Asking, not arguing, but do you have an example of an AD/department thatâs doing a good job of this? I ask because my eyes typically glaze over at the strategic plans that these departments tend to have and the AD-speak when these folks talk to the public, but Iâd be curious to see good examples.
Iâm not a big enough donor to be in the meetings with important donors. Maybe Williams discusses her vision with those donors when courting their money. Are you in those meetings?
I mean whatever she told Hardie got him to pledge money to the save Oak fund and as much as anyone else, heâs had a lot of influence over her continued employment. At some point she has to have shared her vision for the AD with him as both a large donor and the Rector.
I also wonder if Youngkin reappoints Hardie to the BoV and if heâs not on the board, if his giving decreases.
2 Likes
That was one of Shakaâs issues when he was approached â that the âplanâ for basketball post-Bennett was haphazard and not well-thought-out. No vision, or strategy of how to get there â long-term funding, role of GM, etc.
Seems some of that has been sorted out post-Odom hire, but it took a lot of cold calls to major donors to get there. Whether thatâs sustainable is another argument for another day.
3 Likes
Hardie might be a Democrat, but heâs Bill Goodwinâs son-in-law. And Goodwin is very close with YoungkinâŠ..
2 Likes
My thoughts on the Tony of it all (also devolves into discussion of NIL preparedness)â
It isnât Carlaâs fault, but she deserves a slice on the pie chart of blame. I think we make Tony into more of a unique snowflake than he is sometimesâ he obviously didnât love the new world, but I think there are lots of successful coaches from the old world still hanging around and being successful who donât care for it either (Barnes, Izzo, Self, Sampson, Drew, Painter all come to mind) and a major difference I can see with them is that their athletic departments were far more proactive on NIL.
Barnes specifically comes to mind to me as a guy wired a lot like Tony, but Spire and their whole department has been on board and rowing in the same direction with the new era from day one, and itâs showed! (@AdventiveQuasar there is the answer to your question, LSU has done a good job too, Michigan and Ohio State obviously have as well, Michiganâs one more year fund was ahead of itâs time and won them a title. Texas Tech and Louisville have adapted well quickly too if you want non-SEC/B1G examples) Tennesseeâs teams are absolutely killing it even relative to their SEC peers. I know weâre not Tennessee or in the SEC, but we do have money and can alleviate this stress for coaches better than most, and there is no evidence at all we were proactive on NIL which will be the thing that defines this era of college sports.
Would Cav Futures being up and running at max capacity from day one have prevented Tonyâs retirement? Who knows, not in the long run but maybe for a few years? And even if it didnât it probably would have saved us some misery in Scott and helped out Oak too.
Itâs an impossible hypothetical to know the outcome of, and I know Tony wanted to run the program his way and obviously earned the right to, but we absolutely did not put our best foot forward for him when the ground shifted underneath the sport, and I think that is absolutely on Carla.
How much of the blame lies on Carla for his shitty retirement, I am totally willing to debate on, I certainly donât think itâs the majority, but to say itâs zero feels foolish to me too. He deserves a ton of blame for his own misery for not adapting. Weâre a wealthy school with a basketball committed donor base that would have moved mountains for him on a simple ask after the cachet he had from 2019, but Carla could have anticipated some things and moved some mountains for him in the meantime.
Now Odom has a war chest, and weâre drowning in cornerbacks, and thatâs great, but my primary complaint with her is that we are behind and playing catch-up on NIL. The calvary is arriving, but is it too little too late, and how many years did we waste?
5 Likes
He had everything he needed or wanted. HGN has said as much. There were no mountains for Carla to move. He wanted to be done with this type of CBB. He had said that many times in various ways.
8 Likes
For me, all this reminds me of all those posts I used to read wondering why nobody in the department would step up and stream the Blue-White game.
Why did nobody make NIL easier for Tony?
Huge mystery; we may never know.
1 Like
Quite simply Tony said âmy way or nothingâ regarding NIL. Basically verbatim. When he figured out that wouldnât work, he left.
I donât think many really have a handle on how he ran that program. It was not a mystery, it was straightforward.
8 Likes
More earnestly: I suspect guys like Barnes, Izzo, and Sampson are probably content to focus on what they like and be uninvolved with NIL. I suspect Tony would not have been content with that set-up. He wanted to be involved in making clear he wanted it to be a certain way.
5 Likes
A better AD would have shut down the Tides Inn years ago
14 Likes
Heilman! The guys team exists, too!
There are examples across the P5, usually at the spots that are being proactive in driving change in some way. Even at UVA, Littlepage was very clear on his vision: success would be measured by 70 ACC titles and 12 national titles across the department over 10 years and we would do it the âright wayâ (e.g. no scandals).
You can argue that Littlepageâs vision was a good one â we achieved a ton of hardware! You can argue it was a bad one â it was a strategy rooted in breadth of success and thus we likely diluted our focus and resourcing on football. And football withered under his watch. But above all else, you knew what he was trying to do and all the actions out of the department reflected that vision (e.g., overresourcing for non-revs, the profile of coaches he hired was consistent with the âright wayâ vision, etc.)
Until the guys prove it!!
1 Like
Personally I think his failure to properly upgrade facilities was a major stain on his tenure. Carla Williams started that project day 1 when there were certainly other projects that couldâve and perhaps shouldâve gotten her attention instead. That set the department back. It was not something that couldâve been deprioritized either. UHall was simply no longer fit to be inhabited and was literally crumbling.
3 Likes
You could say that Littlepage was reactive with that too. It was in response to the backlash to the Gooch report. Basically, if we want donors to fully fund all the sports instead of cutting them, this is the goal.
1 Like
Also, he sounds very excited to finally be at a place with menâs recruiting to get that program on the same level as the womenâs team. Sure, he could be full of shit, but nothing about his public comments sounds like someone looking to bolt.
1 Like
Perhaps. Even then, it was a structured multi-year vision for the Department.
I took his vision as wanting to be the Stanford Athletics of the East Coast. He saw that we have a competitive advantage in attracting Olympic athletes because of our academics, he would ensure we were among the most resourced programs nationally in non-revs, and then weâd hope to catch fire in Basketball or Football with a coach who could win with less (e.g. CTB in MBB or what Harbaugh did at Stanford in FB). That was implicitly his formula and it mostly worked to his desired outcome.
I donât think that formula works any longer in the NIL/Rev share world, as evidenced by Oakâs departure (and Stanford almost being completely left out of the P4).
1 Like
A few hundred posts (incl the baseball thread) and not a single mention about the botched rebrand.
2 Likes
Tony was the one person who had a blank check to get anything he wanted. If he had asked donors to bulldoze Scott to build a new bball arena he couldâve gotten it. Blaming him leaving on a lack of anything is nonsense.
Weâve priortized womenâs bball over baseball. You can argue with that decision, but when successful, womenâs bball can make money. Baseball is virtually always a money loser. BOC is going somewhere where baseball is higher on the totem pole.
Bronco, well, there are so many rumors about his departure, itâs hard to know what to believe there and who is to blame.
I will agree that our department has seemed too reactive, but I donât think that differs from the NCAA and college sports overall. Except for a few commissioners and a few schools, too many people have had their heads up their asses and keep getting caught with their pants down.
9 Likes
I agree that Littlepage laid out a plan with tangible, measurable goals. I was only commenting on the proactive part of your assertion.
And I also agree that the breadth model doesnât work under the new rules of roster limits instead of scholarship limits. If thereâs 34 guys on a baseball team and full funding means all 34 get ships, the old model of the 24 non-scholarship guys subsidizing the 10 guys getting scholarships with operating costs paid for with ticket sales and student fees and donors covering coaching salaries doesnât work anymore.
1 Like