Spider2020
Bench player
Fair enough. Like I said, maybe I’m just getting old. I guess I’m more so surprised that the market is as high as it is.
We are being materially outspent
- Thread starter SFspidur
- Start date
First, I don’t believe college sports was always a business.
Second, the viewpoint of old was collective and not individual sports. We all know the story of the revenue sports “carrying” the non-revenue ones.
It is college football that has changed the landscape for “amateur athletics” in the United States. College football has created this mega-business within the confines of the US higher education system. The only reason this happened is because the NFL has no minor league system. The world that football created has spilled over to basketball.
The funniest thing about the situation is that many schools do not know how to run such a business as it is outside the core competency of the school system. There are way more school athletics departments running deep in the red than in the black. At some point there will be a reckoning and who is going to foot the bill.
This is the question that UR has to consider carefully because if the athletics department goes into the red, the only entity that will save it is the University itself. The Board of Trustees knows this and they have to decide how much to invest in athletics. They also should be coming up with some metrics that have to be hit in order for the investment to continue. If the targets aren’t made then corresponding action is taken. This has been my problem all along. I want to know what the justification is to support the status quo of men’s basketball because I sure can’t see how it can possibly be meeting any goals.
Spider17
All A-10 player
You’re getting old?! I presume you’re around 27-28 if you graduated in 2020. That’s the age of some college basketball players now! Hope you have eligibility left because you can suit up for us!
It is artificially high. There are a bunch of power schools that spent a ton of money because they knew they had one shot to spend without any true constraints. Something will eventually come. That is another thing I agree with Mooney on as it is surprising that the “rules” have not been established by the NCAA. However at the same time it isn’t surprising because that would mean that (a) the NCAA actually did some work and (b) that the NCAA had actual authority. The Big 10 and SEC leadership know that they hold the keys and the NCAA is just a bunch of letters.
Life as a fan is tough because most fans care about the games and not the politics, but the politics are taking over the game. Exactly why a bunch of the best coaches decided to retire early.
I am so tired of hearing excuses. Let's say this is true about the top 3.Stealing PQ's words...JOC has the rough numbers thanks to sources, and VCU, Dayton, and SLU are all spending $5 million or more in NIL, while we're "at about the midpoint" of the A-10 at around $2 million.
Commonly asked million dollar question: how much are Rams, Spiders getting paid?
Where do VCU and UR stack up in the A-10 in terms of player payrolls?richmond.com
1. Fine, then be no worse than 4th place now knocking on their door.
2. Midpoint? Give me a freaking break. If 2 million is at the midpoint, I would say it is barely behind teams 4-6 in money spent.
3. Spend better with the 2 million. Find better fits. Construct the roster better. Pay more for a star and less for more of a key role guy, like maybe a defensive guy who doesn't have impressive stats.
4. Recruit better.
5. Coach better. Seriously, freaking coach better. You are given 2 million to go build a team, and we are not asking you to go "compete" with Arizona, Duke, and UCONN here. I don't want to hear Dayton, VCU, and SLU spend more money because we should be just as good as them, or awfully close to it, with our 2 million. Even SLU doesn't look like this juggernaut with stars everywhere that we shouldn't be able to find enough talent and coach well enough to compete with.
Bottom line is spend the 2 million wisely, get more talent in here, and coach better. And, stop with the constant F ing excuses.
You are not wrong. This does not look close to a 2 million dollar team. It looks like a mid tier CAA team ( which I guess we are since we lost to Elon) who likely pays very little for NIL.
Elon is tied for 10th in a 13 team CAA.
Furman is tied for 4th in a 10 team SoCon.
Ch Southern is 8th in a 9 team Big South.
And, we are freaking whining about having only 2 million to spend. Un freaking believable.
1. We should have gotten way more for 2 million.
2. Yes, numerous coaches with 2 million would have done a lot more.
3. Not confident at all. With 5 million, we maybe beat Ch Southern and still lose to Furman and Elon. Seriously, if they can beat us and our 2 million roster, why should we be fooled into thinking 5 million would matter?
4. Yes, I am a little pissed off by this morning because it's another freaking excuse. I haven't been this upset with us since the schedule came out, and the freaking excuses that followed it.
Spider17
All A-10 player
Really well said VT. I agree with everything that you wrote here and I think many of us do as well.
It does help having some context with where UR stands with NIL relative to the top, but this also brings up many more questions and comments like you astutely mention.
$2 million probably puts us then around 4-6 range like you said. Let’s say top half to be uber conservative with the estimate. Fact of the matter is we’re still underachieving either way. We are a bottom half A10 team this year and we’re a bottom half team last year. Plus, it doesn’t explain the losses that we have to Charleston Southern or Elon that we always find ways to lose to in OOC every year. We’re not asking to win against Arizona or UConn like you said but we shouldn’t be losing to the teams we do in OOC. Or if we do it’s once in a blue moon.
And to your next points about constructing the roster better, those were the same thoughts I had. $2 million is not chump change. If Saint Louis gave Josh Schertz $2 million I bet he can get a lot more out of it than Mooney did. There’s also not much evidence to support that if Mooney was given $5 million that he would substantially construct a better roster than he would with a $2 million budget.
I appreciate that we at least have some transparency on this issue and the fact JOC wrote something that was informative, but without this additional context it sounds like an excuse.
We all want to win. I’m tired of losing like this for the 2nd year in a row now and the only thing we hear from our coaching staff, is to give them more money.
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Disgusting.
sman
Starter
I know you're just ranting, but exactly do you mean here? why should a team with half the payroll be as good?
if we had a $5M payroll, would you be ok with a $2M team being as good?
*23*
Assistant coach
And don't worry, moon will have an update in the spring. After the portal is closed he will figure out how much it would have cost us to get the top targets we missed on. Then he will email PQ and Hardt about it. Then they will reply in a week that they are looking into it. Then Mooney will reply thanks. Then he will go to the library and check out the latest Harlan Coben novel, pack up the family and go to the beach for a week. Then back and this off season, they are going to be goin FULL SPEED and have URGENCY in the off-season workouts, which implies they did not two off seasons back. The beat goes on. Guess what, by the time they commit to more dollars, another WARP SPEED change will have occurred and back to ground zero. Such inspiration from our 1.5 million dollar man.
Spider17
All A-10 player
Absolutely. Admin is so fixated on A10 that they ignore our poor results in OOC schedules to teams that definitely operate with less NIL than we do.
Everything you’ve posted in this thread so far I agree with 110%.
Moving forward, I’m curious what will come out of this. Was this shared just for Mooney and our staff to make excuses for our poor results and nothing will be done from this. Or, will we have more funding from this to be aligned with Dayton and VCU like Mooney’s interview and this article suggested. If the latter, and Mooney is given closer to a $5 million budget than a $2 million budget then the staff, president, AD, PQ need to all agree that if we underperform again, Mooney has to go. Enough is enough. Give someone else a chance. Like you said, we’re not trying to beat Duke over here. At the very least, we’re wanting to not lose to Charleston Southern and get embarrassed by Davidson at home. It’s really not that high of a bar. Certainly not a $2 million bar.
It very much sounds like an excuse. And it very much is one. And, it sure does seem planned. They have to know we aren't the only ones pissed about the last 2 seasons. Attendance is down. Relevancy is down. And, they come out with this today. The timing of it is so obvious. We are 9-22 in the A-10 since last year, so they have to come out with excuses why? And, we are 9-22 IC because we "only" have 2 million to spend? Unbelievable.
*23*
Assistant coach
I think both 17 and VT have laid out there reasoning for supporting Mooney in the recent past, likely with the expectation that he would build on the success from two seasons back. Instead he has rolled out an inferior product, and the same coaching deficiencies exist. And the excuse mongering just will push you over the edge. We dont believe you Mooney.
I hear u, but I call it like I see it. I have never been more frustrated being a Spider fan. Never. And, I go way back to the Jumpin Johnny Newman days. Nothing comes close to this, not even the Bill Dooley years.
Talent level has dropped. Coaching is bad. OOC schedules are garbage. Excuses are at an all time high. Excitement is down. Relevancy is down. Easy to see why a usually optimistic, coach supporting Spider loving fan like me has changed his views.
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Spider17
All A-10 player
I don’t want to speak on behalf of VT, but there is no way to think that there is a 1:1 direct correlation between money spent and results. There are so many factors like spending the money wisely, finding the right players, coaching those players up, developing them making adjustments during the game and practice against teams, etc.
This might be a bad analogy but think about it this way. Person A spends $20 a month to go to planet fitness. He knows how to work out properly and has a commitment in going every day, working out for 2 hours a day. Person B spend $100 on a fancy gym membership. They buy all the fancy workout supplements. They pay for a private personal trainer but only show up to the gym 2 days a week for 30 minutes and while they’re there spend half the time socializing.
Person A spent $20 and Person B spent $200 but Person A has more tangible results with what they had. So it’s not how much money you have but how you chose to spend it and making the most out of that investment, which in our case is coaching our players well, developing them, and playing like a team. It’s like when we won at Kentucky several years ago. Kentucky at that time was paying players under the table, but they weren’t good enough to beat our guys who played well together as a team.
Mooney is asking for more money but has not shown the competence that he can make the most of it if he were to have that money. On the flip side, Roussell has given me all the confidence in the world that the more he gets, the more he will make out of it which is why I hope our women’s team continues to get funded at a high level.
In college basketball, I don't think that is as dramatic as you are making it. I bet we could go up and down the conferences, mid major and major, and we would find teams with much lesser NIL doing better than teams with higher NIL.