Tim Adams said...
I said I was done with this thread, but I wanted to respond to you since we are also friends.
I 100% agree that Mike Thomas has a tough job, and I'll add that I think he is a very nice man. However, the road to winning the Big East and going to another BCS bowl game goes through WVU. You pretty much have to beat them. If just the Louisville game was being played at PBS, it would be a lot more palatable to me. The athletics department could still add some revenue and also gauge the advantages/disadvantages. They could also continue to try and fix the bugs that inevitably will occur for fans' seats in trying to play home games in two different venues.
Continuing to imply that there was some sort of feedback taken last year from fans, alumni, students and supporters about the PBS experience also bothers me because there is absolutely no evidence that is true. And even if it were, the question shouldn't have been did fans enjoy the PBS experience but rather do fans want to play league games at PBS?
This decision to play two league games at PBS makes Butch Jones' rebuilding job that much tougher on a couple levels. One, other college coaches simply don't want to play UC at Nippert because they know it can be a tough venue. I had BK tell me how "special" Nippert and and BJ has made the exact same comment to me last year. Two, it will make recruiting tougher. When a kid comes to Nippert with 30,000 UC fans, it is loud and partisan. There will certainly be more than 5,000 WVU fans at PBS this season, and there might be 15,000. Recruits will see that.
I guarantee you Charlie Strong and Bill Stewart are ecstatic they won't have to play the Bearcat at Nippert Stadium next season.
Winning trumps everything in college sports. We saw the Shoe go from averaging 13,176 a game to half that in just two or three years because of the lack of winning. When the winning stops the gains made in season tickets and UCATS membership will slide like we've seen in basketball.
Shank Daddy - I know you aren't reading this anymore, but just in case you sneek a peak ;) - I hope you realize my point was more that I agreed with you that don't agree with you on this. For the record, I am a UCATS member and my opinion was never solicited by Mike Thomas or another member of the athletic department. I do think he has to put on a smiley face since they have committed to play these games much like I suspect CBJ will when he discusses the venue publicly (although I agree privately he is probably not very pleased).
I totally agree with your projection on how attendance will shake out and if we are both right, that will make CBJ's job this year much more difficult (I think you know my stance on calling this a rebuilding job and that is a topic for another thread
). My main point of the initial post was to point out the difficulty of MT's job, which you acknowledged. Let's say we keep both games at Nippert, exceed expectations and make another BCS bowl game. At that point Butch would have quite a bit of leverage and I could see a reincarnation of the many Mick threads currently active on the basketball board on the football board next January. "If we had played our games at PBS, that would have paid for the extra million or two CBJ is asking for from a football budget perspective" I can see being posted. MT's job and the decisions he makes are damned if you do and damned if you don't.
It looks like Koch is reporting an extention for Mick is almost done. I wonder if the same people that tore him down for not signing Mick quickly enough will now praise him for getting the job done?
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Q&A with AD Mike Thomas