With the many changes of college athletics today, it’s safe to say that it’s going to be more difficult to maintain the level of success we achieved in the early 2010’s in both baseball and softball.
What are your expectations moving forward?
Going forward, I have zero expectations for all UL sports. 100% pure entertainment. Results are what they are. With that said, do doubt games are much more enjoyable when we are winning.
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- When we’re silently extending coaches following losing seasons, there is no standard. Deggs and Habetz can say their programs aren’t living up to the standard, but that means very little when there are no real world consequences for doing so, other than missing out on some bonuses.
- Why should our expectations change? They haven’t changed for our peers. Unless we no longer even dare to consider our conference mates peers.
- When SELA is 39-10 in softball and getting votes in the polls and when ULM sweeps us in softball and takes a series against us in baseball, I’m not willing to chalk the failures we are seeing up to just a symptom of the changing landscape. No different than us losing to EMU in football.
We have a leadership problem at this university. When the performance is this lackluster across the board, you have to look at the man in the AD’s chair. My expectations are at an all time low until a leadership change occurs.
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After transfer portal and NIL, I pulled athletics donations beyond season tickets for various programs. With that, I made a sort of unspoken rule for myself about expectations and criticisms: I have zero expectations and stay away from criticizing entire programs beyond complaining about in-game events.
I am not willing to throw my hard-earned money at kids playing college sports, I don’t have that kind of disposable income. Since taking that stance, I willingly give up my right to bitch.
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I agree to a point. We should be able to compete better in conference but from what I understand outside of ULM we have the fewest NIL dollars in conference. At some point that has a huge effect…especially when the coaches refuse to change how they recruit. If we continue to go after high school kids, I just see us being in a constant state of rebuild. Gotta learn how to moneyball it.
like Redtail I have tampered my expectations and don’t expect much. I’ve given up even watching much college sports.
Same here. Refuse to give my hard earned money to these young adults when they are also given the finances to pursue any education route they desire, free room/board, meal plans, etc.
Outside of about 10 programs in all of America, university athletic programs are losing money. I’m starting to equate that 99% of D-1 athletes are just like WNBA players: they’re demanding more money as a collective than dollars that are coming in
I give the required donation for the seats I have and that’s it.
My expectation when attending games is hoping my young kids enjoy going and continue to peak their interest in each sport. Nothing more - nothing less.
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I shouldn’t be so brash in denouncing the NIL explanation, but I’m tired of the changing landscape being a blanket excuse for each and every failure. I agree with you about recruiting. This year’s baseball team is a prime example. 10 years ago you could probably feel good about this year because even though the results aren’t what we’d like there’s a lot of young talent getting experience. Now. That experience is gonna pay off…at other programs.
So we’re last in NIL. Why? Why are schools like Troy, Southern Miss, and even McNeese kicking our ass in this? Could it have something to do with our administration and their decade long project of severing connection between our community and the athletic department. We literally have people who have had tailgate spots for 20+ years giving them up because of the price hikes…and there’s no one in line behind them to purchase. Think about it. For years we were told prices have to go up on tickets, concessions, parking, tailgating, etc. to be competitive and maintain our standards. All the while the atmosphere at our games was getting worse. Now we suck in everything, and the remaining fanbase has resigned themselves to having no expectations. Is pricing now going to adjust to the lack of standards? I bet not.
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I completely blame it on the admin. We needed someone to bring a lot of our practices in to the modern world but if the price out ways the demand, you have to change. It’s basic economics.
With all the success we were able to have since 2011, there is zero reason we are in this position. It has been complete mismanagement.
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Solid topic btw Gerry. Anxious to hear your thoughts.
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I will say for certain. Softball has changed since the 2010s. We were never going to have that series winning streak that we had. All I hope is that we stay somewhat competitive. We had a decent start to the season, I’m not sure what’s going on. We’ve beaten two top 25 teams. Surely JMU or even ULM aren’t better than ole Miss or A&M. We’re capable of beating these teams I just don’t understand why we aren’t. I’m not a fan of firing a coach after two seasons so I’m hoping Coach Aly finds all the problems to us losing games we shouldn’t and fixes those problems.
There’s the match that lit this fuse…
We had a little success under Hud and the admin decided it was time to play dress-up and pretend to be a big boy program.
Jack up prices across the board, but especially tailgating, to run off the riff-raff and get some of that fishing shirt crowd we always see tailgating at bigger schools. While at the same time, tripling down on efforts to herd students into a playpen and turn drinking/possession citations into a revenue stream.
A regional school with a surprisingly vibrant and enthusiastic athletic following…
Yeah, lets price out every person who might be ragin’ or cajun, and lets turn every sport into a meet & greet in luxury boxes. Maybe we can even build an indoor air-conditioned tailgate for the important people…
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The standard we’re used to in diamond sports can be replicated even in today’s environment of NIL and transfers. The key here is coaches have to step up and find the diamonds in the rough. Will it be difficult? Of course it will, but we see our peers having success. So the question is why not us? We must move past the toxic mentality that drives a belief that we cannot succeed because of NIL and the transfer portal. We need a president at UL and head of athletics that are on the same page and are committed to success. That means we must commit to rebuilding RCAF into what it should have been all along, a fundraising arm that targets all potential donors. We can’t afford to spend blindly any longer and we can’t keep raising prices which we know has pushed people away from UL Athletics.
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$13 million deficit and chased off the folks that fill the seats and parking lots to maybe cover 5% of that.