Let's Talk Football

[GreenPuddleSplash]

I believe it's put on by the West Bank Booster Club. Or at least in the past it was. Ray Hester group used to be involved but I'm not sure if they still sponsor it.
Live stream
https://www.facebook.com/GreenWaveFootb ... 033460845/

Is it just me or is the live feed very difficult to hear what anyone is saying?

[tpstulane]

I believe it's put on by the West Bank Booster Club. Or at least in the past it was. Ray Hester group used to be involved but I'm not sure if they still sponsor it.
Live stream
https://www.facebook.com/GreenWaveFootb ... 033460845/

Is it just me or is the live feed very difficult to hear what anyone is saying?

I'm here and the sound system is muffled bigtime.

[JerseyWave]

Watched it on Facebook live. Dannen was impressive. Said this was the first year since Katrina the University operated with a Surplus. He has the money for a new Tennis Facility but not ready to announce the plans. Talked about the Football Performance Center that will be built where the Mintz ptractice field is. 90% of the design is completed and about 1% of the fundraising. Will cost about $35 million. Weight room, meeting rooms locker room. Practice field will be on top of the building. Called it the last piece to the puzzle.

[winwave]

Glad that information is finally public.

[tpstulane]

Watched it on Facebook live. Dannen was impressive. Said this was the first year since Katrina the University operated with a Surplus. He has the money for a new Tennis Facility but not ready to announce the plans. Talked about the Football Performance Center that will be built where the Mintz ptractice field is. 90% of the design is completed and about 1% of the fundraising. Will cost about $35 million. Weight room, meeting rooms locker room. Practice field will be on top of the building. Called it the last piece to the puzzle.

Just got home. Yes that was good news. I had heard about the Athletic Center before but didn't hear about the surplus and tennis plans until tonight. He said the building is not football specific it will be available to all programs. He also mentioned that he plans on bringing back Men's Golf and the Sailing program got us back in compliance with Title IX.
Overall it was a nice event. Glad I attended.
WF spoke about some of his best players that were in attendance and he introduced his entire staff. He also did a Q&A with Gus Kat. A few players also did a Q&A. The live auction items brought in close to $6,000.

[tpstulane]

Also mentioned last night was that the avg incoming ACT score for a Tulane student is now a 32. That's great for the school but makes it tough on your baseball coach if you're trying to get academic money. The school turned its first surplus since pre-Katrina. Props to Mike Fitts for that.
If you want a recap the video below is still up. TD starts talking around the 9min mark.
https://www.facebook.com/GreenWaveFootb ... 033460845/

[mbawavefan12]

Reporting that you have raised 1% of the funds is comical.

So where is the tennis facility going? I would also like to know if there is any plan to utilize the land near Ochsner?

I still feel like we are in a much better position as an athletic department than we were 3-4 years ago. The one concern is that we are in a league with teams who are all investing huge money as compared to where they were 3-4 years ago. Look around, almost every school in the AAC is pouring money into athletics.

[lurker123]

Reporting that you have raised 1% of the funds is comical.

So where is the tennis facility going? I would also like to know if there is any plan to utilize the land near Ochsner?

I still feel like we are in a much better position as an athletic department than we were 3-4 years ago. The one concern is that we are in a league with teams who are all investing huge money as compared to where they were 3-4 years ago. Look around, almost every school in the AAC is pouring money into athletics.

Sorry but what is your beef? That Dannen is being too transparent and not playing hide the football like the previous admin? That Tulane has to have a detailed design before it can go hat in hand to ask for donations for an ops center? That some check writers might want to see that the request is not for something ephemeral and pie in the sky?

How is Tulane not pouring money into athletics like other AAC schools? In the past two years, we've dramatically upgraded the quality of personnel in football, MBB, volleyball and AD. That was not cheap. I'll leave baseball personnel out of this.

Why not look at last five or six years total? In addition to personnel upgrades, Tulane has built Hertz and Yulman, renovated Devlin and continued to upgrade Turchin. Do you think other AAC schools are looking at Tulane and saying they have to catch up with us? How many other AAC schools have made athletic investments in excess of $100 million during that time frame? Just asking.

[mbawavefan12]

Reporting that you have raised 1% of the funds is comical.

So where is the tennis facility going? I would also like to know if there is any plan to utilize the land near Ochsner?

I still feel like we are in a much better position as an athletic department than we were 3-4 years ago. The one concern is that we are in a league with teams who are all investing huge money as compared to where they were 3-4 years ago. Look around, almost every school in the AAC is pouring money into athletics.

Sorry but what is your beef? That Dannen is being too transparent and not playing hide the football like the previous admin? That Tulane has to have a detailed design before it can go hat in hand to ask for donations for an ops center? That some check writers might want to see that the request is not for something ephemeral and pie in the sky?

How is Tulane not pouring money into athletics like other AAC schools? In the past two years, we've dramatically upgraded the quality of personnel in football, MBB, volleyball and AD. That was not cheap. I'll leave baseball personnel out of this.

Why not look at last five or six years total? In addition to personnel upgrades, Tulane has built Hertz and Yulman, renovated Devlin and continued to upgrade Turchin. Do you think other AAC schools are looking at Tulane and saying they have to catch up with us? How many other AAC schools have made athletic investments in excess of $100 million during that time frame? Just asking.

Jeez relax.

I have been part of a number of fundraising campaigns, just found it funny that you would publicly acknowledge that you have raised $350k for a $35mm project. Never seen something like that before, that's all. In the end I would rather more transparency like that I suppose and hopefully the announcement will bring other big donors to the table.

As for Tulane expenditures, it still leaves us well behind the rest of the league. Everyone has or is building a Bball practice facility. Our FBall and Bball stadiums are by far the smallest in the league and each are very flawed from a design/revenue POV. Our Fball locker room/weight room/meeting rooms etc are at the bottom of the league. So as I stated, we are still very much at the bottom of the league from a athletic asset POV. That's an obstacle that some won;t acknowledge and just say win and then we can get the money to make further upgrades, which is a silly POV.

As far as who else has spent $100mm, it is somewhat irrelevant because our starting point was so far behind. But even still, I think you would be surprised at how much the rest of the league schools have spent in the last 6 years or so and many are moving forward with other huge spending plans. Besides that, most had respectable facilities built long ago and each year they make upgrades.

I have no idea what our comparable budgets are for coaches and recruiting, but let's be real, I can't imagine it is the top half of the league. With that said, I still really like the recent hires in the two big sports, especially Fritz, he is a winner. As I also said I think we are in a much better spot now than under Dickson. If we were still in CUSA and had our current assets, then fine, but the AAC is full of schools with huge aspirations and we can not be happy just having adequate assets/budgets, that's my main point.

[lurker123]

Reporting that you have raised 1% of the funds is comical.

So where is the tennis facility going? I would also like to know if there is any plan to utilize the land near Ochsner?

I still feel like we are in a much better position as an athletic department than we were 3-4 years ago. The one concern is that we are in a league with teams who are all investing huge money as compared to where they were 3-4 years ago. Look around, almost every school in the AAC is pouring money into athletics.

Sorry but what is your beef? That Dannen is being too transparent and not playing hide the football like the previous admin? That Tulane has to have a detailed design before it can go hat in hand to ask for donations for an ops center? That some check writers might want to see that the request is not for something ephemeral and pie in the sky?

How is Tulane not pouring money into athletics like other AAC schools? In the past two years, we've dramatically upgraded the quality of personnel in football, MBB, volleyball and AD. That was not cheap. I'll leave baseball personnel out of this.

Why not look at last five or six years total? In addition to personnel upgrades, Tulane has built Hertz and Yulman, renovated Devlin and continued to upgrade Turchin. Do you think other AAC schools are looking at Tulane and saying they have to catch up with us? How many other AAC schools have made athletic investments in excess of $100 million during that time frame? Just asking.

Jeez relax.

I have been part of a number of fundraising campaigns, just found it funny that you would publicly acknowledge that you have raised $350k for a $35mm project. Never seen something like that before, that's all. In the end I would rather more transparency like that I suppose and hopefully announcements like that will bring other big donors to the table.

As for Tulane expenditures, it still leaves us well behind the rest of the league. Everyone has or is building a Bball practice facility. Our FBall and Bball stadiums are by far the smallest in the league and each are very flawed from a design/revenue POV. Our Fball locker room/weight room/meeting rooms etc are at the bottom of the league. So as I stated, we are still very much at the bottom of the league from a athletic asset POV. That's an obstacle that some won;t acknowledge and just say win and then we can get the money to make further upgrades, which is a silly POV.

As far as who else has spent $100mm, it is somewhat irrelevant because our starting point was so far behind. But even still, I think you would be surprised at how much the rest of the league schools has spent in the last 6 years or so and many are moving forward with other huge spending plans. Besides that, most had respectable facilities built long ago and each year they make upgrades.

I have no idea what our comparable budgets are for coaches and recruiting, but let's be real I can't imagine it is the top half of the league. With that said, I still really like the recent hires in the two big sports, especially Fritz, he is a winner. As I also said I think we are in a much better spot now than under Dickson. If we were still in CUSA and had our current assets, then fine, but the AAC is full of schools with huge aspirations and we can not be happy just having adequate assets.

No go here. Tulane spends $100 million plus and it doesn't matter because in your view it wasn't well spent. How do you know Tulane's coaches and AD salaries are below AAC mean? Wanna bet? I'm glad you like the hires but as you say, "I can't imagine..." in effect Tulane athletics being competitive in its spending and management policies. Meanwhile let's not let facts get in the way so you can beat up Tulane admins.

Finally you bewail Tulane's lack of a decent football ops center than you belittle the process Dannen is using to plan, fund and build it. In other words you don't like what exists today and you'll mock those trying to improve things because that's what real Tulane fans are supposed to do. "Comical" was your descriptive word not mine of how Dannen is handling this. Then you tell others to relax who disagree with your throw-away put-downs at Tulane decision makers who are trying to make things happen instead of howling at the moon.

As I said no go here. And yes I"m shining a light on it.

[winwave]

Reporting that you have raised 1% of the funds is comical.

So where is the tennis facility going? I would also like to know if there is any plan to utilize the land near Ochsner?

I still feel like we are in a much better position as an athletic department than we were 3-4 years ago. The one concern is that we are in a league with teams who are all investing huge money as compared to where they were 3-4 years ago. Look around, almost every school in the AAC is pouring money into athletics.

Sorry but what is your beef? That Dannen is being too transparent and not playing hide the football like the previous admin? That Tulane has to have a detailed design before it can go hat in hand to ask for donations for an ops center? That some check writers might want to see that the request is not for something ephemeral and pie in the sky?

How is Tulane not pouring money into athletics like other AAC schools? In the past two years, we've dramatically upgraded the quality of personnel in football, MBB, volleyball and AD. That was not cheap. I'll leave baseball personnel out of this.

Why not look at last five or six years total? In addition to personnel upgrades, Tulane has built Hertz and Yulman, renovated Devlin and continued to upgrade Turchin. Do you think other AAC schools are looking at Tulane and saying they have to catch up with us? How many other AAC schools have made athletic investments in excess of $100 million during that time frame? Just asking.

Jeez relax.

I have been part of a number of fundraising campaigns, just found it funny that you would publicly acknowledge that you have raised $350k for a $35mm project. Never seen something like that before, that's all. In the end I would rather more transparency like that I suppose and hopefully the announcement will bring other big donors to the table.

As for Tulane expenditures, it still leaves us well behind the rest of the league. Everyone has or is building a Bball practice facility. Our FBall and Bball stadiums are by far the smallest in the league and each are very flawed from a design/revenue POV. Our Fball locker room/weight room/meeting rooms etc are at the bottom of the league. So as I stated, we are still very much at the bottom of the league from a athletic asset POV. That's an obstacle that some won;t acknowledge and just say win and then we can get the money to make further upgrades, which is a silly POV.

As far as who else has spent $100mm, it is somewhat irrelevant because our starting point was so far behind. But even still, I think you would be surprised at how much the rest of the league schools have spent in the last 6 years or so and many are moving forward with other huge spending plans. Besides that, most had respectable facilities built long ago and each year they make upgrades.

I have no idea what our comparable budgets are for coaches and recruiting, but let's be real, I can't imagine it is the top half of the league. With that said, I still really like the recent hires in the two big sports, especially Fritz, he is a winner. As I also said I think we are in a much better spot now than under Dickson. If we were still in CUSA and had our current assets, then fine, but the AAC is full of schools with huge aspirations and we can not be happy just having adequate assets/budgets, that's my main point.

+1

[winwave]

Also mentioned last night was that the avg incoming ACT score for a Tulane student is now a 32. That's great for the school but makes it tough on your baseball coach if you're trying to get academic money. The school turned its first surplus since pre-Katrina. Props to Mike Fitts for that.
If you want a recap the video below is still up. TD starts talking around the 9min mark.
https://www.facebook.com/GreenWaveFootb ... 033460845/

No direct quote there that says the threshold for academic money which can be stacked has been raised.

[mbawavefan12]

Reporting that you have raised 1% of the funds is comical.

So where is the tennis facility going? I would also like to know if there is any plan to utilize the land near Ochsner?

I still feel like we are in a much better position as an athletic department than we were 3-4 years ago. The one concern is that we are in a league with teams who are all investing huge money as compared to where they were 3-4 years ago. Look around, almost every school in the AAC is pouring money into athletics.

Sorry but what is your beef? That Dannen is being too transparent and not playing hide the football like the previous admin? That Tulane has to have a detailed design before it can go hat in hand to ask for donations for an ops center? That some check writers might want to see that the request is not for something ephemeral and pie in the sky?

How is Tulane not pouring money into athletics like other AAC schools? In the past two years, we've dramatically upgraded the quality of personnel in football, MBB, volleyball and AD. That was not cheap. I'll leave baseball personnel out of this.

Why not look at last five or six years total? In addition to personnel upgrades, Tulane has built Hertz and Yulman, renovated Devlin and continued to upgrade Turchin. Do you think other AAC schools are looking at Tulane and saying they have to catch up with us? How many other AAC schools have made athletic investments in excess of $100 million during that time frame? Just asking.

Jeez relax.

I have been part of a number of fundraising campaigns, just found it funny that you would publicly acknowledge that you have raised $350k for a $35mm project. Never seen something like that before, that's all. In the end I would rather more transparency like that I suppose and hopefully announcements like that will bring other big donors to the table.

As for Tulane expenditures, it still leaves us well behind the rest of the league. Everyone has or is building a Bball practice facility. Our FBall and Bball stadiums are by far the smallest in the league and each are very flawed from a design/revenue POV. Our Fball locker room/weight room/meeting rooms etc are at the bottom of the league. So as I stated, we are still very much at the bottom of the league from a athletic asset POV. That's an obstacle that some won;t acknowledge and just say win and then we can get the money to make further upgrades, which is a silly POV.

As far as who else has spent $100mm, it is somewhat irrelevant because our starting point was so far behind. But even still, I think you would be surprised at how much the rest of the league schools has spent in the last 6 years or so and many are moving forward with other huge spending plans. Besides that, most had respectable facilities built long ago and each year they make upgrades.

I have no idea what our comparable budgets are for coaches and recruiting, but let's be real I can't imagine it is the top half of the league. With that said, I still really like the recent hires in the two big sports, especially Fritz, he is a winner. As I also said I think we are in a much better spot now than under Dickson. If we were still in CUSA and had our current assets, then fine, but the AAC is full of schools with huge aspirations and we can not be happy just having adequate assets.

No go here. Tulane spends $100 million plus and it doesn't matter because in your view it wasn't well spent. How do you know Tulane's coaches and AD salaries are below AAC mean? Wanna bet? I'm glad you like the hires but as you say, "I can't imagine..." in effect Tulane athletics being competitive in its spending and management policies. Meanwhile let's not let facts get in the way so you can beat up Tulane admins.

Finally you bewail Tulane's lack of a decent football ops center than you belittle the process Dannen is using to plan, fund and build it. In other words you don't like what exists today and you'll mock those trying to improve things because that's what real Tulane fans are supposed to do. "Comical" was your descriptive word not mine of how Dannen is handling this. Then you tell others to relax who disagree with your throw-away put-downs at Tulane decision makers who are trying to make things happen instead of howling at the moon.

As I said no go here. And yes I"m shining a light on it.

Did your wife make you sleep on the couch last night or something?

I never said $100mm doesn't matter and frankly you making it out that I had a "beef" or was belittling things is absurd internet nonsense. I said the money spent merely got us somewhat caught up (which is 100% a fact) and frankly there are serious questions about whether in some ways it set us back by limiting our future options. Am I happy they were able to raise the funds, of course, but you seem to insinuate that we should just be having a party that we have merely cut the gap to the rest of the league, that's a loser's mentality. We have a lot more work to do if we want to compete for championships every year, another fact.

And again goddamit, I simply thought it was funny to announce to your constituency that you were 1% to a fundraising goal, it's a funny/strange statement.....I mean you clearly have not been involved in fundraising to not find that statement amusing. As far as budgets, yes I am obviously speculating. I think the budgets have improved since the dark Dickson days, but if we are int he top of the league then say it, no? I would bet my paycheck we are not in the top half, but clearly much better than in the past.

I am done with this, hopefully other readers understand where I was coming from and what I was trying to get across, you clearly did not. Good day.

Edit: Our total coaching salary budgets are below the mean. I will take that bet, donate to charity.

[tpstulane]

Also mentioned last night was that the avg incoming ACT score for a Tulane student is now a 32. That's great for the school but makes it tough on your baseball coach if you're trying to get academic money. The school turned its first surplus since pre-Katrina. Props to Mike Fitts for that.
If you want a recap the video below is still up. TD starts talking around the 9min mark.
https://www.facebook.com/GreenWaveFootb ... 033460845/

No direct quote there that says the threshold for academic money which can be stacked has been raised.

Logic thinking would say if one scores below avg why should he/she qualify for academic money? The threshold was raised from 29 to 31 a few years ago. That's when the avg ACT was 29. Now that it's 32 you can safely assume scoring below 32 won't get you any academic scholarship money.

[winwave]

There's always exceptions to the rule. We'll see what happens.

[tpstulane]

There's always exceptions to the rule. We'll see what happens.

Yes but when it comes to academic aid it's rare to get that exception. You open up the possibility of having to lower standards for all students. Just makes it tougher to find that baseball player that can score a 32, play and pay. Stanford, Vandy, Rice and those types are recruiting the same kid but have a distinctive advantage in other forms of aid.
I can only imagine the chaos created if it was known to have baseball players given academic aid for a 29 and the general student body population couldn't get it at 31.

[winwave]

Remember though that that is TD saying it is the average not someone from the academic side. So it's possible that 32 is not the baseline.

[DfromCT]

Although our spending has been impressive for TULANE, it pales in comparison to what our peers in the AAC are spending. We did the stadium "on the cheap" no doubt. It needs upgrades that will probably cost as much as the SEVENTY MILLION DOLLARS it cost to build. We started at a disadvantage, and think that spending "almost" as much as the others in the conference, that have a better argument for P5 invites, will make us attractive to a power conference? I think not. We have a LONG way to go to get into that neighborhood. And our record on the field is a ball and chain we need to overcome. Doing things on the cheap doesn't help. We needed to build Yulman to the original plans, and flip the bird to the NIMBY's. We should have threatened to hold a voter registration on campus and had all of our students vote for City Council when that one woman backed the NIMBYs.

We're playing catch up. That cannot be argued. We're not spending as much as our peers to try to get the P5 invite that will go to a VERY SMALL handful of schools. If we're basing our argument on the fact that we're in New Orleans, and that PER CAPITA (in a state that's the smallest one to host an NFL team) there's a ton of recruits, we're going to be left out once again in the early to mid 2020's when the LAST round of re-alignment takes place.

We are on the outside looking in, and not doing nearly enough to get inside.

[galvezwave]

Although our spending has been impressive for TULANE, it pales in comparison to what our peers in the AAC are spending. We did the stadium "on the cheap" no doubt. It needs upgrades that will probably cost as much as the SEVENTY MILLION DOLLARS it cost to build. We started at a disadvantage, and think that spending "almost" as much as the others in the conference, that have a better argument for P5 invites, will make us attractive to a power conference? I think not. We have a LONG way to go to get into that neighborhood. And our record on the field is a ball and chain we need to overcome. Doing things on the cheap doesn't help. We needed to build Yulman to the original plans, and flip the bird to the NIMBY's. We should have threatened to hold a voter registration on campus and had all of our students vote for City Council when that one woman backed the NIMBYs.

We're playing catch up. That cannot be argued. We're not spending as much as our peers to try to get the P5 invite that will go to a VERY SMALL handful of schools. If we're basing our argument on the fact that we're in New Orleans, and that PER CAPITA (in a state that's the smallest one to host an NFL team) there's a ton of recruits, we're going to be left out once again in the early to mid 2020's when the LAST round of re-alignment takes place.

We are on the outside looking in, and not doing nearly enough to get inside.

Cold , hard truth

[Bearwave]

2 Private school stadiums that opened the same year. One cost $270 M, the other $75 M. I know conference and TV money is vastly different but Yulman could have been so much better had the administration not given in to the NIMBYs.

[golfnut69]

2 Private school stadiums that opened the same year. One cost $270 M, the other $75 M. I know conference and TV money is vastly different but Yulman could have been so much better had the administration not given in to the NIMBYs.

a west side upper deck would make a world of difference.....I still would kike to see an inflatable partial roof over Yulman, covering the stands, enclosing the noise and light issues..leave the middle open like the original Texas Stadium so God can see his favorite team...this type of rrof was used with success a the metro dome and in the case of NOLA have it so it can be deflated and retracted...now you have a recruit and chick magnet

[breaker]

Dang, I saw the thread title and was really hoping to get scoop on how Landry Walker is going to be post Keytaon Thompson and whether Shaw could bounce back this year. Losing Sportsnola hurts - both for HS coverage and Tulane coverage.

[mbawavefan12]

2 Private school stadiums that opened the same year. One cost $270 M, the other $75 M. I know conference and TV money is vastly different but Yulman could have been so much better had the administration not given in to the NIMBYs.

a west side upper deck would make a world of difference.....I still would kike to see an inflatable partial roof over Yulman, covering the stands, enclosing the noise and light issues..leave the middle open like the original Texas Stadium so God can see his favorite team...this type of rrof was used with success a the metro dome and in the case of NOLA have it so it can be deflated and retracted...now you have a recruit and chick magnet

You can't have an inflatable roof with a hole in the middle tmk. The bubble doesn't cover the stand either, it's inflated only over the field.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aTul1MklyTw

[GreenPuddleSplash]

2 Private school stadiums that opened the same year. One cost $270 M, the other $75 M. I know conference and TV money is vastly different but Yulman could have been so much better had the administration not given in to the NIMBYs.

First, Waco has half the population that lives in the city compared to Orleans Parish. Second, there's much more land in Waco than in New Orleans, which also leads to land value, which is a fraction compared to Orleans Parish. Lastly, NIMBYs are a very powerful and litigious group. I hear a lot of people saying we should have told NIMBYs to f* off (I 100% agree we should have put up more resistance), but if it was that easy, the University would have done it (my inside sources have said time and time again that ALL options were heavily vetted and researched including telling the NIMBYs to F off but the law was not on our side). Tulane holds a lot of clout, especially as the largest employer in New Orleans, however, your clout only gets you so far when the law favors the rights of NIMBYs / homeowners. I would love to see a much bigger stadium, however, if I were left with the options of having a smaller stadium or none at all, I'd choose the smaller one. However, times are changing, Susan Guidry, the NIMBYs council member is going to be gone so who knows, we might be able to get an expansion on our stadium. If there was a good time to push for expansion, now would be the time.

[tpstulane]

2 Private school stadiums that opened the same year. One cost $270 M, the other $75 M. I know conference and TV money is vastly different but Yulman could have been so much better had the administration not given in to the NIMBYs.

a west side upper deck would make a world of difference.....I still would kike to see an inflatable partial roof over Yulman, covering the stands, enclosing the noise and light issues..leave the middle open like the original Texas Stadium so God can see his favorite team...this type of rrof was used with success a the metro dome and in the case of NOLA have it so it can be deflated and retracted...now you have a recruit and chick magnet

You're more likely to get even worse with a triple deck on the East side.