šŸ€ Ryan Odom Transition

I hope Ryan is someone that likes to run up the score, because we’re going to need to do it.

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That would make sense, we’ve got the Sanchez contract buyout provision to fulfill there.

Why are we getting game announcements through FOIA requests? I mean, whatever, who cares. But still, dumb.

Also, I’ll be excited to watch our team. But buy games suck. Don’t ever become such an educated hoops fan that you can’t just say ā€œRider? What the fudge? Cmon scheduling department!ā€

HC Kevin Baggett is a member of the South Jersey Hall of Fame. Sorry, what? Who’s the other member? That guy from the Sopranos Pine Barrens episode?

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Our whole athletic department runs on a ā€œcome and FOIA itā€ model that I don’t really understand. It’s really bad for fan engagement, and it makes stuff like the football assistants’ extensions look really bad when it comes out a year later after a disappointing season.

I get not making announcements for every game scheduled against a tiny school, but the department seems like it treats fans as the enemy with how they reveal information sometimes. There is such thing as too buttoned up informationally in an enterprise where you need fan support.

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Have to hope with Tony ā€œFt Knoxā€ Bennett gone some of that starts to change. Odom announcing he’ll stream Blue-White is a big step in the right direction. Hopefully we’ll see more transparency and outward engagement moving forward.

This isn’t hating on Tony, obviously we love him for a multitude of reasons. But his iron grip control over even mundane, harmless information was maddening. Streaming the Blue-White wasn’t going to give his opponents meaningful scouting tape, and instead it denied far-flung fans (like me in Texas for the last decade) an opportunity to connect with the program earlier in the season.

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Yeah, there’s probably a bit of ā€œneed some time to turn the aircraft carrier aroundā€ goin on here

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Well said, and it’s my #1 complaint about the athletic department. We should pass this along to the fan council.

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D1 Docket has it listed and he’s a Charlotte alum so he would probably know, but I haven’t seen it reported anywhere. There was a rumor that Charlotte had a clause similar to VCU where we had to play them within a few years of poaching Ron (or pay them)

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Checked in with D1 Docket (great dude), gave him the dates from the Madia article. He said he’s got the contract for the Charlotte game, absolutely was part of the Sanchez buyout, but he wouldn’t be surprised if we ultimately buy out of the commitment.

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Probably the biggest reason why I wanted Pitino- and also the ability to recruit all Americans

Because PR people want to package stuff together and announce it all at once? I dunno. This example is pretty banal. My organization sits on a lot of stuff and then rolls it out sequenced / strategically to have a bigger reach or for other logical reasons.

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Makes sense, but also, ā€œbeat the FOIA requestā€ makes sense, too. Certainly not a biggie. This isn’t Smits-Bratt-Phillips resemblance level stuff, here

Perhaps the FOIA wasn’t even required for this particular detail, UVA might have been like ā€œAll you had to do was ask.ā€ Or maybe it was a non-secret detail that DP got through a broader FOIA request but could as easily have gotten by just asking.

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Basketball announces the bigger opponents as one offs. The others they generally hold as part of a full schedule announcement. Football announces games almost as soon as the ink is dry on contracts. That’s a little different though as there are only 12 opponents and dates are really important for planning weekends.

I get the point about FOIA as it pertains to the coaching contracts, but I think the schedule part is overblown.

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Anyone with a DP sub know if there was anything extra in the article?

I just thought the buy game costs were interesting…

Those five are all buy games, and those respective agreements dictate that UVa will pay Rider ($95,000), North Carolina Central ($90,000), Hampton ($85,000), Queens University ($85,000) and American ($92,500) for traveling to Charlottesville.

$447,500 for buy games… where does that money come from? The Rothstein quip about losing a buy game… ā€œthe epitomy of brutalityā€ā€¦ seems legit.

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Exactly. The only sport where that level of secrecy makes any sense from a winning games perspective is football. In all the more continuous sports it’s a personality quirk rather than a competitive advantage

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Now it makes more sense. I’m guessing the buy game costs were the reason for the FOIA. Learning the date of the Maryland game was incidental.

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$450k total? If you convert that to metric, it’s not even half a Grünloh

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Like I said, no biggie, just seems to me that if the department asked itself if it’d be better to reveal the first opponent of the Odom era through a fun tweet or a FOIA disclosure, they’d probably settle on ā€œfun tweet.ā€

I suspect they just didn’t really care / didn’t really think of it. And I’m :100: % in support of not caring / not paying attention to certain aspects of one’s work life, to be clear.

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