rlh04d wrote:Kyle wrote:I really don't care if Dannen is the biggest a$$hole on the planet. He understands the biggest obstacle at UNI is money and acts accordingly.
If UNI fans want a perennial top 25 program they need to pay for it or step aside so someone else can. If it takes a pompous jerk off to make this happen so be it.
UNI's second biggest obstacle is lack of fan support.
I was skimming through 2015 season attendance the other day and it's absolutely disgusting how many home games UNI played in a 50% full arena. In the best season in program history.
When you have people who bought season tickets, as a student (WHO GET FREE TICKETS), to basketball and football and donated to the PSC at the Gold ($1,000 minimum donation), Directors ($1,400 minimum donation), and VIP level (1,900 minimum donation) (yes, I know people like that at all three of those levels...I am one of the) who no longer donate/buy season tickets because of the way they've been treated it does become an issue. I donate, but at a smaller level, and combine it with another person and keep it under their name. I know, for a fact, if my name shows up on a NCAA/MVC request, a seat upgrade, etc... it's going to the back of the pile...and that's best case scenario.
I get that Dannen has been able to get things done people didn't think could happen. I acknowledge that every time I talk about him. I think he's done a GREAT job at building the athletic department, as a whole, and retaining who/what needs to be retained to for the continued success of the athletic department (for the most part...there is a reason we've lost some key AD members the last 6 years though), especially given the poo storm he walked in on. Remember his first action was cutting baseball due to issues that Hartzell ignored his entire time at UNI.
It's absolutely wonderful that the big donors are finally being embraced and feel good enough with the university to donate what they do.
I want Dannen to continue at UNI. However, we can't, and Dannen can't (but is), lose sight of the people who can't write a 10K+ check each year. The Panther Scholarship club needs those kinds of donors. We need as many $100 per year donors as we can get. For every Panther fan/alum that can donate $10k with no problems there are 10,000-15,000 who can/could donate $100. That big name donor looks nice, but so does a PSC with 5,000+ more members than it already has. 5,000 more members at $100 is an extra $500,000 per year. Unless we have 50 people who can start donating 10k per year the smart business move is to go after the "little guys" every bit as hard as the big boys.
As a real world example of what I'm talking about...I am a branch manager at my company and do wholesale HVAC equipment...York/Luxaire actually...shout out to my Wichita brethren on that one
... We've had some turn over with territory managers out of our branch the last 2. The TM that was here moved to the contractor side of things, the guy who was the branch manager moved into the TM role about a year ago and he now transferred to another location to do inside sales. So we are now on our 3rd guy in just over a year. That has created some issues with retaining existing accounts, along with our largest account going through some serious credit issues and going from well over a million in sales per yer to pacing less than 100K this year. The goal of our new TM is to generate new accounts. The new TM, our VP, and myself all sat down to try to figure out how we wanted to do things to get sales back. We decided that we need to "schmooze" our existing big accounts to keep them happy BUT the best approach is to go after the dozens and dozens and dozens of smaller shops that are less than 10 people total in the entire company. Why? Well, there are about 15 of them for every 500K plus per year account we could get. They are also typically much easier to keep happy. They don't require as much ass kissing, special treatment, being told how special they are, etc... We can easily make up for lost sales, and then grow sales, by grabbing as as 50-100k per year guys as we can and continuing to grow our bigger accounts. That's a smart move in many ways, and in a worst case scenario it's a great move. If we lose one of the small guys we aren't out like we are if a big time account pulls out and can replace it easier.
That same thing holds true for PSC donors. Dannen has to spend so much time making sure the "big guys" and "big name guys" have their egos stroked enough that people like me, or the people we really need to grow the UNI fan base, are ignored and we end up with half full arenas for a top 10-15 team
