DoubleJayAlum wrote:BCPanther wrote:I 100% agree with the investment argument especially when you speak of Missouri State, Indiana State, Evansville and, most certainly, Drake. What the administration has done to the Drake program in borderline criminal.
But...
How do you explain UNI's almost decade of success then??
We have invested in a new arena, we are paying a coach over 5 times what we did 10 years ago (that number keeps going up every year, btw) and have done nothing but invest in making sure our team travels the right way, has the facilities they need and have done nothing but increase what we are paying assistants.
In your eyes, does UNI not invest in its program simply because we also sponsor football??
Great question.
In the case of UNI, I'd say the concern is that UNI is tapped out. It has reached the upper bounds of what it can do, meaning that continued investment may be hard to come by. Likewise, increasing investment seems completely out of the question for the foreseeable future.
I think it is also important to point out that in order to do the things you outlined, your athletic department also had to drop baseball.
Do the struggles of your basketball program the least two years had anything to do with the financial cutbacks that were required to be made in your athletic department? (Honest question - I don't know). Have you seen any drop off in your other athletic programs in the last two years?
The struggles in basketball are not related to money. We are spending more than we ever have. The O'Rear injury two years ago, coupled with the McDermott situation did set us back a bit, but if struggling is getting into the NIT and winning a game, I think about any Valley program would take it.
In other sports things are going well too. Volleyball made its 7th consecutive NCAA, softball won the regular season league title, Women's Basketball is strong though they can't seem to shake the injury bug, Women's soccer is vastly improved and getting an on campus facility that breaks ground this spring.
As far as baseball goes it had to be done. We were up here on an island by ourselves, we had ZERO control over facilities and were paying a huge fee to play at a run down Summer League baseball stadium. Couple all of that with the fact that Iowa High School Baseball is still played in the summer and there is absolutely no way you can compete with kids that can't play summer league ball it painted us into a corner.
You may be right about being tapped out. We have a very loyal, however, small fan base that gives what it can and it hurts that the guy we had to write unlimited checks ended up being a full fledged criminal. However, I would take our future over everybody not named CU or WSU. Jake is locked up long term and as long as he is allowed to continue paying assistants well and traveling well, he is happy. He turned down A&M's big money offer and there really aren't any other jobs that scare any of us outside of the traditional elites and maybe Wisconsin.
We are in a good place and I think if the Valley would get picked apart we may be very attractive to a new league, ie the MAC.