Originally posted by 06panther10
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Just more childish rantings.
My money has been firmly placed where my mouth is. Happy to discuss that.
Made your contribution to the Dome project yet? They're still accepting them.
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Was that supposed to be an argument?
Just more childish rantings.
My money has been firmly placed where my mouth is. Happy to discuss that.
Made your contribution to the Dome project yet? They're still accepting them.
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As I keep saying, start putting a winning product on the field, court, mat, pool, etc and, voila, donations come in.
Here's betting that volleyball is pulling in some money, vis a vis basketball, correct? There's your only answer and it's independent of what an AD and/or coach can do.Leave a comment:
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The issue isn't 06, BC, myself, or anyone else on this forum and our donations. We cut checks every year. All of us have for a decade plus, plus tickets, merch, concessions, etc. I can't speak for those others, though I know they aren't any different, but I know I have gotten multiple people to become season ticket holders, PSC donors, go to more events, join the UNI Foundation, join the Friends of Gallagher, go to events (sporting and otherwise) they normally wouldn't have at UNI. I've spurred more conversation about UNI in a number of places because of what I wear and how outspoken I am about UNI that never would have existed without me there. It certainly feels like the general fans, like us, are doing more than the athletic department to do these things. That shouldn't be the case.
We were already invested before David got here. I can tell you I've had conversations with some LOOONG standing UNI fans, alumni, and donors who are actually cutting back on donations right now (arguments for merits on both sides) due to the direction of the athletic department. I'm talking people with "name power" behind their names.
Again, at this point I'm not even talking about us, or our expectations. I'm looking entirely at David's self set foundation for athletics department success. His baby. His plan. His strategy. His master strategic plan.
Take a look at these and tell me the issue is "06 isn't adding another comma to his donation this year" and not a failure on the part of David, and his athletic department, to accomplish his goals, and grow the athletic department profile.
$2 million in cash donations to PSC
Have we hit this? Are we close to this? If the answer to those questions is no (and it is) why? What has, or hasn't be done to get there? What has been tried and failed? Why has it failed? Was the plan of attack bad? Was it just missed opportunities? If opportunities were missed why were they missed and what is being done to make sure they aren't missed again? Every single aspect of the failure to get there has to be looked at. No one should be safe from extreme criticism for failure. The failed plan ultimately comes down to the leader. What action did they/did they not take to make sure it could succeed? People not in the right place? People not giving the right tools/access to tools? People not given the right training? That all falls directly to David and how he has the PSC run
2,000 PSC members
Have we hit this? Are we close to this? If the answer to those questions is no (and it is) why? What has, or hasn't be done to get there? What has been tried and failed? Why has it failed? Was the plan of attack bad? Was it just missed opportunities? If opportunities were missed why were they missed and what is being done to make sure they aren't missed again? Every single aspect of the failure to get there has to be looked at. No one should be safe from extreme criticism for failure. The failed plan ultimately comes down to the leader. What action did they/did they not take to make sure it could succeed? People not in the right place? People not giving the right tools/access to tools? People not given the right training? That all falls directly to David and how he has the PSC run
It doesn't help that Nathan Christiansen left UNI, and David Harris, to go to a peer institution in SDSU. A university that is run almost entirely by UNI people at this point and is getting more in donations for their version of rally in the valley than we get in an entire year at this point. If only we had someone like Justin Sell or Nathan Christiansen on our campus with the ability to put them in leadership positions...............
Increase season ticket sales in every sport at least 50%
Increase overall ticket revenue by 50%
Increase average attendance at each ticketed event by 50%
Explore and secure multiple new sources of revenue
None of those have happened, and again I understand COVID, but I don't understand how COVID has had 10 times the impact at UNI as anywhere else in our peer group for ticket sales and revenue. Maybe David actually addressing this compared to just hiding in his office would "calm" some of the mistrust and anger. Maybe David needs to look at how other universities have recovered and start to implement that in Cedar Falls.
To your case about "Look how successful the teams are". You're right. Somehow we are still having great success. I think we should win, or finish 2nd, in the all sports trophy this year. Why isn't that success translating to donations? Why isn't that translating to ticket sales? Ticket revenue? Sponsorships? Naming rights? Why, despite the success, is the athletic department struggling more than it has in decades?
Now, I can go back into my opinion which is my thoughts as well as having conversations with people at all levels of UNI support. I'm talking people at work who aren't UNI fans but will talk UNI with me, to people who will go to a game or two a year, to people like myself who are PSC members and go to games with season tickets for at least one sport, to people who are large donors, to people who are LEGACY UNI people. I'm not talking long time donors/ticket holders. I'm talking "legacy names" at UNI on both the athletic and academic side. I have a pretty good idea what the pulse is around the current state of the athletic department. It's not good. The legacy people are being driven away, almost intentionally it seems. It's radio silence from the department on anything. It feels like David having to talk to anyone is a chore and he hates doing it (what I was told by people who have talked to him at various events). You can see that when you see him at events as well. He sits in his seat, stoically, and doesn't interact with those around him. I've seen him walk through venues and he avoids talking to people.
He really seems to hate the public part of his job. Not everyone is made for jobs that require a ton of external communication. I'm one of those people. It's why I took a back office data/numbers/spreadsheet position where 99.9% of my communication is internal. I understand not really liking having to do that. The problem is the role of an athletic director is literally to do all of the external stuff. You need that personality. You need to shake babies and kiss ass. Maybe 25+ years ago the role was truly administrator and could be done from the office. That isn't how the college world works today. He worked under Jamie Pollard for a decade. His boss was, likely, the best example of it in the entire country. It would be one thing if he was the true back office kind of director and we were having all the success with donors, psc members, facilities, etc. We aren't having that. It needs to be examined why.
I can tell you that the President/CEO of my company is SUPER visible internally and externally. We are doing very well as a company, and a large part of it is how visible he, and the rest of the senior leadership team, are to everyone. How everything is communicated, details laid out and how they will impact everything, etc. They don't just sit in their office and do "important VP, CEO, CFO, CMO, COO, et. document work". They live the values they want every employee to live. They are out there with us pushing the change, pushing the values, pushing the products. It truly is a culture, and right now it's clear UNI has a culture issue and the stink of it is really starting to emanate to outside of the offices in the dome.Leave a comment:
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It's actually amazing he gets the recruits he does. They take all their visits, see all the dedicated facilities, all the multimedia presentations, all the things prepared for them by an in house graphic designer and all of the shoes, gear, etc that everybody is dripping with. They come here and Jake gets to show them an arena that hasn't been touched since the day it opened with scoreboards we got for free, a video board from a now bankrupt advertising company that looks like it should be outside of a casino, a cold war era gym for practice that is shared with your average elementary ed major and a couple shirts that we most likely had printed at Shirt Shack.Originally posted by clenz View Post
It's embarrassing and it has to change.Leave a comment:
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Nah. We will see real quick how easy it all is and how great we are when we have to have David hire a replacement for Jake. We are in such great shape as a department attracting a coach at that level should be a breeze and we should have 100000% faith in David to do it and totally not cheap out. I’m sure just any random coach can step in and do what Jake has done because it’s super easy to overcome the complete Grand Canyon we are in facility wise for those we are going against for recruits.Originally posted by 06panther10 View Post
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Interesting that David’s entire strategic plan is seen as “gaps” and not the foundation of how the department should be working.
It’s our coaches ability to punch 7 levels above their weight that has kept the gaps plugged and make things look like everything is fine.
Those plugs aren’t going to last forever. Just wait until they are gone and those leaks start to get faster and soon enough the full reality of everything starts to flood out.Leave a comment:
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Hey champ, we shouldn’t have to “punch above our weight”. We are only asking to punch AT OUR OWN WEIGHT. God forbid one of our tremendous coaches ever leaves and you will see just how easy it is to “overachieve”…Originally posted by Blue42 View Post
And the vast, VAST majority of the few people left posting on this site are the some of the very few people on earth that actually support UNI through thick and thin thru the PSC and through season tickets. Thats why we are actually demanding accountability, BECAUSE we care.
Of all places to antagonize people with “OPEN THE CHECKBOOK CHEAPO!!!”, this place aint it buddy.Leave a comment:
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I haven't said everything was "fine".
And I'm not happy with DH's performance in fund raising and facilities development. Said that on PN many times.
But some of you guys are so ridiculously negative that you ignore success and focus only on the gaps. I find that to be bull***t. It's childish and helps nothing.
We have continued to be successful and punch over our weight on the field of play. Talented kids continue to see value in coming to UNI. It's undeniable.
I wonder how many of the loudest negative voices on this site have proactively written a check to the UNI athletic department or PSC that has a comma in it?
Raise your hands fellas. Talk is cheap.Leave a comment:
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It's one thing for us fans to sit on Twitter or here and say things like "It's clearly broken" and talk about all the issues we see.Originally posted by FOTY View Post
People, like blue, will look at that and go "That's just unrealistic fan expectations. Be realistic and you'll see everything is fine". That's why I went and I pulled David's own words, and the plan he created, to look at from an objective point of few. Not my expectations, not my reality, not my opinion. What were David's own, publicly stated, metrics for success for him in his role.
When you look at where we are in relation exclusively to his words and ignore even any fan expectations you still can't call his time so far successful and healthy. He's failing, at least as far as anyone can tell, to meet even his own standards.
Was his 5 year plan lofty? Yes.
Did COVID hurt some? Yes.
My issue becomes, again looking only at his own words that define success, is apparently COVID impacted UNI at a level that no other university in the country was hit. COVID might have slowed the progress other programs were making by a year, but at this point it's pretty clear they are all back to where they were before as far as moving forward. It not only slowed UNI, it slammed us into the strongest brick wall ever built at full speed.
Even looking at the stuff that was pre-covid projects, what is the reason those were stopped before covid even happened? The track and field facility? The soccer field, which was supposed to be part of the TF upgrade. The team room for football disappeared in 2018 and was ignored as ever being a thing for a full year before David was pressed on social media about it and his only statement was "It was put on indefinite hold" even though we had been told that, like the track, funding was already done.
I've asked dozens of times and I'll ask again: Why is UNI the one place where funding raising is so damn hard? Why is it the one place where it's accepted to just go "It's not easy so we nee to accept it". Why is UNI the one place that can't find anyone to sign on for sponsorships/donations? Why is Cedar Falls/Cedar Valley/380 Corridor so damn bankrupt compared to Brookings, SD, Vermillion, SD, Terra Haute, IN, Normal, IL, Murray, KY, Martin, TN, Jacksonville, AL, Youngstown, OH, etc.? How is Cedar Falls, and UNI, so immensely different from all of those other cities and schools that it's impossible to do anything here while at those places it's just the standard?Leave a comment:
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Thanks Clenz! Great write up focused on facts and reality. Too bad the right people aren’t talking about it. If The same were to occur in Ames or Iowa City, Harris would be out of a job.Leave a comment:
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Somebody want to pass that on to Nook.
You can't frame it any better.Leave a comment:
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Jake has been here 21 yrs, HC for 16. He built the program from the ground up. He's done so despite being given near zero facility updates, not even upgrades, since McLeod opened 16 yrs ago. Anything he may have had given to him was done by Dannen. Harris was introduced 6+ yrs ago. Jake has won the COY more times in the 120-year history of the Valley than ANYONE. He’s UNI all time wins leader, top 3 in MVC history for MVC and total wins with a legitimate shot to be top in both in when he retires. He’s done so with the bare minimum facility and budget wise. He’s had the team ranked in the top 25 multiple times, a top 5 NCAA seed, won ESPY awards, etc. all with the bare minimum bottom of the conference facilities sans Valpo, and they are a different discussion on their own.
Women’s hoops was one of 64 teams to make the WNIT. It’s a bit different than the men where it’s 32. 64 make the NCAAs and 64 make the NIT. If you can’t make the at least WNIT regularly (which the program has) you are in some serious trouble.
What Jacobs has done with the softball program somehow dwarfs what Jake has done for ROI/support from the AD. Only team in the MVC without their own facility, AFAIK. Jacobs joined UNI in 07, prior to him joining UNI averaged 19 wins and 7 in MVC play. During his 15 yrs the program has gone over 30/15. He has won COY in the league 4x. He’s done so with a budget that consists of “Go to Play It Again Sports for your **** and then hope the municipal field doesn’t have people on it when you get there for practice.”
Football has been beaten to death, but 6/7 wins isn’t acceptable. 24 teams make the playoffs. We play in the equivalent of the ACC/B10 for BB come tournament time. We are the 9th place B10 team getting an NCAA tournament bid.
You didn’t mention volleyball, arguably our most successful program. Why? Perhaps because they’ve fallen off a cliff the last 2 yrs.
No mention of wrestling? Is it because the AD has actively made it as hard as possible for Schwab to have a program? Actively ignoring the facility issues long enough they can go “Building is condemned, nothing we can do.”
The health of the athletic department goes far beyond what coaches are able to do with the resources they are given.
I’m not claiming fundraising is as easy as “Give me money, please!”, but I am looking for actual answers as to why it is so much harder at UNI compared to anywhere else in our peer group. Our fundraising numbers are dropping at a not slow rate. We can’t get naming rights deals, we struggle to get sponsors, small individual donors aren’t renewing to the PSC/dropping donation levels. “But COVID!!!”. Did COVID happen only in Iowa? Is that why an Ag school that was D2 until 2008, in a town of 20,000 and hour away from any other form of modern civilization, in a state of 700k has managed to raise something like $250m for facilities and general donations in the last 10 yrs? Is that why our group of peers (MVC/MVFC, Big Sky, CAA, A10, etc.) have all been able to transform their athletic facilities over the last 10 yrs? Is that why UNI is the only school (sans Valpo, who again is a completely different conversation) to not have a practice facility for basketball? To not have touched the arena/fan experience since 06? I've been keeping loose track of facility improvements at FCS level/peer group institutions from the last 10 yrs to current and it's approaching, maybe over now, a billion dollars. Meanwhile getting $2m for a practice field equivalent to what a number of HS/NAIA/JUCOs have took yrs and was said to be impossible here. We got new turf in the dome only because we were told "This needs to go or you're not going to be allowed to host games starting next year". We were set to host the 18 MVC Outdoor championship but that got taken due to condition of the surface. We were told the funding is already set to update it and we'd be hosting those events again within a year. It's been 4+ yrs.
We are now over 80% of the way through David’s 5-year plan. I did a post about this a couple months ago. I’ll bring back some of that p
FB Meeting room - Success, even if 10x more difficult than it should have been
On Campus soccer - technically a success because of club rugby - it is a failure based on the actual plans/metrics set by the plan/AD. Still no infrastructure around it. No seating, scoreboard, team seating area, etc. It’s just a field with a fence around it.
Basketball Practice Facility - complete failure
Football practice field - success because of Mark Farley, who raised 100% of the funds
McLeod Upgrades - 50% (banners hanging in the rafter and a new court)
Dome Renovation - complete failure
Outdoor Track Renovation - complete failure
West Gym upgrades - somehow worse than a complete failure
$2 million in cash donations to PSC – not even close
2,000 PSC members – not even close
Increase season ticket sales in every sport at least 50% - fail – every sport is down
Increase overall ticket revenue by 50% - fail – it is down
Increase average attendance at each ticketed event by 50% - fail – every sport is down
Explore and secure multiple new sources of revenue - this is a top secret apparently but based on everything that is know it's tough to give this anything but a fail...though the word "explore" is the first word so maybe it's technically a pass?
Annually operate with the parameters of our budget - this is real nice boiler plate language, but is meaningless in terms of an actual metric but I'll give half
Bring department to full Title IX compliance - I'm assuming fail since nothing has changed
Develop a survey structure for athletic department staff and student-athletes, designed to provide actual feedback on existing culture and climate. - probably a pass. Impossible to know outside of the AD
Implement specific mechanisms that will enlarge the pool of applicants to include all protected classes and ensure that representation is maintained throughout the search process. - probably happened? Impossible to know outside of the AD
Attract and retain diverse student-athletes, coaches, and staff who are integrated into the campus community. - seems like a pass
Win the NCAA/Minority Opportunities Athletics Association Award for Diversity and Inclusion. - didn't happen as far as I know
That is 20, self-set, metrics. Of those there are maybe 2 we have demonstrable proof they happened fully due to someone paid by the athletic department (practice field and team room). 2 or 3 we assume would be done and 2 or 3 that are 50%. That leaves a minimum of 12 metrics that are impossible to not grade as a failure as of now. That's not a great grading out for a 5-year strategic plan that you took a year to develop and study.
Taking literally anything else away from this discussion, using ONLY DAVID’S OWN SELF SET METRICS FOR HIS ATHLETIC DEPARTMENT, there is no objective way we are healthy/succeeding
However, we can look at things beyond just those metrics to get a pulse check
1. Staffing. The number of vital/long standing UNI employees/UNI for life type people that have left the athletic department (AND taken pot shots at UNI after being gone) is damn high. Schofield, Moose, Colin, Trent Ames, Steve Nurse, Lindsey Thomas, and others I’m sure I’m not bringing to the front of my brain. On top of that it’s taking 4+ months to fill open positions if they are filed at all, and rather than filling with experience our positions are being filled with people who are right out of college and spent a few months as an intern somewhere, which apparently makes them qualified to lead areas of a D1 athletic department. I’m not faulting those kids when they don’t succeed. They were offered the job. If they should have been offered from is a different conversation that isn’t their fault. Were they given the tools and resources to succeed? Again, not on the person taking the job, really.
1A/2. External communications. There is less than zero communication coming out of the athletic department. It is a top secret cold war era war room apparently. Only school in the country where fundraising goals and facility plans need to be kept as tight as the nuclear football. Every other department in the world uses those thing as ways to get people excited and bring more donors and fans in. To our AD even acknowledging it exists is like saying Beetlejuice 3 times. Social media engagement was at zero a few yrs ago. They got hammered for it. Jerek Wolcott took a **** of abuse when he was here as SID. Yet I know he actually took what was being said and at least TRIED to make changes. I’m not going to get into how/why I know that, but he genuinely tried. There was a season (19 IIRC) they actually started pumping out social media posts and were blown away by how many followers/engagements they picked up just by doing the most basic of social media posts. That stopped, Jerek left, and we are back to where we were before. On top of that the lack of media guides, game notes, etc. for sports has been a huge problem for yrs. We went 2 yrs without a media guide for football. When we did get a media guide or game notes they were riddled with errors/omissions, BUT at least we got them I guess.
Programs succeeding because we’ve had coaches in place for 15+ yrs who have found a way to avoid being bottom of the league with what they are given, or more accurately not given, isn’t proof of a healthy department. It is proof that the duct tape holding everything together has yet to fail. Once that duct tape is gone (retirement, finally getting sick of it and going somewhere else, etc.) the flood gates of just how bad it has gotten isn’t going to be able to be ignored.Leave a comment:
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Bull****. Those programs have had success because of historically great legacy coaches that have all been in place 15-20 years.Originally posted by Blue42 View Post
Fundraising is down. Attendance has cratered. Projects can’t get off the ground. Staff is dropping like flies. And the West Gym is about to be bulldozed. Leadership has failed us and we are headed down a dark path, I’m sorry you can’t see that, because pretty soon it could be too late to right the ship.Leave a comment:
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