Post by PantherU on Nov 30, 2021 13:00:23 GMT -6
We all have heavy disagreements on this message board. This is partly why message boards exist, because we're all entertained by having the opportunity to argue about stuff we care about with people who share common interests. For this message board, we're all here because we all share the common interest of being college basketball fans for the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee's Milwaukee Panthers.
In 2016, we "fought" a bloodless civil war over the handling of our transition away from one coaching staff to another. No matter your position on how that was handled, the important thing is that you cared about the program enough to participate in discussion about it and you supposedly care enough now to participate in discussion of this program many years after it has been nationally successful and relevant at the same time.
As a group, we couldn't agree on much in 2016. More than most, we seemed to have an agreement over what we were looking for in the next coach. It seemed most of us preferred someone who had already been a head coach, and a successful one at that. We ended up with two coaches who, more or less, had similar resumes to what Rob Jeter had in 2005. When LaVall Jordan left for Butler a year later, the university hired a coach who had, more or less, a resume similar to Rob Jeter's resume in 2005. With the noise of the fighting in spring 2016 and the shock of summer 2017, it's entirely possible we could have ended up with a better hire if the fans who are intensely invested in the future of the program spoke up with one voice as to what we were looking for in the hire.
So this is what I am proposing. I propose that we, as the long-standing community of the remaining fans with a stake in the Milwaukee Panthers Basketball program, come together as a group over the next few months on what we are hoping to get out of the hire for the next head coach of the men's basketball program.
I propose we do this over a few months so that in March, we will be able to state in a clear and unified voice that we would like the university to pursue a coach that fits "this" profile, whatever we decide "this" will be. To me, this is the best thing we can do to help the success of the program in the future. It is about simply the head coaching position in men's basketball. There can and will be nothing in the proposal about other employees of the university, whether they work in Chapman Hall or the Klotsche Center. This proposal needs to carry weight, and it cannot be a referendum on the job performance of current employees (except for Pat Baldwin Sr., obviously).
I believe Amanda Braun can make the right hire, and I think she will have a better chance of doing that if she has the collective input of the fan base on what we want out of this hire. If we agree to do this, and come together on our expectations as to what the men's basketball program needs in its head coach, Amanda will know to take our collective voice into account as she guides the process to fill the position.
I believe Amanda will listen to us for one reason: she has, more than once. I proposed that we buy the naming rights for the Arena, she got it done. We proposed we build a practice facility and I had Joe Rice even put together an architectural proposal, there are shovels in the ground and the building is looking mighty similar to what Joe had designed.
I have other thoughts that I would like to include here as I set everything up for this months-long proposal discussion, but I'm going to let the discussion on this thread get started before I bring more of my thoughts into it beyond this original post.
Now, here's what I would like you all to read before we get started:
- This is IMPORTANT: Debate over the individual aspects of our common voice will each have their own thread so as to keep things organized. This thread must be limited to what we each think about the proposal at large and which topics should have their own threads.
- Do we require them to hire a successful head coach? Do we require them to purse candidates who have coached at the Division I level? If we require a successful head coach, how do we as a group define success? Do we require a candidate who is a current assistant coach to have demonstrated strong recruiting ability at the mid-major level? Do we want to push a specific style of play in picking the next coach, or do we just ask for success regardless of how it's achieved? How do we want to word these: directives, requirements, suggestions, desires?
- Do we go beyond the coaching hire and ask the university for other concessions in regards to men's basketball? Do we ask that they pull money from airing commercials on TV and instead inject that money into men's basketball? Do we ask the chancellor to have a more direct hand in the running of the athletic program? Or is this simply a directive for the next men's basketball head coaching hire and we leave it at that?
- For a difficult discussion, do we make it clear in our official suggestion as a group that we want the university to simply hire the best candidate for the job, regardless of race? Or do we leave that alone and assume the university is going to make that decision anyways? I don't want that debate here. I want that debate in a separate thread. I want this thread to remain mostly clear.
- Suggestions for candidates for the next coach should have a separate thread that will not be part of the directive, because we don't want to require the university to look at specific candidates. They'll put themselves up on their own, and we can make our individual cases for different coaches in a thread separate from this proposal entirely.
- I have spoken with Ken Peterson, President of the Black and Gold Club, and he is willing to allow us to submit these directives to the university under the banner of the BGC. The BGC already considers all of us to be members as there is no complete membership roll maintained. It's also a Booster Club that is not officially affiliated with the university (unlike the Varsity Club), so they are able to make this kind of public push in early March while PBS is presumably still the head coach of the program.
- What do we call this proposal, where do we locate the debate for each thread, and what do we name the threads? I propose we specifically use an underutilized section of this message board so as to not gum up the discussion of the proposal as well as the discussion of the current season. For instance, we could push this whole discussion in the Klotsche Krazies section of the forum. If PantherLou/Admin are willing, I would appreciate it if they could create a whole new board under the Men's Basketball group to house this specific discussion, as there are going to be a number of threads over the next few months and it deserves to be higher up on the forum than a lower slot. That said, I have no idea if Lou or the admin even come on the board anymore. If the Admin is interested, I am willing to take the Admin role and guarantee I will maintain their anonymity in that transition (just shoot me an email). If the Admin would like to maintain control, I'm happy to take a moderator position so I can move discussions between threads etc.
So, what do you guys think? What threads should I start on this discussion?
In 2016, we "fought" a bloodless civil war over the handling of our transition away from one coaching staff to another. No matter your position on how that was handled, the important thing is that you cared about the program enough to participate in discussion about it and you supposedly care enough now to participate in discussion of this program many years after it has been nationally successful and relevant at the same time.
As a group, we couldn't agree on much in 2016. More than most, we seemed to have an agreement over what we were looking for in the next coach. It seemed most of us preferred someone who had already been a head coach, and a successful one at that. We ended up with two coaches who, more or less, had similar resumes to what Rob Jeter had in 2005. When LaVall Jordan left for Butler a year later, the university hired a coach who had, more or less, a resume similar to Rob Jeter's resume in 2005. With the noise of the fighting in spring 2016 and the shock of summer 2017, it's entirely possible we could have ended up with a better hire if the fans who are intensely invested in the future of the program spoke up with one voice as to what we were looking for in the hire.
So this is what I am proposing. I propose that we, as the long-standing community of the remaining fans with a stake in the Milwaukee Panthers Basketball program, come together as a group over the next few months on what we are hoping to get out of the hire for the next head coach of the men's basketball program.
I propose we do this over a few months so that in March, we will be able to state in a clear and unified voice that we would like the university to pursue a coach that fits "this" profile, whatever we decide "this" will be. To me, this is the best thing we can do to help the success of the program in the future. It is about simply the head coaching position in men's basketball. There can and will be nothing in the proposal about other employees of the university, whether they work in Chapman Hall or the Klotsche Center. This proposal needs to carry weight, and it cannot be a referendum on the job performance of current employees (except for Pat Baldwin Sr., obviously).
I believe Amanda Braun can make the right hire, and I think she will have a better chance of doing that if she has the collective input of the fan base on what we want out of this hire. If we agree to do this, and come together on our expectations as to what the men's basketball program needs in its head coach, Amanda will know to take our collective voice into account as she guides the process to fill the position.
I believe Amanda will listen to us for one reason: she has, more than once. I proposed that we buy the naming rights for the Arena, she got it done. We proposed we build a practice facility and I had Joe Rice even put together an architectural proposal, there are shovels in the ground and the building is looking mighty similar to what Joe had designed.
I have other thoughts that I would like to include here as I set everything up for this months-long proposal discussion, but I'm going to let the discussion on this thread get started before I bring more of my thoughts into it beyond this original post.
Now, here's what I would like you all to read before we get started:
- This is IMPORTANT: Debate over the individual aspects of our common voice will each have their own thread so as to keep things organized. This thread must be limited to what we each think about the proposal at large and which topics should have their own threads.
- Do we require them to hire a successful head coach? Do we require them to purse candidates who have coached at the Division I level? If we require a successful head coach, how do we as a group define success? Do we require a candidate who is a current assistant coach to have demonstrated strong recruiting ability at the mid-major level? Do we want to push a specific style of play in picking the next coach, or do we just ask for success regardless of how it's achieved? How do we want to word these: directives, requirements, suggestions, desires?
- Do we go beyond the coaching hire and ask the university for other concessions in regards to men's basketball? Do we ask that they pull money from airing commercials on TV and instead inject that money into men's basketball? Do we ask the chancellor to have a more direct hand in the running of the athletic program? Or is this simply a directive for the next men's basketball head coaching hire and we leave it at that?
- For a difficult discussion, do we make it clear in our official suggestion as a group that we want the university to simply hire the best candidate for the job, regardless of race? Or do we leave that alone and assume the university is going to make that decision anyways? I don't want that debate here. I want that debate in a separate thread. I want this thread to remain mostly clear.
- Suggestions for candidates for the next coach should have a separate thread that will not be part of the directive, because we don't want to require the university to look at specific candidates. They'll put themselves up on their own, and we can make our individual cases for different coaches in a thread separate from this proposal entirely.
- I have spoken with Ken Peterson, President of the Black and Gold Club, and he is willing to allow us to submit these directives to the university under the banner of the BGC. The BGC already considers all of us to be members as there is no complete membership roll maintained. It's also a Booster Club that is not officially affiliated with the university (unlike the Varsity Club), so they are able to make this kind of public push in early March while PBS is presumably still the head coach of the program.
- What do we call this proposal, where do we locate the debate for each thread, and what do we name the threads? I propose we specifically use an underutilized section of this message board so as to not gum up the discussion of the proposal as well as the discussion of the current season. For instance, we could push this whole discussion in the Klotsche Krazies section of the forum. If PantherLou/Admin are willing, I would appreciate it if they could create a whole new board under the Men's Basketball group to house this specific discussion, as there are going to be a number of threads over the next few months and it deserves to be higher up on the forum than a lower slot. That said, I have no idea if Lou or the admin even come on the board anymore. If the Admin is interested, I am willing to take the Admin role and guarantee I will maintain their anonymity in that transition (just shoot me an email). If the Admin would like to maintain control, I'm happy to take a moderator position so I can move discussions between threads etc.
So, what do you guys think? What threads should I start on this discussion?
