Changes need to come to the athletic department
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Kansas has been known as a basketball school for quite sometime now. Fresh off a 14th straight conference title and a trip to the final four. But I’m kinda tired of being crappy at most other sports. The softball sits at 0-15 in big 12 play and hasnt made the NCAA tournament since 2014, the women’s golf team finished dog last at the conference tournament, the women’s basketball team has shown slight improvement but been terrible for several years. The women’s soccer team finished in the bottom half of the conference standings. The baseball finally ended 11 game losing streak yesterday (how Ritch still has a job is mind blogging), the football teams struggles having become a national laughing stock. I’m just wondering when we can be better across the board. I realize most schools aren’t great to multiple sports and we have a good track program, men’s golf and women’s tennis team but I want more.
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Don’t forget we can watch all these teams pile up their losses on Metro Sports TV and ESPN3 from any where in the world…except if you are the State of Kansas and the KC Metro Area and in return half a dozen men’s basketball games and a bunch of women’s volleyball games are also blacked out.
Zenger must go…zing the Zenger…
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I get the games on cox. Depends on if you want to spend xtra money. My choice. I don’t like Zenger, either. Some fans don’t have the choice.
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@kjayhawks Volleyball is doing well.
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One argument is that the enormous basketball driven petroshoeco contracts and NCAA Carney revenues subsidizing of the minor sports has eliminated all incentive to need to try to make the non basketball sports competitive. They get their monies regardless, so they just keep operating ineptly. And Zenger and Self just stay focused on doing whatever it takes to keep the basketball driven petroshoeco revenues and March Carney revenues optimized and forget about the minor sports. Even football has become a minor sport at KU.
Money rules D1.
And as Jay Bilas said, the ADs and the NCAA have turned amateur sports into the biggest money machine in all of sports, and basketball’s March Carney is the biggest single revenue generating event in sport.
Successful minor sports would just dilute the marketing message of KU basketball.
The role of the minor sports in D1 may just have been reduced to giving the children of big donors and the children of those involved in promoting the basketball program something to do.
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While the NCAA tournament is the NCAA primary money maker, the apparel contract between the so called shoecos and colleges is driven primarily by football and not basketball. Look at the top 20 most valuable contracts and you will see that other than KU who does not even make the top 10, the rest are colleges where football rules; even at KU with arguably the worst football program in Division I, it generates more income than basketball since TV contracts generate the most money and football, not basketball, drives that train.
If basketball would drive the apparel contracts, schools like Villanova and Duke would be at the top and they are not even in the top 20 and UK and Michigan State, both with top tier basketball programs are tied for #20.
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Bring back Mangino and get rid of Zenger. Two big fixes right there.
