The football stadium expansion project continues to make strong progress, with our design team partners at McMillan Pazdan Smith and SLAM using the market study recently completed by Legends to help inform the best decisions for seating options and amenities. Thank you to the over 1,500 supporters who responded to the Legends survey.
How much does the 1500 survey dictate plans?
Need strong leadership and a clear vision for down the line. Not 1500 surveyors in 2023.
I think the survey is just being used to validate in house ideas and help judge best direction to go.
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Theyāll spin it to justify what they do. Nature of the beast
I look at it this way. They donāt ask and people will complain, they do ask and people will complain. Itās just the way people are.
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This athletic Dept has been a bust. People say bring back Lutz, hell bring back Judy too.
I wish I wuz kidding
I mean I get the desire to win in basketball and football. I do, but we have made progress in other places.
in the last 5 years we have:
Made a bowl game
Increased giving nearly every year Covid not counting
Managed to get thru pandemic without cutting any sports
Changed logo
Stepped up in conference
Won in other sports specifically baseball, soccer, softball, golf
Released capital building campaign
Raised close to 75 million dollar towards that campaign
Increased operating budget
Iām not saying Mike is great or anything - just to be pragmatic and look at what has been accomplished that was far more than previous administrations and decide if that is enough or not.
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Who was AD the last time we played in the hoops NCAA tourney?
Who was AD when we played for and should have won the soccer Natty?
Who was AD when we finish 3rd overall in the college golf tourney?
Who was AD when we stated football?
Who was AD when we got an on campus basketball arena?
Who was AD when we started football and got into D1 without ever snapping the damn ball?
That works both ways
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Ex girlfriend fallacy - if you break up with your current GF, you donāt have to get back with your ex. Nor do any of your current GFs failings in any way validate how shitty your ex was. Itās not a zero sum game.
Mike has done some good things here. He would be fairly well lauded if we were just relevant in either football or basketball. Itād be night and day if we were killing it at either.
Thought exercise: how would you feel about Mike if we had our current football program, but FAUās current hoops relevancy? How about our current hoops program but like JMU or Libertyās football success? Would he be a hero then? Would you / we be sweating him getting offers from ACC schools?
Iād feel a lot better if we were relevant in at least one of the revenue sports.
Uh, ok. Yeah if we went to the FF in hoops Iād be really happy. I would also be happy if I hit the Powerball this week. My Lord.
Thatās why I also included the example of JMU and whatever somewhat disappointing bowl game they got against Air Force, and also Liberty getting the NY6 nod.
Trying to do two things there:
-
ascertain at what level he turns from a zero to a hero for you? Is it a somewhat disappointing bowl bid after a great season? A NY6 Bowl? A Final Four Run? Where in that spectrum does the meter switch from negative to positive?
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illustrate that his other accomplishments are good enough that if he attained any success in the revenue sports we would do a 180 towards probably worrying he was about to get taken by an ACC school.
Also man, I just canāt with the Judy era. That part is black and white to me. With the one exception of leveraging her stint on the NCAA hoops selection committee, pretty much everything we did in sports was despite her not because of her. She was the ultimate DMV employee running our AD.
I donāt long for the Judy days, I realize what she was. Im a realist, I donāt think she was awesome but I also donāt think she was a slug of AD as some seem to think.
Iāve answered your question multiple times but here goes again.
I want hoops to be good again first and foremost. I want us to make the tourney on a regular basis and our down years we shouldnāt be horrible.
Football I would like for us to be good enough to make Saturdays more than a drunken reunion. 7-5 will do me fine.
I like baseball and I think weāre all pretty happy with that. The other sports, if weāre good Iāll kinda keep up but not a priority.
So far, meet the new boss, same as the old boss. And I donāt see anything changing to be honest.
Pretty much all the good stuff with Judy was other folks
Basketball: Jeff Mullins laid all that ground work, including Melvin and Bobby, CUSA and Halton - as soon as she got her finger prints on it everything fell apart where we currently sit
Football: Forced on her after she failed to lead the push when given a chance and her lack of movement there has been something we are still trying to crawl out of.
Most importantly our club participation actually shrank as we graduated thousands of kids.
Iāll give you her hiring Gunn and golf.
I didnāt want to rehash the Judy bit. Just that if we want to move on from Mike that is fine, but we need a clear picture of what he has done, needs to be maintained and what a replacement needs to do - besides just win in football and basketball.
To me the money part of this equation is where I am worried about Mike I am happy we have what we have for the capital campaign, but the fact that we havenāt landed any new major sponsors or a big donor not previously connected to us - that is concerning me far more than football and basketball wins and losses.
This. It is concerning that an up and coming city like Charlotte has such trouble funding its ambitions with athletics with a University in town. Always been that way.
We are a 30,000 student public university in the south in a great city on the rise and have trouble taking care of FB. It is almost a contradictory statement. Just frustrating.
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Itās a money game. If we want to win we have to be at least near middle of the conference in $ and resources.
No money - no winning.
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Canāt raise money if you spend it recklessly. Based on complete headscratcher hires in revenue sports, why should a potential donor believe Hill will spend their money well?
Doesnāt help when the state gives a fraudulent conference state funds to move into this city - not to mention that coverage is always tilted elsewhere for athletics. Havenāt done enough winning & havenāt won in that have presented themselves.
Well Will looked like a great hire - first winning season, bowl win, P5 win, tons of media coverage. Didnāt work out in the end, but it wasnāt all bad.
Ron was a brilliant hire on paper and was being chased by other programs.
Biff - incomplete grade
Now if you want to talk about extensions then I agree with you. Terrible extensions of Ron specifically, Will to a lesser degree.
Colleges miss on coaches regularly. Itās just is harder at the G5 level because when we miss itās harder to get out from under it. Either way - with Mike or whoever else, we need more money. Period.
The less we currently have and raise the harder it is to attract quality coaches and administrators.
Dark Lord Greg Sankeyās vision for ācollegeā athletics will eventually be realized. People here already donāt care about us, including alums. They will stick with their ACC team, which is funny because theyāre no longer a have & will collapse.