NCAA report: Economy cuts into sports

#2
#2
Not surprising when you look at our donation requirements compared to the rest of the SEC....I don't see how we wouldn't make money
 
#3
#3

Thats for the Hammy haters!!! Fired fat boy,hired Pearl, hired Dooley and made money despite all the gloom,doom and hate being spread by factions of our fanbase!! Believe it or not,that is Hamilton's main job description " make a profit " . With all the new facilities we have built or are building during his time,I just don't get all the hate!! GO VOLS!!!
 
#4
#4
Thats for the Hammy haters!!! Fired fat boy,hired Pearl, hired Dooley and made money despite all the gloom,doom and hate being spread by factions of our fanbase!! Believe it or not,that is Hamilton's main job description " make a profit " . With all the new facilities we have built or are building during his time,I just don't get all the hate!! GO VOLS!!!

That's part of my main issue with Hamilton. It has always seemed like more of a priority with him to have nice facilities, even if we have crappy teams that play in them.

The current horrific state of our football program rests squarely on his shoulders. He's the one who allowed Fulmer to not only continue in mediocrity for 5+ years, he literally gave him a contract that said 7-5 was not only good enough at UT, it was worthy of a raise and extension. Then, after giving Fulmer the huge contract he fired him about 3 years too late.

It was Hamilton who allowed LK to walk for USC leaving us with no coach less than a month before signing day. Rumors of Kiffin to USC had been out there as others turned down the job, but apparently Hamilton had no contingency plan for what took place.

Then, in perhaps his worst knee-jerk reaction of all, he proceded to hire a woefully underqualified coach as a replacement just for the sake of filling the job rather than wait it out with an interim until later this fall when more acceptable candidates would have been available.
 
#5
#5
That's part of my main issue with Hamilton. It has always seemed like more of a priority with him to have nice facilities, even if we have crappy teams that play in them.

The current horrific state of our football program rests squarely on his shoulders. He's the one who allowed Fulmer to not only continue in mediocrity for 5+ years, he literally gave him a contract that said 7-5 was not only good enough at UT, it was worthy of a raise and extension. Then, after giving Fulmer the huge contract he fired him about 3 years too late.

It was Hamilton who allowed LK to walk for USC leaving us with no coach less than a month before signing day. Rumors of Kiffin to USC had been out there as others turned down the job, but apparently Hamilton had no contingency plan for what took place.

Then, in perhaps his worst knee-jerk reaction of all, he proceded to hire a woefully underqualified coach as a replacement just for the sake of filling the job rather than wait it out with an interim until later this fall when more acceptable candidates would have been available.

I agree that Fulmer should have been gone around that time span, and that the contract extension was insane. However, my understanding is that Hamilton wanted to get rid of him back then but the boosters wouldn't allow it, and that the contract extension was pushed by Thunder Thorton. The big time boosters have been doing more to harm the football program than to help it.
 
#6
#6
When you consider our recent success on the field vs the other schools listed, that is kind of amazing that we are in the elite 12.
 
#7
#7
That's part of my main issue with Hamilton. It has always seemed like more of a priority with him to have nice facilities, even if we have crappy teams that play in them.

The current horrific state of our football program rests squarely on his shoulders. He's the one who allowed Fulmer to not only continue in mediocrity for 5+ years, he literally gave him a contract that said 7-5 was not only good enough at UT, it was worthy of a raise and extension. Then, after giving Fulmer the huge contract he fired him about 3 years too late.

It was Hamilton who allowed LK to walk for USC leaving us with no coach less than a month before signing day. Rumors of Kiffin to USC had been out there as others turned down the job, but apparently Hamilton had no contingency plan for what took place.

Then, in perhaps his worst knee-jerk reaction of all, he proceded to hire a woefully underqualified coach as a replacement just for the sake of filling the job rather than wait it out with an interim until later this fall when more acceptable candidates would have been available.

You do realize that this would have essencially destroyed our football program for 5 years...it would have thrown away any chance for the last recruiting class, and any progress on this years class as well.

Putting in an interm coach for this season was absolutley not an option.
 
#8
#8
An interim coach would have basically ended our football program.....no way we'd even sniff a top 25 class with an interim coach let alone keep the recruits we had so far and absolutely no way in heck we pull Hunter and Rogers.....that's probably one of the dumbest ideas EVER...congratulations
 
#9
#9
If Hammy keeps making million dollar mistakes at the rate he is, ours won't be profitable for long. We'll be like GM needing a bail out to pay off the benefits he promised our "Retired" coaches.
 
#10
#10
That's part of my main issue with Hamilton. It has always seemed like more of a priority with him to have nice facilities, even if we have crappy teams that play in them.

The current horrific state of our football program rests squarely on his shoulders. He's the one who allowed Fulmer to not only continue in mediocrity for 5+ years, he literally gave him a contract that said 7-5 was not only good enough at UT, it was worthy of a raise and extension. Then, after giving Fulmer the huge contract he fired him about 3 years too late.

It was Hamilton who allowed LK to walk for USC leaving us with no coach less than a month before signing day. Rumors of Kiffin to USC had been out there as others turned down the job, but apparently Hamilton had no contingency plan for what took place.

Then, in perhaps his worst knee-jerk reaction of all, he proceded to hire a woefully underqualified coach as a replacement just for the sake of filling the job rather than wait it out with an interim until later this fall when more acceptable candidates would have been available.

Wait, this doesn't make sense to me. Who would we have had as an interim? I thought we only had 2 coaches left when Kiffin departed? If so, would we have Wilcox, Smith, Wylie etc on our staff now? Probably not. I think he had to hire a real head coach and one who had enough connections to bring on a solid team. Seems like Dooley's done that.
 
#11
#11
Not surprising when you look at our donation requirements compared to the rest of the SEC....I don't see how we wouldn't make money

How do we compare to the rest of the SEC? I have been told UGA's, for example, is much higher than ours.
 
#12
#12
UGA per seat is lower....the minumum to become a new season ticket holder depends year to year, and its cumulative....for 2009 the minimum was 4,205 priority points (1 per every $1)
 
#13
#13
An interim coach would have basically ended our football program.....no way we'd even sniff a top 25 class with an interim coach let alone keep the recruits we had so far and absolutely no way in heck we pull Hunter and Rogers.....that's probably one of the dumbest ideas EVER...congratulations

Yeah, letting one or possibly 2 recruiting classes get away for the sake of hiring a qualified coach is decidedly worse than saving the one class, but pissing away the next 3-4 years and having to start over from scratch AGAIN and being even further from the pack after a few more losing seasons. What in the world was I thinking. :crazy:
 
#14
#14
Let Dooley coach before you judge him....I don't see how Lane was any more qualified than Dooley is......plus Dooley has put together a great staff IMO....I think he will turn our program around
 
#15
#15
Let Dooley coach before you judge him....I don't see how Lane was any more qualified than Dooley is......plus Dooley has put together a great staff IMO....I think he will turn our program around

He didn't fail as a HC in one of the easiest conferences in America.

This whole topic has been run into the ground on VN over the past few months, I should have known better than to bring it up again. You have your opinion of how the DD era will play out and I have mine. Hopefully I'll be wrong, but only time will tell.
 
#16
#16
He wasn't a head coach at the college level AT ALL.....he coached the Raiders and attempted a what, 72 yd field goal....yea, great coaching there
 
#17
#17
The economy is a major factor in ticket sales but personally I believe home theater/media rooms are even a bigger threat.

HD/3D, your own bathroom, a great couch/recliner and not paying concession prices are huge factors when making the decision to shell out big bucks for the gameday experience.

Note how the Yankees and Cowboys have tried to replicate the home experience with Mac Daddy viewing screens and concessions brought to your seat.

You can "tailgate" at home with friends and not have to worry about sitting in endless traffic going home.

Admittedly, it's not the gameday experience we fans who have braved rain, heat, and tiny concrete seats in the same zip code as Jupiter know and love but it's a reality the marketers have to face. It's just plain harder to get us out the door these days.

Winning...now that would cure all the ills.
 
#18
#18
He wasn't a head coach at the college level AT ALL.....he coached the Raiders and attempted a what, 72 yd field goal....yea, great coaching there

That's exactly my point. He had never failed as a HC at the college level, DD has, thereby, LK was more qualified in my book. Kiffin's only experience as a HC was with a NFL franchise so disfunctional that Vince Lombardi might not have been successful there. And LK did actually improve the Raiders record from when he arrived, even if it was only marginally.

This whole topic has been debated ad nauseum over the past few months. We both know both sides of the argument and have our own opinions and I doubt any new facts are going to come to light to make either one of us change our mind. Only time will tell who is right. Like I said, for UT's sake, I hope I am wrong, but the coaches who fail at lesser jobs and then win big in the SEC are very few and far between.
 
#19
#19
I agree with you on your last point....and yes I do get the other side of the arguement....agree to disagree :mf_surrender: :p
 
#21
#21
He didn't fail as a HC in one of the easiest conferences in America.

This whole topic has been run into the ground on VN over the past few months, I should have known better than to bring it up again. You have your opinion of how the DD era will play out and I have mine. Hopefully I'll be wrong, but only time will tell.

No he just got fired by Al Davis on morality issues, how ironic is that?
 
#22
#22
He didn't fail as a HC in one of the easiest conferences in America.

This whole topic has been run into the ground on VN over the past few months, I should have known better than to bring it up again. You have your opinion of how the DD era will play out and I have mine. Hopefully I'll be wrong, but only time will tell.

How is coaching a doormat team in a dinky conference playing the likes of LSU, Auburn, Boise State, and Navy supposed to be easy? Plain and simple, the school had a schedule designed to collect money from bigger schools for being their OOC patsy Kinda like Buffalo and UT.

It amazes me at the fans such as you who at this point really want Coach Dooley to fail and in the process our team fail. Personally I never liked the mouthy thing from Kalifornia from day 1 but when it came to the Vols I hoped he would succeed. I like the way Dooley handles himself so far, he acts like an SEC coach should and so far so good. I wish him the best of luck and hope he is successful. I realize it is going to take some time and we all need to support the guy for the next few years that are going to be rough. I'm looking for improvement and if he keeps delivering that, I'm happy with him. The team should improve both on the field and these off the field incidents should dwindle to a minimum and not have us in the news every other week for robbing at gunpoint, committing federal crimes by filing numbers off of guns, beating up policemen at bars, and on and on that we've had in the last decade. I think we've got a guy that understands that and I'm confident things will improve.
 
#23
#23
How is coaching a doormat team in a dinky conference playing the likes of LSU, Auburn, Boise State, and Navy supposed to be easy? Plain and simple, the school had a schedule designed to collect money from bigger schools for being their OOC patsy Kinda like Buffalo and UT.

It amazes me at the fans such as you who at this point really want Coach Dooley to fail and in the process our team fail. Personally I never liked the mouthy thing from Kalifornia from day 1 but when it came to the Vols I hoped he would succeed. I like the way Dooley handles himself so far, he acts like an SEC coach should and so far so good. I wish him the best of luck and hope he is successful. I realize it is going to take some time and we all need to support the guy for the next few years that are going to be rough. I'm looking for improvement and if he keeps delivering that, I'm happy with him. The team should improve both on the field and these off the field incidents should dwindle to a minimum and not have us in the news every other week for robbing at gunpoint, committing federal crimes by filing numbers off of guns, beating up policemen at bars, and on and on that we've had in the last decade. I think we've got a guy that understands that and I'm confident things will improve.

Obviously they weren't going to be especially competitive in those games you mentioned. However, what bothers me about his record is the fact that he couldn't even get above .500 in a conference that weak, and the fact that over the course of his 3 year tenure, the didn't even improve over the last 3 year stretch under the previous coach.

It also amazes me that people are still incabable of separating wanting someone to fail from not thinking they don't have what it takes to succeed. It's really not the same thing.
 
#24
#24
The economy is a major factor in ticket sales but personally I believe home theater/media rooms are even a bigger threat.

HD/3D, your own bathroom, a great couch/recliner and not paying concession prices are huge factors when making the decision to shell out big bucks for the gameday experience.

Note how the Yankees and Cowboys have tried to replicate the home experience with Mac Daddy viewing screens and concessions brought to your seat.

You can "tailgate" at home with friends and not have to worry about sitting in endless traffic going home.

Admittedly, it's not the gameday experience we fans who have braved rain, heat, and tiny concrete seats in the same zip code as Jupiter know and love but it's a reality the marketers have to face. It's just plain harder to get us out the door these days.

Winning...now that would cure all the ills.

Too many bells and whistles these days. Back in the day a football game was a big deal and it brought people in from all around. One of the reasons was Knoxville was a retail center. The little places scattered about like LaFollette, Athens, Middlesboro KY, etc had stores with staple goods, but anything else had to be brought in from a city where they had bigger stores. People went to the ball game and came home with 2 suits from the Mill Outlet in the process. These days they've built chain stores in rural areas and between those and the internet sales it's diminished the importance of going to the city after stuff.

Somewhere along the way the games began to be used as an attraction to Pigeon Forge/Gatlinburg for weekend get aways. Most here are too young to remember when Pigeon Forge had 2 family inns, Teague's Statuary and cows, trees and farms pretty much rounded out the rest of it. Now they have plenty of attractions on their own.

You are right, we are a lazy bunch these days. Fighting traffic turns a lot of us off. We are also busy. I teach Hunter's Ed. 2 weeks ago we had the range portion for 1 of the classes. They are required to fire a .22 and shotgun for the class. We brought out high powered rifles, treestands, and other things hunters use. We offered to allow the kids to fire the rifles and shoot additional skeet free of charge after the class with the idea of showing them the advantages/disadvantages of various hunting weapons. NOT 1 Kid stayed past their required activity. At 12 years old if you'd laid out a 30/30 lever gun or a 30:06 bolt action I'd have shot till the barrel fell off the gun or the ammo can was empty. Today's generation is different.
 
#25
#25
He didn't fail as a HC in one of the easiest conferences in America.

which part do you have an objection to? the fail part or the easiest conference in america? let's not forget that the wac is thinking about replacing fresno and nevada with div 2 teams.
 
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