your standard answer, show me the money and protect education. IMO, you have it backwards. Stay staus quo, don't present and execute a plan for improvement and you will get the same sporadic results, dwindling funding and less support in all areas.


ETSU, to my knowledge, has never presented a vision or comprehensive plan to the general
public for the improvement of the money sports. The fans haven't demanded it and the media never ask about it.

ETSU has achieved successes in football and basketball but has never capitalized on them. They've never had sustainable money sports. Why? Imo, there was never a plan to improve ETSU football and basketball. It was just status quo. The results, occasionally a winning program but not sustainable. Not a formula to grow the fanbse or interest the media and certainly doesn't entice anyone to open there pocketbook.

Dr Nolan has proven beyond any doubts he has the knowledge, the vision and the resolve to continually improve ETSU. He has done way more in 7 yrs than the previous Administrations did in 30 yrs. Don't take my word for it. Take a drive through campus. The beautification, the renovations, the new construction and the many additional academic programs. ETSU has and is going through a modern day transformation.

Athlectic Dept not keeping up with the modern day transformation of Athlectics. IMO, they are regressing.

With Dr Sander, you have a proven AD. but to take ETSUs Athletics, especially the most important ones, the money sports, to the next level, a comprehensive plan must be presented to fans, students and businesses. The plan has to be an exciting, major improvement to attract the money necessary to improve and sustain the money sports.

Think small, be small

Plan big, involve everyone.. grow, grow.
.

If you’re talking to me 76 — I do not disagree with your vision for ETSU athletics. I consistently reference our former conference brethren - certainly Marshall, App State, and GA Southern - and in my latest reference, their athletic budgets compared to that of ETSU. I do not know what sort of comprehensive plan they put forth back in the day to make their moves. Note - they were all having exemplary football success at the FCS level before they moved. However, they will not move any higher and have settled into their status quo place. When they were roaring in football and moved, we were awful in football and retreated - of course ultimately dropping football. Of course there are these other modern examples of schools progressing through FCS to FBS with start up or revised football programs - like UNCC, ODU, GA State, the Florida schools, etc. - these, for example, in high population growth areas with consequential booming enrollment growth. Note — even these lower level upstart FBS football schools depend heavily on student fees.

Back to the MONEY, heck — you cite the transformation of the ETSU campus under Dr Noland, which is costing money. Even with Dr Noland, somebody will have to step up and put some serious restricted to athletics money on the table for him to launch a realistically achievable comprehensive to the next level athletics plan. Sure wish I could meet with him with check in hand to get this underway.

Again you are asking people to give you money before you have a plan. That's backwards. You have to show them your comprehensive plan, the timetable, the advantages, their perks, etc. I
would never give or pledge money to anything unless I know what its going to be spent on, it's benefits and what I get in return.

If you cannot see the major difference in the way money sports at ETSU have been treated as to how other universities treat them, so be it. If you think ETSU is keeping up in today's Athlectic landscape, so be it. If you can't, see where ETSU stands in relationship to our former conference members and your happy with that, so be it.

IMO, if ETSU continues as is, the entire Athlectic Dept will continue to lose ground, will become even more irrelevant and eventually downgrade the program to D2 or lower.

(07-25-2023 06:26 PM)Buc76 Wrote:  IMO, if ETSU continues as is, the entire Athlectic Dept will continue to lose ground, will become even more irrelevant and eventually downgrade the program to D2 or lower.

Respectfully, this is a pretty outrageous prediction.

It was only 10 years ago that Dr. Noland did present a ambitious vision, to bring football back to a university community who had very deep reservations as to whether this was a smart thing to do. Today, you hear very little rumblings that returning football was the wrong decision. That is a huge success and included raising a great deal of money from large donors.

Around the same time, ETSU worked with the city to complete a massive renovation to Freedom Hall and start playing our flagship sport there while also having our brand prominently displayed in a facility that we don't even own. Again, a pretty ambitious vision and execution related to our money sports.

Then in 2019, ETSU undertook a 3 year major capital campaign which while unrelated to academics, raised over $163 million dollars. That was very important to do, and the donors who contributed to this campaign are many of the same people who would contribute to an athletics plan.

In both football and basketball, the investments discussed above paid off. And when you talk about sustaining and building on these successes in basketball and football, here's the thing- we can invest however much money you would want to reasonably discuss and move to a different conference, and there is still no way that we could have kept Steve Forbes or Randy Sanders. And as for the replacement coaches once they left, Scott Carter would have screwed that up regardless of his budget.

Dr. Noland made one very big mistake in hiring Scott Carter, and we are still paying for this in so many expensive ways and long-lasting ways. But to say that ETSU athletics has become irrelevant and could lose Division 1 status is just silly.

etsubuc — “we can invest however much money you would want to reasonably discuss and move to a different conference, and there is still no way that we could have kept Steve Forbes or Randy Sanders. And as for the replacement coaches once they left, Scott Carter would have screwed that up regardless of his budget.”

BINGO — and these folks we continue talking about that moved up and out of the SoCon, they are experiencing the same coaching turnovers because they also don’t have the money to retain winning coaches in this day and age of college athletics - and are now falling further behind the Power Five programs that, ON PAPER, they share the same absurd FBS classification. And yes — Carter was obviously a huge mistake, unreal — as he slammed the brakes on an ETSU athletic program that was on the move, seriously damaged it starting with that basketball disaster followed by the overnight fall of football — and ETSU is still reeling. Yep - no amount of money could have prevented that disaster. Like all mid-majors and low level FBS schools — how does ETSU hire and keep a good Athletic Director, a winning basketball coach, and a winning football coach in order to establish sustainability — the necessary reality BEFORE realistically launching an ‘athletic move up campaign’? My old grand pappy used to call it ‘caught between a rock and a hard place’.

Yes the biggest mistake Dr. Noland made was to entrust the athletic department to Carter. That set us back a few years and we are in the process of recovering and we will. I still think the problem is hiring good, competent coaches to replace the good ones that will always leave. Just think if we had hired a coach as good as Forbes to carry on. And if we had hired a coach as good as Sanders to carry on. All the conversation now would be overwhelmingly positive and we would be asking 'where do we go next?' and 'the sky's the limit". Of course keeping up the hiring of good coaches goes back to the AD position and fortunately we have a good one in Doc Sander. Cannot wait for us to get back on track. Go Bucs!