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Ford's recruiting recruiting results have not been acceptable since the the Yuri/Jimerson/Hargrove class in 2019. The bad recruiting results actually started before NIL. That said, Ford's recruiting in retrospect has been overrated all along. We all just bought into the hype because as fans we wanted to believe. He only had one great recruiting class. The class with French and Goodwin. Even that class was marred by taking risk with questionable character transfers that almost destroyed the Ford era before it even really got started. The "best recruiter ever at SLU" has actually recruited less talent to SLU over his time period than Grawer, Spoon and Majerus. Just stack up the names they brought into the program and compare them to those Ford did. It really isn't close.

Is there any possible way to defend what Ford is doing here? Going into this year, I was pro ford. I didn’t think he deserved to be fired after last year, clearly regret that thought process now. Theres no way to spin what has happened this year. We’re 231 in the NET and the laughing stock of the conference. If Fords not fired after this year, then I will never watch another SLU basketball game again.

Chris May and Travis Ford have not pushed the national profile of the Saint Louis Billikens forward under his tenure. That’s all that needs to be said.

I just wanted to stop by this thread on the 2023-2024 season to say that I am not enjoying the 2023-2024 season. Thank you for listening to my TED Talk.

Shot clock violations out of two consecutive timeouts is all you need to know about Travis Ford.

A portion of the endowment is not liquid. SLU’s endowment is used for disbursements for designated funds, but the endowment serves a large purpose as collateral for debt issuances that they use to finance capital projects like new dorms or academic buildings.

I agree - it looks better on merch and it shows up WAY better on the graphics that are used online, for TV highlights, etc. And just anecdotally, kids seem to like it - I've seen way more kids wearing SLU gear in the last few years.

Other than the insane out of bounds call by "TV Ted" we got very favorable foul calling in that game. They whiffed on one or two Loyola fouls, I need two hands to count all the reach ins we committed without repercussion. Please don't start blaming stripes for this. What a joke. Bad teams that made bad mistakes blame refs. Even CTF didn't blame the refs for this debacle.

I’ve watched 2 games this year. Lifelong fan. Over the past 10ish years I rarely missed a possession. My engagement as a fan is at an all time low. I almost feel guilty. Im just so checked out on TF

Travis has a mini conniption fit every trip down the floor. No wonder players lack confidence

When was the the last time a starter level player on an at large bid NCAA tournament team committed to SLU out of high school? The last such player was Gibson Jimerson and it was almost 5 and half years ago when he verbally committed to SLU.

now you are just being unreasonable. the champions center was planned and fund raised and construction started before NIL was ever dreamed would be allowed. i am sure if we could turn back time things would be different. but to blame that on Chris May is reasonable.

I will try to simplify this. First , The Bills did not look ready to play a t the opening buzzer. They were out of sync....Like a first game of the season.....especially the first half of the game. Let's look at the key factors.... Watson had a career night...that 1 game that far exceeds...he came in averaging 9.7 pts /gm...tonight 24pts....His slash coming into tonight was a very weak...39/31/63....Tonight he was 70/ 71/ 56...not even close to a sustainable level. Throw in 6 rebs and 4 steals and you have a career night. BUT..... Even with all that... this game was winnable...How? By The Bills playing just an average Bills game...Let's look at the numbers. 1...TOs...especially the first half...The out of sync Bills had 11 TOs....That is what they average for a full game...Let me repeat that ...The Bills had an entire game of TOs in 1 half....Hard to come back from that.... Again, let's simplify...points off TOs...Bills 14...Loy 21...the difference is 7 pts...difference in game pts ...7...the difference in the game 2..Slash....Projected (which is close to the Bills season slash)...46/39/73...actual slash...42/35/42... we shot the same from FT line as we did from the field...never a good thing...time to break it down. Here is what The Bills needed to do to make the projected average season slash....1 more 2/ 2 more 3s/ and 6 more FTs ... all that equals...2+6+6=14pts. What this means is that even with Watson having a career night AND a dismal TO stat the Bills still could have won by 7 with an average shooting night. Making some FTs alone probably would have saved the day....42% is embarrassing. Bottom line ...If the Bills just shoot average tonight ...they win.... even with a career Dez night plus butter fingers.

Lol "we'll get started on that tomorrow...." Well the game was today Travis.

3 pt defense is comical really

Can’t blow a lead when you don’t have one.

40-33 Biilkens lead at halftime. TO’s are 13-11 with SLU giving up more, but points on TO’s 17-16 is pretty even. SLU winning the rebound battle 14-9, and shooting 62/50/71. Keep going Billikens!

You could fire ford solely based on the defense alone

I was teaching in London one semester, years ago, when my kids were young. We signed our boys up to play with one of the local youth "football" teams (our older son had some talent, but we're talking about when they were still under 10 years old). Fulham was still in one of the lower divisions at the time. My older son's team was selected to play a scrimmage during halftime of one of their games. What a great experience and great memory. He can say that he's actually played on the field at Craven Cottage. The Billiken connection makes the memory even more special.

Why is this in blue?

I can definitely use your tickets. Will message you.

I don't disagree. I just disagreed with Soderball's interpretation of Roy's post. Economics wise, you are correct that paying the buyout may be the better financial decision. I also agree with your take about Ford offering to lower his salary. What would he make at his next job? Not $2.5M. Probably more like $500K to $750K. It would be better to take decrease now to bring in better players than to lose that much of your money stream over time. I know he would be owed more from this contract, but if he plans to continue coaching long term, it might be a better call.

If you interpreted Roy's post as saying people should not be upset or that folks are not allowed to express outrage, then I think you misread his post. Read it again. He simply says that the situation may stay the same for reasons other than performance. I also question this attitude that is out there that there's a segment of fans arguing with you and telling you not to express your outrage. Other than a very few, I don't see people expressing that idea at all. You need to stop raging against the imaginary machine.

I'll add that the energy Thames and Hughes Jr displayed was a positive. Both showed they belonged on the floor with the game on the line. I do wish Jr would find a mid range jumper. All 7 of his attempts were behind the arc. And of course both need to get better at the FT line.

Also he's going to have to put his house on the market at a time when interest rates are high and B-Roy is retired. But the cost of living near Berea College will be much less. I hope Realtor Troy Robertson gets him a motivated buyer.

pistol the BoT is made up of not only the wealthy but also most creative and hard working men and women in the area. if anyone can figure it out to use the unrestricted money they can do it. Other schools have thought outside the box to enhance their athletic department and successfully did it why cant we. we never hear of any of the money from the endowment fund being used for anything. i am tired of this trophy aspect. it does us no good just sitting there growing. when a new project comes to light, we fund raise from ground zero instead of utilizing the unrestricted money. the old adage, "that's not the way we have ever did it" or just simply "we cant" is a loser attitude. and right now we are a loser. if the bigshots refuse to address it, why should the fans even continue as fans. it's a whole new world in division one college athletics and the billikens are about to be left in the dust. from my viewpoint if the BoT isnt willing to try to access the money that no one is bucking up individually, then lets get the process started to move down to D3. we are apparently nothing but losers that do not deserve a credible athletic program.

He could do it and would still lose. Dude has won a NCAA tournament game in 27 years of coaching. He could have Lebron and still F it up some how. He's a loser, and will always be a loser.

You keep bringing this up and I keep telling you it's not going to happen, but I figured I might as well try to explain why we can't pay high coaching salaries (or NIL) out of the endowment. 1. The endowment is not a single fund. An endowment the size of SLU's is likely thousands of individual donor fund accounts that generate spendable interest in perpetuity. Endowments exist to provide guaranteed sources of funding, not as a rainy day fund. 2. Fundraising campaigns generally fall into 4 categories: 1. student support (scholarships, fellowships, etc.), 2. academic program support, 3. faculty support, and 4. capital projects. Category 1 is generally the largest, and the most important as college becomes increasingly unaffordable. Growth in the endowment fund needs to keep up with tuition increases to ensure that scholarships are as valuable in the future as they are today. 3. Many funds within the endowment are restricted. However, even unrestricted endowment funds represent donations from individual donors and if they see them getting used in ways that could be seen as irresponsible - how many would see buying out a bad coaching contract, for example - it's going to create discontent among the last group of people a university wants to alienate. 4. In most states, there are laws that protect donor intent and ensure prudent use of gifts given to institutions to be available through investment and investment income. In other words, if the school were to use endowment funds/income for buying out a contact or paying an exorbitant salary, it would open itself up to possible (let's be honest, probable) litigation. 4a. In fact, there are legal terms established when funds are accepted into the endowment that say that the funds must be invested according to the school's investment policies, only a certain percentage of annual earnings may be spent, earnings over the allowable spend amount must be reinvested, and funds can't be disbursed if the investment loses money until it is back above water. 5. A lot of funds are not paid out in full to the university at the time they are announced. Someone may make a $10 million gift that pays out over 10-20 years, for example. I'll sum this up with an example that I find helpful from Inside Higher Ed: "Let’s say an institution invests its $50 million endowment, and the spending policy allows the institution to spend 4 percent of annual earnings. If 8 percent was earned (or $4 million) in a particular year, then $2 million can be spent, and $2 million will be added to the $50 million endowment. As a result, there is $52 million to invest the following year, and if the return is equal to the previous year, then there will be $2,080,000 to spend, and the endowment grows to $54 million, and so on. OK. So now you understand that an endowment of $50 million may only add $2 million to the annual budget. You think, “Hey, $2 million is nothing to sneeze at. I can think of a lot we could do with $2 million.” But one must remember that the original $50 million endowment is made from a bunch of smaller endowments. Most of these smaller endowments have restrictions about what the money can be used to fund. Theoretically, the breakdown could look like this: 50 percent is restricted to scholarships, 25 percent to programmatic support, 15 percent to athletics, 8 percent to specific positions and 2 percent to unrestricted general purposes. In this scenario, that would mean there is only about $40,000 that is unrestricted (can be used for any purpose)." tl;dr - We can't use the endowment to buy out Ford's contract. Your line "so get that out of our heads" is accurate. I hope this helps.

Jordan Goodwin and Hasahn French masked a lot of Ford’s deficiencies. Travis owes them millions of dollars, because there’s no way he has a job here still without those two.

Reece Davis on College Gameday said, "If nobody wants your coach, eventually you won't want him either."

Nostalgia is all we have now

The logo is actually not bad, I’ll defend it. The mascot is what happens when you let one person run wild with no oversight.

i understand the board's negative feelings. Trust me, i am very unhappy as well. I was saying after his first year at SLU he was a terrible floor coach, practice coach and talent developer. But I defended him solely on his recruiting ability. He has consistently had more talent on his teams from an overall viewpoint than any Billiken coach in my fandom in my opinion however his overall coaching abilities never maximized what talent we had. So why is this roster all at once so lacking in talent compared to years past? Simply because the recruiting angle has died. It is all about the money now and the warm and fuzzy "make them want to be here" approach he has been successful with over his entire career to bring in players, is all but gone now. The players want to get paid and if SLU doesnt some other program will. Therefore, Ford is worthless now in my opinion. However, while I havent see it, the very likely rumor is he has quite the contract that will be very expensive to buyout. It will involve him working off his contract for a few years before it will be possible to get rid of him unless one of the whales steps forward and pays. Then keep in mind, there is the matter of the replacement coach. How much will that cost? What length of time will that commit be? What's the point if SLU wont go all in with the portal and the the paying of our players? So if you consider, SLU apparently wasnt going to play in the bigtime aspect of NiL, so what crumbs we got have definitely not panned out to compete. We also believe that he didnt get fired this past spring because the buyout was prohibitive. With those two financial near certain aspects in mind, what makes any of you think anything is going to happen soon? Oh slu has the means, a multi-billion dollar unrestricted endowment fund is just sitting there and never used. But apparently SLU needs that for flash and bragging rights. So get that out of our heads. We are screwed for the near future. I have started to believe we arent even a D1 program with the new circumstances. I doubt i would become a rabid D3 fan like I am nowwith the Billikens, but as long as the powers to be at SLU continue to ignore our wants, there isnt much us common folk can do and all the complaining and threats, etc, arent going to help. in all liklihood, only total ekkertime absense and caring will make them even consider anything drastic compared to where we are now. i'd suggest finding another passion.

Probably due to Drew’s uncle Teddy being on the officiating crew. I knew that was going to be an issue for us right from the jump.

This is going back but Gary would call in at every show. Both of them would go at it on strategy. Recall one conversation, Majerus offered courtside tickets to an upcoming game to Gary and Gary refused. It was funny how Majerus responded. Recalled another show when Majerus and Rammer went at. That was kind of ugly.

In a battle of the worst coaches in the A10, Ford emerges with the crown.

I just want to see some kind of offensive scheme to get guys open. And on D see shooters challenged on 3’s and on drives to the hole. It’s not on the players, although we may not have top 50 talent, but it’s on how they are used. There is no discipline on either side of tha ball. We play helter skelter. While everyone else is playing Chess. He’s a recruiter but not a teacher/coach.

If I train for a marathon and then two weeks out from the race I get the flu for a week and don't get out of bed I will still be in marathon shape on race day. How are none of these guys in shape and why does everyone have some sort of injury? Is Travis Ford Munchausen-by-proxy or does our strength and conditioning coach have no idea what they are doing?

There's no more weekly coach's show right? I know Majerus didn't want to do it but he's like a Hall of Fame coach and could big time in a way that Ford can't. How are we paying $2.5mil/yr and that doesn't include a weekly coach show? Almost every coach in the country has one. This guy avoids so much scrutiny. Just #Blessed I guess

I think the dolphin may retire this season. He’s gonna be busy.

If you support ford, you don’t support slu (someone may have already said this)

If Ford is the coach next season then it’s clear that basketball is not a priority to Saint Louis University

Not an update but good to see Mike Crawford at the game tonight.

Shows how bad Loyola is to be fair. And I’d say we got a favorable whistle that half too

So says Captain Obvious.

I’ve seen a lot of lazy starts under Travis. This may take the cake

Fire Ford at halftime. Completely not ready to play. Blow it up

Ok sorry misread it. Yeah 6 makes better sense. So not as agregious. Bottom line SPUMAC sucks I hope they lose.

My newest add to the collection is your MLS Champion keeper!

I know. My comment was that it's nice someone from the media was able to provide us with something as simple as Parker's status. I think most of us would love to hear more from and about our players/coaches. I listened to the Harriman interview before the SLU game a few weeks back. Great stuff. Give me more from the people in the arena.