There's no way to know for certain if the football team would have gotten 2 commitments this month and if the level of interest from all our recruiting targets would be the same if our hoops team sucked.
However...
1. Conventional wisdom is that it works the other way and that football success drives success in other sports through increased publicity and money. Basketball does that to, albeit to a lesser extent.
2. It is known that Embree has been utilizing the tremendous atmosphere of our home basketball games as a part of his recruiting weekends. This may be more important for us than other places since we could have weather issues during a December/January official visit and also because Embree backloads a lot of OVs to that time period.
3. The rise of the basketball program dovetails with a lot that Embree is selling to recruits. Colorado is seen as an athletic department on the rise in Pac-12 country (as Embo talks about). Also, a lot of the hoops success can be tied to a major upgrade to practice facility, training room, and home arena (exactly the plan that's on the table for football and about 10x bigger).
4. The fan base is energized now that we have a winner again in a spotlight program. That drives donations and other support. It also increases the impact of our success in Skiing, T&F and Women's Golf (along with adding WLAX) to further demonstrate that CU athletics are on a major upward swing. This momentum is something that the so-called Olympic Sports can't deliver on their own, but on the coattails of success in the big revenue sports they re-inforce the message in a big way.
I'm a believer that hoops success actually has a big impact on football recruiting. It's coming as a surprise to me, because I just thought of it. It wasn't something I'd really considered before.
However...
1. Conventional wisdom is that it works the other way and that football success drives success in other sports through increased publicity and money. Basketball does that to, albeit to a lesser extent.
2. It is known that Embree has been utilizing the tremendous atmosphere of our home basketball games as a part of his recruiting weekends. This may be more important for us than other places since we could have weather issues during a December/January official visit and also because Embree backloads a lot of OVs to that time period.
3. The rise of the basketball program dovetails with a lot that Embree is selling to recruits. Colorado is seen as an athletic department on the rise in Pac-12 country (as Embo talks about). Also, a lot of the hoops success can be tied to a major upgrade to practice facility, training room, and home arena (exactly the plan that's on the table for football and about 10x bigger).
4. The fan base is energized now that we have a winner again in a spotlight program. That drives donations and other support. It also increases the impact of our success in Skiing, T&F and Women's Golf (along with adding WLAX) to further demonstrate that CU athletics are on a major upward swing. This momentum is something that the so-called Olympic Sports can't deliver on their own, but on the coattails of success in the big revenue sports they re-inforce the message in a big way.
I'm a believer that hoops success actually has a big impact on football recruiting. It's coming as a surprise to me, because I just thought of it. It wasn't something I'd really considered before.