You could make the case that basketball success was a major contributor to UWM's enrollment explosion following the Sweet 16.
My numbers may not be perfect here so if I'm off please correct me.
I was a freshman in 2005, the last class of students who had
largely made their choice on where to go to college before the team went to the Sweet 16. Personally, I made my choice the previous fall. Milwaukee's enrollment in the fall of 2005 was roughly ~24,000 students. Our selectivity rate was 92% - if you wanted in, more likely than not you were getting in.
In the following three years, there wasn't much change in everything around the university. The overall prospective student population in the city, region, state and country didn't drastically change. The university didn't add any new colleges until 2008 (when it was awarded the Schools of Public Health and Freshwater Sciences, hardly game changers for incoming freshmen). There wasn't much in the way of big research breakthroughs, news pieces about the university or a whole lot of note to be honest. Riverview Hall opened in 2008, but adding a few hundred dorm rooms wasn't going to have a massive impact of enrollment for what remained largely a commuter university.
And yet? Enrollment exploded in the three years following the Sweet 16. Overall enrollment in the fall of 2008 was 32,000, and despite the massive growth in enrollment our selectivity rate actually dropped, down to 65%. It was harder to get in and yet we had increased our enrollment by 33% over three years. Out-of-state student enrollment also spiked.
The proof is in the pudding. Basketball success led to massive growth in university enrollment simply because prospective students learned we existed. I understand that uwmfan doesn't believe this to be the case, as he said "the table for growth was already set and moving forward." Yes, it was, but the catalyst was basketball. There was a level of awareness of UWM in the general population that had literally never existed before, and the recruiting arm of the school was equipped to capitalize on it.
Now, I am not saying this to advocate for moving a bunch of funding to men's basketball. uwmfan is 100% right - it would be a very bad look right now for the university to start funneling cash into the men's basketball program when everyone else is tightening their belts.
However, the fact that men's basketball needs to be made a priority by the university is not up for debate. It is the front door of the university and needs to be seen as one of the most important non-academic tools Milwaukee has to combat any number of problems that plague the school.
There needs to be an understanding of what basketball can be for the university that Mark Mone has never had. I ran into Mike Lovell a few years after he left Marquette and we chatted for a bit. When I asked him what's the biggest difference between UWM and MU, he told me that 'at MU I have 100 Jimmy Lemkes in my office and a lot of them are millionaires.'
This is how you make people care about the university. But more importantly it gives you a common tool for the university to engage its community. Are we giving blocks of tickets to each college inside the school and helping them plan events to engage their alumni and maybe, just maybe, solicit donations on occasion?
We have 15 schools inside the university. That's roughly the number of home games we have in any given year. Every night could be "College of ___ Night." Spotlight the successes of alumni and faculty of the schools in videos aired during pregame and halftime.
But really, this is what I would do if I had been in that position I mentioned we should create the other day. You know it really wasn't my intention to put my name up but after hearing those words of support from some of you and Cactus' thorough, pointed response that someone like me at age 26 wouldn't be a good fit, yeah...I'd probably love that gig. So this is how I would START it:
I'd get meetings with anyone and everyone who is in a position of authority within the university. Because what I want to know are these things: what are the challenges your (school or department) faces? What are your goals over the next year and five years? Beyond being able to hire faculty or spend more money, what are some support services you need but have been unable to get from the university? Is it possible we can be of service to you in these areas, and how could we help you accomplish your goals?
If you approach each stakeholder in UWM as someone you can get something out of, you've already lost. Do I want to sell them tickets? Yes, but I also am happy to give those tickets to games away if it means it helps the school or department in goals of some way. Maybe they're running an online auction to raise money for their department, it's not hard to get the team to sign a ball or give up a lunch with Coach Lundy.
You have to look at athletics as an arm of the university that can help the rest of them without requiring more spending.
As far as the brand, that's not something for athletic department employees to say. As one stakeholder in the program and an alumnus of the university, I can say I'd prefer a change that doesn't so much as completely change everything as much as asserts our independence - not from the UW System, of course but from any possibility of confusion regarding who we are in relation to UW-Madison and other UW schools.
My preference is that we occupy a place in the UW System similar to the University of Cincinnati's place in the University System of Ohio. For those who aren't aware, this covers basically every D-I public school in Ohio as well as Central State in Division II. Where they are different from the UW is their campuses are all operating under their own brands.
Some schools elected to keep the connection to Ohio State through branding as ____ State University - including our three conference partners - and some schools elected to be University of City (Akron, Toledo, Cincinnati).
It is our status as an urban, public, doctoral R1 research university that I believe means should we pursue a changing of our brand, it should be as the University of Milwaukee. Our academic profile is far closer to Cincinnati, Pittsburgh and Memphis than it is to Platteville, Whitewater or Green Bay. That's not a knock on any of the UW schools, it's just a statement of fact.
I think it's important to look at how the University of Memphis came to their name - West Tennessee State Normal School (1912–1925), West Tennessee State Teachers College (1925–1941), Memphis State College (1941–1957), Memphis State University (1957–1994), then finally the University of Memphis from 1994 to today - does that progression look familiar to any of you? I respect the people who like the Wisconsin State University name. It's a good name. I just don't think it fits us. Just like we don't have particularly much in common with Platteville or Whitewater, I don't think we'll find closer partners in Illinois State or Indiana State. They're all fine institutions but I believe the "urban" part of our profile is more important.
Being athletics-minded as many of us here are, I think that this potential name and branding change is an opportunity for the university to signify it is ready for bigger and better things in athletics and academics without necessarily moving more money into the athletic department.
Updating the colors to black and cream just makes sense. If you saw those alternate uniforms this year and didn't think "wow we found our identity," I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree on it. But what an incredible nod to the "Cream City" brick. You can also unofficially call the colors "black and tan" as a tongue-in-cheek nod to our beer culture.
We talk about the Black and Gold as if it's been etched in stone but what constitutes "Gold" has changed over the years. In the 1990's our color scheme was more in line with what Oakland's is now, with more of a "Vegas Gold" color over the "Old Gold" we have had the last ~25 years.
Also, if our intention is to remain in the Horizon League, it may not be a bad idea to update the color scheme. Yes, we've been here longer than both of these schools put together, but Oakland and Northern Kentucky are also "Black and Gold" schools - and NKU's Black and Gold is almost identical to ours. It may behoove us differentiate ourselves from our conference peers.
The Cream, to me, is an essential color choice. It will give us a color that can replace white in the scheme, making us look unique among a sea of D-I schools that use a basic white for their uniforms. Pairing it with Black keeps an attachment to our heritage while striking out in a new brand.
I think, if the mascot were to change, I would be disappointed. I used to want that change; the university made a mistake when we changed from the Green Gulls to the Cardinals upon the creation of UWM. The original plan of adopting the Penn State or University of Michigan S.O.P. of having the same school colors and fight song for every campus was a poor choice, and I'm glad they recognized that upon the addition of new schools to the fledgling UW System back in the 1960's.
How we came to be Panthers - by student vote, and then the discovery that the student who nominated the name because he thought of an animal that would eat a badger - is a fun bit of history that I've always enjoyed. I do think if you're going to make changes to the brand, one thing you may want to consider is keeping some aspects of the previous brand, and I think you can easily accomplish this by keeping the current gold as an accent color and the Panther as the mascot.
Sometimes universities have big plans and make sweeping brand changes like this when there's a big new investment or a big change. Sometimes the change is more symbolic than it is tangible.
I would LIKE to say the move is this: The University of Milwaukee adopts a new Black and Cream color scheme for the Panthers as we mark the next step in the evolution of the university as its athletics program - and particularly basketball - makes the step up to the Missouri Valley (or Atlantic 10) Conference.
In truth, we're probably in the best place for us right now. It's hard to compare our athletics expenses to most of the Missouri Valley schools, since most of the public ones play football, but we're about $4 million per year short of what Indiana State spends on athletics and they're the school with the lowest expenses in the MVC. UIC - who is a better comparison for us because our sports line up almost perfectly and they're only a couple years removed from leaving us in the HL - is about $5 million per year over what we're spending.
More importantly,
89.32% of our department revenues come from "allocated money," which is described as this:
This
has to change, whether we stay in the Horizon League or move up or whatever. We need the program to create more money for itself. There are
eight public schools in D-I that get a higher percentage of their revenues from the state/student fees. In the Horizon League it's IUPUI who is closest to us (87.37%) and in the Valley it's UIC at 84.65%.
All of this comes back to the fact that we have over 200,000 living alumni, something like 150,000 of whom live in Wisconsin. We simply need to own our own people. All we need to do is sell alumni on supporting the program. I don't see that job being done well enough or fast enough. And there's no longer the excuse that the basketball team isn't good. They're good. Two 20-win seasons in a row. Coach Lundy is still here. OHOW Center is open. Top overall seed in the NCAA Tournament loved our practice gym!