Rick with Michael Hunt

[uwmfutbol]

Apr 15, 2011 9:35:54 GMT -6 PantherU said:

Apr 14, 2011 19:50:45 GMT -6 uwmfutbol said:

K-Raw,

Just to clarify, I think the school's overall image plays a part in getting students excited to be on campus even before they attend their first class. Obviously sports play a massive role in this, but so does the satisfaction of being part of a "good," well-connected school. Honestly, I feel like too many people are essentially embarrassed to say they're a student/alum of UWM. This goes well beyond athletics. It's almost a cyclical problem; the negative perception of the athletics and academics almost seem to feed off of each other. I'm not sure if I'm making sense.

Does it?

Ask a student who isn't proud that they go to UWM and ask them why they don't think it's a "real" school.

You bring up a good point. I would love to see a student/alumni survey giving them the ability to talk about exactly what they like and dislike about the university. Furthermore, I'd love to know what keeps them away from basketball games. What would get them excited about Panther basketball? What are their thoughts on football? Would they be willing to donate to such a cause? And finally, why do we lose 28% of our freshmen? Why did they leave?

[PantherU]

Before I go, I'll give the short answers to my survey from spring 2008:

500 students participated:

What would you like to see from Athletics at UWM?

Respondents: Football, 440; Basketball on-campus, 55; Cut, 5

For those who went football, I asked how far they'd be willing to increase their semester fees to make that happen. Before I asked that question, I noted that football would likely take up to 5 years from announcement, so chances are they'd never see it as a student.

47 said they would not raise their segregated fees.
62 said they would raise their fees $20
185 said they would raise their fees $50
146 said they would raise their fees $100+

I would note that a good portion of the respondents were likely to have parents paying for at least some of their tuition.

[uwmfutbol]

Those are some interesting statistics. Thanks for posting those. If the University is able to gauge the student body as a whole and determine that the students want it and (more importantly) are willing to pay for it, then that should be enough of a green light down the road. What comes first though--football or a new basketball arena? This is where it gets tricky.

[PantherU]

Apr 15, 2011 10:09:31 GMT -6 uwmfutbol said:

Those are some interesting statistics. Thanks for posting those. If the University is able to gauge the student body as a whole and determine that the students want it and (more importantly) are willing to pay for it, then that should be enough of a green light down the road. What comes first though--football or a new basketball arena? This is where it gets tricky.

That's not tricky at all.

Track and Field practice field should come first. Duh.

Of course it's the basketball arena. Basketball is our cash cow, football is a future cash cow but not a cash cow until it's on the field.

[Pounce Needs Pals]

This football talk was big in 2001 with UWM, nothing happened then. Why does anyone really think something with be different now.

[PantherU]

Apr 15, 2011 21:08:43 GMT -6 Pounce Needs Pals said:

This football talk was big in 2001 with UWM, nothing happened then. Why does anyone really think something with be different now.

Well, for one the football feasibility committee was completely off their rocker. I looked at their report, which was really ridiculous - they had us building a stadium for "at least" $125 million, which is $100 million more than many FCS stadiums built in the last 15 years.

Other than that, is was like anything big time athletics-oriented was back then - low-major, feeble and unorganized.

Here are some other things that are different:

1. Student enrollment has jumped from about 26,000 to about 32,000.

2. Everything basketball has happened for us - anyone here can tell you where the program was when Bo was here. He began the move to pull us out of obscurity.

3. Several football programs, more than right before 2001, have begun in the past couple years or will begin in the next few. They all have had varying ways of putting it together, they're all in different situations, and except for Lamar, they've all had winning teams in their first years. Lamar was 5-6.

4. Those programs have all been great for attendance in FCS too - even Lamar, the low-major with the losing season, averaged 16,000 for home games. Of course, that's football crazy Texas, and Georgia State is football crazy Georgia, but Old Dominion? Football crazy...Virginia?

5. Football at Milwaukee would plunge ahead along the lines of the Charlotte 49ers, the school I point to so often in branding. Despite having an NFL team IN THE CITY, in a basketball state of North Carolina, they're plunging ahead. And they're taking their sweet time. The Charlotte Football Initiative (which we'll pilfer when the time comes)

6. Milwaukee is far closer to the schools that have started football than the two schools, Hofstra and Northeastern, who have cut it.

7. UWM is far less a commuter school than it was then. That was the time when landlords started buying up the houses and renting them to students. By now, 70% of the houses in the area between the river and Downer between Edgewood and North is student off-campus housing. Yet the perception of the commuter, "not real" school continues. I wonder why.

8. Sure, South Florida got big. But we all saw a school take advantage of the perfect conference situation to make the move to the Big East. It wasn't until Old Dominion's second season, where they continued to win against a large number of their own I-AA competition, and continued the trend of selling out every game, that I was convinced that it's not only possible, but guaranteed to succeed at Milwaukee if we do it the right way.

9. With the people we have - see, Mike Lovell and Rick Costello - I think it's going to happen. We just need to get that arena built. I'm more ravenous to finish the arena now than ever. Bud never wanted football and never wanted to do what it took to get it.

10. This time, it's going to be organized, it's going to be strong, and it's going to be popular. Because this guy's going to be a part of it, and I know that there are others like me. Many others like me.

I love this quote from Judy Rose, who is a great person that helped an 18-year old kid through e-mail correspondence figure out what the solution to our branding problem should be. This quote is about football:

“People always talk about the cost of football,” she said. “They ought to look at the cost of not having football.”