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Post by JG Panthers on Sept 27, 2013 10:33:27 GMT -6
I am one of those people that cares way too much for the meaningless game of athletics in this country. And trust me I feel ashamed of myself for it. Wait, what? You're ashamed of enjoying sport and competition as much as you do? There's a pretty sizable difference between enjoying sports and idolizing individuals. Regardless, I'm not sure how this applies to the practice facility or the politics behind it. Jimmy is 100% correct when he emphasizes the role athletics plays on the advancement of university reputations (whether that's right or wrong, it's true). I'm not saying I agree with building a $35M practice facility, but you can't deny the impact facilities have. Although they are just merely "creature comforts" as Super King contends (and accurately so), facilities are what draw students/athletes, faculty/coaches, and media support, whether that's in athletics or academics. Simply put, athletic success is the fast lane to increased university academic reputation. It's not the only way, but it is the quickest way. However, that success isn't simply derived from the "if you build it, they will come" adage. You need competent leadership in place to drive the metaphorical bus. I'm in the camp that is concerned with Coach Jeter's ability to be that bus-driver. The jury is out on Ms. Braun and Chancellor Lovell (although I think he is mostly on the right path), but having good leadership paired with outstanding tools will facilitate a trajectory of sustainable success. It's simply impossible to sell a bill of goods to a (somewhat understandably) fickle fan/alumni base when recent history shows a less than inspiring ability to lead at Milwaukee, whether it's because of the umpteenth AD hire in the last 8 years or the product on the playing surface. Sort out your underachieving coaching staffs/athletic department employees, give them the ability to delegate and tools to succeed, build your shiny new facilities, standardize your keys to success, and sustain it by consistently auditing your programs and staff. Let your previously rudderless athletic department ship aid in the advancement of your university. |
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Post by DunneDeal on Sept 27, 2013 14:30:21 GMT -6
Athletics/Fraternities/Sororities are the only reasons why 90% Alumni return to the school, for visits and such.
Academics are not the case, I don't see 5,000 people showing up for that riveting Business lecture, or 80,000 people going to that Physics symposium.
Its 80,000 people at a Badger Football Game, its 5,000 people at a MKE B-Ball game (circa 2005), that love for university is brought back with the school being represented in sports. Something to cheer for, it brings them back to campus. Once there, then they can talk up the Lubar School of Business, or the Peck School of Arts, you need a reason to bring people back, once they have made money and have some to give back. Which in turn helps your academia, because you have donors, and people willing to help.
The practice facility works like that, you have a place, a dedicated place for your athletes to train and live. That space draws kids in. Basketball Recruiting and a Fraternity Rush are very similar. You have a lot of different people, telling you different things trying to get you to join them. So you show them what you have, and what makes you better. Here at Milwaukee my chapter is the only one with a house, yea its messy but we have a house, we own it, that may give us a leg up on another chapter who rents, or doesn't have a house at all. It not a if you build it they will come situation, but if its down to Milwaukee and XCity do I want to be in a space thats for me I can use it when I want, or do I want to have the space where I can use it, but sometimes I can't.
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Post by gman2 on Sept 27, 2013 23:08:40 GMT -6
The best practice facility in the country isn;t thinking big enough.
If this university could even raise that much money, I say take that $35 Million and try to form partnerships and build a multi use soccer/rugbby/la cosse/football stadium and establish a D1 FCS football program. While researching a family trip to Kentucky and Tennessee and could not believe that these states have multiple D1 football programs and the state of Wisconsin has one. Now some will say "but we have Bucky to root for so who needs another team." The Vols have as big, or maybe bigger, following and somehow the state of Tennessee appears to find a way to have multiple D1 teams. Come on, let's think big.
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Lutzow10
Freshman
MILWAUKEE PROUD - PANTHER STRONG
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Post by Lutzow10 on Sept 27, 2013 23:28:47 GMT -6
There is a simple reason for this: Bucky is a fascist.
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Post by apaladino on Sept 29, 2013 8:02:01 GMT -6
I would love to have a generous angel like Knight or Pickens or Jerry Jones to help our university out. I don't get the people that complain about these gifts yet, they have no problem with every stupid club out there getting $$ from students.
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Post by Pantherholic on Sept 29, 2013 13:36:18 GMT -6
Don't get me wrong, I love the idea and vision with it however I just don't see us getting anywhere near this amount raised. If we were the only team in Milwaukee we would have a better chance but even then it'd be unrealistic. Unless we partner with the Bucks, I don't see how we can raise those kinds of funds considering the overall lack of interest for Panthers basketball in the city.
On a sidenote, Jimmy when referencing other articles in a post please use hyperlinks. Its a pain to stop, search for the other articles and then come back to yours. While I was glad I could tell a co-worker about an article involving Chik-fil-A potentially coming to Brookfield that I found on MBJ's site, I could care less when looking for the Braun article.
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Post by PantherU on Oct 2, 2013 21:24:56 GMT -6
I think it's all well and good to complain about the role athletics plays in academics, but the rest of us understand what athletics means to University. Whether or not you are successful in athletics has a huge part to do with how you are received as a University. As I have said many times before, in a perfect world, there would be no athletics tied to universities. But this is the world we live in, and if we want to advance the reputation of this university, athletics must be a huge part of that.
The reason that I came up with this facility and had mwu put it together, has nothing to do with making an example and everything to do with winning. Winning on the court, winning in the classroom, and winning in the admissions office.
Did you all see the latest numbers in admissions out there? We are getting killed by UW Madison. It has less to do with being a good University – something we have been getting better at every single year – and every thing to do with reputation. Students in this state don't remember our run to the Sweet 16, and without that they don't think we are worth their time. Get us this building and we are never far from the minds of highschoolers nationwide.
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Post by PantherU on Oct 2, 2013 21:27:33 GMT -6
Don't get me wrong, I love the idea and vision with it however I just don't see us getting anywhere near this amount raised. If we were the only team in Milwaukee we would have a better chance but even then it'd be unrealistic. Unless we partner with the Bucks, I don't see how we can raise those kinds of funds considering the overall lack of interest for Panthers basketball in the city. On a sidenote, Jimmy when referencing other articles in a post please use hyperlinks. Its a pain to stop, search for the other articles and then come back to yours. While I was glad I could tell a co-worker about an article involving Chik-fil-A potentially coming to Brookfield that I found on MBJ's site, I could care less when looking for the Braun article. Sorry, the link to the Braun story was in the first paragraph of the original story on PantherU. |
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Post by PantherU on Oct 2, 2013 22:14:05 GMT -6
The best practice facility in the country isn;t thinking big enough. If this university could even raise that much money, I say take that $35 Million and try to form partnerships and build a multi use soccer/rugbby/la cosse/football stadium and establish a D1 FCS football program. While researching a family trip to Kentucky and Tennessee and could not believe that these states have multiple D1 football programs and the state of Wisconsin has one. Now some will say "but we have Bucky to root for so who needs another team." The Vols have as big, or maybe bigger, following and somehow the state of Tennessee appears to find a way to have multiple D1 teams. Come on, let's think big. Football, even at the FCS level, carries a much larger price tag than you might imagine. $35 million would definitely build a stadium, but you also add $5 million in annual costs to field a successful team. It's not worth the price tag, especially when it dilutes other sports. There are only two ways you can make football work at Milwaukee: 1. Start up an NCAA program in FCS Pioneer League. This is a conference with familiar names: Butler, Drake, Valparaiso. These schools came together in the early 1990's due to a rule change that stated schools couldn't keep one sport in a lower division. A lot of schools, these included, had D-III football programs and D-I teams in other sports. When the rule changed, they brought the teams up to D-I as one conference with the express ruling that none of them would give scholarships to football players - this is totally legal, if the Big Ten wanted to they could drop scholarships from their football programs. What this does is it causes the university to collect instead of pay out tuition. Instead of paying for 63 FCS scholarships, they get 80+ football players who pay their own way at school. We make money. The cost for these programs at schools like Butler is under $1 million, which is easily covered by the tuition those students pay. Tuition is less here, but room and board and tuition are about 13-15k per year. Even here, the cost of the program would be offset by the team's tuition. Add in all those friends and girlfriends who come to the school, and the added students who come to be in the marching band, and football is profitable at UWM. Not wildly successful, but profitable. Besides, success is relative. I think we'd paste most UW schools outside Madison and probably Whitewater. The problem is that it doesn't add a ton to marketing. The JS would cover it, but it'd almost never be a front page story and it'd be a small one juxtaposed with a full page on the Badgers. The good thing is that it Is profitable, it gives students a reason to shut up about student life and lack of football, and it gives those who don't like soccer a reason to come to campus in the fall. 2. Recognize what we have in a club football program and sell it. Dave Mogensen has built an actual program, getting former D-I kids to come to our school to play. They're successful, but they're a club - technically on the same level as the debate team and SDS. But it's football, and in reality isn't much different from the football in the Pioneer League. I think our club team could actually probably beat Valparaiso. The problem here is it isn't NCAA. But I don't think students need to know that. Meaning, if we promote it heavily and give it some backing, it could be a real winner at UWM. There's a designation used at schools that want to recognize a sport but don't want to pay for a real version of it - it's called Varsity Club. Its the kind used for Kentucky Hockey, Michigan Lacrosse and Wisconsin soccer (okay maybe not the last one). What it is is the university recognizing the sport as "varsity" while not giving any financial support of any kind. Personally, I think Milwaukee can knock three birds out with one stone and not spend a dime - Varsity Club status for the club football, hockey and lacrosse teams. These are the ones because these are the three that could actually get some fans. They exist at our school, two of the three are fairly successful, and they can be used for a great many things. The university already partly realizes this - when they slashed away SA one of the things they did was they brought all club sports together under one umbrella, effectively creating an athletic department for club sports. If I were running the show, I'd create a full website for the club teams not unlike the athletics website. I would get the AD to assign unpaid student interns to the program to cover it like an SID. I would create a sports marketing class in the business school, run by Doak Geiger, where I would have them marketing the sports that are spectator sports and running game day promotions. I'd also pay Nic Waldron for his M logo set and adopt that as the marks for the club program. Then I'd get the bookstore to sell shirts - or just us selling them - with a percentage going to the club teams themselves. Put the club sports on the varsity athletics website and it's gold. Not just as a "club sports" link, but next to the men's and women's sports - do a club sports header as well. This will alert the rest of the fans that these sports exist. I would tie club athletics into the university's events. I would schedule a home football game on the weekend of the Panther Prowl and call it Homecoming. We could do a lot of things to raise awareness and get students out to the games. The best part is that the university really doesn't have to spend money on this. But it would effectively kill the "we're not a real school" BS. Maybe the hashtag should have been #jimmy4clubad |
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Post by ghostofdylan on Oct 3, 2013 11:40:11 GMT -6
Jimmy, aren't you supposed to be on your honeymoon?
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Post by PantherU on Oct 3, 2013 18:31:37 GMT -6
Jimmy, aren't you supposed to be on your honeymoon? Shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh |
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Post by ghostofdylan on Oct 4, 2013 10:25:27 GMT -6
Jimmy, don't you think that your new bride is going to wonder what all the typing is about?
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Post by uwmfutbol on Oct 5, 2013 16:21:23 GMT -6
The issue with Division 1 athletics is not with programs like Wisconsin, Oregon, Texas, etc. These lucky few are able to use athletics to drive research and academics and increase scholarship funds through increased donations and other added revenues. It really becomes problematic for the mid-major and low-major programs desperately trying to catch up and find themselves hemorrhaging funds. This is the sad reality for UWM. We spend money but it doesn't translate to increased exposure or revenues to help the University. We don't have a single donor like Phil Knight or legions of loyal Wisconsin alumni eager to break out their checkbooks for their alma mater.
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Post by uwmfutbol on Oct 5, 2013 16:29:13 GMT -6
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Post by uwmfutbol on Oct 5, 2013 16:53:28 GMT -6
Let me just clarify, though, that I'm not necessarily against funding a new arena or a new practice facility. I just don't see how it'll happen, especially considering how expensive it has become to even attend a college these days. I feel like the opposition would be too strong.
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