It shouldn’t take 16 years for a turnaround.
This times a billion. If they’re not gonna do it for a Mason legend, they may as well disband the program b/c we’re never gonna get where we want to go in this era by pinching pennies. He’s too good a coach and Mason is too big to be satisfied with just hanging around the fringe of relevance.
It does when you hire coaches like Hewitt (washed up looking for payday), Paulson ( in over his head )and English ( uses us as stepping stone)I think Tony will get us in soon if he stays and we pay him.
I completely agree. We ponied up for Tony contract wise at 1.8, so now its time to build rosters that are competitive as well.
One year turn arounds are the rare exception; that is why you could only list a handful of examples over two decades to support your case.
Affordability of higher education has been a statewide concern among elected folks, not just at Mason, and increasing student fees would be politically unpopular when kids are graduating with crushing debt loads. As someone who is paying off ~$150k of my daughter’s loans from a Va state school, I get it.
But isn't this talking out both sides of our mouths. We all know T. Boone Pickens ain't walkin' through that door to fund our athletics budget. People say we should seek funding from businesses, but those business leaders aren't in those positions because they just throw around money without clear objectives. They want to see a return on their investment. Usually, the funding comes about as a combination of leaders within that business seeing a return and, usually more importantly, that business leader having a strong connection to the school (usually an alum). It's tough to build a donation base when you don't have that built in alum network at the higher levels within the business community. I think we're getting there, but the school is still not in that mature stage. I guess I'd be less irritated by the "let's not raise fees" crowd if I hadn't heard of other VA schools (see JMU, ODU, vcu) doing it to help athletics.
If I haven't done it before, I would like to congratulate you on the Mike Rhoades hire.
I went for $400.00 per semester. At the time that was a lot. My most expensive textbook (hardback) was $12.95 I think.
Wasn’t that 50 years ago?? If so, the 62.5 equivalent in 1975 dollars is 10.33, so a little less than the cost of a text book.
This makes too much sense not to do it. You could increase the fee by $150 a semester, allocate all of the $ to basketball NIL/rev share and nobody would even notice. An additional $300 a year is a drop in the bucket given the cost of tuition/room and board, but it would make a massive difference for the basketball programs’ ability to recruit championship-caliber rosters.
I don’t remember the exact number, but it seems unlikely an additional $300 a year would push us over. Not like we’re talking about $1,000 per student.
