Who is that? And with what money...

_________________
MBB Scholarship Chart

UWGB had an RPI of 69 last year. Their RPI was in the 30s for most of the season before they lost at home to Milwaukee in the HL semifinal and to Belmont in the NIT. But Alec Brown was a 2nd round NBA Draft pick, so who knows where they'll be next year or the year after, with a 3rd or 4th year coach who didn't recruit the talent they had to get into the top 100. They were probably too good for us to beat last year.

Drexel was 135, in a decent league, which is about where we need to be, I think. The key is getting the highest RPI teams on the schedule that you have a reasonable chance of beating. At home in 2014-15, that's probably in 75-140 range, on the road it's probably 150-210. We beat Missouri State (93), UNI (112), Illinois State (133), and Milwaukee (134) at home. We blew late leads on the road against Tennessee Tech (211), Tulane (224), Mississippi State (239) and Portland State (255). Those ranges should probably move up 10-15 RPI points both home and road in 2015-16 when White, Doyle, and Turk are upperclassmen and the incoming players have a year of experience.

Athletics reports to Tom Kelly

The new AD is supposed to create revenue from corporate sponsorships, ticket revenue, and media.
Media meaning Loyola is supposed to be able to sell ads on the radio and TV. No, I'mnot makng this stuff up. Fundraising is going to be as easy as calling the right people and asking.

JCT-
I knew Green Bay was high last yr but I thought they would drop out of the top 100. You and I both know how hard it is to get a top 100 team to come play us here. Elgin tells everybody who will listen about playing top 100 rpi teams to boost the valley but there are many obstacles in the way for all of the valley members. Maybe Loyola should just let him pick the new AD, I forgot he's got a candidate as a finalist.

That sounds like the right approach, but I hope expectations are in check. (I fear they are not.) I can't imagine us buying a top-100 game in the next 10 years.

_________________
MBB Scholarship Chart

Who do you think would buy a commercial on a broadcast that draws a few hundred people? Our Ticket prices are already high. That's what Grace hung her hat on for increasing revenue. We only have a 5k seat gym. If you sell out every game you'll make about 1.5-2.0 with the extras. How are you going to get legit corp sponsors with such a low attendance avg?
If fundraising was that simple Loyola wouldn't have a 9% giving rate. Athletes has about 30 donors outside of Loyola employees and athletes' parents.
This isn't a plan, Its a fantasy by people who have no idea what athletics are and what they should mean to a university.

That's basically what I was saying. UWGB is not likely to be anywhere near where they were last year. We got burned last year on the UIC game, when they dropped from 177 to 317. Our best bets for getting teams into Gentile with respectable RPIs (e.g. better than 120) is to get consistently mid-level or higher teams from the A10, West Coast, MAC, Horizon, and Colonial to commit to home and home series. That means: St. Louis, St. Joes, LaSalle, Western Michigan, Akron, Ohio, Valpo, San Francisco, St. Mary's, etc. Mix that with a few 2-for-1s from mid and lower level teams in the Big East, Big 10, and Big 12: Iowa State, Kansas State, West Virginia, Penn State, Purdue, Iowa, Minnesota, Northwestern, Xavier, Marquette, etc. Add some consistently good teams from smaller conferences like Harvard, Belmont, Boston U, etc. (All the teams in bold are teams we've already had come into Gentile).

Either way, we shouldn't be scrambling at this point to fill out a lot of our schedule. We should have all but one or two slots filled up, with a better balance of home and road games. Kudos to women's basketball for putting together an excellent schedule with a good home/road balance and having it released before August 1.

After this summer I'm under the impression. 2 for 1 are a thing of the past, but I've been wrong before. You're going to find the big five playing each other more and with bigger conferences less games to go around. Maybe that will help other mid majors to play home and home with each other but I'm not so sure. Let's not forget we have to pay players in the very near future.

You are right. All raising ticket prices (basically doubling them overnight) did was to drive off every casual fan (and some of the regulars) from the seats. The additional revenue-- even if we maintained the same average attendance-- was insignificant in the scheme of things; it would have been only $450k or so, but turned out to be just about $0 (or worse) thanks to the lower attendance.

Bodies in the seats is much more important at this point than box office revenue. Seeing the place full is a better fundraising tool than anything else, creates a winning environment, supports media viablity, etc. I don't have a huge problem with gradually building ticket prices up to where they are now over several years and after a couple of winning seasons, but dropping it on fans in one dose drove off a lot of people who weren't willing to pay twice as much immediately. Visiting attendance from local teams (UIC, Milwaukee, Northern Illinois) was some of the worst we've had in years, which should show the folly of the much higher price point.