Bull94

To help out the university? I do understand where you're coming from but if you can afford it, why not up the donation to help out the programs? That's not the good old American way. That's why they base seating priorities on donation levels to begin with. They want to give you an incentive to donate more. Give me an incentive to donate more and I will. Don't expect me to do it out of the kindness of my heart.

no it's not a guarantee but this is an exception not the rule. do you think the d-rays have a shot to win the East by spending 3 times less than the Yankees or red sox? how about if I hire a lawyer? Should I expect the same results from a guy who charges $100 an hour as i should if I hire a guy for $300 and hour? do you think I'd get a nicer house if I spent 3 times what you pay to have yours built? not neccessarily but 9 times out of 10, I will.

sorry dabull but we live in a capitalist society and those willing to pay a higher price deserve the best seats. How come I can't get the same seats as older alums even though I donate multiple times as much? There is no incentive to donate more. In fact I could donate much less and still have my same seats and I'm strongly considering this because I don't see me ever getting 1st level seats. Why pay for something if I can't get it? I'm not saying anyone has to increase their donation, only that the highest donors get the best seats. This is how it works in our country. Seating should be reset every 5 years based on how much you donate. Otherwise there is never an incentive to donate more. I basically have to wait for the older alums to give their seats up or die. Why bother donating more?? That was my point. The crowds wouldn't be any smaller.

You should have come up with the $600k to buy out RMC and the extra $900k in salary plus all the additional funding he would have required last year. I'm sure Woolard would have listened to you.

Absolutely. This is insane. Losing momentum in football would do much more damage to the school's athletic reputation than staying bad-to-mediocre in basketball. I totally agree. I would rather have a shot at a BCS game and payout every year then a one and done in the NCAAs. So now we are depending on football to improve our bb program?? That is insane. Let's pretend for a moment that we don't have a football team. So, what do we do to turn this bb program around? obviously if we didn't have a growing football program that needs the money to continue it's path then we would be able to concentrate on basketball. We also would still be in CUSA or some other lowly conference. We were chosen to join the BE on our football potential. You can't just pretend to not have a football program. Coach K was pissed when the ACC expanded because he knew they were trying to turn a hoops conference into a football conference. That's the cash cow of college sports. Unfortunately in order to grow a new program most of the funding has to go to football. Why do you think football schools are starting to compete in basketball? Texas, OU, UF, OSU, etc. Because they bring in loads of money to fund all of their sports programs through football. First, We need to raise basketball revenues by resetting the donation levels at the arena. Kansas did this several years ago because they started to bleed money. All the best seats were going to all the old donors at ridiculously low donation levels. Their new AD came in and said up your donation or lose your seats. Many did but some didn't. New donors came in to buy the rest. There was no incentive to donate more money when you couldn't get the best seats. They raised tons of new money and now they are financially much better off. I think only time will allow us to compete financially in basketball. Once our football program is well established and we have been to a couple of BCS games and we have 45,000 season tickets sold.

not only that but if you aren't willing or able to financially committ to building a program you won't attract many good coaches.

Absolutely. This is insane. Losing momentum in football would do much more damage to the school's athletic reputation than staying bad-to-mediocre in basketball. I totally agree. I would rather have a shot at a BCS game and payout every year then a one and done in the NCAAs.

Hire a new coach. No, this is the BE, we need to pay a higher salary. Yes. No. Absolutely. Any other questions? Rueb So it looks like you would rather try to compete in basketball than football? Don't you think it would be a wiser investment to build our football program to the point where we generate enough cash to support all other sports first ? Isn't it as obvious to you as it is to many others that football is the cash cow of college sports? You're willing to jeopordize that for basketball now? Say we up our basketball budget $2M, that would still put us in the bottom half of BE funding. Take that away from football and where does that leave us? I'd rather take the long term approach. Invest in the cash cow and then fund the other programs as we start to get BCS invites and 45,000 in the seats. Seems as though it has worked quite well for a lot of other schools.

That's great you don't think he should be coach next year Rueb. What's your plan of action? Should we go out and hire somebody for the same money? Do we up the funding? Should we expect any coach to succeed if we don't committ financially to winning? Are you willing to see the football program stagnate if we take away from that in order to fund basketball?

How does talking about the program ruin a "fun" season?  What about this season was "fun"?  That's the attitude I don't get.  I get what you are saying that everyone is hoping we win, but sometimes it seems like it doesn't matter to people.  It seems by that statement that you'd enjoy the season no matter how successful we are.  After football season is over and some other sports have yet to get started (softball, baseball), what else is there to talk about?  Are we supposed to ignore the negatives and not criticize the program at all until the season is over?  What else would we talk about?  I also understand not calling anyone a "clown" as Bulliever says, but a lot of people can criticize the program without going nuts and name-calling.  Those are completely different things.  I don't know the coach personally so I'm not going to judge him personally.  However, our team needs to do better and I don't get the point of waiting for the season to be over to say anything negative about the basketball team.  Anyway, hopefully it does matter to everyone that we win, but sometimes it just seems like people are too complacent. I have no problem with people criticizing the program but the endless "fire Mac" talk is ridiculous. If we are not ready and willing to committ financially to this program then nothing will change regardless of who our coach is. That's what a lot of people don't get. They come on here and call for Mac's dismissal thinking that all will be different just by changing the coach. They're wrong. I'm all for change if that means we will committ to competing financially in the BE. I don't think that Mac got a fair shot at success in the BE though with the limited resources we provided to him and for people to bash him for that is lame. I just hope that if they do committ financially to basketball that it doesn't take away from the growth of our football program. I think that comes first. One thing Woolard can do to raise some funds is to update the donor amounts for the best sections in the arena. Kansas did this several years ago because they were having financial troubles and people were willing their tickets on after paying the same donation amounts for decades. It was unpopular with the old timers that had tickets for years but it was neccessary if they wanted to continue funding the program properly. They instantly raised millions in additional donations to keep their program solvent. It's time for us to do this. We can't be expected to run a successful BE program off of Sunbelt donations. It allows younger alums who are willing and able to donate more to get the best seats. It also allows any of the old timers who are willing to up their donations to keep their seats.

what about Villanova last year? they started 4 guards and did pretty well. I didn't think we were willing to run the floor enough this year.

Mac isn't a good recruiter anyway, and with poor results what's the difference? The next coach is gonna get handed a certain quality of product either way. At the rate we're going, bringing in some JUCO kids isn't going to make a difference in the long run. Many coaches go this route in the first couple years of building a program. By putting a winning product out on the floor. Jose Fernandez was a no-name coach when he got here, the difference in the men's and women's programs is huge. If McCullum was having similar success as Fernandez you would see big attendance and the donors would surely follow. Comparing men's and women's basketball is completely ridiculous. Where is the huge attendance jump for Jose? How about the big donors for him? If they were the same then why hasn't he attracted either? Doesn't RMC have one of the top Florida recruits coming in next year? We all salavated over him when he chose FSU. Everybody said Mac needed to land him or else. Now that he is transfering in nobody gives him credit. Not ridiculous at all, considering Jose didn't come from a "pedigreed" background in coaching. If a similar coach on the men's side had similar success, you would see a lot more fans and eventually, donors. McCullum might have reeled in a couple of nice recruits, but overall recruiting has been weak. He could have done a better job recruiting for the Big East, imo. We are a couple years into it and still struggle with depth of talent. So you're saying we should bring in a guy whose only head coaching experience is at the high school level to coach our men's BE basketball team?? and you think he would have greater success than RMC?? That's crazy. I find it funny that given the history of this program and all the obstacles it faces people still believe RMC should be bringing in McDonald's All Americans in our 2nd year of BE play.

Mac isn't a good recruiter anyway, and with poor results what's the difference? The next coach is gonna get handed a certain quality of product either way. At the rate we're going, bringing in some JUCO kids isn't going to make a difference in the long run. Many coaches go this route in the first couple years of building a program. By putting a winning product out on the floor. Jose Fernandez was a no-name coach when he got here, the difference in the men's and women's programs is huge. If McCullum was having similar success as Fernandez you would see big attendance and the donors would surely follow. Comparing men's and women's basketball is completely ridiculous. Where is the huge attendance jump for Jose? How about the big donors for him? If they were the same then why hasn't he attracted either? Doesn't RMC have one of the top Florida recruits coming in next year? We all salavated over him when he chose FSU. Everybody said Mac needed to land him or else. Now that he is transfering in nobody gives him credit.

94, you make some good points but are you telling me there isnt a guy ot there who is up for the challenge?  Or would love to be given the opportunity to coach in the big east and maybe be successful and boosting his career?  Why cant we do what VCU did with Jeff Capel, why cant that happen with us?  Now he is at Oklahoma getting top recruits.  There are guys out there dying to get in and get their names known.  Thats why we need a guy that when you interview him you can tell he has charisma and swagger.  Ask Jim Leyland about swagger, guy coached and loved guys like Barry Bonds and now gettin Gary Sheffield because of swagger.  he claims it is the most underrated quality in sports and coaching (especially recruiting).  I agree 100% with him there.  and i didnt say a no-name coach, we have one of those now, I said a well known ex player or a successful mid major coach.  believe me i want the big name hire, but i hear so much how we cant afford it.  So lets find the diamond in the rough.  And trip you highlighted two of my sentences and say they are wrong, but yet they are right.  then you say they dont pertain to our situation.  it would pertain to any teams situation.  Is USF different than anyone else?  Recruits dont want to play for a coach they dont know will be there the next year.  how does that not pertain to our situation???? Sometimes you respond just to respond. Why? PS 94, we arent 16th in the Big East (place-wise) I believe we are like 14, give us some credit  There may be some guys out there up for the challenge but the smart ones will stay away. VCU was able to do what they did with Capel and now Grant because those guys saw how VCU will spend the money in order to compete in their conference. The young guys also realize that if they are able to be successful there then it will lead to bigger and better things(i.e OU). I believe ???VCU's coach gets paid about as much as we pay with the potential for a huge payday if successful. Don't you think it would be much easier to go in and compete in the colonial athletic conference against teams with similar budgets then it would be to come into the BE and compete against national powers that have budgets 2 and 3 times as large for the same pay? Unfortunately USF would be considered a dead end job where VCU is a stepping stone.

this is exactly why I do not think he should be around next year.  no recruit is going to play for a coach who is in the last year of his contract, with a poor track record, and no talks of a contract extension.  Mac hasnt improved the team "enough" to even serve his last year of his contract, let alone talk about contract extensions.  And no recruit is going to say yes to a coach who very likely will not be there next year.  We should try and find a well known young ex-player who is motivated and getting into coaching, or a successful mid major coach (like mac was, which didnt work out) who both, we can steal for a low price.  If our AD lives up to his hype I have all the confidence in his hiring decisions to find that next good coach for a cheap price.  hopefully the new coach can improve us and bring in a new excitement.  Which will fill seats, get donors and students interested, and eventually have the money to give him the extension he may deserve, in the future. how will a no-name coach fill more seats and bring in more donors? USF is not a career building job. any decent up and coming coach can see that we don't have the money to support a winning program in the BE just yet (i.e. Grant). We pay mid major salaries yet we expect them to compete against the best. Would you take a job that pays the same but you would be expected to compete against much better competition? How will they compete with schools that have budgets multiple times ours? Would you expect them to hit the ground running as far as recruiting goes? In the end we would be in the same situation regardless of who you bring in. The name may change but the situation remains the same. 16th highest paid coach in the BE + 16th largest budget in the BE + 16th best facilities in the BE = 16th place in the BE.

Joe, That was Coach K's big complaint when the ACC brought in Miami, VTech, and BC. He knows that football is the money maker and he knows that it will make it all the more difficult for basketball schools to compete with the kind of money the football programs are bringing in. The ACC (traditionally a basketball conference) realized this too. If we're smart, we will build our football program to it's fullest potential before anything else.

Build our football program first. That's where we make our mark. $4M dining hall and $6M practice facilities & softball upgrades should be priorities. Fund basketball further when we get to our first BCS game. Mac is doing as well as expected with his limited funds.

cyber, Tron disappeared in big games, BB was a head case from the start. They may be in some record books but I think you'll find many more are held by guys from UofL, Cincy, Marquette, etc. The much needed ongoing renovations will be great when they are finished but it's tough to tell a recruit to pick us over teams that have far superior facilities now. Not just arenas but practice facilities, work out facilities, dorms, dining halls, etc. UF spends $3M more on basketball per year then we do. We give Mac a car and a gas card while Donovan flies around ona private jet to recruit. Our resources are greater now in the BE but so are our expenses. Remember this is only our 2nd year. Did you see what our payouts were after the bowl games? not very impressive. We would have been better off financially playing a 1-AA home game then we were getting a $300,000 payout for the PJBowl after all was said and done. Yes I'm sure we could go into debt like some of the others but where will that get us in the long run. Fortunately those in charge know that football is the way to invest our money for the greatest return in the future. Once we feel that we have grown that program enough to start syphoning from it to fund other areas of our athletics, then I think you will see some great things. We definitely have the potential. Everybody just expects everything now. New softball stadium, new baseball field, new dining halls, new practice fields, etc. VTech is at that point where football is self sustaining and they are now able to invest in other programs. I put football first and foremost. That is where USF will make ourselves known. If we start sucking money from the football program in order to invest in basketball right now then I think you should expect our football team to top out right where we are. We have a long way to go in football in order to compete with the big boys. remember a new basketball coach that earns $500k more per year will expect more money for recruiting, assistant coaches, etc. etc.

Dining Hall. keep growing football. that's our money maker. keep winning. more season tickets. better facilities. better recruits. it's a virtuos circle.

we're a football school now. just like FSU and Miami. get used to it. hopefully one day we can afford to fund a bball program properly. until then don't expect much. Not really, there are still a lot of USF basketball fans. Many have just been turned off over the last 5-6 years. Get the right coach and system at USF and this could be a nice program which can grow and be ready to flourish with a little money added to mix. This is not a complete reclamation project. There is some talent on the team next year and USF has solid facilities, and best of play in the nation's best basketball conference. I doubt USf will ever be UNC or Duke anytime soon, but it can be a solid basketball school that can regularly make  the NCAAs & give its fans hope. solid facalities? did you know the city of  Louisville is building a $400M arena for basketball? occasionally make the tourny maybe. just like Miami and FSU. we would need a lot of money added to the mix. imagine if you and 15 neighbors all decided to build new houses. You all took bids and you settled on the lowest bid. would you expect your house to be better than any of you neighbors? especially a guy who is paying 5 times as much?? guess what. we have the lowest basketball budget in the BE. we get what we pay for regardless of who the coach is. look at what our former coach is doing. was he a terrible coach  because he didn't get us into the NCAA's or past the first round of CUSA? not neccessarily. he just didn't have much to work with here. Yes we have solid facilities that are going to get much better when USF finishes their planned renovations. USF has their own practice court right now but that too will get better based on the SunDome renovation project. Let's put it this way the Gators have the exact same arena and I don't see them looking to build a new building. USF can hire a good young coach for under $800K. If he has success USF then needs to decide what to do, but in the interim a new coach can stablize the program. It surely can't get any worse. Regarding Greenberg, Greenie has been quoted on his OWN website that the USF job helped him grow as a coach. Remember USF was his first "bigtime" job. Prior to USF Greenberg had only coached in small mid-major conferences so moving to the BigEast was a big step up. IMO, Greenberg is a better coach. Sure he has access to more resources at VPI, but a lot of the failures he experienced at USF were direct result of him not getting the most of his players on and off the court. That has NOTHING to do with money. I laugh everytime they say that he had nothing to work with in CUSA b/c he had players such BB, 'Tron, Reggie, Cedric, Scott Johnson, etc...who are all sprinkled all over the CUSA record books. Other than Ced and Reggie none of those players significantly improved after their sophomore year.  IMO, if you give CRM those players we would have likely been in the tournament a couple times, instead of the fat goose egg Greenie posted with all that talent. That is why I keep harping on recruiting in regards to CRM. If he could just get players into his system and keep them engaged I think USF would be at least competitive. Unforutnately, that has been his downfall. no offense cyber but the Gators have no where near the same facilities we do. The O-dome may be similar but their practice facilities, dining halls, study rooms, lounge areas etc blow ours away. I don't think our bball team even has their own workout facilities?? we can't afford to spend another $550k a year on a bbal coach right now. we are having a hard time paying assistant coaches, facility upgrades etc for the fball team. that is where we need to invest right now. besides bring ina guy for that kind of money and he will demand a higher recruiting budget, better facalities, more money for assistants etc. I believe the guys Mac has brought in the time he has been here are superior to the ones Greenie brought in the 7 years he was here. Mac has a guy in the NBA. we have been able to beat top 25 teams several times and we now play in a dominant conference where we can't pad the win totals against the bottom half of the conference like greenie did. those guys Greenie brought in that you say were so great were middle of the road CUSA players. none made the NBA and none would hold records in the BE. I love the fact they played for USF and respect what they did while they were here but they couldn't compete in the BE either. The fact of the matter is that money has everything to do with long term success. VTech made a committment to their hoops program. they have a well established football program so they can do that now. Mac had to ask for laptops so players could study on the road last year. do you think they have to do that at these major programs?? They recruit on private jets, have the best facilities and treat their players like royalty.

we're a football school now. just like FSU and Miami. get used to it. hopefully one day we can afford to fund a bball program properly. until then don't expect much. Not really, there are still a lot of USF basketball fans. Many have just been turned off over the last 5-6 years. Get the right coach and system at USF and this could be a nice program which can grow and be ready to flourish with a little money added to mix. This is not a complete reclamation project. There is some talent on the team next year and USF has solid facilities, and best of play in the nation's best basketball conference. I doubt USf will ever be UNC or Duke anytime soon, but it can be a solid basketball school that can regularly make  the NCAAs & give its fans hope. solid facalities? did you know the city of Louisville is building a $400M arena for basketball? occasionally make the tourny maybe. just like Miami and FSU. we would need a lot of money added to the mix. imagine if you and 15 neighbors all decided to build new houses. You all took bids and you settled on the lowest bid. would you expect your house to be better than any of you neighbors? especially a guy who is paying 5 times as much?? guess what. we have the lowest basketball budget in the BE. we get what we pay for regardless of who the coach is. look at what our former coach is doing. was he a terrible coach because he didn't get us into the NCAA's or past the first round of CUSA? not neccessarily. he just didn't have much to work with here.

I didn't miss the point. I actually agreed with you. I don't think we need a "name" either. The fact remains, we need money to revamp this program regardless of the age or experience of the coach.

we're a football school now. just like FSU and Miami. get used to it. hopefully one day we can afford to fund a bball program properly. until then don't expect much.

I like the idea of a young coach coming in and growing with the program. the problem is UF had much more to offer a young guy. Football was well established. They didn't need to invest in their football program like USF needs to in order to grow. They got to the point where they could afford to funnel all kinds of money into other athletic programs including bball. Donovan knew that the program would be well funded from the start. Someone like Grant saw that USF was not going to have the money to grow bball like UF did. I bet he would have taken our job if he knew we would give him raises every year and eventually upgrade facalities and have a booster jet to recruit with. He saw where the money was going to go and that is to football. Maybe someday we will get to a point where our football program is well enough established to siphon money from it instead of reinvesting everything into it. Donovan is a great coach and recruiter but he couldn't have achieved the same success here. The money available to him had a lot to do with his success.

I agree dabull. what a lot of people on here don't understand is that we are a football first school as we should be. we have a much greater chance of building a powerhouse program in football then we ever will with basketball. all of our resources should be directed there until we get to the next level. we were the only football program out of 64 bowl teams that is younger than 40 years old. pretty impressive since we are only 10 years old. unfortunately this comes at the expense of a lot of our other programs including basketball. the young up and coming coaches wouldn't even keep their names in consideration for the last hire (i.e. Grant) because they know this. we have the 16th highest paid bball coach with the 16th largest budget in the BE. where should we expect to finish regardless of the coaches name? If they are unhappy with this then they need to buck up.Until that is able to change we shouldn't expect much else. Mac is actually exceeding expectations if we finish any higher than 16th. Just ask the experts who pick us to finish dead last every year.