Calling Pistol!

[Taj79]

Tim Finke, a four-star recruit and Billiken target, to Grand Canyon University????  Analysis please!

[DeSmetBilliken]

I’m not Pistol, but there was some discussion of it here: 

 

In short, it sounds like he had a bad summer and his recruiting stock dropped.

[thetorch]

His stock dropped a lot over the summer being in a shooting slump.  He had a bad situation on his AAU team with another star overshadowing him.  He also has a stage dad.  Scared off the bigs, they rescinded their offers months ago after his father cut a prominent AAU player off their HS team.

[Pistol]

@Taj79 I recommend going back and reading every single post in the Recruiting - 2018 thread for full analysis.

We did talk about it there recently, but Torch gets it right, from what I have seen about Finke.

Finke was a top-100 recruit all along - as a matter of fact, he was fringe-top 25 as a sophomore, then fringe-top 50, then he was 77th, then 88th, and finally dropped out of the top 100 and eventually top 150.

Despite his sliding ranking, prior to dropping off the list altogether he was still considered a 4-star player with a lot of options. He had some great offers and narrowed his list to a top 5: Illinois, Oregon, Notre Dame, Ohio State, and Vanderbilt. Then two months after announcing his top 5, he got an offer from Tulsa and that's when I first realized something was up. He shut off his Twitter feed and stopped talking to the media. He got a couple other offers that were lower-level programs than Tulsa. The rumor was that he was going to hunker down, focus on his game, have a huge senior year, and get back in the good graces of higher-level programs for the spring. But then suddenly I saw the news that he was going to visit Grand Canyon, and a week later he was committed.

I still don't understand how this is the best decision for him, and why waiting until spring wasn't an option. This article has some hints as to how it happened - he said his main interests were Illinois and Vandy this summer, but that communication dried up after Underwood took over - but it doesn't give the rest of the story, why suddenly none of his offers were fresh anymore. The article also mentions that Majerle made a strong, quick sell and that the Finke family has relatives in the Phoenix area. (GCU is in Phoenix, about 3 hours from the actual Grand Canyon.)

One of the things TheChosenOne and I talked about with Finke is that he seriously bulked up over the last year, as his ranking was dropping, and eventually he kind of lost his shot. So it makes you wonder whether trying to bulk up to a college-ready physique ruined his mechanics.

It's definitely one of the stranger stories in the class of 2018, which has had a lot of unusual recruiting stories.

[CBFan]

Thanks for the link Pistol good read.

Grand Canyon appears to be a new and up and coming D1 program.

[NextYearBill]

not sure where to post this, but: MODERATORS.... Can i please have my post reaction limit increased.... trying to give daps to my bros and im getting blocked. thanks 

[majerus mojo]

31 minutes ago, NextYearBill said:

not sure where to post this, but: MODERATORS.... Can i please have my post reaction limit increased.... trying to give daps to my bros and im getting blocked. thanks 

Yes plz. Too much good content!

[Taj79]

Thanks Pistol.Yeah, I could have read the whole thread but picking up the bat phone and using the bat signal was MUCH better.  Props dude.

Grand Canyon is Dan Majerle, right?  Maybe the Finke family sees hope there for the stock-plummeting 4-star.  But picking GCU over his previous list seems unheard of to me.  Again, you da' man.

[Pistol]

52 minutes ago, Taj79 said:

Grand Canyon is Dan Majerle, right?  Maybe the Finke family sees hope there for the stock-plummeting 4-star.  But picking GCU over his previous list seems unheard of to me.  Again, you da' man.

Correct. The program has been smart about a lot of things, and having Thunder Dan selling the program is one key. I still think the for-profit nature of the school makes it in no small part a sham, and I don't think they should be allowed to compete in the NCAA, but we'll see how it plays out in the long run. Clearly this for-profit institution sees the value in athletics as a recruiting tool for its potential student body, a lesson that administrators in a lot of not-for-profit D-I schools could learn from.

[kwyjibo]

51 minutes ago, Pistol said:

Correct. The program has been smart about a lot of things, and having Thunder Dan selling the program is one key. I still think the for-profit nature of the school makes it in no small part a sham, and I don't think they should be allowed to compete in the NCAA, but we'll see how it plays out in the long run. Clearly this for-profit institution sees the value in athletics as a recruiting tool for its potential student body, a lesson that administrators in a lot of not-for-profit D-I schools could learn from.

I see Grand(y) Canyon as a good argument against the profitability of college sports (at a minimum it proves there are huge barriers to entry).   If college sports were so profitable there would be nothing stopping for-profit schools starting big sports programs or for even starting a for profit college to jump on the gravy train.  Yet, there is only Grand Canyon and they WANT to be non-profit.  Sports, and that also involves a lot investments in athletes outside of athletic department funding are way less profitable than usually acknowledged (the bulk of sports are funded by university losses and student fees not athletics revenue).

Also, Grand Canyon only has one potentially revenue sport (OK, some others are potentially revenue sports but are not likely in the near future).   They seem to have a well run athletics department but they are not a profit center.  They have men's basketball and they are not making that much money.  Dan Majerle comes at a bargain (he has bars in the area that benefit from him being in the local news) so that worked out.  I think part of it is about being a recruiting tool as the university is not terribly selective and has a large online division.  But that strategy only pays off when your goal is superficial academic gains.  Sports can bring more attention and applications but they tend to decrease the quality of applicant.  I would say that sports then might hurt a bit but that is not the case either as getting more applications has become more of a way to game the USNews rankings.  So, sports success could be a minor help to your USNews rankings but you would not actually make the university better off (something for-profit universities would likely be have to be honest about).

Sports are more likely to be a better draw in the actual student athletes themselves (better high school achievement is correlated with sports achievement) than in the spectators wanting college sports.  This is the argument made by people I have talked to in elite college athletic departments (admittedly some of these are D-III).  For the Ivy League, sports are important financially but that is about maintaining connections with wealthy alumni (rowing/crew programs are extremely expensive and are huge money pits except for the fact that crew alumni give generously and adamantly demand crew resources are maintained).  Sports are also seen as a way to draw good student athletes so the notion of revenue becomes less important (Ivy football works out in that it gets alumni wallets flowing, gets lots of smart kids a chance to keep playing, and maintains enough of curiosity factor that NBC sports has a TV deal with them).

[Pistol]

31 minutes ago, kwyjibo said:

I see Grand(y) Canyon as a good argument against the profitability of college sports (at a minimum it proves there are huge barriers to entry).   If college sports were so profitable there would be nothing stopping for-profit schools starting big sports programs or for even starting a for profit college to jump on the gravy train.  Yet, there is only Grand Canyon and they WANT to be non-profit.  Sports, and that also involves a lot investments in athletes outside of athletic department funding are way less profitable than usually acknowledged (the bulk of sports are funded by university losses and student fees not athletics revenue).

Also, Grand Canyon only has one potentially revenue sport (OK, some others are potentially revenue sports but are not likely in the near future).   They seem to have a well run athletics department but they are not a profit center.  They have men's basketball and they are not making that much money.  Dan Majerle comes at a bargain (he has bars in the area that benefit from him being in the local news) so that worked out.  I think part of it is about being a recruiting tool as the university is not terribly selective and has a large online division.  But that strategy only pays off when your goal is superficial academic gains.  Sports can bring more attention and applications but they tend to decrease the quality of applicant.  I would say that sports then might hurt a bit but that is not the case either as getting more applications has become more of a way to game the USNews rankings.  So, sports success could be a minor help to your USNews rankings but you would not actually make the university better off (something for-profit universities would likely be have to be honest about).

Sports are more likely to be a better draw in the actual student athletes themselves (better high school achievement is correlated with sports achievement) than in the spectators wanting college sports.  This is the argument made by people I have talked to in elite college athletic departments (admittedly some of these are D-III).  For the Ivy League, sports are important financially but that is about maintaining connections with wealthy alumni (rowing/crew programs are extremely expensive and are huge money pits except for the fact that crew alumni give generously and adamantly demand crew resources are maintained).  Sports are also seen as a way to draw good student athletes so the notion of revenue becomes less important (Ivy football works out in that it gets alumni wallets flowing, gets lots of smart kids a chance to keep playing, and maintains enough of curiosity factor that NBC sports has a TV deal with them).

Their president wants to be a not-for-profit; their shareholders disagree. There are steps that can be taken to be a non-profit university and GCU has failed to take those steps and will not meet the criteria for the foreseeable future.

While the athletic program itself may not be profitable, it's still a recruiting tool for students at large. There are those that might not even realize GCU is a for-profit school. They're trying to make it look like any other college.

[cheeseman]

2 hours ago, Pistol said:

Their president wants to be a not-for-profit; their shareholders disagree. There are steps that can be taken to be a non-profit university and GCU has failed to take those steps and will not meet the criteria for the foreseeable future.

While the athletic program itself may not be profitable, it's still a recruiting tool for students at large. There are those that might not even realize GCU is a for-profit school. They're trying to make it look like any other college.

Why do you think he wants to be a non-profit? - the same reason Lindenwood is a non-profit.  Non-profit allows all kinds of positives for someone who wants to play a little fast and loose.  Look at the Red Cross and Goodwill - something like 90% is spent on administration - salaries and extras and nobody questions it.  Making GCU even more formidable in their drive to the be a basketball elite.

[Pistol]

3 hours ago, cheeseman said:

Why do you think he wants to be a non-profit? - the same reason Lindenwood is a non-profit.  Non-profit allows all kinds of positives for someone who wants to play a little fast and loose.  Look at the Red Cross and Goodwill - something like 90% is spent on administration - salaries and extras and nobody questions it.  Making GCU even more formidable in their drive to the be a basketball elite.

An article I recently read about GCU stated explicitly that he wants to go non-profit and the for-profit board disagrees with him.

[brianstl]

21 minutes ago, Pistol said:

An article I recently read about GCU stated explicitly that he wants to go non-profit and the for-profit board disagrees with him.

What I read is the problem with going non profit is that they were going to outsource to many core functions of the university.

I don’t get the big deal with their for profit status.  If you have read some of the recent studies(one out of Harvard in paticular), 50% of all colleges will be out of business in a decade.  If Grand Canyon doesn’t deliver value to their students, they will join a bunch of non profits as historical footnotes.

[thetorch]

Rumors abound that Finke's dad will be on the coaching staff at Grand Canyon.

[billikens747]

4 minutes ago, thetorch said:

Rumors abound that Finke's dad will be on the coaching staff at Grand Canyon.

Ah, Grand canyon went the ol Mizzou route

[Pistol]

23 minutes ago, brianstl said:

What I read is the problem with going non profit is that they were going to outsource to many core functions of the university.

I don’t get the big deal with their for profit status.  If you have read some of the recent studies(one out of Harvard in paticular), 50% of all colleges will be out of business in a decade.  If Grand Canyon doesn’t deliver value to their students, they will join a bunch of non profits as historical footnotes.

I would encourage you to read up more on for-profit colleges, then.

I know higher education can't keep going the direction it is (skyrocketing tuition costs, increasing debt loads, etc.), but for-profit colleges are not the answer.