Positives about Today's Game (and KU football in general)
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You guys are awful.
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There are legitimately some positives with this team.
Ke’aun Kinner is an absolute stud. If KU were a better team that won’t pretty much always be playing from behind, he’d have a real shot at being all conference this year.
There are WR/TE’s that can run good routes and catch passes. KU hasn’t really had any of those since the 2009 season.
And the OLine isn’t nearly as bad as many thought they would be. They’ve done a pretty good job of opening up lanes for Kinner and giving Cozart time.
The special teams units are much more competent than in recent years.
There’s absolutely no chance KU loses a game next Saturday.
Cozart reverted back to form after a pretty good opening day for him and the defense couldn’t stop a pee wee team right now.
I legitimately think this team is a QB away from being a bowl contender today. The offensive personnel of this team aside from QB (and Willis or Stanley could be that answer with some experience and development) isn’t nearly as far behind the rest of the Big 12 as many (including myself) though they would be. As long as Cozart is QB though, KU is going to get throttled on a weekly basis.
I’ll end with one last positive, Rutgers lost at home to Washington St. who lost at home to FCS Portland St. opening weekend. I still wouldn’t bet on KU keeping it within 20, but that’s at least a glimmer of hope for KU to steal one and end that road losing streak that goes back to my senior year at KU.
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@nuleafjhawk Its a shame that KU football is so tragically awful. I mean, its almost laughable how bad they are. Poor KU football. Maybe they should liquidate that team and train them all how to play rugby instead.
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@Texas-Hawk-10 by next week
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@Lulufulu have u watched them play?
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@Texas-Hawk-10 Agree about Cozart. I’m on the fence about Kinner - he looks very good so far and I want to be very excited about him - but his accomplishments have been against an FCS team and a team called Memphis. I’m anxious to see how studly he is against Oklahoma, Okie St, TCU, Baylor, KSU, well - you get the idea.
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@Khubar_Jayhawk You’re addressing the team, right?
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I was frustrated last night (if you weren’t, you probably shouldn’t watch KU sports at all) - but notice there was no name calling or calling for heads. Yet.
I’m just trying to vent and keep things light.
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@nuleafjhawk Don’t beat your head against the wall. KU football will not win any games barring a fluke. Just look for the positives. The team is in building mode for 3 years. If they aren’t a .500 team in 3 years then vent with both barrels. For now it’s expected. Save the bulk of your passion for b-ball. With any luck the b-ball team will have as many losses as the football team has wins…
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@nuleafjhawk Kinner really is that good and durable. He was the JuCo POY lasy year and is living up to his reputation so far. His numbers are absolutely going to suffer once KU gets past Texas Tech because KU going to be so far behind pretty much everyone during the second half of their schedule.
I really do think KU can at least keep 3 of the next 4 competitive enough for Kinner to get 20 or so touches. Rutgers just lost at home to Washington St. who lost to FCS Portland St. opening weekend. Iowa St. still doesn’t have an offense, and Texas Tech might have just as bad a defense as KU. I’m not predicting an upset in any of those 3 since 2 are on the road, but there’s at least enough evidence to suggest KU can at least be competitive in those 3 games with a Baylor thrashing mixed in there.
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@Texas-Hawk-10 I hope you are right, a lil hope!
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@Texas-Hawk-10 I appreciate your enthusiasm and loyalty and I hope you’re right. One comment on the Baylor game - I didn’t see (and still haven’t seen) the final score, but I watched until about midway through the 3rd quarter and Baylor REALLY struggled with Lamar. Heddy Lamar? Never mind…
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@nuleafjhawk Baylor ended up hanging 66 on Lamar. I’d be shocked if they didn’t do something similar to KU’s defense.
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@nuleafjhawk Here is another positive. KU football will absolutely have the best record in the Big 12…at losing consecutive games.
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@Lulufulu You talking all time or just single season? KU has a ways to go to match the all time (29 games, Baylor), KU’s longest Big 12 losing streak (I believe that got to 27), and KU can only tie the single season streak since ISU went 0-9 last year.
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@Texas-Hawk-10 Yeah, the whole Big 12 season should be a disaster ( I wish that weren’t the case, but it sure seems that way now) but I’m really not looking forward to Baylor and TCU.
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The goal for Beaty this year should be to identify which freshmen he has that can become legitimate Big XII contributors. Other than that, the more important things this season are happening at the high school level.
KU remains severely talent deficient, particularly on the defensive side of the ball, where we lack either speed, depth or both at each position group. It is critically important that KU get some depth this offseason. We can’t compete with the kind of numbers that we have on the roster right now.
If KU can find 35-40 legitimate contributors this season and add a legitimate Power 5 recruiting class each of the next 2 years, they will have a chance to compete in 2017.
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@Lulufulu
Interestingly enough KU actually has a really good rugby team.
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@jayhawkeyes I’ve heard they’ve got a world class dodgeball and kickball team too!
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@jayhawkeyes Oh! Hey, I did not know that.
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@nuleafjhawk Dodgeball!!! That movie is hilarious.
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I just saw an article on Yahoo! News ( I didn’t read it ) - it was titled " The Three Most Overrated Teams in College Football"
I’m guessing we weren’t one of them…
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Well, if things are bad around the KU program, at least it’s not the dumpster fire that’s Rutgers football.
Our next opponent has just had half a dozen players kicked off the team for various and sundry “alleged” crimes including burglary, assault and domestic violence. And its coach got a three-game suspension for pressuring a teacher to change a player’s grade (though he still gets to lead the team during weekday practices). Part of an athletic program that’s got a laundry list of violations that could almost qualify them for the Death Penalty if the NCAA were so inclined.
In their last game the Scarlet Knights got beat by Pac-12 doormat Washington State. Tonight they have a game with Penn State, so they may have their act together (relatively speaking) by the time they play us. But it’s worth hoping…
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Hiring KU football coaches is analogous to painting the Golden Gate Bridge.
Scraping and painting reputedly start on one end and by the time the other end is reached, it is time to start scraping and painting again on the starting end.
As soon as you complete the long process of hiring the coach and promoting him his first season, it is time to start looking for another coach.
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Beaty’s future probably depends largely on what the adidas conveyor can deliver. Those that argue that shoes don’t matter in football as much as in basketball appear to be ignoring a 900 pound gorilla and a 500 pound gorilla with shoe contracts with athletic departments in D1.
If it is remotely like adidas’ basketball conveyor, we can at least infer it is very likely a smaller talent pool than available to Nike schools, however the system may in fact work. There was a time when naivety ruled about PetroShoeCo impacts on basketball, too. Now we know better, because as basketball fans we have discussed the issue and posted data and links to stories that appear to refute the naive notions of the past regarding shoe influence on basketball. Because most here are KU basketball fans first and foremost, the PetroShoeCo network in football has not been explored nearly as much, and so my hunch is that perceptions of PetroShoeCo influence remain in a naive state. I know I have not taken the time to explore the legacy of Big Shoe in football yet. And I have not read any posts here that suggest that anyone else has either. If they have, I certainly hope they begin sharing the mechanisms and dynamics of what appears a plausible PetroShoeCo-Agent complex shaping football talent distribution in a likely different way than in basketball.
And for many years now I have intentionally avoided much discussion of football out of a moral objection to the game that I have held, since brain scanning research made clear that almost any impacts in football likely cause brain damage. I have argued that football ought not be being played by schools, when school officials, athletic directors, and coaches, are apparently aware that the sport is apparently triggering brain damage to one degree or another in almost all that play the game.
But the reality is that football is such a big money attractor on so many levels (note: I did not say money maker, because it appears that a number of programs perhaps lose money, depending on how revenues and costs are defined and accounted for in the apparently near Hollywood-like accounting systems of D1 501.c3 athletics) that it is not going away any time soon. Further, the 501.c3 economics of football and basketball seem hopelessly (perhaps tragically so for basketball) intertwined. And so to continue on in naivety about football’s PetroShoeCo dynamics is to imperil basketball indirectly, because the funding dynamics of both sports appear to be intertwined. For example, and on the most naive level, going to alumni and corporations to raise money for buying out failed football coaches contracts appears to reduce, or at least delay, to some degree or other the ability to go to those same alumni and corporations to raise monies for basketball needs. Thus, if we are to do right by the KU Basketball program and legacy, then we as basketball fans unfortunately have to begin to understand how football programs ought effectively to be run, and advocate for such, rather than continuing to let recent apparent incompetence reign in football management. In infer in the beginning, rightly or wrongly, getting KU football on more effective footing must be important from a basketball point of view, or Bill Self, a busy basketball coach apparently fighting a lot of fires of his own in what appears the PetroShoeCo influenced recruiting wars, would not waste his time with the football issue.
Until football is either dropped on moral-medical grounds, or gotten on more effective footing, as a point of naive beginning, my hypothesis is: Beaty is not just trying to dig out of the hole that Zenger and Weis created, for whatever reasons they deeply augured the hole. Rather, Beatu is also trying to do it dipping into a likely smaller pool of Power 5 grade players that can be difference makers than coaches not at adidas schools.
It appears rather like climbing the rock face of El Capitan in Yosemite with one hand tied behind his back; this I suspect may underly part of why Weis threw in the sponge and tried the juco approach. He perhaps figured the available PetroShoeCo talent pool for him to recruit was so small that it would perhaps take ten years, not five, to dig out. And Weis probably saw no ten year horizon to his career. So, still hypothetically speaking: maybe he and Zenger got together and talked real politik about the situation, and decided that the only win-win for both KU and Weis was for Weis to try loading up on jucos to see if Weis could get one .500 record and announce he was leaving to spend more time with his family, which decoded to another assistant’s job somewhere, or maybe another head job at some small school somewhere without any pressures–the kind that Turner Gill went to after KU appeared to run him.
By doing this, maybe then the program might have been made a little more attractive to Beaty, who had perhaps been lined up by that time of real politik discussions. In a best case scenario, Beaty would have a little bit of momentum to build on, and a season to start adding his 4 year recruits-- Beaty being early enough in his career to follow a long term building program. And in a worst case scenario, there would have been no lasting influence of Weis that would obstruct Beaty’s long term rebuilding plan either. Alas, the best laid plans of mice and men often go astray and we got the worst case scenario came to pass. Woe is Beaty. But at least he didn’t get stuck with a bunch of inadequate four year players that had to be carried as dead weight, or run off in an unsightly act.
Thus, the positive, hypothetically speaking, is that this team, bad as it is likely to be this season, and perhaps worse next season, has an appropriately aged coach with recruiting connections to appropriate regions of the country, to make the 7-10 year slog to normalcy that KU must make. And no one needs to have any illusions that any short cuts are there to be found. This is the football equivalent of a twelve step fan. KU football is now sober for a few months. Winning is ONLY defined in staying sober one day at a time. Winning is something that comes only with long term sobriety.
Bill Snyder did not start the rebuild of Kansas State. I happen to know this, because in childhood I was a closet KSU football fan even as I rooted for my Jayhawks. My father had graduated from KSU, so I wanted to connect with him some how regarding KSU and football was something that seemed to do no harm to KU.
Doug Weaver was probably the guy that started turning KSU football around. He was there for a decade, or so. They were terrible, because back in those days you really had to cheat to recruit players and cheating involved hard cash under the table, or used cars sold cheap, not just a pair of shoes. KSU and Weaver were in no position to cheat, so Weaver had a chance to imprint some character and stability on the KSU program and at least an awareness of what would be required in football to become successful. Weaver’s long term failure made clear to KSU leadership and alumni that good intentions and intelligent coaching were not enough to win in big time college football. You had to have facilities, and you had to have lots of players and a franchise quarterback. The stadium would cost a lot. The players would not come cheap. And you had to get very, very lucky on the franchise player.
Enter Vince Gibson a defensive coordinator from University of Tennessee and one of the most thoroughly southern football types I ever say. He approached the KSU problem the southern way. He was willing to do whatever it took with the rules, the alumni, and the players. His practices were previously unthinkablely savage to northerners, but were quite routine in the south. Gibson was actually flabberghasted that Kansans were appalled at his spitting on his players and having them crawl under chicken wire from opposite directions and fight past the oponent. But they gave him his football stadium. And he got them the players. And some how Lynn Dickey was drawn to Manhattan and Gibson turned the program around to .500, even getting a trophy win or two, before being run out for being a sadist. But it was Gibson that really showed the foundation of what it took to win at KSU. After Gibson, if I recall correctly, there was a restoration of properness with old KSUer Ellis Rainsberger, who proved there was no going back. Football was dirty business. It was a harsh world and the successful in it were largely NOT the kind of men you wanted to meet your mother, or your sister. You didn’t even want them to meet your pals on the golf course. Football coaches–not the window dressing types, but the ones that actually got down in the face masks of the players on the practice fields, and went out and lied to the players and parents about what was in store for them in college, these were a hard and even revolting breed to university types. This was not the days of Tom Harmon and Fielding Yost. These were the times of the long shadow of Bear Bryant who nearly killed players in a patch of desert outside College Station just to develop a reputation as the meanest sunnuvabitch that ever blew a whistle. These were the times when head coaches like Dr. Tom “albino” Osborne were beginning to pretend to be learned gentlement, or at least buttoned down corporate types in public, while looking the other way at Caliban-like assistants feeding their players every kind of performance enhancing steroid they could find and feeding them raw meat and protein shakes, paying them bounties for injuring opposing players. and lining up borderline co-ed nymphonmaniacs for visiting recruits. This was how it really was. This is what Pete Gent briefly tried to blow the whistle on that was then deftly washed down the football media memory hole to be replaced with the pasteurized, homogenized horse shit that passes for sports reporting ever since. But I digress.
Bill Snyder is the guy that walked into Manhattan prepared for him by Weaver, Gibson and Rainesberger, from the corrupt Hayden Fry Iowa program experience at North Texas State and knew the time was ripe in Manhattan for the gentlemanly approach with brass knuckle staff and the ag and oil driven recruiting scheme. Don’t get me wrong. Bill Snyder is the leper with the most fingers among this class of coaches. He is now almost a dinosaur. This class of coaches that dawned the scholarly demeanor, like Bill Walsh, or the business suit and Brooks Brothers coat of Tom Landry, or the “Dr.” of Tom Osborne, and maintained the “whatever it takes” assistant coaches,were all the vogue for a time.
Snyder had to have what had happened at KSU before he got there to make it work. KSU had to be savvy and willing to put on the gas masks to achieve what they achieved.
One question today for KU is has anything happened in the past to lay a foundation for a Bill Snyder type?
Another question for today is: Is David Beaty KU’s Doug Weaver, or Bill Snyder?
Still another is: Where is KU on the evolutionary time line?
And another: how can it play the PetroShoeCo politics and economics in recruiting to begin moving forward?
And a final one: when are we KU basketball fans going to wise ourselves up about the football Big Shoe dynamics, so that we can better advocate for basketball? I don’t want to do any more digging. I am old and tired of digging. But I am going to see if I’ve got any juice left in the battery and at least start.
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@jaybate-1.0 I was wondering recently about the petroshoe connection in div 1 football. I see a ton of UnderArmor being worn by teams. And, I have heard that UnderArmor is moving up in the ranks. Its interesting even though I have minimal interest in football as a sport.
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@jaybate-1.0 Shoe companies don’t have significant impact in football recruiting. There are two primary reasons for this. One being that shoe companies don’t make model shoes for football players like they do basketball. When was the last time you heard anyone say they just bought the newest Beast Mode or JJ Watt model shoe? This means they don’t invest the hundreds of millions of dollars endorsing football players like they do basketball and soccer players.
Another big reason is that there is nothing in HS football that is comparable to the AAU in basketball. In football, you play for your high school and that’s it, there’s no club team with an apparel sponsorship steering you towards a particular school. Nike, Adidas, and Under Armour just don’t have the influence in college football recruiting that they have in college basketball.
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So hope you’re right, but that’s kind of what I used to hear about basketball recruiting and petroshoecos; I.e., just no influence.
But can’t football players sell shoes just as easily as basketball players? And didn’t we estimate recently that Nebraska, for example, got an allotment of something like 12,000 pairs? And aren’t there way more football players that might be paid through shoe sales than hoopahs?
As Deep Throat once said to a reputed former ONI liaison officer between Admiral Morer and General Al Haig that some how just coincidentally showed up a year later as a cub reporter on reputed CIA asset and WAPO editor Ben Bradley’s city desk, “Follow the money.”
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@jaybate-1.0 Think about how shoe companies were able to gain such influence in basketball. Signature shoes for pro athletes and sponsoring and outfitting high level AAU programs.
Also think about which sports can the average 40 year old go out and play down at the Y or in a rec league. Basketball and soccer are about it which is also why those two sports have the richest apparel endorsement deals. People can actually go to a store, buy a signature shoe for a basketball or soccer player and play in a rec league on the weekend wearing those shoes along with other player endorsed apparel. That’s not the case with football.
Who in football has a highly desirable signature shoe? I honestly can’t think of anyone who does. The big 3 might have a T-shirt slogan like Beast Mode or Johnny Football for an individual football player, but how many football players do you see in commercials for Nike, Adidas, and Under Armour? Direct TV promoting Sunday Ticket really is about the only place to see a football player other than Peyton Manning promote something. People aren’t buying helmets or spikes to wear on the street so the marketability just isn’t there with football apparel and players because there aren’t any over 40 football leagues down at the local Y like there is for basketball and soccer. Another thing that hurts the marketability of football players is that they wear helmets that cover their faces. How many football players do you think you could identify just by looking at a picture of them in street clothes? I guarantee for the vast majority of people including myself, I can identify a lot more basketball players than I can football players (and I watch way more football than basketball) and then even with the football players, it’s almost exclusively QB’s. Calvin Johnson is an all time great WR, but I wouldn’t be able to pick him out of a line up because he wears a helmet. So if I was a marketing executive, why would I pick someone most people wouldn’t recognize unless he’s in his Lions uniform to be the face of an apparel marketing campaign? Football players just aren’t as marketable as basketball players so apparel companies aren’t going to spend the money to endorse a football player that they would a basketball or soccer player.
And the other point I brought up, what in HS football is even remotely similar to AAU basketball? 7 on 7 will probably get there one day, but at this point 7 on 7 teams are still just the skill position players of HS teams. I wouldn’t be shocked if in the next 20 years we start to see 7 on 7 club teams and that’s when Nike, Adidas, and Under Armour will quite a bit more influence on recruiting, but even then it won’t be near the level of influence that it is in basketball because elite college football recruits rarely have the immediate impact that elite college basketball recruits which hurts marketability and the rate of elite HS football recruits being busts is also much higher than elite basketball recruits so there’s a much higher risk of losing money on a kid in football than basketball.
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@Texas-Hawk-10 & @jaybate-1.0 I’ve been trying to use my brain (without much luck) and get away from googling every damn thing I think about, but are there some cartoon superheros or mythological beings that use footwear as their “thing”?
If so - even that won’t help our football team. Maybe we should try rollerblades. Or cross country skis. Barefoot? Cowboy boots. (good ankle support and keeps our feet out of the …poo). I don’t think there’s anything we can put on our feet to make this team any better.
The good thing is, I won’t be calling for Beaty’s head after the next game. Or year. Or 5 years. I have arrived. I don’t care any more. I would LOVE to see football be a viable sport at KU, but since it almost never has been and nothing seems to change as far as the administration goes - it probably never will be.
So, I go to work every Monday ( except for the beloved bye weeks! ) and hang my head, bite my tongue and mark on the calendar that we’re another day closer to basketball.
By the way, in basketball I think we could wear rollerblades, cross country skis, go barefoot or wear cowboy boots and STILL be great.
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You appear to be looking for the same model of petroshoecos influence in both sports and leaping to a conclusion that since it isn’t there, then there is insignificant petroshoeco influence in football and football recruiting.
That appears a frequent error in forensic inquiry and analysis.
IMHO, it shouldn’t likely be the same model, if there were one.
It would likely be different, wouldn’t it?
Why?
Because the legacies and path dependencies and future opportunity sets and characteristics of the two games are different, so the models of influence should likely evolve differently. Football proliferated differently in its early days than basketball did. Influence and/or corruption (note: influence is not necessarily corrupt) have legacies and those legacies are tied up in the legacy of the activity in question.
There is no reason to expect the same model of influence and/or corruption in both sports.
There is only reason to expect some model of influence that culminates currently in the petroshoecos’ vast spending on college teams, and perhaps most on football.
Hypothesis: the petroshoecos spend huge sums of money on football and other sports in order to have significant influence over football and other sports and their talent distributions, because it helps their businesses.
That is one nascent hypothesis for a board rat, and one giant nascent hypothesis for board rat-kind!
The way I pieced together the basketball model of influence, even as incompletely as I may have, was to go back and read the old muckraking books on basketball corruption in the 1940s to 2000, before such books apparently stopped being written , and then looked to see if the NCAA had ever resolved the old corruptions. When it appeared they had not, then it was just a matter of tracing the paths forward of those old unresolved corruptions to the present day–to consider probable evolutionary paths and track familiar actors recurring in the drama over time.
It’s hard to foresee a possible research process for football much more than that. And I don’t care enough about football to go through it again for football alone. But as I said, basketball’s future appears tied up with football, so I might try, or perhaps encourage others younger than me to try to map the legacies to see where they lead and what they suggest about the situation today. Even if it were to yield only a little knowledge, that would be a lot more than we appear to know today.
Likely the time to start with football is way back in the late 1800s, when it was reputedly instituted in part to begin to prepare a cadre of young American men for military and corporate service in the then planned new American overseas empire. Follow it forward. Hard to say what the paths forward would imply today, but the potential advantage of this genealogical approach is we know what the present looks like and so one pioneers forward from the past toward a known landmark in order to get to know that landmark in a meaningful way. And if this approach were to falter, there would of course be others.
We have huge sums of money being spent not just on basketball, but on football, too.
It is not enough to say that there is no significant petroshoeco influence on football and football recruiting, simply because football shoes don’t translate to street shoes the way basketballs shoes do.
What one needs to keep in mind is that this is not just about global petroshoe markets, but about petro apparel markets.
It is about the whole enchilada of human clothing migrating toward more petro-apparel globally. And on a global scale, even just a half of one percent shift in global apparel distribution toward petro apparel and away from materials like cotton, linen, silk, and leather, etc. would probably be a big deal.
A key question is how does football, a conspicuously American game, fit into this petro-apparel marketing process? Why should the petro-shoecoes subsidize American football at all? All the reasons that you give are reasons why American football should not be being subsidized at all. And yet what we observe is that American football is among the major beneficiaries of the largesse of PetroShoeCo contracts to American college athletic programs.
Is football being feathered to get to basketball? or to track? or to all sports?
Why spend so much on American football, when no one else plays it around the world?
The reason for the geneological inquiry into the legacies of influence and/or corruption is simply one potentially fruitful approach to accrue some knowledge that might help us answer such questions in a substantial way, rather than in simple “no’s” that do not adequately account for the spending on the game of football.
At least that is how it seems to me so far.
Rock Chalk!
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I am in a different frame of mind than you, which is relatively rare.
I wish football were banned, because of the head injuries that neuroscience and brain scanning apparently suggest happen to all that play the game, not just the acute cases of concussions and paralyses that sadly occur so often.
But it isn’t being banned for complicated reasons tracking not insignificantly to money.
Next, football, the game I wish would go away, or wish a way could be found to play it without brain damage, is entwined fiscally with the greatest game ever invented–a game where some brain damage occurs, but in which the game was at least designed to minimize brain damaging impacts.
Thus, I am left with the unhappy situation of having to think about the game of football, and the various economic dynamics that it has that may blow back onto basketball.
But I certainly understand and have in the past shared your feelings about KU football.
At the same time, because of the massive changes in cash flows into both sports as a result of TV, realignments past and future, sports apparel contracts, merchandizings, gaming, player payment, etc., I no longer believe KU is hopelessly doomed to being terrible in football, because it is in the heart land in a small population state, any more than OU, or Nebraska, are. A great legacy is a great advantage to OU and Nebraska, but KSU proves lack of a great legacy can be overcome sometimes with a great coach. And I believe now that all the structural change mentioned above makes reshuffling the deck on who is who in college football even more feasible…with the right conference, conference commissioner, chancellor, AD and head football coach. There has been so much structural change that there is a window of opportunity that did not exist ten years ago when KU had a brief uptick under Mangino.
I am not saying I wish for a great football program, because with that would come even more inertia toward a brain damaging sport and even more complexity for KU Basketball to deal with.
But I am saying it is now feasible for better or worse.
I believe that we have been watching a tug of war among KU alumni and private oligarchy in the state to “get control” of KUAD by many means. We have been watching KUAD be subjected to the stresses of regime change from various factions. There appear many reasons for what we have been witness to since Scalpinggate, but there is one big one that seems immediate and concrete. A lot of the big money sharks appear to be swimming around Mt. Oread and positioning for the inevitable renovation of Memorial Stadium. A good KU football program could easily justify an 80,000 seat stadium. A top notch football program could justify a 100,000 seat stadium with some kind of weather control. This is the kind of construction opportunity that comes around once in a blue moon in a midwestern state. This is an ox to gore on a potentially huge scale. The small thinkers and non football lovers look at Memorial Stadium and see a small renovation and the addition of a few seats. Big thinkers and football lovers can foresee a project of many hundreds of millions of dollars. It is hard to say who will win out. But it is often unwise to bet against the development sharks, unless a very organized opposition forms to obstruct them.
From a basketball fiscal stand point, wouldn’t it be great to have a 75,000 seat domed football stadium to play KU’s pre-season games in? And play the conference season in AFH? Such a domed stadium would end the threat once and for all of expanding (and wrecking) Allen Field House. It would give KU basketball not one, but two of the greatest college basketball venues. It would give KU basketball a connection between its past and its future for the rest of the 21st Century.
For reasons such as the stadium and field house issues, I now think it is encumbent on KU basketball fans, if they can stand it, to think about football at least from the point of view of its impact on KU Basketball.
I have not come down fully on the side of supporting a resurgence of KU football. I am just trying to acquire some of the knowledge that appears needed to make a rational decision.
Rock Chalk!
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@jaybate-1.0 What is the goal of Nike, Adidas, Under Armour, and let’s throw in Puma as well since they have considerable influence in Golf here in the US and Soccer outside of the US. The goal of any major corporation is to make money is it not? How do these companies make money? By selling merchandise. In football, the only thing that’s a significant money maker is jerseys and so making different jerseys is the way to make money because people will buy every version of a jersey to wear to games or at home.
In basketball, you have a the jerseys which don’t get updated nearly as frequently as football, but you have signature model shoes such as Jordan’s and LeBron’s that come out every year and have multiple color combinations and people buy every color combination. That’s a lot more money than a football jersey.
In soccer, teams typically have 3-4 uniforms and get updated very regularly, every 1-2 years, and along with the jerseys withouy names, you have player specific jerseys. You also have the national team who updates their uniform every year. People will buy every possible because people in Europe and South America are far more passionate about soccer than people in the US are about any sport. Soccer is also the most popular sport in the world and one where Nike, Adidas, and Puma spend far more money to be the outfitters of teams like Manchester United, FC Barcelona, Real Madrid, Bayern Munich, and other top clubs than they do on college contracts.
And with golf, look at the contract Rory just signed with Nike earlier this year. It’s right up with the richest endorsement deals in sports. Also can you buy the same outifits the competitors wear and be able to wear to work? Just about every polo style shirt I own is a golf shirt and if you look at the price tag on some of these shirts, they’re right up there with jersey prices as are the golf pants.
Basketball, soccer, and golf are all sports played worldwide with stars recognized worldwide who make far more money for Nike, Adidas, Under Armour, and Puma than college football does. So, why would shoe companies exert the influence they’re capable of on a sport where the ROI is nowhere near the levels of basketball, soccer, and golf? Money talks and the money in football just isn’t any near what it is for basketball, soccer, and golf.
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Great take. Lucid. Thanks for sharing it.
And what you lay out is precisely why I find it such a striking anomaly that so much of the shoe contract monies to the schools appear to be finding their ways to football!
There is a logical disconnect, if you will.
Basketball, soccer are where the big individual endorsement contracts are reported.
But football schools are pulling down some of the really huge petroshoeco contracts with schools.
And the football programs appear to be hogging a lot of the monies given to the schools regardless.
Red flag!
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Not really. Look a the 2015 list of schools and how much they make from their endorsements
Football schools:
- University of Nebraska Big Ten Adidas $4,050,000
- University of Oklahoma Big 12 Nike $3,390,000
- Oklahoma State University Big 12 Nike $2,050,000
- University of Missouri SEC Nike $2,250,000
- University of Texas Big 12 Nike $4,130,000
- Texas Tech University Big 12 Under Armour $2,450,000
- University of Alabama SEC Nike $3,670,000
- University of Michigan Big Ten Adidas $8,200,000
- Michigan State University Big Ten Nike $1,600,000
- Florida State University ACC Nike $4,200,000
- University of Florida SEC Nike $3,355,000
- The Ohio State University Big Ten Nike $4,264,014
Basketball Schools:
- University of Kansas Big 12 Adidas $6,475,000
- University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill ACC Nike $3,550,000
- University of Louisville ACC Adidas $6,775,000
- University of Maryland ACC Under Armour $4,425,000
- University of Kentucky SEC Nike $3,525,000
- University of Connecticut American Athletic Nike $2,825,000
- University of Florida SEC Nike $3,355,000
It sure looks to me that schools with strong basketball programs do a lot better than schools with strong football programs. KU with a nearly non-existing football program makes it like a bandit…If football would be a big influence in endorsement contracts, then Texas, Oklahoma, Nebraska, Alabama, all power-house football programs…to name a few, would have much bigger contract than KU with is puny football program…and yet they don’t.
Of course football programs take the bulk of the money, after all they have well over 100 individuals in the program counting players, coaches and support personnel while the typical basketball program has maybe 20-25. Also, TV contracts and gate revenues are typically much higher for football than basketball.
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@JayHawkFanToo said:
Of course football programs take the bulk of the money…
Exactly.
This is exactly what I am getting at.
This shouldn’t be happening, if basketball, golf and soccer really were driving the rig.
But they apparently aren’t.
And don’t forget track. Track should be getting as much, or more, than basketball and golf. Track is a huge global sport. Track and soccer are adidas real whammy global sports supposedly.
So football is taking the lions share away from all these sports.
Sumthin’ ain’t right, here.
But what?
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I am also extremely interested in that Michigan and Michigan State disparity.
adidas-UM $8.2 M
Nike-MSU $1.6 M
Both schools are good in both football and basketball.
Are we looking at lag times in contract signing dates triggering the bias?
I’m not sure.
Any idea?
What we seem to be looking at is a disparity driven by adidas recent strategy of going after Nike via basketball program signings. Is this just a short term distortion, or a long term trend?
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I think you are missing the big picture. While KU’s contract with Adidas is $6.4M the total AD budget for the school is $97.6M. The revenue from basketball is $18.2M and football $23.1M and $54.8M not specifically allocated to any sport and includes the conference contracts.
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Thanks for thinking of my potential limitations of vision, but, alas, I have seen budget figures on and off over the years and perhaps those very ones, but I can’t recall for absolute, footnoted certainty.
Now, let’s say turnabout is fair play.
I suspect you may not quite understand how the game is played in the political economy, and that is no criticism of you. Most folks either work for a private entity and contract with private, or with public entities. Or they work for public agencies and work with private and public agencies. That sort of thing is all very straight forward. Very, very, very few work at the level where the game is to play all sides mentioned in pursuit of a political economic influence in pursuit of an agenda. At that level, the game is to use as little of your money, frankly, none whenever possible, and free ride on as much of other organization’s money as possible to budge some bureaucratic blob in the direction that benefits you, or your organization’s strategy.
To wit, you won’t find many situations in which Player A wags the dog with the most money of any of the contributors involved; that would be inefficient and heavy handed. Player A instead wags the dog with the least money at the table, but perhaps the most new money, or else it isn’t really wagging the dog, is it? Wagging the dog is a game of buying influence the cheapest way possible.
The PetroShoeCos could play this game another way, but they have chosen to play through the athletic departments for a reason. They are a cheap date, at least, compared to having to go out and win customers one at a time directly.
Historically speaking, almost nothing in a political economy worth undertaking on a grand scale is worth undertaking largely with one’s own money.
Have you ever heard the term “leverage” in finance?
Imagine leverage in everything involved in the public-private realm. The game is to catch a ride on the Reading that has already been largely paid for and is already in motion and add just a little coal to the boiler and ride as far as you need to go for a lot less than the cost of stoke the entire boiler out of your pocket. Capice?
So: when you point out the small share of the budget that shoe money represents, you are perhaps unintentionally pointing out precisely how the game is perhaps played much of the time in large scale undertakings in the political economy. Most of the majority monies you refer to are set in stone and already have overhead claims on them. The whole idea of bringing new monies to the table in this realm is that it only takes relatively small amounts placed in timely fashion to shift large, unwieldy organizations that are themselves embedded in still larger organizations in the directions sought.
Hmmm. How shall I put this?
Organizations like 501c.3 athletic departments embedded in public universities are cash black holes. No matter how much the TV contract is, no matter how much the legislature appropriates, within a few cash cycles, usually even before one single cycle, overhead will be created to absorb it all and so the organization will be looking for more monies in order to avoid having to go to the legislature, or the bank, for more monies. A sizable portion of the reason for spinning athletic departments off into bogus-in-spirit 501.c3 organizations was apparently to keep from having to go begging in the state house on a regular basis. Regents and chancellors know there are strings attached to monies from the legislature; that is duly instituted politics, not this public-private 501.c3 grey area stuff. Get a fresh $10 million appropriation from Topeka and those legislators will have it earmarked for their cousins and uncles long before you get a chance to give it to y0ur bureaucratic pals.
These organizations we call athletic departments have an inelastic demand for money in whatever form they can get it. Public agencies are not the only organizations with this penchant. The athletic departments pay no taxes so long as they don’t make more than 6 percent over their costs. And it appears they are rather deft at finding overhead to keep them at 6 percent surplus, or less. They have no conventional meter running either, if they don’t borrow from banks in a big way. Their major constraint is the lost bureaucratic autonomy that occurs when having to go to the legislature for money. Outside monies fix that problem. Donors played the role awhile. TV played that role awhile. Both are still around. But now Petroshoecos are playing the role of newest money.
The scale of shoe monies you cite are hugely stimulating to these organizations, because they are cream on top to be skimmed. And with the new cream you can distribute it Dale Carnegie stylet to win friends and influence enemies…quite legally apparently.
Nothing I am talking about here is apparently illegal.
Oh. My. God. To walk into a college athletic department and offer them even $1M per year makes you a demigod to them, because the bigger monies have already been earmarked, i.e., overhead has already been created to gobble up the last money source. Kick the amount up to $5-10 Million per year, and wave the possibility of skies the limit in front of them and you are like a real god to them unless someone else comes in and waves still more. New money is the most valuable money.
College sports appears to reside in a nearly perfect straddle of what I call the public-private realm of political economy.
It is a regulatory grey area where nothing short of bald faced crime like ticket scalping is definitively illegal and influence is the coin of the realm. And organized ticket scalping draining millions can go on for a decade without notice of the Chancellor, or the AD, or the head of the donation foundation, or coaches. And even when the almighty DOJ wades in on a tip from outside it can only nail a few small fry. Is this an amazing realm or what?
Athletic departments appear the grossest perversion of the spirit of the 501.c3 law that has probably ever occurred and that is saying something given the occasionally sordid history of 501.c3s.
Many involved with them are making a killing off of them. This is not why tax exemption of them was created and everyone knows it, but the athletic departments got spun off into these tax exempt shells and the donation process got spun off into the tax exempt foundations and the money got too big too fast, and the regulations were just fuzzy enough, to keep anyone in DOJ, or IRS, apparently, from ever really going after them and shutting them down.
Heck, even some of the watch dogs on the 501.c3 athletic departments are 501.c3s. Is that a sweet deal or what?
Do you sense the profundity of the regulatory conflict of interest here?
Now, a vast constellation of sports industry has built up around these 501.c3 shelled athletic departments and very, very, VERY few persons actually understand how business is conducted in this realm, about what the formal and informal benefits are and how they are distributed.
A school gets, oh, say, 12,000 shoes and DOJ and IRS apparently don’t even look into what happens to them. Pfffft. Gone.
I certainly don’t claim to be an expert about any of this.
I just know a whisker’s worth about 501.c3s generally.
And IMHO, neither you nor I will ever live to see a day in which the organization paying the lion’s share of the athletic department budget (unless its new money) will ever be the one temporarily calling the shots; that is just not apparently how it works in this realm IMHO.
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@jaybate-1.0 The discrepancy between Michigan and MSU there for two main reasons. One is that Adidas has always paid more for an overall contract with a school than Nike has. Nike contracts used to not include every sport. Until a couple of years ago Baylor had Nike as the supplier for their football program and Adidas for basketball. Nike has only very recently started including all sports in the contracts with schools whereas Adidas and Under Armour have always done that.
The other reason is that Michigan just renewed their Adidas deal this summer and I don’t know the last time MSU did their deal. Nike is just now in the past couple of years starting to pay comparable deals to Adidas and Under Armour so whenever MSU signs their next deal, it’ll be closers to the Michigan deal which is currently the bigfest apparel deal any college has signed. Most of money these apparel deals provide to schools is what’s used to fund a lot of the non-revenue.
As @JayHawkFanToo pointed out, these money made from apparel deals are a fraction of the operating cost for an athletic department. The real money for these companies is in soccer. Michigan makes about $8.5 million per year with their Adidas deal. That deal absolutely pales in comparison to the £75 million ($128 million) per year deal Adidas just inked with Manchester United. Lionel Messi makes north of $10 million per year from Adidas, James Harden’s Adidas deal pays him about $13 million per year, Rory McIlroy’s Nike deal pays him $40 million per year. These deals dwarf a lot of the college contracts and that’s why football recruiting lacks the influence from these companies, they are busy looking for the mext major basketball, soccer, or golf star because those players are in sports played worldwide and become worldwide recognized stars. Follow the money and you will see why football recruiting has minimal influence from apparel companies comapred to trying to lock up basketball, soccer, and golf players as early as possible.
You need to zoom out to a global scale to see where Nike, Adidas, Under Armour, and Puma really focus their attention when it comes to trying to influence young athletes who have the potential to make them as much money as possible.
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@jaybate-1.0 Here’s a website that lists the 15 richest apparel endorsement deals in the world.
http://www.totalsportek.com/money/biggest-endorsement-deals-sports-history/
This list is slightly out of date now as the new deals Steph Curry and James Harden just signed aren’t on there, but you see where the biggest pools of money are and it’s not American football. Companies always have and always will influence the industries that will make them the most money. Under Armour is still a new enough company that they don’t have the clout Nike and Adidas do, but give them another 20 years and their market share and influence will be much greater. If Puma ever decides to focus add basketball to their arsenal and enter that market, they could become a major player as well and cut into Nike’s market share because of the influx of Euro and South American kids who have a soccer background who like Puma’s style over Nike.
I just honestly don’t ever see Nike, Adidas, and Under Armour ever exerting their influence over HS football recruit like they do with HS basketball recruiting the ROI on exerting that influence will never be at the same level.
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Now that’s a great link. Thx for passing that along!!!
But again, the global ROI ain’t there, so why are they spending so much on football?
This is the key point.
It’s obvious why they write big checks to a soccer team that markets well to the Crown of Great Britain’s Commonwealth–the 3rd largest economic entity on the planet. Slam dunk.
What are they buying in a college game parked in an American cultural cul de sac?
It’s challenging for persons to think flexibly about this sort of stuff.
They either want to think locally, or globally, but struggle with scoping between both.
There are vertical and horizontal dimensions to political, economic, military and logistic activity and they simultaneously have local and global dynamics. It’s not an either-or, or even a both, world of analysis. It’s an “all” world simultaneously.
You’ve got to get comfortable with it to keep from shutting out the most interesting parts.
