All great points, Ron.
Fire Sanchez
Coaches did throw out the loyalty card years ago, but that didnāt make me stop watching or lose interest. I can follow the logic that has us where we are, it doesnāt mean I have to participate in it though.
If my son played for Charlotte Iād tell him to do thisā¦ March into the AD office and demand to negotiate his NIL deal with whomever Jerry Richardson negotiated the naming rights with and then demand a Bobby Bonilla type contract. It would only cost the AD $20k per year.
If we didnāt suck terribly and play a dreadfully boring type basketball maybe we could generate NIL money. No one in charlotte with money gives a shit about our brand or basketball team. Make something entertaining and the money will come. Unfortunately we are focused on ādoing the little things rightā and āgetting better every dayā and a half a dozen other platitudes that literally donāt mean anything.
We live in a financial juggernaut of a city. Not drumming up interest, not tapping into that is a failure.
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I agree. Ultimately, Ron might be a cool cat that started here with 9 lives, but he has long run out of excuses, valid now or not.
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Part of it may be Ron, and maybe Iām too old school, but I was always taught that you earn your playing time in practice. Iāve never been to one of our practices, so donāt know if thatās the case. I also know that coaches over the years have had someone that could be a starter, coming off the bench because they found that it gave a needed boost or it gave the player a chance to see where they could best impact the game.
I have also heard it said, that itās not who is out there starting, itās who is out there finishing. It seemed like Brice was getting starterās minutes.
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Yes, Ronās infallible coaching style is working out so well for us at this point 
So do we fund NIL or expand our brick & mortar structures. Iāve seen posts that claim that studies show that NIL is just redirected funds that had been coming into schools. It may be a matter of which do we want more right now.
As Iāve mentioned before, a big concern I have is the disadvantage we have being located in NC. How many other states do not allow their public universities to build athletic infrastructure with public financed bonds? I donāt know, maybe no states allow it, but if our donors are having to fund our growth instead of donating to NIL or funding our athletic department, then this new crappy age, we are truly stuck behind the eight ball with little chance of escaping.
As to the Charlotte whales, most already have an allegiance to other institutions within NC. Biff may be abke to move the needle more with some of them, since he talks their language
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Thereās very little to redirect one way or the other. Unless and until we publicly commit to winning, we put out an entertaining product, and give the average fan a reason to care we will continue to be an afterthought.
If we donāt right the ship Iām the next five years, given the landscape, we should probably stop spending tens of millions on facilities and sacrificing students futures by financing athletic fees.
If leadership canāt lead, we are doomed either way.
clt says prepare to be shocked, UNC CHeat and nscu have state funding
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I do have to put some blame on the the guy for not doing enough to elevate the program enough to keep core players
I also see a lot of people blaming NIL and thats fine to a degree but there are other G5 programs dealing with that too and they seem to be navigating it fine for the most part.
I mean the only reason I can see us not having having moved off sanchez at this point is either we dont have the money to move off the guy yet with all the other project going on. or mike might be trying to gather more money so that he can hire a home run hire in a former good coach and give him the big bag so he doesnāt have to go back to hiring another assistant.
I think all G5 are just feeders now and weāre done. Sure we could get lucky one year but it would implode by the next and we canāt build a program.
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Why would we even try then? I absolutely donāt believe this to be true, plus we are in charlotte not some small town somewhere. We just have quitter an d losers mentality, reflecting the last 20 years of leadership.
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We need to embrace that model. Go to Cheat, Kentucky, UCON, Kansas & Texas. Tell them they can direct talented freshman that they donāt have room for to us. Weāll keep them a year or two depending on how they turn out, get them used to the college game , and then they can bring them on through the portal once they have schollys freed up and direct the next batch of freshmen to us.
We can get better recruits in and they get experienced contributors back.
It can be our own version of one & dones.
Most of our capital improvements have come via bond issues. We, as in UNC Charlotte, can not break ground on a facility until it is fully funded. How that has played out is we raise X dollars then issue the bonds then break ground build the building then pay off the bonds.
What we can not do is use funds from tuition to pay for the bonds for anything other that academic buildings and educational operations. We also can not use any state funding to pay for athletic buildings.
Halton, the Union and Richardson have all been financed using a combo of bonds large donations and the athletic fees.
What you may be thinking is many states do allow state funding or tuition dollars to fund athletics and facilities.
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I have zero interest in that model. None.
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If kids are truly getting $250k to play basketball in college and they arenāt even super stars, itās time to just give up.
I read that Nebraska has a $917 million NIL collective.
Nebraska!!! Not Alabama. not Michigan. Not Texas.
If Nebraska is throwing that kind of money behind college athletics, the other power players wonāt be far behind.
Thereās simply no point in trying to compete with that.
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Iād rather shut athletics down.
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The smarter model is to let them invest their time into 3 and 4 star freshmen and sophomores who canāt get playing time behind the upper classmen they steal thru the portal and then steal those bench warmers when they still have 2 or 3 years of eligibility but have already burned their ability to transfer and play immediately. You have to win and be a desirable destination to win the battles for those players in the portal or to recruit the high school players you are talking about so none of this is going to work with a lame duck coach. Getting the right person in place to lead the program should be the first order of business.