1. What is the university doing to increase athletics donations? What targets does it have over the next year? Next five years? Next ten years? There is no money coming from the state to build athletic facilities (nor should there be since there appears to be no plans from the university to grow the program so there will eventually be a return on the investment made). As a result, what creative ideas does the athletic department have to fundraise for facilities?
Well I gave them one corporate sponsor to pursue, if you know of any I suggest you contact Dan Croak. For targets I'm assuming you're talking about donation levels. I'd hope that it just increases every year.
The state legislature tabled a ~$12 million investment for the new basketball practice facility that will go on the surface parking lot next to the Klotsche Center, at the recommendation of the Governor. It was part of his pledge for 'no new construction' in the current biennium. The roughly $12 million would come from the State of Wisconsin budget, with the university paying the full amount back to the state over time as the university collects the $25 per student, per semester fee. The total money collected hovers between $6-7 million, but about $1 million of that was spent on the plans for the practice facility as well as the 2012 "face lift" of the Klotsche Center Arena. Andy Geiger, the gift that keeps on giving.
The university will eventually have all the money collected and would not need the state to give us a bond/loan, but current projections for student enrollment put the university at reaching the number around 2022, and no one really wants to wait that long. I've heard alumni representatives in the state legislature from both parties have indicated to the university that the 2017-19 budget will include the money. Which makes sense; it's a net zero to the taxpayer, and students overwhelmingly supported the measure. Of course you should take that with a grain of salt - politics are what they are, after all.
The practice facility will kill the two biggest points for negative recruiting against the university. One, it eliminates the practice situation for men's basketball which is one of the worst in Division I (at least 345 out of 351, teams have been added since I last studied it as a student). Two, opposing coaches will no longer be able to say the university doesn't support the basketball program. The facility is on par with the building opened this year at Creighton.
As far as fundraising, the Black and Gold Club (I'm part of it) is in the process of classifying as a 501(c)3 so we can help raise money for the university. I'm expecting the money we'll raise will go toward scholarships rather than specific projects, and that the money we'll raise will be in small increments. If you have questions about the athletic department's plans, you should definitely contact Jenny Gryniewicz in the athletic department/UWM Foundation. You can call her at 414-239-2560 or e-mail her at gryniew2@uwm.edu.
2. Everyone says how strapped for cash the university is in. If so, why did it spend millions on the naming rights for the arena? I actually agreed with this investment but I don't see any indication how they plan to take advantage of it. What are their season ticket targets? What are their attendance targets? What are they doing to increase these numbers? Why did it take someone from this board to come up with the naming rights idea? In general, it seems like most of the good ideas come from people on this board rather than within the athletic department itself.
First off, something happened between June 2014, when the announcement was made on naming rights, and today, with us talking about the school being strapped for money. The $250 million cut to the UW System has turned the university upside down as Mark Mone tries to shake every loose penny out of our pockets to keep moving forward.
I can't answer questions about the program's plans for raising attendance or marketing the program. I also can't tell you why it took a member from the board to come up with the idea to buy the naming rights, but I can say that particular board member would be too humble to tell you it's not the first time the university has pursued an idea of theirs - after all, we still talk about the practice facility and that idea came long before the naming rights. That member of the board would like to thank the university for ignoring years of terrible ideas like adding football or eventually retiring Brad Carroll's jersey.
People who work for the athletic department have come up with plenty of great ideas, put them forward and gotten them executed. Employees have come up with many more ideas than I've ever submitted, so don't just assume the people working in athletics don't know what they're doing. I trust every one of Amanda Braun's employees to get the job done - they're all excellent at what they do. They are committed and ambitious and they want to take this program to the levels we want this program to reach.
There are plenty of ideas I haven't shared with the university, the blog, the message boards or my fellow fans; I'm sure plenty of fans here can say the same thing.
Of course, not every fan has a blog that puts out news before people want it out there, points out shortcomings with the program, university and Horizon League, and is generally loud and obnoxious in the arena.
It's just funny that it never occurred to anyone that the best way to get rid of all of that is to put me on the payroll. My usernames on this board and others would get shut down (Black Panther and my name), PantherU would either get shut down or passed off to a few fans who wouldn't get a scrap of inside information from me, I'd pass off the Twitter account, Facebook page, and generally just disappear from social media - whatever they'd want me to do.
Contrary to popular belief, I've never gotten one story handed to me by the basketball coaches; they've never been a source or even nudged me in the direction of a story. In fact, if I got a hold of something and tried talking to them to get to the next step in the story, they'd lord it over me. I never got a scrap of help from those nerds hahaha
Personally, I think I can help the program if they want me - and I'm far from the only one. I think GhostofDylan should have been hired to work for Sports Information the second he left back in the nineties. Anyone think apaladino wouldn't make an excellent replacement in accounting once a spot opens up? SkrapHeap also would be a fantastic choice for student-athlete services. And the university has no need to shut these guys up! The list is much longer than that, but my point is this: these are people that support the program even without getting a paycheck from it. I know that I've logged onto Facebook at 2 am, seen athletic department employees online for chat, and kept them up for an hour or more talking about the program and ideas for the future and what the department can do to achieve its current goals. When Andy Czekalski was a student intern in marketing, it was one of these 2 a.m. conversations where he came up with the name PantherU for my site. I'm sure plenty of people have Panthers on the brain 24/7; at some point you want to get those brains working for you.
Seeing people like Eric Becker working in athletics makes me happy; I know that the ticket department is in good hands because there is a passionate fan running the show who once upon a time was a member of this board. I wouldn't be sorry to see a lot more fans on the athletic department staff. You know, provided they can do the job like Becker.
3. Why was nobody held accountable for the APR ban last year? These were Jeter's recruits and the failure occurred under his watch. Who on the coaching staff was fired, suspended, or even reprimanded?
Well there were several points where Rob Jeter and his staff took punishment. For one, they would have had a relatively good team last season; the APR ban knocked their ability to recruit in the spring and summer recruiting periods, their best shooter redshirted when he could have returned from ankle injury around December 1st, and the program lost practice time from summer through the end of last season.
That hurts Jeter and his staff because they, like us, want to win, and it robbed them of potential bonuses and perhaps even job opportunities. I don't know about anything behind closed doors, but I would assume publicly reprimanding employees is kind of a bad idea.
As for other people who were responsible for the APR ban, employees who might have taken some blame had moved on to other jobs and obviously the players were no longer in the program.
In the aftermath, the basketball program has broken its team GPA record for a semester three semesters in a row, and is on track to bring their APR score to a perfect 1000 this summer. Players who hadn't graduated have come back and done so, even some who no longer hurt the APR score but came back and got their degrees. A couple of these guys had transferred to different schools, and Rob Jeter and his staff went out, brought them back to campus and helped them graduate. It's been a heartwarming story that I wish the school would highlight, but then again I'm not sure if it's nice to point out guys who didn't graduate on time.
They also rarely post about Jeter's program doing community service. I recall the university highlighting the Special Olympics camp last month and the players giving rides to service members the day of the U.S.S. Milwaukee ceremony, but nothing on the other couple dozen community service events Jeter, his staff and players have participated in this school year. I'd love to see every single community service project the program participates in highlighted in a press release. That goes for all sports, not just men's basketball. This athletic department does a hell of a job getting out in the community, they should get recognition for it.
4. What is the university's justification for supporting the basketball tournament move to a "neutral" site and alienating the majority of its fans in the process? What's the upside to the university?
When I met with Amanda Braun and SID Bill Behrns last spring, I was told that they believed the fans would benefit from having a consistent place to travel to for the conference tournament. Amanda also said the shortened tournament was to benefit the players by taking them out of class less. Also that Olympia is a top-notch promoter and they were spending good money actually promoting the tournament itself.
I think pretty much everyone on this board knew it wasn't going to work. Likewise with people at Valpo, Green Bay and Wright State. UIC fans knew too, but not for the same reason as the other four - when you host the HLT, you understand the benefits much better. UIC just didn't want to guarantee long distance travel every year haha (I'd like to hope Jim Schmidt voted against the tournament because it was a bad idea for all of us).
I don't think this was Amanda Braun not understanding college basketball. She's very intelligent, and she was coming from a mid-major conference that has made a neutral site tournament work for 25 years. So I think she truly believes this HLT is good for us in the long run.
I just disagree. I fully respect her stance - obviously we pay her quite a bit of money to do what she does, and she made the decision she thought would best benefit our program. And you can't say with any certainty that she's not right; maybe by year 5 we'll all be clamoring for a renewal and hoping Olympia doesn't eschew that in favor of joining the Big Ten Tournament rotation.
I think what's lacking isn't intelligence or drive but rather institutional memory. People who have been there for a long time in athletics have moved on in recent years - LeVar Ridgeway, Brian Morgan, Deedee Merritt, Kevin O'Connor, Charlie Gross, John Stewart, etc. - these are all people that have long-term institutional memory of our program from before Amanda Braun arrived on campus.
You could read that any number of ways, but the best way is to read it like this: Amanda wasn't standing in the Arena in March 2011, or reading the local paper, or watching the local news, or talking to local people. So how could she know how impactful it was for the university to play the conference championship downtown?
My opinion is the university is satisfied with the way things are and has no desire to put additional effort into growing the program and making it special. They are happy to go through the motions. Until that changes, we can expect more of the same. Giving Jeter any kind of extension will further confirm my suspicions at which time I'll have to reevaluate my future support of the program after 20 years.
I would say that if Jeter were to receive an extension, reserve judgment until you read the fine print. This wouldn't be the first time a coach was extended heading into the final year of their contract, only to be fired after the season. The chance of that rises since Rob's contract doesn't include a buyout clause in it currently; if he's extended, something like that would almost certainly be a part of the deal.
Also, I've heard from several people in the past few days who have run into Chancellor Mone in Detroit (he did make it Detroit after all BTW). Each of them were very encouraged with how he talked about the basketball program and believe he'll take more of an interest in the development of the program than Lovell or Santiago ever did. That's encouraging.
I believe the Jeter era is likely reaching a conclusion in 2017. I have mixed feelings about this, obviously, but coaches can't always ride off into the sunset with the storybook ending. I'm hoping this program can end on a high note. I'm excited for the senior seasons of Jordy, Akeem (he's not leaving), Cody, Austin and Studer. As the roster changes, Rob will adjust the style of play to fit the new guys.
Which reminds me - one thing this board has always complained about with Rob is that they don't know what style of basketball his teams play; that's because it changes with the roster. The team played stronger defense and more of a half-court offense when Anthony Hill, Kaylon Williams and Ryan Allen were on the court - that's because the team was a better fit for that style of play.
In any case, no matter what your feelings are on Rob Jeter, his staff and program, I would hope that you all go into 2016-17 as supportive and positive as you were in his first year. As far as I know, everyone's problems with Rob are all with how he and his staff run the basketball operation and aren't personal. There's not some big chance that he is the basketball coach in 2017-18, so if there's anything I would like to stress more than anything else it's this: unity.
Let's throw out all the petty animus of the past decade. If you're someone who has pulled out of supporting the program, get back in before the next coach arrives. Forget all the politics, all the in-fighting, all the anger and mistrust and let's just support the program. Support the coach for 11 years, soon to be 12, of serving as the head coach of our basketball program to the best of his abilities. Support the players that just show up, put on the jersey that's got our name on it, and fight hard for UWM. In short, support the Black and Gold.
Prowl On.
