KSU and WSU are very, very similar in a lot of ways. Land grant universities with many of the same struggles. Relatively remote geography, relatively small fanbase and TV market, in-state, flagship university rival with a superiority complex located next to the biggest metro area in the state.
There are two things that KSU has over WSU. One is being located in an area of the country where football still "matters" and the second is that despite being relatively remote, they have four lane highway access to Manhattan from two different directions as well as having two highways coming up from the south to keep traffic from being a total nightmare.
Because of that, even though WSU and KSU have similar student enrollment, demographics and population available as fans, they have a 50,000+ seat stadium where they could get away with charging an $18,000/seat fee to have the right to reserve club seats when they first opened their premium seating area. They had $116 million in total athletic department revenue last year. WSU had $71 million. WSU athletics is $65 million in the hole, KSU has a budget surplus every year to build new improvements with and claimed net assets in excess of $300 million. The two big differences in revenue are ticket sales and donations. WSU had $7.5 million in ticket sales in 2022, KSU had $15.2 million. WSU had $9.8 million in contributions in 2022, KSU, including capital campaign contributions.....had $43 million in contributions. We will always be the underdog until our fans commit.
So, even though we have a lot of the same challenges, KSU is in a much, much better financial position to fight those challenges. As mentioned above, Bill Snyder saved the school from disappearing off the map. He was a master at evaluating juco talent, wasn't afraid to schedule patsies and instilled discipline that a drill sergeant would shed a tear for. I'm hoping that Dickert can be the poor man's version of Bill Snyder...but only time will tell.
Even though there are a lot of folks that don't like Chun, he's generally made good hiring decisions that may help close the gap that we are experiencing but again, until our fans spend more money on games and less time winning online polls, we are still fighting an uphill battle
KSU and WSU are very, very similar in a lot of ways. Land grant universities with many of the same struggles. Relatively remote geography, relatively small fanbase and TV market, in-state, flagship university rival with a superiority complex located next to the biggest metro area in the state.
There are two things that KSU has over WSU. One is being located in an area of the country where football still "matters" and the second is that despite being relatively remote, they have four lane highway access to Manhattan from two different directions as well as having two highways coming up from the south to keep traffic from being a total nightmare.
Because of that, even though WSU and KSU have similar student enrollment, demographics and population available as fans, they have a 50,000+ seat stadium where they could get away with charging an $18,000/seat fee to have the right to reserve club seats when they first opened their premium seating area. They had $116 million in total athletic department revenue last year. WSU had $71 million. WSU athletics is $65 million in the hole, KSU has a budget surplus every year to build new improvements with and claimed net assets in excess of $300 million. The two big differences in revenue are ticket sales and donations. WSU had $7.5 million in ticket sales in 2022, KSU had $15.2 million. WSU had $9.8 million in contributions in 2022, KSU, including capital campaign contributions.....had $43 million in contributions. We will always be the underdog until our fans commit.
So, even though we have a lot of the same challenges, KSU is in a much, much better financial position to fight those challenges. As mentioned above, Bill Snyder saved the school from disappearing off the map. He was a master at evaluating juco talent, wasn't afraid to schedule patsies and instilled discipline that a drill sergeant would shed a tear for. I'm hoping that Dickert can be the poor man's version of Bill Snyder...but only time will tell.
Even though there are a lot of folks that don't like Chun, he's generally made good hiring decisions that may help close the gap that we are experiencing but again, until our fans spend more money on games and less time winning online polls, we are still fighting an uphill battle.
A lot of the angst re the PAC holding up is based on uw and Oregon bolting for the BIG down the road whereas the Big12 has no one else anyone would want so they are more stable. If Kansas can establish at least an adequate football program, they seem like the most attractive Big12 school for the BIG or SEC and may end up bolting next round of realignment.