Interesting commentary from WSU's beat writer

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Jason Svoboda

Jason Svoboda

The Bird Level
Administrator
Was asked by SIU's beat writer "you are MVC commissioner for a day, with unlimited power. What changes do you make?" His response:

My first call will be to Indiana State’s new athletic director to convince that person to drop football.

Indiana State should go all in on basketball (and baseball) and use its limited resources on those sports. The school is the smallest of the MVC’s public schools and its boosters are spread too thin. Unlike schools such as Southern Illinois and Illinois State, it hasn’t invested heavily in a new stadium. Attendance averaged 5,060 last season and the Sycamores aren’t a traditional winner.

The Sycamores should brand themselves as the school where basketball, baseball and soccer are important and fund them well enough to be more successful. Give basketball the money to pay better salaries, travel better and play guarantee games at home.

Sure, it will be painful for a few seasons. The payoff should be more success in basketball and a stronger MVC.

http://thesouthern.com/sports/colle...cle_dacd7cd2-d98c-5a3f-84b6-54f3dd3f00e1.html
 

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I've went back and forth on that issue and I think I agree with him. I enjoy tailgating and have friends who have played/rooted for the program. Sadly, I think unless we invest in a new stadium (we certainly don't have the funds or fan support to warrant that) we're doomed in the current landscape of NCAA football. And even if we did invest in a stadium there is no guarantee of a return on that investment. Say what you will, but being D1-AA is much harder to sell around here than a D1 program. If we had a large football fan base or even a hardcore smaller base that was only loyal to ISU (like in basketball) I would think about it much harder and would trust with a new stadium and renewed investment the payoff would be worth it. The sad truth is the support is just not there to invest the money needed to play at this level. It is not fiscally smart to keep the program any longer IMO.

With looming facility upgrades needed at the current stadium or with a new stadium I don't think our athletic department could absorb the hit and still even fund our other programs at the current level they do....which is already poor by MVC standards right now. Furthermore, I would like see some of our other programs get more funding than they do now ( mens bball basketball, track, baseball) and by having football gone they would most certainly get a bump in funding. And before anyone comes on and says "you don't just get to transfer all the funds from football to other sports, some boosters wouldn't donate if there wasn't football, etc etc"... I get it, but there would be more dollars than there is now for our other sports.

Oh and something else to think about in a small market like Terre Haute there are only so many business/corporate sponsors to go around for ISU athletics. Marketing guys would be better off answering this than me, but would it not free up more $$ to sponsor other programs if football is not around??


Ok go ahead and let me have it....
 
Firestorm!

First of all, correct me if I am wrong but isn't WSU in the process of bringing Football back?? So they dropped football, are considering bringing it back but would advise us on getting rid of football. That is interesting to say the least.

Second, pardon my strong bias but if your going to give advice to Indiana State University and how we should "brand ourselves" then I think you might want to include Cross Country (over soccer and yes over baseball) considering we've hosted the D1 Cross Country Nationals 8 out of the last 10 years. Not sure how many NCAA National Championships they've hosted over in Kansas but I'm guessing it aint that many. If your going to leave out details like that then in my opinion your not qualified to give us any freaking advice.

As for football - unless a major donor or sponsor wants to step up and step up quick to rescue football then I think we all know what should happen. Unfortunatly what should happen and what we want to see happen don't align. I think most true Sycamore fans want to see football stick around and we want to support our football program. We've gone back and forth on this issue for many many years now. The ISU Athletic Department and Administration can say they "support football" all they want but until I see actionable movement behind those words I don't buy it for a minute. In fact, if I was a football player, coach or alum I'd be beyond pissed at the lip service of support thrown behind the football program without any real momentum behind the words. Just as resurfacing a shitty track multiple times was a bandaid - a new field and renovated locker rooms are a bandaid. So it is pretty simple really - find the donor and sponsor support to put plans in place to start construction on a new stadium sometime in the next 2 years or drop the program.

Firestorm!
 
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SycamoreStateofMind said:
Firestorm!

First of all, correct me if I am wrong but isn't WSU in the process of bringing Football back?? So they dropped football, are considering bringing it back but would advise us on getting rid of football. That is interesting to say the least.

Second, pardon my strong bias but if your going to give advice to Indiana State University and how we should "brand ourselves" then I think you might want to include Cross Country (over soccer and yes over baseball) considering we've hosted the D1 Cross Country Nationals 8 out of the last 10 years. Not sure how many NCAA National Championships they've hosted over in Kansas but I'm guessing it aint that many. If your going to leave out minor details like that then in my opinion your not qualified to give us any freaking advice.

As for football - unless a major donor or sponsor wants to step up and step up quick to rescue football then I think we all know what should happen. Unfortunatly what should happen and what we want to see happen don't align. I think most true Sycamore fans want to see football stick around and we want to support our football program. We've gone back and forth on this issue for many many years now. The ISU Athletic Department and Administration can say they "support football" all they want but until I see actionable movement behind those words I don't buy it for a minute. In fact, if I was a football player, coach or alum I'd be beyond pissed at the lip service of support thrown behind the football program without and real momentum behind the words. Just as resurfacing a shitty track multiple times was a bandaid - a new field and renovated locker rooms are a bandaid. So it is pretty simple really - find the donor and sponsor support to put plans in place to start construction on a new stadium sometime in the next 2 years or drop the program.

Firestorm!
Click to expand...

Im almost 100% sure their interest is only bringing back if it helps them get into a better conference...No way in hell they bring it back just to play in our league.
 
It's not been mentioned in this threat so I will bring it up. What are the feelings about D2, D3 or NAIA football? What are the advantages and disadvantages of making a move to another division? How much money would it really save? Would it maintain the fan support that we now have?
 

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At first this thread really started to get me fired up. I think the end result of dropping football would be no increase in the success of any other program and then money would slowly start to dry up and attendance would drop.

Its nice to hear some views from a newspaper writer but that's what they do, write stories. I also dont think that I need to be taking advice from schools that want to beat us at all sports. It reminds me of watching the GOP base every move they have made for 20 years on what Democrats say what they are doing wrong.
 
Sycamore Proud said:
It's not been mentioned in this threat so I will bring it up. What are the feelings about D2, D3 or NAIA football? What are the advantages and disadvantages of making a move to another division? How much money would it really save? Would it maintain the fan support that we now have?
Click to expand...

you cant be D1 in other sports if you arent D1 in football
 
This is tough for me. I love football, played it, coached it, spend majority of weekends watching it in the fall. But unless we make a commitment to be a winning program, I just don't see how we can move to the next level of athletics for the rest of the department with a muddling .500 or sub .500 football team that brings in 3-4k a game regularly. "If" we get a new stadium, a donor steps up, or we put together a nice string of winning seasons with relative success then yes we need the program. But if we are just going to tread water and play at Memorial with no real fanbase and no realistic "light at the end of the tunnell" with a new stadium then we need to make some tough decisions.
 

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niklz62 said:
you cant be D1 in other sports if you arent D1 in football
Click to expand...

Yes, you can. There are currently 97 Division 1 schools that don't field football.

Division 1 schools have to sponsor at least seven sports for men and seven for women (or six for men and eight for women) with two of those being team sports for each gender. Obviously there are other criteria like meeting financial aid requirements and the like, but the main difference is simply the number of sports the school fields.

EDIT: Nevermind, I saw you were responding to Sycamore Proud.
 
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Sycamore Proud said:
It's not been mentioned in this threat so I will bring it up. What are the feelings about D2, D3 or NAIA football? What are the advantages and disadvantages of making a move to another division? How much money would it really save? Would it maintain the fan support that we now have?
Click to expand...

This has been discussed quite a few times. It makes no financial sense to do this as you still have the football program expense.
 
Here is the athletic's donor list:

http://www2.indstate.edu/foundation/donors/index.php

There was only $770k of athletics giving in 2014-2015. I see some notable former basketball players, some track guys but very few former football players. Considering football is the most expensive program to field in the $3-4m range PLUS mirroring Title IX female scholarships, former players needs to start doing something if they don't want to see it axed.
 
Jason Svoboda said:
Here is the athletic's donor list:

http://www2.indstate.edu/foundation/donors/index.php

There was only $770k of athletics giving in 2014-2015. I see some notable former basketball players, some track guys but very few former football players. Considering football is the most expensive program to field in the $3-4m range PLUS mirroring Title IX female scholarships, former players needs to start doing something if they don't want to see it axed.
Click to expand...

I don't see Tom James name on that list...

Maybe the problem is that people who want to support something just want to vocalize support but they don't want to actually pay for the support.

Might be some lessons about this in the Bible, not sure.
 

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niklz62 said:
Maybe our problem is how and to whom we are comparing our programs.
Click to expand...

Elaborate please?

I don't think that is relevant at all to any discussion on keeping/dropping football. It is simply a dollars and sense issue.
 
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Jason Svoboda said:
Here is the athletic's donor list:

http://www2.indstate.edu/foundation/donors/index.php

There was only $770k of athletics giving in 2014-2015. I see some notable former basketball players, some track guys but very few former football players. Considering football is the most expensive program to field in the $3-4m range PLUS mirroring Title IX female scholarships, former players needs to start doing something if they don't want to see it axed.
Click to expand...

Very interesting, thanks for this link, very cool.

Barmes, no results found.
Petricka, no results found.
Joe Thatcher....FOUND (and it doesn't surprise me, when I was living in LA, I saw a "spotlight on Thatcher" type of piece on the local Angels tv show...he talked quite a bit about being from Indiana and about Indiana State specifically, was pretty cool)
 
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Jason Svoboda said:
Elaborate please?

I don't think that is relevant at all to any discussion on keeping/dropping football. It is simply a dollars and sense issue.
Click to expand...

Ok, Ive got some thoughts on this and instead of taking all afternoon to make some lengthy response ill just throw some out there and then add more as they come to me.

in football we are trying to take a program that at least seemed like an administration spent 10 years trying to drop and compete in a conference that has had 6 of the last 10 national championship game participants in it. In basketball we are trying to win a conference that has a coach from a school willing to pay him $3.3M/yr.

If we were ever to consider dropping football I think we should consider a different conference. I realize we might not be welcome in any other ones.
 
I get tired of everyone here repeatedly saying how important is it that we stay in the MVC. Why? So we can feel good about ourselves by association when those other schools win championships in football or make the Sweet 16 in basketball? We're sure as hell not doing it.

The writer says we're the smallest public school, which is no longer true, but I don't see where we're really using the increased enrollment to support athletics or at the broader level, more school pride. We're still the poorest of the poor and fighting an uphill battle against the behemoths in our conference.

We've had these conversations about dropping football dozens of times. I'd support that if I knew it would make a difference. We just speculate that it will, but who knows for sure? A proactive school would analyze the benefits of keeping both programs vs dropping one and share those findings and announce a plan going forward. Instead ISU is just content to ride it out, leaving things in constant limbo.
 
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