Messages

Enrollment is down, money is tight...


Simple math says there should be a bit of over capacity in residences halls.


Brandt almost caused me to not transfer to VU way back in 02 for being such a dump compared to the little state school I was attending at the time, and has to be a major detriment to recruiting students now compared to our competition.


Why not mothball or even demolish those old dorms?  Cuts maintenance and utility costs immediately, and better utilization of the overall residency hall capacity.  Maybe even let more upperclassmen off campus to free up the nice dorms for more underclassmen.

If Harre supposedly raised all this money for the Union and Library (timing wise the meteorology wing/KCH is that same era) why does the University supposedly have a pile of debt?


The library and KCH were donated by the Pampered Chef people, who seemingly disappeared as soon as the ink dried on their kids' degrees.  So basically Harre was left to raise money from a field of donors just for the Union?  So where did the debt come from?  I ask this as a student during the era where VU was a perpetual construction site and seemingly could pull buckets of cash out of thin air.

As far as we've tumbled from our peak of the pre-Lottich era (our peak was approximately 5 seconds before Bryce said "I love my job" while already having been in touch with Vandy)...


One could argue Butler has tumbled just as far.  Back to back runs to the finals, to an also-ran in their conference that everyone has almost forgotten about.  Kids they're recruiting now were barely old enough to remember those trips to the finals.


Those 4 straight wins that were admonished above kind of broke them.  From the finals to the CBI because of those 4, and then they ran off to the A10 then Big East where the travel expenses for the non-rev sports are insane.  Yet as their basketball fell back to earth they're no longer the trendy thing to do in Indy, so they don't have the basketball money flowing like they did when they started playing musical conferences.

Even Pittsburgh papers with stories on it with his Pitt connections.

Padilla's words and all the press release type stuff specifically hits on his successful basketball background.  About time the focus is coming to the crown jewel again.  I don't know what Lottich drives but he didn't need to pay extra for heated seats, his seat must already be feeling hot now.

It is about to come full circle...

Jamie Dixon left Pitt.
Pitt hired Stallings from Vandy.
Vandy hired Bryce.
We promoted Lottich.
Now Lottich can get fired by a former Dixon player at Pitt.

and new or incoming Deans (Engineering and A&S)

What happened to Kilpinen?

I don't want lame duck Mark doing the exit interviews as he was part of the problem...


If Padilla is as serious as he played in that video, he should reach out to these transfers.  It might be enlightening.

For the level of the typical athlete in the MVC and any other Mid Major, I've never understood the appeal of the transfer portal.  The typical transfer isn't going to go pro, that's just a fact.  The number of schools where transferring actually could turn you into a lottery pick can be counted on your fingers with probably a few left over.  So why would you not stay where you're most likely to get an education to make you successful afterwards?  In that regard, VU should be just about at "blue chip" level.  Unfortunately, alot of these young men don't have realistic expectations for life, and have bad influences in their ears...

The Valley is about as low travel costs as you're going to get at any division.  Buses and diesel fuel don't magically get cheaper at D3.  We're not like Butler (and next year Loyola) having to charter jets all over the eastern half of the country for all of our sports since we're in the Valley, and geographically Evansville is no worse off than we are in the Valley, with the new additions they're actually better placed than us.  On the rare occasions we do charter for MBB it's a clapped out old Brasilia which probably costs a fraction of the 737's Butler is chartering to go out to the east coast.

With all those financial shortcomings even compared to VU, look how much nicer of a venue Evansville is able to play in than we are.

Reading through all 3 pages of this we're missing 2 VERY big points here...


We were "competitive" and "in the game" for many of our losses.  This is true.  And most of them were a case of the coaching on the other bench overcame the talent on our roster.  Lottich cost us quite a few games this year with late game decisions and/or lack of decisions.  The Loyola game comes to mind, you could see that collapse coming at halftime.


And all the talk of Brandt Hall.  I made the decision to move 500 miles to transfer to VU from a little state school back home that I was commuting to, 20 years ago.  20 years ago Brandt was already behind the curve and almost caused me not to transfer to VU.  Brandt isn't just affecting athletic recruiting, it's probably a big driving force in the lack of enrollment overall.  Valpo isn't keeping up with the competition in that regard, and hasn't been for 2+ decades. 


In the early/mid 2000's we had a new library, union, the Huegli replacement, "welcome center," meteorology building, and other construction projects.  It was honestly a bit annoying going to college on a giant construction site knowing by the time that stuff got built I'd already be graduated and never get to enjoy most of them.  Also in that time, VU made arrangements with Compass Pointe for off campus housing and then that "Uptown" or whatever it was called was built as private partnerships costing VU almost nothing.  Why not more private partnerships for housing like almost all other universities do these days?  Law school land could be Valpo's "investment" with the developer to develop that housing.  With the significantly reduced enrollment these days, does Brandt even need to exist capacity wise?  Furthermore, with all of those buildings going up 20ish years ago, one would think that any/most notes/bonds taken on those projects are close to or already paid off by now.  That should free up some capital.

The video board was back when we were still in the Horizon, that's kind of my point about he has mailed it in since we got to the Valley. 

The amount of money that gets dumped into that football program has always made me shake my head.  Traveling with that huge roster to schools scattered all over the country, coaching staff, etc. just to hold some imaginary status of "football school."  I was there when they were even winning the PFL and the apathy was still abundant then.

Putting a new floor in the ARC was more required maintenance than anything else as it needed some work with the "rebrand" and all.  That was basically putting a band aid on the compound fracture that is the ARC compared to our Valley peers now.

Investing money into Brown Field and the tennis courts to then turn around and get rid of some of the main tenants of those 2 facilities was a lack of vision and planning.

All that investment for ESPN broadcasts, for our games to get buried online making VU less visible than our Horizon League days, because the product on the court isn't worth putting on the flagship broadcasts anymore.

But it could be worse, Mark could've bit off more than we could chew and moved us to a conference with huge travel expenses and have to charter jets to the east coast all the time like Butler 

That picture from the tweet says it all.  Mike Avery should be the top of the candidate list.


While MLB did do some good things for the athletic department many years ago, he also made the lazy hire of Lottich, extended him after a few flukey W's in Arch Madness 2020, and let's not forget the Tracey Dorow debacle.  There was also funding esports right as he cut mens soccer and tennis which was just a bad look even though esports probably costs a fraction of a real sport. 


And while he can't be blamed for the shortcomings of university finances, was he ever specifically out pushing a big campaign for athletics?  A specific campaign for the ARC situation would probably get more interest than the generic old "Crusader fund" or whatever it goes by now.  I've always viewed him as someone who was "just mailing it in" for several years now, basically since the ink dried getting us into the Valley.

Is the editing/deleting dissenters comments on the Athletics/Mens Hoops facebook pages a new development?  There seems to have been a pretty deep cleansing of the Bradley final score post.