cgeldmacher

Getting someone who had a Tennessee offer and who visited Illinois and Iowa is fantastic. I don't even care if she didn't have offers from Illinois and Iowa and the Tennessee offer was stale, this is a great get by Tillett.

They kicked the field goal to satisfy the boosters who had bet on the game, not players or staff. This is something that has been done long before the prevalence of online sports betting.

I don't know much about this kid, but I love that he thanked our program for its "hospitality this weekend" and that his parents are in one of his posted pictures.

Sorry, just saw your reply after I made mine and realized I made the same point you did.

The bolded section is the problem with your take. There is no guarantee that we keep a freshman that has a breakout freshman season. We can, and probably will be, outbid by big schools on any freshman we have that looks like a star. The transfers we bring in are coming here because they know where they are in the big picture of the basketball world and they chose SLU and the compensation package we offered. I don't think we should be all transfers either. I think that there is a proper balance that the staff should develop.

But that's the point. We are talking about putting basketball in its own much better basketball only conference. It sounds like it might be about a wash for the other sports.

Is it better or worse than the A-10 when you don't include basketball?

I feel confident that teams like soccer, baseball/softball, volleyball would compete just fine in the Missouri Valley.

Playing in Maui once compared it playing a Big East schedule every year is not even close. I would take terrible non-conference schedules and no non-conference tournaments every year if it meant being in the Big East.

I agree that it is not a 1:1 comparison, but if we had the opportunity to get into a basketball only conference with Gonzaga, St. Mary's, VCU, Dayton, Wichita State, Memphis, Loyola, etc. I would take my chances with the A-10's rules. If they want to kick us out for putting our basketball teams in that basketball only conference, so be it. We'll find somewhere else for out other teams to play, maybe the Missouri Valley. In fact, if our basketball programs are in this new conference, the Missouri Valley might be a better landing spot for our other sports anyway under those circumstances.

This is off topic for this thread, but in another thread there was a discussion about SLU getting into a basketball only conference. Some posters had concern about being in a different conference than our other sports. To illustrate that this is not an issue, check out this list. West Virginia is ranked #2 in the soccer poll and their soccer team is listed in the Sun Belt Conference. Their other teams play in the Big 12. Also, #7 Western Michigan's soccer team plays in the the Missouri Valley Conference, even though their other sports teams play in the MAC. #19 Kentucky's soccer team also plays in the Sun Belt Conference.

Sonoma or Sedona?

I have no issue with this argument. Not trying to put words in your mouth, but the idea that if we had spent our investable money in the basketball team more wisely, we would have more funds coming out of that program (tournament credits, additional tickets sold, etc.) to be used on upgrading all of our athletic programs makes sense. That argument wasn't raised until just now. My issue is with guys on this board picking every sports team we have at SLU, in different threads, and complaining that they don't have upgraded facilities. What's next, are we sacrificing our values because the track team doesn't have an indoor training facility. Here's how all this gets fixed. Invest (wisely) in the men's basketball team. Let that team earn the needed money for the entire Athletic Department. Then begin the process of upgrading everything else. I'm pretty sure the bigger donors have been squeezed as much as possible at this point. The money needs to start coming from within.

No. I don't want the absolute best for our tennis team if that pulls funds away from the sports I care much more about.

That's not a bad way to look at it. It has to be a long term play. Invest in the sport that brings in the money (men's basketball) and then use the tournament credits we earn to upgrade the other sports. Upgrading tennis now doesn't help the overall AD budget in the future. Investing the men's basketball program now, does help all of the other sports down the road.

I do care about tennis. I play tennis, and it is/was the primary high school sport of two of my three children. Tennis is great. However, if Chris May had two million dollars of extra funds, and he had a choice to build tennis courts on campus or spend the money on basketball, soccer, or possibly part of the costs of new baseball/softball stadiums, I am going to choose those other sports every time.

I do know how it is, because two of my kids played high school tennis at two different schools and both schools used Dwight Davis as their home court for practice and matches. For one of my kids, Dwight Davis was about the same distance away as SLU is. For the other, Dwight Davis was much further away. They often drove down to find out last minute that a practice or match was canceled. Neither of them were receiving any scholarship money from their high school to do this and only did because they enjoyed playing the game. Having said all of this, I understand the challenges faced by our tennis players. However, they sign to come to SLU knowing this is the situation. If they are good enough to receive a scholarship (even a partial one) at SLU, that means they were also good enough to play for other schools. They chose SLU knowing that this would mean practicing and playing off campus. #spendthemoneyonbasketball&soccer

By the way, are we going to do this with every sports team we have? By this, I mean complain on threads that this poor [fill in the blank] team is not taken care of by our Athletic Department and doing so is not in line with our values. I think we have heard complaints the facilities about field hockey (I know that is being fixed), baseball, softball, and now tennis in just the past week. I agree with slufan13's sentiments above. Let's take care of our marquis programs first. Our second priority should also be our marquis teams. Also, our third priority. Everyone else is in line after that. I frankly don't care if a kid getting a scholarship to SLU for tennis has to go to the very nice facilities at the Dwight Davis Tennis Center to play his or her sport. That kid is getting his education paid for by playing a sport that no one SLU attends or, frankly, cares about.

I'm saying that some schools' sports teams are forced into a conference that isn't ideal based solely on football considerations. What was proposed above by Aquinas, which is something I have proposed as well, is creating a conference just for basketball teams, meaning each of the schools would leave their other sports in the conference they are currently in, but their basketball programs would leave for the newly created basketball only conference. This happens much more than you would think for other sports. For instance, Fordham has a water polo team that competes in completely different conference since the A-10 doesn't have water polo. Davidson and George Mason have men's wrestling teams. Several A-10 schools have women's gymnastics teams. None of these are A-10 sports, meaning those teams all have to join and compete in different conferences. The point being that it is not unprecedented to have one of your teams in a conference that is different that the conference you are in for all of your other sports.

I disagree that is a specious argument. In fact this comment "(n)o matter what we spend on Field Hockey that has nothing to do with Basketball spending. That is not how the AD works," if flat out incorrect, not just specious. Are you suggesting that the Athletic Department does not have a budget or that there is no limit to what donors are willign to pay? Every business, and the athletic department is a business, has a certain amount of funds that it has to decide how to allocate. If money is spent on Field Hockey, it means that same money was not spent on either basketball program, either soccer program, or the baseball or softball programs. It's very easy to criticize and say the athletic department is being sexist by not taking care of our field hockey team and that doing so is not in line with SLU's values. I'm sure you will then complain about not having a new baseball stadium or complain about some sort of budgetary shortcoming on men's basketball spending.

Exactly, which means they may be forced into a conference that is not ideal for basketball, because they are trying to accommodate football. These are programs that may appreciate putting their basketball team in a better basketball only conference.

I've been saying this for years. It solves the problem of schools that want to be in a certain league for purposes of football or all other non-revenue sports. I would try to get Gonzaga, St. Mary's, Wichita State, Memphis, Dayton, VCU, Loyola Chicago, Umass and then maybe St. Joe's, Rhode Island, New Mexico, Drake. There are probably several others I'm not thinking of that would thrive outside of the football conference they are forced into.

So, are you okay with the athletic department diverting funds from the Men's Basketball program so that the field hockey team spending comes in line with Jesuit and NCAA values?

Then let's poach Gonzaga and St. Mary's

I firmly believe that most of the costs that have been driving up tuition for the past forty years are unrelated to the actual education that students get. I bet if you run a comparison of what professors were paid forty years ago up to now, you will see that this figure has probably kept up with inflation despite the fact that tuition costs have far outpaced inflation. The issue is that kids, and their parents (I include myself), decide on a university for reasons that have little to do with how well they are going to be educated. They need to see beautiful green spaces, flowers, gorgeous buildings, statues, lakes. They want to know that they will live in modern, state of the art dorms. They want expensive recreations centers (see the topic of this thread). They want to know that they will eat meals in something that resembles the food court at a mall. They big auditoriums that allow for entertainment to come to them. None of this has anything to do with their education, but these are the factors driving kids toward certain schools versus others.