MVCfans.com

And clearly you don't understand my point either. Sad. Fan support can help you win games, it can't help you avoid hiring Matt Doherty as your next head coach.

Good luck in the AAC.

The sad thing really is that I think that Stickboy and BirdsEyeView are really agreeing. Fan support is important but not a guarantee that success continues. However, the support helped N. Carolina recover from a bad hire.

WSU will not be able to steal a coach from a Blue Blood Program like North Carolina did, but can compete with non-blue blood P5 programs for coaches (Jamie Dixon went from Pitt to TCU is an example). But I would argue that WSU's next coach needs to be a good fit to have a vision for what can happen at a program like WSU (like Marshall did) who probably won't have football, but enjoys wide support from the entire city and wants to compete with the BEST. The same people who are paying Marshall's salary are willing to pay for another "winner" like Gregg. The next coach's salary won't begin at 3 Million but likely will begin at 1-2 Million and increase if/when it is deserving.

Wsu won't go low mid-May again. Too risky. VCU has had two coaches since Shaka smart left. Both of them have been smart's disciples to keep the program going in the same direction and similar style of play. I imagine wsu will do the same. Either that or go for a major coach that has fallen out of favor. My guess? Chris Jans will be their next coach if Marshall ever leaves. I wouldn't bet on Marshall leaving now that they're in the AAC, however. Why? He's getting a bump to $3.5-million this season with incentives added in he could make up to $-4-million. Even at 3.5 he will be about the eighth highest paid coach in all of college basketball. And, he will get annual raises to keep him at that level. The ONLY reason Marshall leaves if his dream job opens up or someone like Roy Williams retires and NC offers to pay him like $7-million. No reason to go to a major program just to go if you're already getting paid like you are at one. If that was the case he would have already been gone.

Just a couple clarifications:

Charles Koch affects Wichita State in many more ways than just a coach's salary.

"During the 25m Roundhouse Renaissance in 2002, initial pledges totaled nearly $13 million (including a $6 million gift from Koch Industries Inc.)."

http://www.bizjournals.com/wichita/prin ... 5m-to.html

"Koch Industries Inc. and the Fred and Mary Koch Foundation have given $11.25 million to the university to fund several academic and athletics initiatives. The gift, announced Tuesday, continues a long-standing relationship between Koch and Wichita State."

A couple years ago 3G decided that the locker room needed a BCS face-lift in order to wow high level recruits. The cost for the makeover was 250k. A private donation appeared almost instantly to make that happen.

As stickboy has mentioned, nothing happens without community support, but nothing also happens without big-time donations. Charles Koch should be lauded for his support to a university he never attended (MIT), but he ain't the only fella with deep pockets. There are literally dozens and dozens of boosters that routinely offer up the 6-7 figure checks. If Charles was donating in amounts relative to his net worth, we'd be getting checks in the 100 million dollar range. I'm still hoping that when he kicks the bucket he leaves an endowment of 5 billion or so - firmly establishing the university for decades to come.

As far as basketball success is concerned, it wasn't all money that brought us to this point. Wichita State has been experiencing highly successful periods since the '50's. There's many reasons for that, namely, that the Shockers are the main event in town. Support has always been high for that reason. By support I mean butts in seats. As was already mentioned, athletes like to play in full buildings for obvious reasons. Performance is bolstered by the energy of a large crowd. This is a definite recruiting advantage.

After our most recent athletic recession (90's), we hired a sensational AD in Jim Schaus. Under his leadership, we entered the latest iteration of a "Golden Era". Everything was in place. All he needed to do was instill confidence in the beleaguered community and the well started pumping again. That's Wichita State's advantage. Even though the well may occasionally stop pumping, it never runs dry.

A couple final points:

Turgeon is a job hopper. He would take the first decent offer he received as long as he had Deputy Dog's permission (Roy Williams).

Gregg Marshall is an entirely different cat. He turned down several low-level BCS jobs while at Winthrop where he coached 9 years. He's famous for saying you don't mess with happy and how many hamburgers can a guy eat? He's educated in Economics so he understands clearly the importance of a free market. His belief in such philosophies no doubt endeared him to Charles Koch and makes him keenly aware of what his market value is. Gregg Marshall to Wichita State was not a done deal until he received many assurances. He DID NOT choose this job for the money. He truly believed the program fit him as a person - which it does. After his first horrific year, he went up to the AD and asked him to fire him. The stress of adapting to a new program and reviving it to Gregg Marshall standards no doubt is a strong disincentive to move again. Gregg likes to win and win for the sake of winning. The money will take care of itself. He would be wholly unhappy as a coach in the ACC finishing 3rd every year no matter what they paid him. He wants to be #1. He was #1 in the Big South, he was #1 in the MVC, and he expects to be #1 in the AAC.

To say it's a great day to be a Shocker is an understatement.


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Just a few more ego-boosting tidbits to supplement stickboy's comments about ticket revenue. For a pair of front row seats (front row seats were only sold in pairs), you had to pay $26,000 in addition to the ticket price. This was quite a few years ago...

Just recently (FVV era) there were a few prime seats scattered around the arena. Demand was high so there was a sort of last minute seat license fee created to extract the full value from the remaining seats. These license fees raised something like 500k. We're only talking about a handful of seats people. This is NBA style s***.


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