how can aggie alums fix our athletic department?

[oleschoolaggie]

can it possibly be done? ya know, its very frustrating to watch our beloved alma mater struggle mightily to hold its own athletically across the board in the meac. i mean, our overall athletic department has been very subpar in a very weak d1 meac conference. in the some 40 plus years of meac history, a&t has "never" won the women's all sports trophy and has only "outright" won the men's all sports trophy once in 1996. i say "outright" because we also tied with famu for the men's all sports trophy in 1995.

in recent memory, we've had "winless" (or near winless) records in football, men's basketball, women's basketball, and volleyball. and we've probably had winless or near winless records in tennis as well. given the conference we compete in, a&t should "NEVER" have a winless or near winless record in any sport! much less our two biggest revenue generating sports, football and men's basketball. if it wasn't for coach bibbs' lady aggies and shumate's one meac baseball championship, we wouldn't have any meac championships to our name over the last decade other than football in 2003.

now, i don't know how we alums can fix our athletic department. but somehow, our administrators must be held accountable! there's no reason whatsoever our athletic department should have such a poor track record. in recent years, our biggest revenue sport (football) has completely hit rock bottom and has remained at or near rock bottom. our second biggest revenue sport (men's basketball) has been rebuilt from a 1 win season but has only once advanced beyond the first round of the meac tournament since then. men's basketball has been "mediocre" at best.

so the big question is, what can we alums do about our under performing athletic department? how can we get a competent staff onboard that will maintain our athletic department (at a minimum) above average in the meac? now, i know one of the first things folk are gonna say is donate more money. yes, perhaps we should. but that won't fix our athletic department, its been very poorly managed and that's what needs to be fixed before anybody talks about raising more money...

[Deleted]

We need 'Thrilla, Dooms and Decks to hit the jackpot.



But seriously, the Athletic Department must positively encourage more alumni to donate more money. That will be harder to do as the demographics of our alumni shifts more towards a female majority.

[saabman]

oleschoolaggie :(i don't know how we alums can fix our athletic department) It is not just about the Athletic departments but the over all administrators/ administration at Tee . It surprised me to talk to so many alumni that would say that Tee never reached out to them just to follow up on how they are doing (just a pace of paper to see how you are) go's along way. I made a statement a time back about what my son was telling me about how Univ Michigan fans/alumni supported their athletic department". An for some reason it came up again and he said that it's not just the athletic dept and programs "IT'S THE HOLD SCHOOL" . We need to reach out to all the Aggie nation !!!
westcoastaggie : (But seriously, the Athletic Department must positively encourage more alumni to donate more money. That will be harder to do as the demographics of our alumni shifts more towards a female majority) ON POINT AGAIN BY REACHING OUT TO THAT TARGET GROUP YOU OPEN A DOOR A DOOR OF FOR DONATIONS AND A DOOR FOR ATHLETIC it go's hand in hand .
Stability: in the Athletic Dept from administration to Coaches Down. We can not continue to buyout out coaches contacts every 2 are 3 years . Now (thank about it) How much money have we paid out to coaches that are no long at Tee ? That hurts the Athletic budget, less money for recruiting and so on .
Quality personal : in all departments Cut the bull and this buddy-buddy system and go after the best . Why recruit Quality Athletes But not a quality Athletic Dept administration/ Marketing Deportment .
oleschoolaggie/ westcoastaggie You welcomed me in when I need a drink of water now drink with me.
Reach out to the aggie nation and get that Marking dept off their butts and have them DO THEIR JOB. HIT the Alumni demographics, male/female, academics, athletes and must of all the community .

[oleschoolaggie]

Jul 27, 2011 19:18:18 GMT -5 saabman said:

oleschoolaggie :(i don't know how we alums can fix our athletic department) It is not just about the Athletic departments but the over all administrators/ administration at Tee . It surprised me to talk to so many alumni that would say that Tee never reached out to them just to follow up on how they are doing (just a pace of paper to see how you are) go's along way. I made a statement a time back about what my son was telling me about how Univ Michigan fans/alumni supported their athletic department". An for some reason it came up again and he said that it's not just the athletic dept and programs "IT'S THE HOLD SCHOOL" . We need to reach out to all the Aggie nation !!!
westcoastaggie : (But seriously, the Athletic Department must positively encourage more alumni to donate more money. That will be harder to do as the demographics of our alumni shifts more towards a female majority) ON POINT AGAIN BY REACHING OUT TO THAT TARGET GROUP YOU OPEN A DOOR A DOOR OF FOR DONATIONS AND A DOOR FOR ATHLETIC it go's hand in hand .
Stability: in the Athletic Dept from administration to Coaches Down. We can not continue to buyout out coaches contacts every 2 are 3 years . Now (thank about it) How much money have we paid out to coaches that are no long at Tee ? That hurts the Athletic budget, less money for recruiting and so on .
Quality personal : in all departments Cut the bull and this buddy-buddy system and go after the best . Why recruit Quality Athletes But not a quality Athletic Dept administration/ Marketing Deportment .
oleschoolaggie/ westcoastaggie You welcomed me in when I need a drink of water now drink with me.
Reach out to the aggie nation and get that Marking dept off their butts and have them DO THEIR JOB. HIT the Alumni demographics, male/female, academics, athletes and must of all the community .

saabman, you made some excellent points! and i mean it. you clearly identified the problem but i think one of the best tools to reach out to the aggie nation is bdv! what better way to communicate with aggie athletic supporters than the internet?

i wish bdv had a small fund that it could use for promotions of bdv, especially at homecoming. the more bdv members there are, the bigger difference we can make. i mean, in a matter of days last summer bdv raised money for women's basketball (i forgot how much). now just think how much more we could've donated had bdv's membership been much larger?

and, bdv is a way for aggies to stay in contact no matter where they live in the world...

[DECKS]

Waste and inefficiency has been our problem. It probably costs our athletic department more money to generate a victory than any other program in the nation. How many of our athletes last more than 2 years at A&T? My goodness, look at all the wasted money spent on scholarships. Even with womens basketball, look at how many girls are being replaced. In most businesses it costs less to keep an existing client compared to cultivating a new one. If our student-athletes are our clients then we're just throwing money out the door. It's hard to have success when we're constantly trying to match up freshmen and sophmores against our opponents juniors and seniors. APR will make sure we start focusing on retention which is desperately needed by us!

[saabman]

Good point Decks!!You are right when you say "We have to focus on retention" but you have to wont to learn to learn, don't you think??? As I see it we have to recruit Quality student-athletes not on a hope that we can some how retain them but ones that wont to retain themselves.!! It maybe in A&T's best entrust to go the JC route for a period of time if we only have them for 2 years.
oleschoolaggie: I agree with you 100% BDV and one day we may have that money.

[Deleted]

Rellying on JUCO's have been a main part of the retention failures Decks pointed out. Most of those players were not prepared to succeed academically and as our APR troubles pointed out, we can not keep giving chances to student-athletes that do not cut it in the classroom.

Also, we have to have some consistency with our coaching and athletic dept. staffs. constant turn over involving coaches that did not take the time to learn about and adhere to the new APR system got us these problems.

These problems also turn off alumni from giving back.

Lastly, as DOOMS points out, the Athletic Department must communicate with alumni better then they do now. How do they expect alumni to just blindly throw money at them without constant communication?

[oleschoolaggie]

i think we're guilty of multiple problems in our athletic department. but in my opinion, our number one problem has been "poor decisions" made by our administration.

first and foremost, its "SHAMEFUL" how our admins let both our men's and women's basketball programs hit rock bottom! both programs endured near "winless" seasons within the last decade. THAT'S INEXCUSABLE!!!!!! check this out. in 2003 our men's basketball team had a record of 1-26, in 2004 we were 3-25, in 2005 we were 6-24, and in 2006 we were 6-23. that means any undergrad who was a freshman in 2003 that graduated in 4 years, "never" saw an aggie men's basketball team win more than a "pathetic" 6 games in any entire season of basketball! does anybody in their right mind have the nerve to even wonder why student attendance in corbett has dwindled?

now if men's basketball doesn't make you sick enough, how 'bout the women? they weren't much better before coach bibbs arrived. check this out. in 2000 our women's record was 4-25, in 2001 it was 5-24, in 2002 it was 4-25, in 2003 it was 7-21, and in 2004 it was 7-22. again, THAT'S INEXCUSABLE!!!!!! coach bibbs arrived after the 2005 season and turned our program completely around. again, look at what our undergrads experienced from the same timeframe i mentioned above for the men. they "never" saw any aggie basketball team (men or women) win more than 7 "measly" games in any one season before they graduated! PATHETIC, SIMPLY PATHETIC!!!! again, folk want to know why undergrads no longer come to basketball games like they use to?

and that's not even the worst of it! need i remind anybody of the "infamous" 27 game losing streak in football that stretched from the year 2005 through 2007? can anything get anymore embarrassing than that? TOTALLY INEXCUSABLE!!!!!! not to mention the 3-8 record in 2008, 4-6 record in 2009, and the 1-10 record only one year ago. nuf said about football! SIMPLY PATHETIC!!!!

folks, the aforementioned teams are our 3 biggest revenue sports. all three have had winless and/or near winless seasons within the last decade. why? because our administration over the years have grossly "NEGLECTED" our athletic department! and they made poor decision, after poor decision, after poor decision! DON'T BLAME THE COACHES!! its not their fault. 'cause our admins are "totally responsible" for hiring the coaches in the first place!

just think where our football program would be right now had we hired henry frazier (as prairie view did) instead of lee fobbs? hiring lee fobbs? HORRENDOUSLY POOR DECISION!! and we're still paying for it to this very day! and to make matters worse, frazier was still there for the taking after fobbs got fired. but what did we do? we turned frazier down and hired alonzo lee instead. again, POOR DECISION!!

these poor decisions by our admins is what got us into the "mess" that we currently find ourselves in today! and guess what? i haven't even mentioned the turmoil that our track program just went through or the virtually "winless" volleyball team we currently have. and what about our so called tennis program? and why is a&t "not" one of the 5 meac bowling teams that was ranked in the top 25 in the country? umes, dsu, nsu, msu, and famu were. why can't we? hail, umes has now won "TWO" d1 national championships in women's bowling and we can't even get ranked.

quite frankly, i'm sick and tired of it all! but i'm only one person and i feel helpless. i'm not asking for the world! just give me an "above average" meac athletic department! that's all i'm asking for! is that so hard to achieve? i mean, we're talkin' bout the meac folks!!

i just pray with all my heart and soul that dr. martin will find a way to clean this mess up and put us back on the right track. so far, i think he's got us slowly heading in the right direction. i like the new coaches that have been hired so far. he's given me hope, but surely its gonna take some time, probably a long time...

[DECKS]

Jul 28, 2011 6:49:29 GMT -5 saabman said:

Good point Decks!!You are right when you say "We have to focus on retention" but you have to wont to learn to learn, don't you think??? As I see it we have to recruit Quality student-athletes not on a hope that we can some how retain them but ones that wont to retain themselves.!! It maybe in A&T's best entrust to go the JC route for a period of time if we only have them for 2 years.
oleschoolaggie: I agree with you 100% BDV and one day we may have that money.

It's not just the bad students that we lose. We've also lost a lot of good student-athletes who've gone on to finish at other institutions. What has been going on that we've run off so many kids?

[saabman]

oleschoolaggie/Decks I agree with your statements wholeheartedly!!
westcoastaggie I have to disagree with you because I coach at a JC and we have kids that are now at all levels with in the NCAA/NAIA . Yes we have some that wash out but the Vast Majority gone to complete their degree (we track then when they leave just to see how they are doing). oleschoolaggie put it best (one problem has been "poor decisions" made by our administration)!! One thing that I have learned about Student-athletes is It's like Shooting Dice you never know what you get when you roll them?? We can not afford to play dice at this level anymore then the University's can but we know what we are getting more are less. Now on the other hand a 4 year schools don't really no. You have know i dear if the High schools have done any Grade Padding on the kid and trust me it is done a lot that is something that the administration should be one top of.
DECKS : Made a good point to (We've also lost a lot of good student-athletes who've gone on to finish at other institutions) and that is the of the day Why ARE WE LOSING SO MANY GOOD STUDENT-ATHLETES AT (T)
If they can trans fare and complete their degree at another school and complete in athletic why then can't they do this at (T)

[oleschoolaggie]

i think we lose a lot of student athletes in large part due to behavior issues. kids today lack respect for authority and coaches just can't put up with that. its a whole new generation and sometimes you have no other choice but to release them from their scholarship rather than put up with a bunch of nonsense.

when you recruit these kids, there's no way for you to predict how they will behave once they're away from home for the first time. in general, their attitudes stink as far as showing respect for authority and sometimes you have to cut your losses. once you have a cancer on the team, you have to get rid of it before it spreads. once it spreads, then you have to get rid of several of them...

[saabman]

So true!!!!!

[oleschoolaggie]

you know what? i am really "stunned" that there's not more "outrage" over the abuse that's been bestowed upon our athletic department. we have posters on this message board who will dedicate days and months of outrage toward certain aggie coaches because they don't like a coach's performance. yet, we stand idly by "expressionless" as our admins run amuck while running our entire athletic department into the friggin' ground!

please wake up people! why doesn't a 1-26 record in men's basketball appall you? think about it? we were merely 1 loss away from going completely "winless", that is "ofa" in basketball! when was the last time you've heard of any college going "winless" in basketball! i've heard of a winless football team before we did it. but a "winless" basketball team? we would have been the only d1 program in the country that had both a winless football team and a winless basketball team. we need to get rid of the "aggie pride" slogan.

that entire era of single digit wins in basketball should've raised a red flag! something's seriously wrong with our athletic department when we've had 4 or 5 teams go winless or near winless within a decade! our athletic department needs to be fixed!

look, i'm not a millionaire by any stretch, but every year i try to donate whatever funds i can to help a&t's athletic department. but when ya sit back and see the silence amongst our alums over the total ineptness of our athletic department, it makes you wonder if you're the only one who really cares. at some point you begin to ponder why should i waste my hard earned dollars if nobody else cares?

i know there's a lot of changes taking place in our athletic department, but that's only because our admins were basically "forced" to make those changes due to the ncaa troubles we've created for ourselves. otherwise, it would still be business as usual because our alums seemingly are unwilling to express any dissatisfaction with a "dreadfully" run athletic department!

maybe our athletic department have been poorly run because our alums simply don't care. maybe our admins' management of our athletic department reflects the attitude of our alums, they simply don't care. if so, makes me wonder, why should i care...

[saabman]

oleschoolaggie (i think we lose a lot of student athletes in large part due to behavior issues. kids today lack respect for authority and coaches just can't put up with that. its a whole new generation and sometimes you have no other choice but to release them from their scholarship rather than put up with a bunch of nonsense) So true!!! Man (FACE,GROOMS AND BO-LIGHTING WOULD HAVE BEEN PUT UP ON CHILD ABUSE CHARGES IF THEY WERE STILL COACHING!!!! LOL .
My old man us to say to me when I was complaining about coach Howell (IT'S EASY TO STAND BY AND COMPLAIN ABOUT SOMETHING BEHIND A PERSONS BACK THEN IT IS TO THEIR FACE SO IF YOUR NOT GOING TO DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT SHUT THE F---K UP) We have some that will talk the talk but are not willing to walk the walk .

[aggie2ru]

oleschoolaggie...... I agree with your take on this MESS with our athletic department. First of all, it begins with our previous chancellor's and athletic director's. A few brought good things to "T" and the rest were not qualified when it came to taking our sports programs to the next level. We got HURT more than we got helped. It has really been a constant sad state for AGGIE sports. We don't have sorry azzzzzzzz coaches if administration does not hire them. If you have been on this ride for a while I don't have to mention names. We have SO much work to do to straighten this MESS out and come out of the woods. They can start today by firing "Mr..500 in MEAC" (I know, I know). You know I had to get that in thar somewhere.