Jessie Evans
2000 NCAA
2002 NIT
2003 NIT
2004 NCAA
Robert Lee
2005 NCAA
So don’t say we shouldn’t expect to be in the Big Dance every other year. It could easily happen here. There were 3 teams in the SBC that went to the NCAA tournament over a 10 or 11 year period. WKU, South Al and UL were locks to be playing for the tournament berth. In fact WKU got an at large bid out of the SBC when we won the tournament.
Low expectations for a sport allow mediocrity to be viewed as success.
This one sentence perfectly encapsulates the current state of UL athletics.
Mediocre products get bad reviews.
Now we have Vic back here to tell us that we should just be grateful to have a product at all.
2900+ reported attendance in baseball last night against McNeese. You guys see 2900 people there?
Foote wrote an article in October of this past year about poor attendance at our football games, and he closes the article with this quote from Maggard: "That’s the nature of our beast. When you win, the naysayers are quiet and when you lose, they clink. But if I made my decisions based on that small percentage of people who think they’re helping the program when they do that when in reality they’re hurting the program, I wouldn’t be in this chair very long."
It’s important to note, as evidenced by this quote and by SM’s post, this is not an opinion of just Vic of or a group of outliers on RP. This is the prevailing mindset amongst our leaders and decision makers at the university and athletic offices. This is further evidenced by the fact that RR has essentially been blacklisted until they coalesce and rein in what they speak about.
IMO one of the things we are seeing here is a group who has traditionally been able to tightly control the messaging that is put out to the public grappling with a changing society where that is not so easily done. In previous generations, these conversations happened exclusively in private at the water cooler, on the back porch, at the tailgate, etc. Traditional media didn’t speak about these things, and, if they did, it would resemble the article I mentioned above. Predominantly filtered through administrators and university officials. Then some of the discussions moved to message boards. While a thorn in the side of the objective of controlling the narrative, message boards for a G5 athletic program are still a fairly niche section of the internet. Then people start communicating with each other in spaces on social media where huge sections of the population are. Now you have podcasts almost replacing radio programs or at least the way most people consume those shows. Guys like the hosts of RR are on Twitter and Facebook. You can find their show on YouTube and all the major podcast apps. People are, in a sense, cutting out the middle man of traditional sources and just speaking directly with each other.
I see the following miscalculations in the university’s approach:
1. They seem to be determined to push a square peg through a round hole. This is not 1987’s society. It’s not even 2002’s. We are in the year 2024, and our approach needs to reflect we understand that.
2. It is a lie or misremembrance to say the naysayers were quiet during the winning years. Plenty of people were on the record telling them the gameday experience was unacceptable even during the Napier years.
3. They seem to take the “negative” vocal fans as a disruptive minority. When your stadiums are 1/10 to 1/3 full on nearly every given day, your community, at large, is not reacting with your product offering in a positive way. They may not be vocalizing it, but they are communicating to you that your product is not worth their time and money.
I do have expectations. You should read what I post not what you read into what I post. In your instance those are always very different. You know, ___.
Not once have I ever taken the position that any fan, supporter, donor, etc. should not have the unequivocal right to post or distribute through whatever medium floats their boat whatever they want to disseminate.
What I have suggested, however, is that before doing so, it may be prudent to evaluate their respective goals and decide if they’re program, sport, university, etc. will be better off or worse of after such information is put out there in the public.
No more, no less. No cancel culture, no limitations, nothing.
The reality is we’re rarely in contention for a top 3 spot in the regular season, and just as rarely get into the Dance, or NIT. According to Maggard he expects the coaching staff to be in a real mix for the championship every season. His words and reality don’t mix.
Excellent post. Adapt or die.
Adapting:
1. Embrace the societal shift to non-traditional media by implementing transparent policies that give access to these non-traditional outlets. Example: more people watch Barstool employee Caleb Pressley interview people on Instagram/X/YouTube than Entertainment Tonight.
2. Deal with local social media influencers as a new form of advertising (CajunNinja, CookingWithBrit, etc.). Current students seeing a popular local account mention a school function (game/etc.) is more effective in 2024 than signage.
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