2200 days of Brad Edwards

[GMUgemini]

Lipstick, meet pig.

Your subjective opinion based upon your negative attitude towards the AD.

My subjective opinion is that the difference between its own structure and the RAC will have a negligible impact to the product on the floor or the recruits coming in through the doors.

 

[gmubrian]

Your subjective opinion based upon your negative attitude towards the AD.

My subjective opinion is that the difference between its own structure and the RAC will have a negligible impact to the product on the floor or the recruits coming in through the doors.

Thanks for clearing up that we are posting our opinions. Sorry I don't have your rosy view of the situation. I used to drink the Kool Aid, too, but have seen Mason be Mason way too many times.
I understand why s_curl was the way he was back in the day.

Sorry you couldn't see that I was mostly agreeing with you, that the current plan is probably the best option we have given where we are. Instead you had to jump all over me even though I was saying things similar to DJ3 and Jim and yet they didn't get the same treatment. In order to see that this is the best option, though, it helps to be honest as to where we really are.

 

[Five Two]

You want to get rid of those sports, that's a different argument/discussion.

Recently, a very reliable source told me that there was a plan in place in the late 90s to cut Mason sports down to the minimum DI-AAA (non football playing schools) 16 sports. There was a lot of support to do it and then a small contingent raised concerns to TOC and he backed away from the plan. The majority of staff (coaches, administrators, etc) were not happy with TOC for "caving in" (my source's words) as they realized Mason's best chance to succeed was to get to the NCAA minimum # of sports. Instead, TOC ended up adding sports.
If you are a long-time reader of these boards, you know I've been saying we need to get to the minimum for years. I don't have a ton of facts to back this story up but this is a message board so if I can't post rumors here, where can I?????

 

[Cedric Dempsey]

This thread has spent a combined $70mil to accommodate a basketball program. If these big time donors existed I would think it would have happened back in the day 2006+. I bet the Ath Director has weighed all the financial options with the administration that hired him and this is the best route forward. By the way, that vcu facility with gold crappers won't keep Wade if a solid P5 comes calling.

 

[GMUgemini]

Thanks for clearing up that we are posting our opinions. Sorry I don't have your rosy view of the situation. I used to drink the Kool Aid, too, but have seen Mason be Mason way too many times.
I understand why s_curl was the way he was back in the day.

Sorry you couldn't see that I was mostly agreeing with you, that the current plan is probably the best option we have given where we are. Instead you had to jump all over me even though I was saying things similar to DJ3 and Jim and yet they didn't get the same treatment. In order to see that this is the best option, though, it helps to be honest as to where we really are.

Sorry, if I came across as overly aggressive. I just think a lot of people oversell the effectiveness of these athletics expenditures. We just went through a heated debate where I teach over a $268 million stadium upgrade, which hasn't really changed the fortunes of the football team any.

I mean, I do think it's important that the team have a practice facility they have access to 24/7. But I don't think very many (if any) players are going to choose vcu over us because their practice facility is in its own building.

 

[GMUgemini]

This thread has spent a combined $70mil to accommodate a basketball program. If these big time donors existed I would think it would have happened back in the day 2006+. I bet the Ath Director has weighed all the financial options with the administration that hired him and this is the best route forward. By the way, that vcu facility with gold crappers won't keep Wade if a solid P5 comes calling.

I could live without men's and women's tennis and men's golf and shave that down to 17.

 

[dr. gunnie]

I don't care much about the gym itself, I want an arcade, laser tag miniature golf, movie theater, swimming pool, night club... maybe a go-kart track out back if we have the room.

If you build it, they will come.

 

[gmubrian]

I don't think very many (if any) players are going to choose vcu over us because their practice facility is in its own building.

That is where we disagree. If you think like a high school junior/senior it may be more important than one might realize.

I can only imagine the possible let down during a visit. Let's go see our practice facility. Wow that looks impressive. As they get closer to the building. Hey, why are all of these other people coming in the building? It looks like thousands of people are in here. Oh, sorry, we share this building with the students and faculty, but, we have a couple rooms to ourselves. Aren't there like 30k students here? Yes. Oh, I see. By the way, how do you get to Richmond from here?

 

[gmubrian]

Probably my biggest fear, and I hope I am wrong on this, is that after a year or two, Mason does another Mason like thing and decides it is too hard/costly/risky/unfair to let the players have 24/7 access to a shared facility. Then they start scaling back the access, little by little.

 

[GMUgemini]

That is where we disagree. If you think like a high school junior/senior it may be more important than one might realize.

I can only imagine the possible let down during a visit. Let's go see our practice facility. Wow that looks impressive. As they get closer to the building. Hey, why are all of these other people coming in the building? It looks like thousands of people are in here. Oh, sorry, we share this building with the students and faculty, but, we have a couple rooms to ourselves. Aren't there like 30k students here? Yes. Oh, I see. By the way, how do you get to Richmond from here?

I teach college freshman, some of them student-athletes, and they aren't all this shallow.

Also, we don't have Merten and TOC as president and athletics director anymore, so I am fairly confident they aren't just going to pull the rug out from the basketball program like that.

Also, also, I think we all know how shallow our donor base is and something like a $25 million+ privately funded dedicated basketball practice building wasn't in the cards for us. I mean, I got excited when Pablo posted that we cracked a million.

 

[Pablo]

To build on Mason successes, the Patriot Club needs you!

 

[GSII]

I thought we had 1100 something in Pat club?

 

[gmubrian]

I mean, I got excited when Pablo posted that we cracked a million.

Are you guys sure you are interpreting the graphic correctly? I interpret it that we are at $885k, not $1.3M. $1.3M appears to me to be the goal.

 

[gmutd127]

I once too was "Well the RAC is great, whats wrong with it". The problem is that the basketball teams do not have 24/7 access and have to share the space with other teams that need to use it. Those teams deserve a place to practice as well. Nobody wants to take away the limited space that other teams have, that just makes no sense.

The thing is, basketball is the main sport at Mason, so in order to show to anyone who may come (donors, recruits, fans whatever), "Hey we want BASKETBALL to be great", they have to have preferential treatment in terms of the fact they can have resources whenever they want, whether its shooting, scouting, or whatever. They currently don't have that.

The RAC is a great facility and I'm sure athletes get plenty of resources, but because basketball is the focal point of the athletics program, the main program and money maker, they need the extra care to be there. Plus with basketball having their own space, they won't take away from other teams who need the limited space. In addition, since many other conference schools have great facilities and resources, Mason needs to be able to keep up, over the long haul it will yield dividends.

The new area for basketball will probably also be open to students and others when the basketball team isn't using it.

I personally can't wait for the facility to open.

As I understand it, the new addition to the RAC will be men's and women's basketball only. Players and coaches will have 24/7 access.

 

[Vurbel]

The current plan is to section off part of the RAC this summer so basketball has a dedicated gym (the Cage Gym). Then they will add the supporting classrooms and stuff later. The whole point is to take a shortcut using part of the existing RAC instead of building an entire new facility from scratch. This saves Mason time and money, and gets our basketball teams the bare minimum need right away (a dedicated gym to use when the Patriot Center is in use and other programs have the RAC and Linn Gyms booked). Why is this so unreasonable?

To an old person like me that's fine, but Paulsen isn't recruiting me. To a recruit there is a big difference in having a basketball only facility for all things basketball, and a court in a student rec. center.

 

[Vurbel]

You'd be taking a facility that is perfectly tailored to current use by students/intramurals, paying to renovate it so it fits the basketball team better, paying to build another facility on campus (and despite whatever you estimate price at, a new gym won't be any cheaper than the proposed facility), using up land that Mason is running short of, all while placing an additional load on the Aquatic Center and Skyline while the new gym is built and displacing intramurals.

If we were in the ACC and were rolling in the dollars I'd say maybe. I'd love to have a stand alone building that matches vcu. But something that is in the top 4 of the conference will have to do.

Do we wait to be top 4 then build, or build then become top 4? It's the whole chicken/egg argument.

 

[Vurbel]

As I understand it, the new addition to the RAC will be men's and women's basketball only. Players and coaches will have 24/7 access.

Let's look at it differently. The basketball facilities aren't attached to the student center. The student center is attached to the basketball facilities. How nice of the school to let students use the basketball facility.

 

[sleeperpick]

In hindsight, I guess we should have built the basketball practice facility instead of a hotel years ago.

a hotel that is now dedicated to foreign students that is the nicest on campus and has a dining hall in it.... hmmm

 

[Vurbel]

I don't care much about the gym itself, I want an arcade, laser tag miniature golf, movie theater, swimming pool, night club... maybe a go-kart track out back if we have the room.

If you build it, they will come.

Clemson football?

http://nesn.com/2016/12/clemsons-absurd-new-football-facility-will-have-a-slide-because-why-not/

 

[Dawgs99]

As long as the facility has a separate entrance for the players, along with 24 hour access I don't really have a problem. Whatever the finished product may be....its better than what they currently have.