The last sentence nails the whole situation------too bad we wasted about 8 years, football would be among the elite by now in all probability, UK is a sleeping giant--------not JMO.
New UK Athletlic Budgets
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The last sentence nails the whole situation------too bad we wasted about 8 years, football would be among the elite by now in all probability, UK is a sleeping giant--------not JMO.
I doubt it given the resources so many of our competitors have. In the thick of it/competitive - yes. But hard to believe we'd be perennial top 10 or so.
Not making Mitch my hero at all, just don't see any value in bitching about the state of the program 7 (or 11 in this response) years ago. I choose to look at where we are now and where we could potentially go, not the mistakes made 11 years ago. We still have some work to do and further investment that needs to be made in the program, but we are making positive strides...I will focus on that.
Go Big Blue!
you never disappoint when it comes to Mitch bashing and bringing stuff up from a decade ago.
Have to kind of agree, but there sure is a long list of impressive facts to back up my point of view, isn't there?
The TWENTY THOUSAND fewer season ticket holders, most of whom will never get away from their big screen again, is a pretty devastating number, isn't it?
The effects of the decisions made a decade ago still has our program several years from recovering from them, with almost everything more better now. How did you feel about the TWO OOC wins in consecutive seasons, losses to both in state schools, there were reasons for them and they were very predictable.
Joker had TWO four stars starting his first season, both JCs from California, and the seven SEC opponents he faced (minus Vandy of course) AVERAGED 38 four star commits (plus five stars) over the previous four years. Coaching wasn't really the problem, Brooks worked miracles with his talent, overlooked two stars that he coached up, the problem was lack of raw talent due to the lack of support for football, hate to say it again but the "recruiting room" was a disgrace to a high school, Bishop Gorman had much better facilities for recruiting than our SEC STATE UNIVERSITY football team------and recruiting is supposed to be illegal in high school. In the case of the "recruiting room" it was the difference between elite and horrible-----normally a no brainer that the high school would be the one labeled horrible, but quite the opposite here, UK's no doubt earned the title of horrible.
Is recruiting important, I don't know, but Bishop Gorman was the NATIONAL High School champion a couple of years ago. In 2010 Thug U's recruiting budget was over three times UK's recruiting budget in football (not counting the "Orange Pride") when they had EVERY recruiting advantage in the world and UK had every disadvantage in the world. And their problems haven't been because of bad recruiting. Oh, and while their almost 30 year winning streak was ended by their coach's stupidity their current one is up to five I believe. Hopefully UK has spent enough money to stop it before it gets any longer.
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We have been ranked in the top ten in the forties and fifties with the Bear I believe, in the sixties before Norton went down, NC worthy contender under Curci in the 70s, Jerry had one good year before he ran out of steam in the 80s, had a coach that won a National COY award and two conference COY in the nineties with no support here plus some exciting teams with Tim, and Brooks had us ranked in 07 before lack of depth caught up with us.
I think we will be ranked top ten again before 2020 and if the fans demand it we may not just be visitors. However if our fans are just willing to forgive and forget (And we made progress when our football budget was higher than the bb budget, looks like it is back to about the same again from this budget------still not sure how that is even possible with 85 rides vs 13 rides) we could settle back into mediocrity, we are trying to compete in the SEC you know, all of that money mitch was soaking up comes with a cost.
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One reason for the so called disparity is the fact most SEC teams don't fund basketball anywhere near what is spent on football. Football is everything in the south. Everything.
Not trying to be rude but first off it's 20,000 not 20,000,000. There aren't even remotely close to 20,000,000 seats in the stadium. I understand people being upset about the past and not investing in the football program the way they should. But no amount of complaining is going to change the past or rewrite history of the UK football program.
Also to state that we would be in the elite programs right now had we started this earlier is very laughable. I can not see the future and I highly doubt you can. There is no way to know who our coach would have been if they did start the improvements earlier. Hell maybe they would have helped the Joke just enough to be semi successful meaning Mitch would have kept him a few extra seasons. One thing that has greatly benefited this staff is their history and ties to the talent rich state of Ohio. It helped jump start the recruiting and opened up pipelines some never thought possible here at UK even with the close proximity. So no one knows how things would have turned out. It is simply possible we could be in worse situation than now because we may have never got Stoops and company.
So instead of complaining constantly about how bad the past was and/or how ignorant the administration was. Sit back and be happy they finally made the right call and have improved things. The main reason though the past is exactly that the past and Stoops has our future looking extremely bright. So be happy and enjoy the upcoming season that is rapidly approaching.
A very true statement, but the football team and support staff is MUCH larger than their basketball counterparts
Dang, and I thought that mitch had plans for expanding Kroger to 200,000,000, drat, did it again, but then I rarely even bother to use numbers unless they are in the millions, why even bother, lol.-------oh wait, that was the city college expanding seating again, did you read about Ole Misses plan to add 10,000 seats, making UK only ahead of that private college in seating, and rumors are they are trying to build an entirely new stadium, although still not as large as Kroger. And of course I did spell out the TWENTY THOUSAND season ticket holders numerous times in my posts, how many of those fans with season tickets for decades do you think will be back, most of them seem to be saying they won't be but will pick a few games a year to watch, if any. But I guess he had to justify deleting 7,000 seats (or was it 7,000,000?) somehow. Anyway thanks for the correction, I am sure it confused some of our more gullible fans, glad you aren't one of them.
Wow, NO doubt the most talent AND depth we have had in decades, if ever, and season ticket sales are off 20,000, really sad. Hard to believe that as recently as 2007 we averaged a sellout for the season with a much less talented team that had a losing record in the SEC. And 7,000 more seats.
And don't worry, I plan on enjoying the season to the fullest, just a little sad about what it took us to get there and the years of progress we lost because of the penny pinching and the belief that the rifle team was a better investment, lol.
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You didn't answer my question, and it was a pretty simple question.
And the answer is pretty simple, no one could justify it that was using common sense. And if the coaches didn't want more recruiting money then they should have been fired, but I think Joker recognized the problem, he fired a bunch of very good coaches because they didn't want to recruit, he knew the real problem was raw talent, unfortunately he didn't get good coaches to replace them. Although when you are down to TWO four stars playing against seven SEC teams that averaged 38 four star commits the previous four years, (Plus five stars like Cam) there isn't very much coaching can do.
And I am not picking on you, I have always thought you have very good info, I just get tired of no one wanting to argue the FACTS and instead saying "but look where we are now". I still say our demise should have never reached TWO two win seasons and we are about seven years at least behind where we should be in our recovery because of over a decade of penny wise and pound foolish decisions.
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I replied to one of your posts saying that I don't see any value in complaining about things 10 years ago. That's how I live my life. I agree 100% that mistakes were made with the program in the past, but I choose to focus on the current state of the program and the positive strides we are making.
Jauk, I question if this is the reason jp fired the coaches. I always wondered if it had to do more with the possibility that Brooks' assistants, most of which had NFL experience, had little respect for jp. I wonder if jp felt insecure about having those guys around. That's why he went out and hired his washed up friends.
I don't know about that, I know Brooks thought enough of him to give him part of his own salary (necessary with UK's football budget at the time) when the Bama hiring him rumors were around. Also the other older coaches should have liked him, he did most of the recruiting for them when some of them didn't like to leave the city limits to recruit. He also brought in three 5.7s to add to the ONE we already had (that he recruited, I believe) and our normal quota (or less) of one four star just before signing day when he became head coach.
Unfortunately for him and us the four late higher ranked commits he brought in did diddly squat before they left the program.
So, football with over six times the athletes FINALLY gets a budget EQUAL to basketball, and that is a great thing, problem solved. LOL
And what is considered the money cow in sports these days?
I guess you get conditioned to some of these inequities when you have suffered from them for decades. And this temporary solution wasn't volunteered, it was MANDATED by the fan strike and the loss of TWENTY THOUSAND season ticket holders, tell me another football program that lost about FORTY percent of its season ticket holders------not counting the millions more lost from donations, in large part due to mitch's not explaining his KFund use, IF there was a justifiable explanation. And there probably wasn't a viable explanation.
IIRC at UK the total is somewhere in the 500 plus or minus a hundred range. Of course football the most by far, and are all full rides, and the number mandated by the NCAA. I think the rides have the same value but of course a lot more involved in the major sports, more bodybuilding etc, and there are a lot of partial scholarships in sports other than football and basketball, other sports have so many and coaches decide how they are split up, full and partial. I would imagine that McLauren (sp?) the high school athlete of the year just coming in in women's track and field has a full scholarship.
I think mitch has more sports teams than anyone else in the SEC, which is fine with me, I love most of the "minor" sports.
What an improvement that would be, huh-------and yes, I think we can compete with other teams for the SEC crown, Bama the only program out of sight in talent, but even they can be beat, and then they are out of sight for most other teams also. UK does have some advantages, no other STATE University in the state, no pro team to split with, a large and devoted fan base despite decades of neglect, I even think the basketball program helps football. I suspect that we will miss those 7,000 seats as soon as say the first SEC home game, the most talent to watch at a game here in years, and not all of it on the other team too, lol.
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You must have missed the part where I said a move in the right direction and a direction that needs to continue.
No, I noticed that, and I give you credit for being a very good poster with good info.
But did you notice my long thread on the recent budget when we were making progress where football was getting MORE money than basketball, but now we are already back to equal status, when that is an unbelievable situation given the numbers to start with.
I'd be curious as to where you got your info that says football was getting more money than basketball and what year it was. Do you have a link to the figures? I'd be interested in seeing it.
There are expansion plans IF they were truly needed. The main expansion would be a facility (suites) on the north side to match the one on the south side. That adds revenue more than seats. The other expansion would be the end zones where the upper deck could be added on either end of the stadium. There are plans to upgrade (build state of the art) scoreboard (s). In the meantime KF capacity is similar to expansions seen today. Stoll Field (30,000+) in the 60s was half the size when Tennessee, Auburn, LSU and Tulane were 60,000. Size isn't everything..... winning football trumps stadium size in my book.
Helps in that it helps carry the load for the other sports, a lot of football players played both sports and enjoy watching high level players, etc. And you do see the best at UK.
Mine too.
But don't try to tell me that playing in the Big House, at Thug U, A&Ms $400,000,000 renovated 100K plus stadiums among others wouldn't be a lot more impressive to recruits than playing in the second smallest stadium in the SEC-------and that is where we will be in a couple of years.
I understand your point of view. However, Texas is an entirely different situation. Texas expanded Memorial Stadium when they were resurrected (after a number of coaches that followed Darryl Royal) to a national championship and walking all over the Aggies. Naturally, the Aggies who hate the Longhorns 10 times more we hate UofL would build bigger and better. Half the 450 million went into rebuilding the east side of Kyle Field. They also lowered the playing field 10-12 feet digging through solid rock. So, where are the Aggies today? They are mired in the middle of the SEC. But, in a state of 18-20 million who live and die with football, there is a different mentality funding stadiums. Too, when you look around the SEC's larger stadiums there are empty seats in the upper levels. Winning trumps everything in football. Even the NFL newer stadiums are on average 65,000. So, I understand your concern. Yet, beating LSU at Kroger Field is a major win and impresses recruits. The Taj Mahal of recruiting rooms and training facility rate higher with recruits.
Looked up the thread, was down to page 6 on my computer, answered myself in order to bring it back up to the top, already down a few topics now. A lot of the same type discussions in it, surprised that you missed it, to a simpleton the pie that I pointed out in the original link is a simple way for a non bean counter to understand the relative spending for football and basketball. It shows the percentages of the athletics budget spent on basketball and football, also the money spent on the minor sports and the income from all of them, two pies.
Of course being among the elite programs for decades plus being the top one now, JMO. gives basketball huge advantages that money can't buy.
Oops, gotta go for a while, later.
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So, what is the attendance in that huge stadium with the mediocre teams now, how many tens of thousands is it above what UK can even seat? And they will still have sellouts with millions of dollars more income in future years, especially when they have decent teams-----and they will, in part because that stadium WILL attract better recruits.
UK doesn't need a 100,000 seat stadium now (although I think it would help AND would be sold out occasionally) but we don't need to be just above Vandy in the whole SEC either.
By the way, I understand the Texas mentality a little bit, spent two years in the Army there, also worked for 15 months for Dupont at Vitoria before heading back to Kentucky to go to UK. Also had a sister and two brothers either retire there or settle there after spending their service time there, all three gone now but a lot of nieces and nephews still there.
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Ahh, just took a look at it. That number I believe you're looking at (18.6% of total expenses for football and 14.6% of total expenses for basketball) includes scholarship dollars. The numbers I posted for the same year is 13.4% for both football and basketball and does not include scholarship dollars. The two charts represent the same thing, just a different way of looking at money.
I think that is what you're referring to.
So you are saying that the tricky devils misled gullible me and made me think UK football was getting more of the support that it deserves? That really doesn't help your argument that mitch is a good guy for football, lol.
But thanks for explaining.
Its hard to say what exactly is in the 13.4% (I sound like Fuzz right now), but we know what is not in it. It does not include scholarships, construction debt or money to run facilities (gameday opps, staff to run practice facilities, etc.).
I have no problem being critical of Mitch in the past. What has taken place the past few years (coaching hires, facility improvements, $5 million increase to the operating budget) is long overdue for football. Having worked in intercollegiate athletics and at 4 different universities over the past 17 years, I also know how much campus politics can play a role in getting things done.
The difference in the two different numbers for the same year is also the reason it's nearly impossible to compare budgets between schools. You never know exactly what is being accounted for in the numbers being provided.
Thanks for a good debate Jauk.
