Given Wichita State's exit, Valpo's entrance, Loyola's promising signings, and the state of the rest of the conference, I think it's important that some goals are set for the coming year. We need to set some real and achievable goals-- RIGHT NOW-- so we mark this moment as when and how we make our move to the top of this conference. If we miss this moment, let it slide, take our eye off the ball, someone else will seize it.

Toward the end of our tenure in the Horizon League, we made an all-out push in non-revenue sports. We added more paid assistants in sports like soccer, softball, and volleyball. The additional manpower paid off, as Loyola made a push for the HL all-sport trophy despite not having tennis, swimming, baseball, and other sports. The fact that the race was relatively close, and that the plan to bolster the assistants in various sports paid dividends seemed to take the athletic administration almost by surprise in how effective it was.

Here was a school that won a national championship in a highly-competitive revenue sport because they were one of the first schools to say that racial quotas on the court were stupid, and they wouldn't participate. Then they went on for 25 years or so thinking they could duplicate the feat on the same budget, losing more and more games each year thereafter. The first national championship came so easy, so inexpensively, so effortlessly--- why shouldn't that continue?

There are lots of ways to look at possible goals and objectives for 2017-18. We could focus on redressing wrongs, correcting faults, pressing advantages, out-maneuvering opponents, one-off aims, three-year plans, etc. We could focus on fans, culture, revenue, game-day atmospherics, scheduling, recruiting, media, promotion, branding, marketing, coaching, etc., in various mixes. But from an OPPORTUNITY point of view, right now is the most advantageous position and opportunity for changing how we're perceived since the late 1980s. We need to seize this opportunity with a professional push to dominate this league. And we need to bring all our assets to bear on accomplishing this.

I am not interested in some kind of aspirational thing, to move to a "better conference" for the sake of moving up, or some other artificially competitive goal. I am interested in dominating the Missouri Valley Conference for a sustained period of time, being an active and leading member of the conference, becoming a college sports household name, expanding our reputation, helping to lead by example, and achieving excellence overall and throughout the athletic department.

I've heard many arguments for why we'll never be able to do this, or accomplish that, and a lot of it is just because it hasn't been done lately, or because our current limitations are viewed as limitations. I think we're getting to a point were URBAN experiences are viewed much more positively. I think rural and small towns are viewed as being on the back end of demographics, technology, jobs, transportation, and innovation. So I think Loyola is in a position to capitalize on that in recruiting, academics, teaching experiences, internships, and other areas.

All the attributes about Loyola we were told in the 1970s, 1980s, 1990s and early 2000s were fatal flaws are now attractive assets. I was really upset that Matt Chastain thought Loyola wasn't for him, mostly for Matt Chastain. I see a lot of people around here who think that Bloomington-Normal is as big as they'd like to get. Unfortunately for them, Bloomington-Normal is going to get smaller with current dynamics at work. Mitsubishi closed down. State Farm is putting their job growth in Dallas, Phoenix, and other cities. It's hard to convince 20-something recent graduates to move to Bloomington-Normal long term when the only restaurants are chains strung along the business strip, when the lights go off at 9 pm, despite being a farming center the food is flavorless, and the housing stock is a choice between crackerbox and McMansion.

So here's what I've got:

1. Get out in front on media--- create easy to implement pre-packaged stories for sports radio, local TV, print, and news radio. Send high-quality sound clips, still and video pictures, etc. to local media. Make it impossibly easy to use the Loyola clips to use up 25 seconds of the sportscast.
2. Marketing to fill the Gentile Arena. Every single men's basketball game should be viewed as an epic battle in a war. Massage the ticket prices and promotions. Get the spokespeople out there. Ride the El trains in rush hour with GA tickets. If there aren't 2500 people in the stands, we've been beheaded by our adversaries.
3. While the short term attendance promotion is going on, make sure there's a quality long-term marketing effort that can capitalize on the bonds built, experiences, and opportunities. We need to devote some money and manpower to this effort, because we've tried to skate by in years past. It takes professionalism and resources to leverage the possibilities.

Chip in your own ideas, and let's discuss it. There are no bad ideas right now... let it out!

Loyola needs to come out of this vacuum as the leader of the conference. We need to assert this every day, and participate in the guidance of this conference at all times, unlike what we did in the Horizon League/MCC, when we let a great idea for a conference go to hell when we took our eyes off the ball.

Great post JCT. I think a lot of this boils down to big strategic decisions (and money) that have been brought up a lot on this board. But one thing I thought of, especially making my mock t-shirt, is we need to change up the Porter's Pack marketing and focus it more around the program. I understand Duke marketing Coach K (a five time national champion and three time Olympic gold medalist), but Porter is not Coach K and way more people would care about the team rather than the coach. Even Gonzaga has the Dog Pound rather than Few's Fanatics. Next year is going to be either really good or really bad. If it's good, it could be his last year here. If it's bad, we'll look at him and his contract as an albatross. Either way, building a program around one central figure (who won't be here forever) won't do us any good in building sustained interest

JCT and Super-duper make good points. JCT gets to the nub of things for sure--

__ I take some issue with Duper in that he does NOT consiser loyalty in his comment re what happens should LUC be a SUCCESS next year--or did IO read it wrong ?? I like to think Porter wants to build a sort of dynasty here/ I say success means he stays not leaves !!---But then what do I know about things going on TODAY ?? Not much !!!

I was debating on emphasizing the word could (laziness won out), but that's the key word. I don't think he leaves for just any job.

But never underestimate the stupidity of college administrators. Some will throw his first six seasons out the window if we say win a game or two in the NCAA Tournament. For example, Nebraska is paying Miles over $2 million a year and will probably fire him by next March. If they offer Porter even half that, he would be stupid not to leave and we can't afford to get into a multi-million dollar bidding war over him.

LU athletics had a plan in place to get its athletic commitment at least to the middle of the Valley in terms of resource commitment. It got blown away by an unexpected financial situation. In a couple of blurbs to some supportive groups this phrase has been used "Loyola Athletics will be launching our vision for continuing to grow and succeed in the changing landscape of college sports early this Fall." That means to me they have regrouped , have a better vision of where they now stand financially and have put together a plan with that in mind. I am just guessing that the goal is the same and that is to be at least in the middle of the Valley in terms of resource commitment. You know we as Alums and fans will be part of that. For those of us who want to see things move ahead we have to be part of the push. Do the things you can do and control to help out. Get your season tickets early....buy a couple extra and use it as an opportunity to connect with friends. Call sports talk radio and push the Ramblers. or text the SOBs.....encourage whatever local group you may belong to to meet at a game......Contribute what you can,,,,,,In other words lets try and figure out what we can do to help out .....we can have ideas up the ying-yang for what the school might do but we have no control over that...... I will start by tatooing an LU on my forehead,,, along with number of the ticket office...

One inescapable fact to me is that dozens of Division II, Division III, and NAIA schools, and even a FOR PROFIT Division I school (Grand Canyon) are out there spending a lot of money on non-football athletics. Would a for-profit corporation spend roughly $4.3 million on men's basketball alone if it didn't have ROI? Would Division II and Division III schools have rowing, tennis, swimming, soccer, bass fishing, and bowling as intercollegiate sports if it didn't have an effect on admissions, student life, branding, name recognition, enrollment, persistence toward graduation, etc.?

I'm sure that at a certain point, expenses can exceed the return you get back from it, even if you're very generous about calculating the ancilary benefits. But right now, Grand Canyon has a much higher budget than Loyola-- about 55% higher than Loyola on men's basketball, $4,306,041 for Grand Canyon compared to $2,745,553 at Loyola in 2015-16.

I'm not sure that the administration is properly calculating the benefits of a successful and prominent athletic program. Robert Morris University (the NAIA one in Illinois, not the Division I school in Pennsylvania) is basically using their athletics as an enrollment driver. They receive little or no revenue at all for their myriad of sports offerings, and because they're NAIA, they don't offer full scholarships. So most of the athletes pay full or slightly discounted tuition, similar to Division II and Division III. So when they have a volleyball team, they're getting 12-15 tuition-paying students that they probably wouldn't enrolled otherwise. Multiply that for baseball, softball, swimming, etc., and then factor that some of the athletes might draw friends and high school classmates to attend as well. And contrary to the perception, athletes are on average better students than non-athletes, and graduate at higher rates on average.

I don't know how much of the Grand Canyon budget is spent on advertising to get fans into the seats at their plush 7000-seat arena. But if you're a for-profit corporation looking to improve the brand position of your product to equal that of non-profit Division I schools, advertising your Division I sports programs is a pretty good way to go. And the money they've spent to build their fanbase has helped the performance of their sports programs on the court, which earns free publicity.

Grand Canyon gets its cash from the 60,000 on line students that generated about 2.5 mil in revenue just last year. They attempted to change status to non-profit but were turned down. They are a much different animal than LU.......who knows their business model may be the future of education......for profit rules and regs have turned in the favor of for profits since you know who was elected.....maybe LU will face Trump U in an NCAA game......wonder what the name of Trump U teams would be?????? I would go with aholes. anybody in the Valley already have that?

I , with respect suggest we drop the Politics from this site !! There is a spot elsewhere for it !!