I thought we were still short on our fundraising to cover costs expended on the practice facility? If that’s the case, hoping companies put up cash for 1-2 years of a basketball player might be a stretch. I skip over these conversations, so forgive me if I’m completely off here.
You make a good point. I have no idea where they are at on that issue. The classic old problem persists: You have to spend money to make money. They have traditionally gone cheap on big things and spent money on little things that didn't help them. We have had great non- revenue sports and garbage revenue sports teams- although Fleck certainly has raised football a notch. Ideologically, the U is woke and cool, but in a practical sense, stupid.
This was my big concern with the Ben Johnson hire- they went cheap, get an inexperienced low cost coach, a diversity hire (can we be honest here?) to take on one of the toughest situations in the Big Ten- creating zero buzz in the community. Business people invest in winners. They are not going to be as excited about going all in on NIL for a losing squad. I think Ben is great as a person and his coaching looks good, so far, as well. The
perception in the community is that the losing isn't going to start any time soon. We can all argue about whether we could have gotten Musselman for 4 million, until the cows come home, but I can tell you this- had we gotten him, we would also have a big NIL program going right now. That extra few million comes back into the coffers fast with a successful program and then the ball starts rolling down hill.
That's done and gone. Now they have a huge sales job to do with local business leaders that they have to come up with a big pile of cash to deal with this situation if we are ever going to have a winner here. Coyle is going to have to convince a Lou Nanne type to get that done with the big hitters around town.