Sometimes the same voice over and over is not heard anymore. If this team missed the tourney, it is a gigantic failure
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Tad Boyle is the Greatest Coach in CU Men’s Basketball History
- Thread starter Goose
- Start date
Tad definitely lost the team last year, and it's starting to look like he's lost it again.
I hate to admit it because I love Tad but this is really starting to seem like the case. He's peaked here and signs of regression are showing.
Beavis
Well-Known Member
I don’t understand the takes about how we should be happy with Tad and the state of the team because of what happened during a different era of college sports when we did not have the facilities or care at all about being competitive. How can anyone watch us year in and year out and be happy that we lose in the 1st or 2nd round of the NIT every year. It’s ok to thank Tad for raising our floor, showing we can get NBA talent to Boulder without even being a perennial NCAA team. Now make the right hire, and you can build from there. Good coaches would fall over themselves to line up for a chance to coach a Big 12 program. Seems the choices are positive vibes for Tad’s contribution and build from there or give up. Giving up and saying we can never do more seems like such an odd take to me.
You misspelled "support basketball"
Win 20 games damn near every year with next to zero AD support since Bohn left, please tell me what the issue is?
I'm ignorant to the lack of support for the basketball program during the Rick George era, and have seen that mentioned a lot here. Can you elaborate on the specifics? Didn't they get brand new facilities a couple years ago?
They got a locker room renovation and a new practice court, but the most important facility, the CUEC, is 44 years old.
The CUEC is fantastic
Not the problemo
Practice facility is great
Crowds have been good to great
Is that it?
I have no issues with the EC, and didn't say I did. I was just answering Yak's question.
Disagree on crowds. 11k arena (normal for a flagship program) and we haven't sold out a game since Arizona in 2022. Crowds of 6-8k are normal, in the Boulder - Denver metro area.
I feel like @Goose has answered this question multiple times in the past. I'm flagging him so he can do it again. Support is required beyond just facilities. Personnel, administrative support, recruiting budgets, academic support, student housing, NIL, etc, etc. BB is generally an afterthought in RG's world.
A new coach with the same support level will probably regress in performance, IMO. A new coach who insists as part of his contract negotiations, that more support is given, might do better. But RG will not hire a coach with the bargaining power to demand that.
Tad, and the 20 win seasons he keeps delivering, pretty much are the best you can get with this level of resource support.
It'd piss a lot of people off if Tad got fired or retired, and then the new coach was given a whole bunch of resources and support that Tad never received, and of course all the idot fans would be "see Tad just reached his ceiling."
Absent an absurdly lucky, catch lightning in a bottle, late season run, CU is currently at our ceiling with the current level of institutional support. It is what it is; but right now, it's pretty much entirely on the AD.
Is this not the best recruiting and most talent Tad has assembled at CU (on paper)? Nearly 11k in attendance the other night. I haven’t looked at recruiting budget for MBB, but I can’t imagine it’s proportionately that far off from football’s, which isn’t very high relative to big time programs.
I don’t know all the issues that comprise the lack of institutional support, and can acknowledge there are likely more than football, but your last sentence seems pretty ridiculous. Praising Tad for multiple years for the best recruiting he’s done at CU, getting the #1 overall pick to CU, and then being as inconsistent and having as many major letdowns as his teams have had the last couple years feels like a coaching issue.
Beavis
Well-Known Member
Tad seems to be doing just fine on recruiting, despite resembling a guy who wanted to retire a few years ago, no recent NCAA success and apparently bottom of the barrel institutional support. I just don’t buy that he somehow is magical and nobody could replicate or exceed his success. It’s fine if you truly believe that, but I guess I’ll agree to disagree on that mindset. I love Tad and what he’s meant to CU, and now it’s time to build. It’s a different point for a different discussion, but with conference realignment, CU cannot afford to punt on a sport like MBB.
And schools are downsizing when building new arenas. If CU was to build a new arena, I doubt it will be more than 10,000 seats. Baylor just opened their new and smaller arena to rave reviews.
Did I miss where the AD cared about being competitive? Sure feels like a juice boxes for all kind of approach from the AD (that is when they didn't stay at work late and miss your game)
Luckily our negative fan base is way more engaged than our AD. Rick George is never going to fire tad for on court performance that is just mediocre
When you put every spare nickel and bit of bandwidth into football, it's easy to be happy with a MBB program that wins, is profitable, and has zero scandal. No need to market it, give a large staffing or recruiting budget, or work on booster support which could all be resources directed towards football.
I think the job of coaching this team, this season, is only about 60% done. Tad could still turn this into a successful season.
Just as an FYI, according the latest numbers for FY23:
MBB produces 8% of the total net revenue that football does ($15m vs $1.2m), BUT,
1. Has a Coaching Salaries expense that's 40% of the football budget ($10.4m vs $4.1m)
2. Has a support staff expense that's 23% of the football budget ($3.3m vs $775k)
3. Has a recruiting budget that's 20% of the football budget ($983k vs $189k)
4. Has a "Game Expenses" budget that's 29% of the football budget ($2.2m vs $667k)
5. Has a Team Travel budget that's 39% of the football budget ($1.6m vs $656k)
Also, the total net revenue number includes the $7m they are paying to make Karl Dorrell and staff go away. Removing that from the football expenses and the different is $22m vs $1.2m or 5% and I imagine when the full Prime effect is realized in the financials for FY24, this gap will be even larger.
Of course this doesn't tell the whole story, but it seems like, pound for pound, the financial resources have been allocated generously based on how much MBB brings in, which obviously has a much lower ceiling. If you want to argue that support staff and recruiting budgets for both should be increased substantially, I can get behind that, but I think your general point about MBB being left with table scraps is just false.
Within CU's AD budget, that suggests good funding. However, the problem is spending vs competitors. Especially as it relates to building a NIL booster network. And remember, other programs get budgets even though they lose millions. It's basically minimal funding for MBB and everything else with FB getting everything that can be directed there to increase that budget beyond minimal. I don't necessarily disagree, but let's not pretend that MBB has the type of resources seen at places like Arkansas.
What do you think CU football spending vs competitors in the SEC and B1G looks like? I saw that Georgia spends something like $5m/year on recruiting alone. I expect the FY24 numbers for CU to be higher than 23, but CU football was at less than $1m.
I think there's more evidence to suggest that CU spends an appropriate amount on football and MBB based on the revenue they each bring in.
Now, the real argument here is that CU football spending is probably on par with the other Big 12 programs, but it's a second tier football conference, whereas we are moving into the tier one basketball conference and basketball spending is probably bottom third or bottom quartile relative to the other Big 12 MBB programs.
I think we all agree that the AD should be planning to spend more on MBB going forward, but getting back to the initial discussion, I really don't think any of this excuses the inconsistent team performance year after year, especially as the talent level has increased.
This
Treating all sports as a business net income makes no sense for a college AD unless you plan to simply cut all sports that don’t begin with foot and end with ball.
Your argument is that CU spends appropriately based on its AD resources and that this should translate into more MBB success than programs that spend more while having much richer tradition, a deep MBB booster organization and are located in a much more talent-rich location?
The fact is that Tad's program outperforms what it should objectively be achieving and that, especially this year, he's managed to assemble a team that is talented enough to be in the Top 15 but has underperformed its capabilities so far.
This team's problem is and always was going to be guard play - our guards aren't good enough to be top-25, our wings on the other hand? watch out.
The problem is as we all know, guard play rules the roost I'm college basketball.
Your starting guards are 1) one of the Top 10 guards in the country and 2) the potential #1 or #2 NBA draft pick next year. Starting guards are not this team's problem.
Now, guard depth might warrant a discussion given Smith is out for the year, Ruffin looks about 60% and Hammond should be playing at UNC.
I'm also not sure what you mean by "watch out" re: wings. We basically have two - TDS and LOB. Hadley's a 6-6 post player. Dak and Diop don't seem to have identities on this team yet.
We can discuss off court resources and commitment til we're all blue in the face, but the fact is coaching has been mediocre this year. Whether that's Tad, the assistants or both I don't know. I do know I'm sick of watching teams with way less talent (and resources), do more every year.
Kansas spends $300k more than CU on recruiting and only $3m/year more in total once you back out the difference between Bill Self and Tad's salaries. Arkansas spends $250k more on recruiting and only $100k more on support staff.
Is anyone even asking for CU to be in the same conversation as KU? Maybe Arkansas, but again, the SEC has all the $$$.
Re the bolded... Isn't that a summation of the entire point some people are making about Tad? Nobody is saying he's a bad coach. He's made a historically irrelevant program respectable, but are two tournament appearances in the last ten seasons (if they don't make it this year) what you're OK with from this program simply because they aren't getting the same amount of funding as some other programs?
I'm going to get flamed for this, but does anyone think CSU is an easier job than this one? Because Niko Medved is probably going to have his team in a 6 or 7 seed position a year after losing his best player in Roddy.
I'm not advocating moving on from Tad per se, but this "no one can ever do any better" stuff whenever people criticize Tad is getting tiresome.
This team should not be missing the tournament this year. They're probably going to. Tad deserves some heat.
I'm not advocating moving on from Tad per se, but this "no one can ever do any better" stuff whenever people criticize Tad is getting tiresome.
This team should not be missing the tournament this year. They're probably going to. Tad deserves some heat.