Colorado State University new football stadium

[gman2]

My daughter was contacted by CSU as a track and field recruit. So I thought I would get to know more about CSU athletics and came across this: stadium.colostate.edu/ How is it that so many other states have more than one D1 football team, with the "lesser" of the colleges building facilities like this. Yes I know UWM will never have D1 football. But to see an institution like CSU pulls this off, I am admittedly jealous.

[BBFran]

There are obviously a thousand reasons for this. But I think what sets Wisconsin apart in many ways (and we're not alone -- see Minnesota) is that there is a strong group of smaller state public universities that have historically played football at a lower level, and there was never any real interest by any of those schools in moving their program up. Then MU gave up on its higher level program, which sent a signal that D1 football just wasn't practical in Milwaukee. And that happened at about the same time (early 60s) when the Packers were both ascendant in the public consciousness and playing a substantial percentage of their games in Milwaukee. There just wasn't any real demand locally for college football.

It was really only subsequent to that, in the later 60s, the 70s and forward, that UWM became a huge, powerhouse university with (as I have often pointed out) a higher enrollment now than most of the schools in the SEC. But because of our history, there was no on-campus culture supporting high level athletics. And coincidentally, we were also, and remain, totally landlocked, which obviously makes football extremely problematic.

That's just a number of the many reasons. As for CSU, I'm sure politics plays a big part too. Their new stadium is privately funded but publicly bonded as far as I know. I'm not sure our legislature would bond a teepee at UWM without years of debate, foot-dragging, deal-making and politicking. Stick it to Milwaukee!

PS -- I know my answer ranges farther than your question.

[PantherU]

We had multiple chances to bring back football. At this point, it is not practical. I don't mean it will be practical in the future, I mean the real shot to do it has passed us by.

I think the last chance to get it done was a decade ago, when the Sweet 16 afforded us the attention and good will to get it going. This team could equal or even surpass that, but this is 2015, not 2005 - I wouldn't want it.

Concussions and CTE are killing football. It's dying a slow death, but 20 or 30 years from now, football will be a shadow of what it is today. Youth participation is down 40% in the last 4-5 years, which is an incredible number. Now that parents know what football can do to their kids, a great many of them are choosing to point their kids to other sporting pursuits. I know that youth soccer has seen a huge uptick in the Milwaukee area - that may have less to do with football than the rise of the US Men's National Team, but the health risks just don't exist in other sports that exist in football. Even hockey doesn't have the injury rate of football, and the elimination of checking (which isn't allowed in most levels of the sport right now) would cut that down considerably and provide a more fluid game.

I wish it weren't true. I love football, and you all know just how much I wanted the Panthers to put a team out there. But it's not going to happen.

Say we wanted to start a football team. We'd need to raise at least $50 million for a bare bones D-I FCS stadium and the starting costs of a team. I think that's possible, but the fundraising would take 2-3 years. Say we decide in May, after winning our first NCAA National Championship in men's basketball (wink), that we want to use the goodwill and attention from the title to start a football program. Jenny Gryniewicz, being as good as she is, crafts a plan and raises the $50 million in just 18 months. Then, in December 2017, the Board of Trustees - who killed the program in 1974 - brings it back with a unanimous vote. The university identifies a site - say the Wisconsin Paperboard Corporation finally moves out to the outskirts of town where the property taxes are much lower - and the neighborhood, instead of putting up a fight, says they back our football venture 100%. In spring of 2018, with money in hand, we hire a football coach - promoting head coach Dave Mogensen from club football - and the Panthers begin putting together a staff to start recruiting.

Right as the Panthers get their first commitment, shovels are in the ground in summer 2018. Milwaukee Panthers football will play its first football game September 5th, 2020 against UW-Stevens Point (D-I FCS startups are allowed X number of lower-division games in year 1, and that number goes down each year until year 4 when they have the same as everyone else). Over that two years, the Panthers have spent the $50 million, which goes up to $54 million in 2018-19 and $57 million in 2019-20 as they run the program and pay for scholarships on 35 and then 65 student-athletes.

Say the Panthers are a huge smash. Say they own Milwaukee, killing it and turning the team into a popular program. Say they do so well that we decide to leave the FCS Missouri Valley Football Conference and join the MAC in FBS. Say they match the best rise of a startup in the last 20 years, doing what South Florida did in going from their first game in 1997 to being ranked #2 in FBS in 2007. The Panthers have arrived on the national scene in 2030, challenging the Badgers for state dominance and becoming a national player.

Now let's come back to earth. The Panthers best case scenario - provided we generate enough goodwill this season in hoops, decide to pursue football, raise the entirety of startup costs, are basically gifted the land for a stadium, have the approval of the neighbors/city/state, begin play in under four years from the original decision, then have every single thing go their way in construction recruitment, hiring, conference affiliation, etc. - STILL has us 15 years away from being a real program.

Meanwhile, 15 years from now in real life, football will be on the decline - the decline caused by two decades of concussion lawsuits, two decades of the decline in talent choosing football, two decades of continued rise of soccer and other sports (including baseball and basketball, which are established yet don't have the problems of football). When Milwaukee finally somehow reaches the mountaintop, it will be a hill.

Sound ridiculous? I'm sure if I traveled back to visit my granddad in the 1940's, he would have found it absurd that horse racing, boxing and baseball wouldn't be the top three sports. We don't know what's going to be popular in 2040, but there's one thing I'll be willing to bet - football won't have nearly the popularity that it has today. And you'll have the head injuries to blame.

So why would we want to spend over $100 million over the next 15 years to maybe become a national player in football, a sport that will be losing popularity by then?

Gimme $50 million and let's build the best basketball practice facility in the country for $40 million (would best the new Utah facility by $4 million), then let's take the other $10 million and either build a brand new men's basketball dorm (legal per NCAA bylaws so long as 51% or higher percentage of residents are non-athletes). Either do that or spend less money and renovate the Alumni House to be a basketball dorm - as long as at least one more non-athlete is there than athlete, you're good! You could put 16 men's basketball players in there and 17-18 "non-athletes" - they can be student trainers, managers, kids of donors, doesn't matter. You'll go a lot - a LOT - further with this program if you do that. From there we decide whether or not we want to be the biggest fish the Horizon League pond has ever seen, or use the construction to push for a better conference, either the A-10 or MVC.

Other sports shouldn't be the push, unless you get $5 million pledged for hockey to pay for startups and running the team for a few years. And that's still an 'if.'

Realistically, everything that has to change with this university is the culture. We need a Chancellor that understands how important basketball is to the university, and not after they take the next job. We need that Chancellor to be willing to play ball - to let in players who meet minimum academic requirements or can do so with tutoring over the summer before their first year. We need the chancellor to be willing to not just have a team but support the team, actively helping in fundraising from big donors and trying to secure corporate sponsorships. We need them to not just have a passing interest in basketball but be emotionally invested in the program (or at least be able to feign that investment).

Chancellor Mone may be that person down the road, but he sure as hell isn't right now. I had an alum tell me yesterday that Mone, who was in a suite at the Packer game with some alumni, didn't even know there was a basketball game going on when it was brought up that we broke the scoring record. The alum said that Tom Hecker was there and it looked like a vein was going to pop in his head. That alum talked to me because he knew I'd have an interest in that exchange, and even though he himself is not much of a basketball fan ('it's the sport, not the team'), he was disappointed in Mone too.

That's a perfect example of what kind of hand this program has been dealt. It's also reminiscent of that part in We Are Marshall when interim chancellor David Strathairn confesses he didn't know the football team was playing, with Ian McShane, playing a father of one of the players, telling him that if he's not going to be interested in the game that he should at least know the score so he can act like he is.

I don't need Chancellor Mone to be able to name the starting five, but I need him at least know the score of the game and to not think of the basketball team as a god damn sideshow. I need him to understand that basketball is going to bring him better students from a much wider and deeper pool of potential talent. I need him to understand that one Sweet 16 is worth more in marketing than this university spends in a decade. I need him to understand how many prospective students weren't considering this school Wednesday morning and then logged in to the website to check us out Thursday morning. I need him to understand that this basketball team is the true marketing arm of this university, and all the dollars spent on billboards, TV/radio ads, newspaper ads and website ads are almost entirely wasted when you can advertise basketball, put thousands of more butts in the seats, and not just get the kids of those attending to come here but be rabid supporters of the university even after they graduate.

Get that person to understand and accept that, and be willing to help, and life becomes easier. We have the power of numbers, and he's the one who can mobilize those numbers. Want to convince people that Madison gets way too much of the pot in state support? Put a winning basketball team on the court and make people care about this program so deeply they will go to war to get this university its equal share.

It's not rocket science. We're here for academics. But 10,000 people don't show up to watch Johnny Freshman take his biology exam. They will show up to watch Johnny Freshman dunk a basketball.

[gman2]

Obviously UWM will never have D1 football, and we will not have another D1 team in this state. I didn’t start the thread to suggest UWM start a D1 program. I know that will never happen. Just wanted to say that I’m jealous when it comes to what other colleges can achieve, and to what can be achieved in other states that we cannot achieve here in Wisconsin. I actually watched the UTSA vs Rice game a couple of weeks ago.

I don’t want to take anything away from D3 football athletes. Plenty of players from the high school my daughter attends are playing at the D3 level. They are great kids and give it their heart and soul every Saturday. There are some real studs that play at the D3 level.

Football will continue to thrive at the high school and collegiate levels. A very small fraction of high school football players actually plays at the collegiate level. While youth football is in decline, for the most part the players that drop out of or don’t enter youth programs are players that never really had a chance to play at the varsity levels of high school competition and certainly not college. What will happen is that the pool of high school players may shrink, but the pool of players that could play at the collegiate level will not fall off. The studs that have what it takes to play at the collegiate level will continue to play football as youth, in high school and into college.

[MKEPanthers45]

spec.usd.edu

Very jealous of the on campus facility our upcoming opponent South Dakota is building, that would be perfect for us. That being said i'd be perfectly content with just a practice facility!

[mrpantherfan]

The point made is on building and spending on facilities. Fire the govenor. Get someone that knows you're either getting behind or getting ahead. Commit to making UWM GREAT in basketball, both men's and womens. Strive to be great, not status quo.It's not that difficult.

[mcdadenets50]

Dec 14, 2015 17:19:41 GMT -6 MKEPanthers45 said:

spec.usd.edu

Very jealous of the on campus facility our upcoming opponent South Dakota is building, that would be perfect for us. That being said i'd be perfectly content with just a practice facility!

Jealous indeed. Check out this link:

spec.usd.edu/Naming-Opportunities

This is how you raise money. $100,000 lets you name the team film room, $50,000 gets you naming rights for the tennis coach's office and so on.

South Dakota is big time.

[BBFran]

Testify, Brother Jimmy!!!!