Yes but Cal and Stanford were not holding out........
But never mind. it's all history now.
What is an reasonable subsidary for WSU to provide to Athletics...
- Thread starter ttowncoug
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Yes but Cal and Stanford were not holding out........
But never mind. it's all history now.
Why wouldn't they? Are those school allergic to money? Why not hold out? USC, UCLA, Cal and Stanford are located in the two largest metro areas on the west coast.
Or, perhaps, someone lobbied those schools to take a position and build enough of a voting block to make sure equal revenue distribution, rather than what the Pac-10 had before, was the rule. In case you forgot, you didn't give Moos any credit for making that happen.
Don't know, and don't much care at this point. I have just been parroting what I read.
Perhaps Stanford and Cal appreciated the Pac-10. They are nestled right in the middle. Great geographical location for travel north and south. Stanford doesn't need the extra money. As far apart as the schools are now (esp with Colorado and Utah), it would be a helluva trek to leave the Pac-12 and join conference "we have". Texas would be about your nearest commute? Stanford, with its 87 sports, would have a pretty big travel cost.
Nope...not allergic at all. Cal's and Stanford have different interests. In the negotiating room where is Cal and Stanford going to get more money. They could have held out with USC and UCLA, and like USC, they weren't going any where.
If you want me to say Moos was so vital in keeping a majority of partners together sure.
And why doesn't anyone "side" with USC...same reason they don't side with the Dallas Cowboys, and those owners aren't allergic to money either.
Oregon, with hands down the best FOB in the conference, just lost a coach after one season, and struggled to get a high end replacement. Our FOB didn't prevent Leach from seeking theTennessee and several other jobs. So much for the coach retention/alure capacity of a nice FOB.
As for the performance enhancement capacity of facilities. As someone who used to work in athletics, WSU athletics specifically, this should be the critical thought in any facility upgrade. The question is what does that require? The question here is did we need to 67 milion to accomplish that? The FOB is full of unnecessary bells and whistles that just aren't necessary. A high end, less pretty, facility could have easily been built for half that price. But aesthetics was a major consideration "the wow factor.' Don't deny it. We could have made it available to other sports too, we didn't.
The FOB wasn't about performance enhancement, it was about Moos' vision, base around the fiels of dreams concept. He got part of it right in purely football terms, he went out and spent to hire a great coach (my credo). However, place too much importance on the FOB in terms of recruitment and program development and now we are stuck deep in debt. It is possible that had he hired a coach whose success was/is more dependent on recruiting talent (a Price type), we my have gotten more recruiting bang for the buck. But the type of kid that is attracted to Leach, by and large, doesn't give a crap about the FOB. He is tough minded, overlooked kid, who isn't affraid of working harder to be successful.
The good news is the FOB isn't going anywhere, and our next coach may need it more than Leach does.
With the exception of Gabe Marks, all of Leach's 4 star recruits so far have been busts, Toki, Mitchell, Bruggman. Can you show me some evidence that Calvin, Borghi et al came to WSU in substantial part do to the FOB? If not, I call BS. This is a group, clearly Leach's most talented, that signed only after 3 straight bowls and 26 wins, not shortly after the FOB was built. As for Borghi, he passed up on Stanford, who has great new facilities too, much better weather and academics. So I'm skeptical of your claims.
Specifically what bells and whistles and how much did they cost? Put fingers to keyboard here and give us some real numbers and information. When does your $35 million FOB need to be remodeled? Can it be remodeled or added onto? Where is this $35 million FOB located?
The location of the FOB had some issues that made construction more expensive. One thing I recall is the a major IT conduit (fiber optic cable for like half the campus or something like that) ran right through where the foundation needed to go. Of course, the FOB could have been built out in the sticks and we could gold plated golf carts moving everyone back and forth....
There is a reason why schools have bells and whistles, a ton of uniforms, and its not for the people in the stands.
And if you are wanting to win the Star Game and not the real games, Leach isn't your coach.
"It’s February and we’re well past due on a good Mike Leach rant.
Never fear, SEC fans. The peculiar Washington State coach came through to scratch that itch the day after National Signing Day.
During an interview with ESPNU Radio on SiriusXM on Thursday, Leach unveiled another conspiracy theory of his: The media are manipulating the recruiting rankings.
“I don’t look at the stars,” Leach said during a discussion of the latest signing class. “Well, part of it is they’re manipulated by the media anyway. Ya know?
“I mean if a program from a big media base or a big following recruits a guy, then all of a sudden they get voted to have a bunch of stars.”
That’s the same complaint many fans of programs in the SEC have expressed about recruits who sometimes leave them for Alabama or Florida and then see a subsequent bump in their value by recruiting services. You wouldn’t expect to hear that from a coach the day after National Signing Day, but then again Leach is anything but your typical coach.
Leach didn’t identify specific recruits or recruiting services when making this claim, but he did cite an example from his time at Texas Tech that involved a recruiting flipping to the Red Raiders from a previous commit to Texas A&M. He claims the recruiting ranking tanked when the kid decided to go to Lubbock instead of College Station.
“I’ve recruited people before who started out as a 4-star and ended up as a 2.5-star or something,” Leach said. “I had a guy flip from A&M one time to us and lost anywhere from one-to-two stars depending on what thing you looked at. Just because he flipped to Texas Tech. How about that?”
For the record, Leach’s 2018 recruiting class at Washington State checks in at No. 45 in the nation and No. 9 in the Pac-12, according to the 247 Sports composite. His 26-player class is comprised of two 4-star recruits to go along with 24 3-star prospects."
And if you are wanting to win the Star Game and not the real games, Leach isn't your coach.
"It’s February and we’re well past due on a good Mike Leach rant.
Never fear, SEC fans. The peculiar Washington State coach came through to scratch that itch the day after National Signing Day.
During an interview with ESPNU Radio on SiriusXM on Thursday, Leach unveiled another conspiracy theory of his: The media are manipulating the recruiting rankings.
“I don’t look at the stars,” Leach said during a discussion of the latest signing class. “Well, part of it is they’re manipulated by the media anyway. Ya know?
“I mean if a program from a big media base or a big following recruits a guy, then all of a sudden they get voted to have a bunch of stars.”
That’s the same complaint many fans of programs in the SEC have expressed about recruits who sometimes leave them for Alabama or Florida and then see a subsequent bump in their value by recruiting services. You wouldn’t expect to hear that from a coach the day after National Signing Day, but then again Leach is anything but your typical coach.
Leach didn’t identify specific recruits or recruiting services when making this claim, but he did cite an example from his time at Texas Tech that involved a recruiting flipping to the Red Raiders from a previous commit to Texas A&M. He claims the recruiting ranking tanked when the kid decided to go to Lubbock instead of College Station.
“I’ve recruited people before who started out as a 4-star and ended up as a 2.5-star or something,” Leach said. “I had a guy flip from A&M one time to us and lost anywhere from one-to-two stars depending on what thing you looked at. Just because he flipped to Texas Tech. How about that?”
For the record, Leach’s 2018 recruiting class at Washington State checks in at No. 45 in the nation and No. 9 in the Pac-12, according to the 247 Sports composite. His 26-player class is comprised of two 4-star recruits to go along with 24 3-star prospects."
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Found this interesting........
These are the Pac12 Teams that landed in the Top 50 Recruiting Class Composite according to last 6-Years of RECRUITING STAR RANKINGS
#6 USC - Replaced Coach
#14 UCLA - Fired Coach
#20 Oregon - Fired Coach
#24 Stanford - Cougs 2 Game win streak
#29 UW -
#31 ASU - Fired Coach
#35 Arizona - Fired Coach
#41 Cal - Fired Coach
#43 Utah - Cougs 3 Game win streak
#47 Oregon St - Fired Coach
These are the Pac12 Teams that landed in the Top 50 Recruiting Class Composite according to last 6-Years of RECRUITING STAR RANKINGS
#6 USC - Replaced Coach
#14 UCLA - Fired Coach
#20 Oregon - Fired Coach
#24 Stanford - Cougs 2 Game win streak
#29 UW -
#31 ASU - Fired Coach
#35 Arizona - Fired Coach
#41 Cal - Fired Coach
#43 Utah - Cougs 3 Game win streak
#47 Oregon St - Fired Coach
You are old enough to know better. 15 years or so ago Oregon started putting billboards in Time Square, sending recruits comic books about them going to Oregon and winning national championships, and built state of the art facilities including lockers with Xboxes. Many Cougs on the boards sneered at the use of money. We took pride in our scrappy squad which won more games on a shoe string budget.
But over the longhaul, it didn't work out too well for us. Oregon played for two national championships.
As far as the other recruits, specifically Borghi and Calvin, how often before new facilities did the Cougs face off against Nebraska and Stanford down the stretch and win? Cougs didnt win many battles against traditional powers.
You are arguing something that is very different than what Socal is saying. If you are saying the coach evaluates talent better than many of the services, I am not sure he will argue with you. If you are arguing the FOB is helping Leach get those four star kids rated by the service, I think Socal is correct in terms of the FOB getting us the service rated 4 star recruit. Do you disagree with that?
Socal if I am reading it right thinks the FOB was a waste of money if the expectation was to get more top flight service rated talent.
How would you rate the 2012/13/14/and now 15 class. I think we can probably give out grades on those classes to see how we are doing in actual recruiting.
As stated by someone else above, I think the "bottom half" of the classes Leach has brought in are much better. Almost every guy Leach lands has at least a few P5 offers. Even the OLs.
Well, I am someone who doesn't put a ton of stock in the ratings unless we are the beneficiary of a great rating. I do tend to trust the coaches evaluation more than I do the services. But Socal is specifically talking about those service ratings.
And if we look at the classes, I think it is fair to evaluate probably 3.5 of them. I think the first two were clearly Leach's best in terms of production and the number of players that contributed. So Tron doesn't go epileptic, I will not call 2014 a disaster, but in comparison to the first two classes that I would grade in the A- to B+ range, I would say 2014 is a D-. On to 2015 which we have a pretty good read, there are probably two players that we don't know how to grade, Mattox and Myers. Won't call them a busts, but I can't call them contributors. We will find out this year what side of the fence they move to.
Out of 24 (I believe) recruited players, four olineman and three dlineman never made it. I believe 11 have played, two in question, 11 never or barely saw the field and are no longer with the program. Out of the 11 successful players, there is one dlineman that is contributing and no offensive lineman. The remaining are Harper, Sweet, Tago, Namndi, Broughton (JC and gone) Luani ( NFL) Molton, Tyler (tragic) Dale, Parker, and Williams. From a class of 24ish, we have 10 still on the roster with two of those players that we just don't know if they will contribute.
Is it fair to stay first two years we really good, year three a mega struggle and year four not a foundation class as we are missing at least 7 lineman? The question is- has the FOB helped in recruiting past 2012 and 2013 in the classes we can evaluate?
Where I differ from Socal is I am not sure he would build that building again and I would build it even if I was Nostradamus and had the results of the classes back in 2011.
We undoubtedly spent more money than we could have on the FOB. Yes, Oregon lost a coach who went home to coach at Florida State.....but he's from Florida and that just happens sometimes. I never said that the FOB made a coaching search easier.....I just said that a bad facility encourages good coaches to leave. Leach did flirt with Tennessee and would have probably left, but would he have left sooner if he didn't have the FOB promised from the get go? Would he have even come to WSU in the first place?
I agree that we screwed up the FOB in a number of ways and there's no denying that. You are dead wrong when you say that the kids don't give a crap about the FOB. Would our classes be much different without it? Probably not, but I guarantee that they all love it and if the FOB gets us that 1 or 2 extra sleeper kids per year to commit from a long distance, I'm all for that.
Couple things Flat:
1. What did "we screw up" in regards to the FOB?
2. There has been several mentions of CML and the Tennessee deal. Everyone has gone on the premise that he was on the precipice of going. How does anyone know that? Was there a quote of his that mentions this, that I've missed? Could he have been using it as leverage, much like he did when he was at TT and came out to the Ewe? Strictly leverage, strictly making sure administration that he isn't a "sure thing"? Could he have had zero want to go there but he was just making sure the "CEO" knew there were head hunters out there and he had value?
#1 is a legit question.
#2 is probably more "detail" or splitting a hair but the innuendo is awful strong that he's looking for a way out when in reality, no one knows that. All supposition... Unless he's come out saying he was about to head to TN.
1) Areas where I feel that we screwed up on the FOB are: I do agree with folks above that we overspent on the FOB knowing that Pac-12 money wasn't coming like promised when construction started. I don't think it's to the degree suggested by some, but we undoubtedly overspent. Just as an example, we spent $61 million on an 84,000 sf building. KSU spent $65 million on a 132,000 sf building. Boise State built a 70,000 sf facility for $22 million. Decisions were made that drove up the cost per sf on our FOB compared to others. Also on the "screwing things up" is the seating. The "Crimzone" seating should have been larger in my opinion and the FOB could have been designed to fit more into the stadium design overall rather than just getting plunked down into the endzone with the minimum size possible so we didn't impact the practice fields much.
2) I didn't really speak much about Leach to Tennessee because coaches leave schools all the time. My main point was that Leach might not have even come here in the first place if Moos hadn't promised him a new FOB.
I guess I'm still confused. You say we could have cut budget but in the next portion you say we could have expanded the FOB to include more seating? And you do realize we did downscale the FOB due to cost already? It was supposed "to fit more into the stadium design overall" as you say. But that's where the budget cuts came in. Personally, I think it was a mistake to cut this design.
Can you imagine if we continued that design all around the stadium?! That little lipped roof all around? The sound factor would have been incredible. But alas... budgets.
Wow - this is a pretty stark comparison, thanks. 70,000 sq feet for $22 mil vs 84,000 sq ft for $61 mil. Pretty hard to argue those numbers in terms of "did we overspend?".
Would be curious to see similar numbers relative to the luxury suite addition. Have yet to go up there (feel free to invite me), but I would suspect that similar comparisons could be found?
And completely agree on the footprint of the FOB. Yeah it is a cool look, but how many seats did we lose, plus eliminating any possibility of future expansion in that end zone. Except way up in the corner by the flags. Which I would fill in if it were me.
Finally, I don't know what the Bohler, etc facilities were like compared to the competition. They were state of the art at one time (when they did the Bohler addition), but that was a long time ago. I will repeat that with 1/4 (or more?) of our athletes and coaches vacating Bohler, there should be plenty of room for all the other sports. Read NO on any basketball facility, and I cast a questioning eye on the apparent amenities of the Baseball facility. Particularly if we end up building a real replacement for the bubble right next door.
So yeah, I think everyone agrees that the two improvements were needed. Did we need to spend $165 million? A fair question.
I guess I'm still confused. You say we could have cut budget but in the next portion you say we could have expanded the FOB to include more seating? And you do realize we did downscale the FOB due to cost already? It was supposed "to fit more into the stadium design overall" as you say. But that's where the budget cuts came in. Personally, I think it was a mistake to cut this design.
Can you imagine if we continued that design all around the stadium?! That little lipped roof all around? The sound factor would have been incredible. But alas... budgets.
Wow - that is cool! Never saw that before. Love the corner section.
This is all that matters, and Moos knew it. You can argue it's utility and necessity all you want, but as the years pass it become more and more valuable simply because it exists.
When you go into that corner section, and you see how many seats are complete junk, there are probably 23-50 seats that you can't even see the end zone. A good 100 or so that have partial view blocked. It shows how we had plans when we built the luxury seats. Then budget came into play and everything was downsized. Design was sacrificed for budget. That is one of the easiest indications of that.
Looking at this overhead google map, I'm curious about WHERE you think the FOB should have gone to get more seats? Are you saying they should have gone down to 1 50-yard field and then a general area? Because if the FOB would go back any further, there wouldn't be one of those sections.
https://www.google.com/maps/@46.7316686,-117.1631618,257m/data=!3m1!1e3
Well if you squeezed them closer to the Library, shoved them a little closer to Bohler and shave off maybe 10 yards of the one closet to the Library, you could keep both fields and gain probably 15 yards. Half the width of the FOB. That's all I was saying. And yeah looking at your map, almost looks like the FOB itself obstructs a few Section 1 seats. That's why I would fill those in, but curve them like the student side is. Gain a few hundred seats anyway. Maybe.
Such as? Specifically what decisions? Building the FOB next to the stadium increased the cost, but it that decision also made a lot of sense. Should we have gold plated the crappers instead of platinum plating them?
I don't know about construction costs in Kansas, but construction costs in Idaho are significantly lower than Washington.
And square feet is nice and all, but what about other stuff?
I'm still trying to figure out what a "subsidary" is from the thread title.
They should have put the FOB about 30 yards to the west onto that worthless rec field and used that as opportunity to move the field a bit west when they eventually do more work on the bowl
Moving to the west a bit is about their only opportunity for future expansion or just increasing the footprint. They lost footprint when they dug down.
The actual seating on the south side (except at the very top) isn't the best and they'll lose seating the next time it is upgraded - access/egress is horrible (which will cost them more seats in the future)
The original post in this thread apparently meant to write "subsidy" but that implies that a "grant" or "gift" was made, in this case by the university to the athletic department. I do not believe anyone or anything has gone into debt by accepting grants or gifts, unless some guy named Vinny offers you a grant or gift you can't refuse.
"That worthless rec field" is our football teams practice field. Many of the programs have full length fields. We are already cutting ours in half. Are you expressing the idea of giving our football program half a field to practice on?
And if the field had been pushed to the west, you'd have this awkward looking thing ...
I don't know the specifics but all BS aside, we got screwed on our football operations building. Oregon spent $68 milllion on their 145,000 sf "Football Performance Center". South Carolina just announced that they had reached their funding goals for a $50 million dollar FOB at 110,000 sf. Clemson paid $55 million for their facility that was over 100,000 sf. For whatever reason, our cost per sf was astronomical. I haven't reviewed the plans or seen the specifics but if you pull your head out of the sand, something went wrong when we were bidding out this project. I could see it costing 10% more because of Pullman's remote location but we paid closer to 50% more. And FWIW, KSU also built their FOB at the end of the stadium and included seating as part of it. Oregon, South Carolina, Clemson and a host of other major players all got bigger buildings for similar money to us. Colorado is the only school that spent more per square foot in my 10 minute search.
You might have missed this (from one of dgibbons' posts) or you couldn't comprehend it when you read it ...
"The location of the FOB had some issues that made construction more expensive. One thing I recall is the a major IT conduit (fiber optic cable for like half the campus or something like that) ran right through where the foundation needed to go. Of course, the FOB could have been built out in the sticks and we could gold plated golf carts moving everyone back and forth...."
And, of course, the costs also included many items beyond brick, mortar, plumbing, and fiber optic cables. Perhaps Boise State squeezed a restaurant-sized kitchen into its 70,000 sf, $22 million facility? And what has Oregon pumped into its FOB since it was built? There have been a few modifications, thanks to the suga daddy. HTH.
"The location of the FOB had some issues that made construction more expensive. One thing I recall is the a major IT conduit (fiber optic cable for like half the campus or something like that) ran right through where the foundation needed to go. Of course, the FOB could have been built out in the sticks and we could gold plated golf carts moving everyone back and forth...."
And, of course, the costs also included many items beyond brick, mortar, plumbing, and fiber optic cables. Perhaps Boise State squeezed a restaurant-sized kitchen into its 70,000 sf, $22 million facility? And what has Oregon pumped into its FOB since it was built? There have been a few modifications, thanks to the suga daddy. HTH.
That was an addition to what Oregon already had for its football facilities. Not the sole football operations building.
My head is not in the sand. People who just throw around numbers per square foot as the sole metric for value might need to pick sand out of their scalp though.
Fake news, or you don't know what you're talking about.
Look at the dates these facilities opened.
https://goducks.com/sports/2011/6/21/205174793.aspx
https://goducks.com/sports/2011/6/21/205174864.aspx
Flatsie says "Fake News?"
At best, it's a Trumpian distortion. It's likely the cost exceeded $68 million, perhaps by $65 million or more. Here is one reason why...
"The important thing to note is that the Hatfield-Dowlin was able to spend its time personalizing every detail of the complex because all of the money was donated. Since the money was donated, the University doesn’t have any financial breakdowns concerning the Hatfield-Dowlin Complex.
“We have no information on the Hatfield-Dowlin Complex and it was a project that we didn’t have any part in managing,” said Darin Dehle, director of capital construction.
The War Room, where coaches meet to talk about strategies, game plans and football ideas. (Nate Barrett/Emerald)
“It’s a gift,” athletics department spokesman Craig Pintens told Comcast Sportsnet. “It goes to the foundation and then to the athletic department. The $68 million figure has been used by the media because a long time ago, it was on the budget when the blueprints were submitted to the city.”
From https://www.dailyemerald.com/2013/08/12/the-hatfield-dowlin-complex-in-perspective/
I don't understand what you two are fighting about. Flat thinks we spent way too much, does his research, and comes up with multiple comparisons that appear to support his viewpoint. I agree that you can't just look at Sq feet and cost. But the numbers are pretty far apart. I think if nothing else you could agree that we could have spent less. Whether we should have or not is another discussion.
gibbons disagrees, but in fairness does little to dispute those figures other than say "things cost more in Washington" and they had to move some cable. I don't get the other Oregon facility comparison. The C center houses the entire Athletic department (per the article) and the M center is the IPF. Which WSU has too, only they are called Bohler Gym and the ASS. So the new Oregon building looks pretty close to apples to apples.
In 20/20 hindsight, I think that we could and should have spent less on the FOB and the Luxury addition (which by all indications is not full, despite of what was said at the time). I also think, in hindsight, that Bill Moos was building his legacy facility and spared no expense to do so. Look what he was used to - a blank check.
Either way, I don't see a reason to get frothed up about it. No one is telling lies or making things up here.
Thanks for your contribution.
How, oh great and powerful, self-appointed genius of all geniuses, was WSU going to save money? Be specific. It's easy to say something should cost less with nothing to back it up. As repeatedly stated throughout this thread, the FOB was scaled back to save money.
And you don't read worth a damn. Casanova houses the football locker rooms- those ones that were getting all the media for having Xboxes in like 2003. Where are the WSU locker rooms? Hint- in the FOB. Lots of other football in Casanova too.
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