What the future of Gopher’s basketball should be… a High-End Feeder program

[Wet_Blanket_Guy]

The Gophers need to a wholesale change to their basketball approach and I believe it is as follows:

*Become a high-level feeder program to top-tier Blueblood programs / other high-end major P5 schools. Pitch HS recruits and freshman transfer targets on a two year system in which they knowingly enter with a plan to transfer to a bigger more prestigious basketball school after those two years.

*Utilize our lesser NIL and revenue sharing monies on the HS and freshman transfer targets, but also make them guarantees around playing time as the roster should have limited veteran players who are taking up money.

*focus on winning fans back by moving to a much more uptempo system. I’d argue fans would rather watch a team lose 100-90 than 68-58. You need to get excitement back into Williams arena and bringing entertaining basketball back is one of the keys. Watching a Nolan Richardson coached team due 40 minutes of hell would be pretty fun. Just press constantly and run and gun.


The WHY?

Due to the massive changes in the NCAA model (portal transfers w/ no limits on transfers including immediate eligibility), influx of NIL money, and the soon-to-be revenue sharing agreement between conference networks and their athletes (Gopher basketball is not getting a big share of the Gopher pie)… we have to tailor an approach that can work within the confines of these new rules of engagement.

Let’s face it, the Gophers are never going to be spending (between NIL and revenue sharing) high-single millions or low teens millions of dollars a years on their basketball roster. The #1 basketball prospect in the class of 25-26 just signed with BYU for a reported NIL package of $7M! They are backed by some mega-donors.

THE GOAL:

• ncaa tourney once every 3 years
• Round of 32 every 6 years
• Sweet 16 once every 8 years

Outside of my hatred of CBJ, I don’t think many coaches would be truly successful with this roster. While CBJ needs to go, our complete program needs to be burnt to the ground for a fresh start. Think about it, in the grand scheme of paying players…would it have been smarter to take the sum of money that all the players (Garcia + rest of roster) make and just offered to players who would be freshmen and freshmen portal transfers…would our record be any worse?

 

[FinnGopher]

Welcome to UMN Community College.

 

[stocker08]

Interesting concept. St. Thomas becomes a halfway decent mid-major.....the Gophers siphon off the decent players from them.....and then the high end players from the Gophers go to the blue bloods.

Sounds like St. Thomas ends up sucking no matter what happens.

 

[Wet_Blanket_Guy]

I’m under no illusion UST will ever win a national title. Every 15 years a round of 32 or sweet 16, that would work.

And let’s call a spade a spade, better teams are taking players at a greater rate from the gophers than they are UST…but it’s the rat wheel of the portal. Both the gophers and UST give, yet at the same time they take from lower level teams…it’s the new way.

 

[stocker08]

Hard to say whether St. Thomas will be able to keep their best players in order to make an NIT Round of 32 every 15 years. Best of luck to the Tommies.

 

[Spaulding!No!]

We had Jack Wilson.

 

[short ornery norwegian]

there is one issue with this idea -

The Gophers are in the B1G - one of the wealthiest and most powerful conferences in college sports.
this approach would be an admission that the Gophers cannot compete and will not try to compete in men's basketball.

whether it reflects reality or not - it just looks bad. it's like saying "we give up." and that in turn could reflect poorly on other sports at MN.

even as spinless as Coyle is, I don't see him going along with this. He'd rather stand in front of the onrushing rioters saying "remain calm, all is well." ("Officer - they're looting the Food King!")

 

[howeda7]

Hard to say whether St. Thomas will be able to keep their best players in order to make an NIT Round of 32 every 15 years. Best of luck to the Tommies.

I appreciate the effort to troll the St. Thomas lovers here.

I do think some have big time homer blinders on with the talk of the Big East. The only reason that made some sense 5 years ago was the idea that adding the Minneapolis market to the Big East held big value for TV. That's no longer true. There's no "Big East Network" to get onto cable systems and even if there were, it's increasingly irrelevant.

Conferences want teams that will add "brand value" for the Fox Sports/Amazon/Peacocks to bid on their entire TV contract. St. Thomas adds almost nothing to the Big East in that regard. Almost no one outside of Minnesota knows what it is. Whoever bids on the next Big East contract will not increase it because St. Thomas is there and they will make everyone's slice smaller. The B1G would never add Rutgers today for the same reason.

 

[Wet_Blanket_Guy]

there is one issue with this idea -

The Gophers are in the B1G - one of the wealthiest and most powerful conferences in college sports.
this approach would be an admission that the Gophers cannot compete and will not try to compete in men's basketball.

whether it reflects reality or not - it just looks bad. it's like saying "we give up." and that in turn could reflect poorly on other sports at MN.

even as spinless as Coyle is, I don't see him going along with this. He'd rather stand in front of the onrushing rioters saying "remain calm, all is well." ("Officer - they're looting the Food King!")

I put this out there with the understanding that the Gophers will A) most likely never have the huge donors to offer massive NIL deals to 5 star freshmen, and (b) due to not having huge donors the players we do end up getting who show something in years 1 or 2, will get offered big contracts by other schools who have the donors and revenue sharing agreements (other B10 schools for example).

We need a unique path as we don't have the big money. The old way does not work in which you hope to land decent prospects and keep them for 3 or 4 years. Couple that with the fact that the Gophers can't augment younger players with true veteran talent (costs a lot for excellent portal players) due to lacking a daddy warbucks.

 

[FinnGopher]

I put this out there with the understanding that the Gophers will A) most likely never have the huge donors to offer massive NIL deals to 5 star freshmen, and (b) due to not having huge donors the players we do end up getting who show something in years 1 or 2, will get offered big contracts by other schools who have the donors and revenue sharing agreements (other B10 schools for example).

We need a unique path as we don't have the big money. The old way does not work in which you hope to land decent prospects and keep them for 3 or 4 years. Couple that with the fact that the Gophers can't augment younger players with true veteran talent (costs a lot for excellent portal players) due to lacking a daddy warbucks.

NCAA needs a salary cap. Anyone over the cap gets a significant luxury tax that gets dispersed to other programs in the conference.

 

[Bob_Loblaw]

NCAA needs a salary cap. Anyone over the cap gets a significant luxury tax that gets dispersed to other programs in the conference.

The unfortunate thing about salary caps and luxury taxes is that the people who want to spend a ton will pay the luxury tax and the people not spending will just pocket the tax revenue.

We saw it with the Pohlads who "needed" an new stadium to compete and then cut payroll from a playoff team. They needed the new stadium to put more in their pocket, not to compete.