Tulsa does a lot with a little--we've never had state funding or government assistance. I don't think it's impossible for a few good winning seasons to lead to skelly stadium filling up again and more money being available to the program. If we could just beat Washington or Oklahoma this year, it'd do wonders for the visibility of the program. 40 to 50 million / year for athletics is money that was inconceivable when we were in C-USA and the WAC 20 years back.
After OU and Texas left, the Big 12 was extremely disadvantaged. The conference was in dire straits with a new commissioner and their 2 flagship teams leaving. Aresco had all the leverage in the world, PLUS he had ESPN behind him and he STILL couldn't win the poker hand. Instead, he played it polite, cautious and folded and the Big 12 took our best teams from a seemingly disadvantaged bargaining position (there were rumors Kansas & K-state were going Big 10 and WV to the ACC). I just don't see Aresco as an aggressive guy. He can keep the ship afloat but he'll never fire a shot to win the battle.
I think we need a serious change to the ”insiders” making decisions for TU.
To be fair the PAC-12 fell apart when they turned down $30M a year from ESPN and Fox causing those networks to move on to the Big12. At that point the fall of the Pac12 was just a matter of time.
That's true and apparently adding SMU and SDSU was not going to get the PAC-12 closer to the $40 mil they desired.
They demanded $50m per school haha
Rumored it was the Arizona St Pres who went to one of his professors and was in turn given that stellar advice. Other conference presidents then fell for it hook line and sinker.
He was either tenured, or stupid. One professor was the slayer of the PAC. Some TU faculty would be proud. I wonder if the Rose Bowl sends him Bday cards?
I was thinking that as well - how many academic purists would just wet themselves with joy knowing they completely ruined athletics for an entire institution? I’m sure we have a number of those types on staff.
Maybe.
Unfortunately too many short sighted and narrow minded academic purist would certainly bust a nut if they could ruin athletics.
It has been higher on paper in the past, in the vicinity of that number, due to creative accounting, such as adding pre-planned capital spending that was covered by endowment proceeds, but the actual operating budget of TU athletics, year to year, is a far lower number. I won’t discuss actual numbers in this forum.
Basketball needs to start paying for itself. Too many lost opportunities to make money.
The nature of the academy is that you will always have folks who think their stellar critical thinking* and general negative attitude is somehow a net positive in a business environment. Luckily, most but not all, of the problematic faculty at TU have largely retired or moved on. New vision. New era. And the faculty are behind it. Some are frustrated, sure. And some are groaning under the strain of actually having to work and be held accountable, but for the most part, the polarizing environment of 3 years ago is mostly gone. There’s a couple of notable exceptions but most of the faculty understand athletics role in attracting our best students and its value as an amenity once those students arrive on campus. They largely get it - the stadium was there 50 years before they were born. They chose to come here. If they are truly unhappy about it, there’s opportunities elsewhere at peer institutions without athletics.
I think so...Our one year improvement has been impressive, and our
It's Been a long time since since Donaldson. Just like it has been a long time since a John Blake.
No doubt, but TU has a history of certain folks attempting to destroy the athletic program.
I actually believe the conference may be in better shape with the addition of Utah, CO, BYU, AZ and Arizona State.
Totally. This was bad negotiating strategy by whoever negotiated for the PAC. They highballed so the networks move up. That often works but if you go too high and the other side has choices, they can walk. Or in this case, the networks seem to have just not responded and the PAC thought they were important enough to wait the networks out. But they were wrong. Problem wasn't the number, it was whoever did the negotiations. It sounds like negotiation by committee, which would be right for their commissioner.
Trusting a party school to come up with the number vs Stanford…. Yikes….
That's a great reason to expect it's professors are not able to do a relatively simple statistical analysis. The professors are at all the parties. That's why US News and World Reports ranks them in the top 20, in undergrad teaching.
What you really mean is OSU and Iowa State don’t know it yet, but they joined the WAC.
Probably quite a few less whor3s in Wichita Falls than Dallas as well. I'd certainly appreciate the safety, cost of living and relaxed lifestyle of Wichita Falls over the constantly under construction metro-plex. Hope pony gets rode like the broken down mare they are and then sent to the glue factory.
I can't see why they think moving from a 3rd tier conference to an unstable 2nd tier will make any difference. And they go from having more money than most of their competitors (remember Larry Brown, Weird Tim Jankovich at $2m/yr, Chad Morris at $3.5m/yr) to less. Their problem isn't the conference or anything the conference will solve, their problem is they're just not very good at athletics.
Their problems are numerous and include an inflated sense of entitlement, value of their presence in the DFW market, lack of any perspective regarding reality, etc....
Why would joining the ACC put SMU in a hole? Joining the ACC will almost certainly bring additional money into the university on the academic side. Conference revenue distributions should be at least equal to that of the AAC at least as long as Clemson and FSU are onboard. Ticket revenue should increase in both football and basketball. Don’t see much of a downside here.
