Ask the AD Transcript - February 16, 2018 - Kansas State University Athletics

Welcome to another edition of Ask the AD. Brian Smoller with director of athletics Gene Taylor here to answer some questions from you the fans and also some news and notes regarding K-State Athletics.
We'll get to the fan questions here in a moment first would start out basketball season - we're still kind of getting to that stretch run - we're getting to mid-February where everyone's trying to make a push for postseason play and some big games coming up.

Gene Taylor: Yeah you know we really do - we have some great home games coming up, obviously Iowa State this Saturday coming off a big win the other night and I would say that at Oklahoma State we played as well as we did during that five-game winning streak stretch we were shooting the ball well and so it's critical that our fans come out and bring that energy that they brought during some of those games we had during that winning streak. They still have a lot of confidence in our ability to finish high and we've got three home games left, got a couple tough road games but everybody's now kind of positioning themselves for the Big 12 Tournament and obviously the NCAA Tournament and the more wins we can have obviously the better. We hope we can take that energy from the Oklahoma State win and bring it Saturday and we can just keep it rolling like we did in that five-game stretch.

Brian: And everybody talks about the NCAA Tournament but the Big 12 Tournament in Kansas City should be a whole lot of fun.

Gene: Well you look at this conference and everybody's beating everybody and people are beating them on their home court. I think anybody can roll in and it's maybe Texas Tech right now is kind of the favorite but I think this is the year that anybody can walk into that conference tournament and win it.

Brian: Multiple teams at the top of the Big 12 have better road records than they do home records. Alright, speaking of basketball and really K-State Athletics and the university as a whole got a great treat here to have a true living legend back in Manhattan to have a speech and that was Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.

Gene: You know as part of our diversity program and certainly celebration of black history month to have Kareem here - he did two things for us which was really neat he spoke to our student-athletes and coaches in kind of more of an intimate setting and they got to talk about more about him as an athlete and what did he need to do and what do they need to do to maybe be a better athlete a better student and he talked about both the importance of being a student and also being an athlete being focused I think our athletes really enjoyed that time - we had some one-on-one opportunities to ask some questions to him directly and he came back a little bit later in the evening and talked to the public and we had I would say close to 3,000 maybe even 3,500 people from the community, our students on campus and really talked about social justice and what it meant to be diverse in a community; so there was a lot of really good questions from the community it was just a really special night - he's an incredible man; he's got a lot of things beyond the world of basketball so it's just a great opportunity for all of us really to have him here.

Brian: It was great to have him here and I know there were a lot of people very excited not only I anticipation but then hearing him speak he delivered on that.

Gene: And I think he was really appreciative of the turnout of both the athletes and the people in the community so it was it was a fun night.

Brian: One of the things I know as an athletic director that you'd said when you first got here on campus was that you wanted to meet with all members of the staff and kind of develop what would be eventually I guess the best phrase for it is the strategic plan. Where are you at in that process right now?

Gene: I did meet with everybody and I got a lot of good feedback from our staff and we're going to take that now and say okay what's the next three or five years look like in terms of goals and strategies for our department and to go longer than that doesn't make a lot of sense. We're going to look at our mission and vision and we're going to bring somebody in to help us go through that - they're planning to come in and talk to all of our department heads, all of our coaches, senior staff and say okay where does K-State Athletics want to be three to five years from now but not only from a financial perspective student-athlete success, etc., and we'll get a plan and we'll unveil that sometime later this summer to say okay here's what our future looks like at least from what our employees want, our staff wants, what our coaches want and our goals for the next three to five years.

Brian: Speaking on the fans, let's get right to our fan questions for today. We first start with Facebook a question that came and Tom I apologize in advance this question was very good it was very long so to kind of condense it down I hope I represented the crux of your question here but it's in reference to student athletes signing for an athletic scholarship and then in reference to promotions of the school in the sport and sometimes he indicated and talked about privacy with the student-athletes kind of exposing themselves a little bit for the benefit of promoting a sport either through a commercial or for something in-game where do you stand on that sort of thing are there papers so to speak when they sign a scholarship?

Gene: Well we do something obviously - they sign the scholarship; there's nothing directly tied to that scholarship once they get here we have a lot of NCAA forms they have to sign, we have some media forms in terms of access to media; we do ask them to do some promotional things and we try to limit that obviously it's more in-house and how do we promote their particular sport - most of the student athletes we ask them if they're interested and they do it you know - a lot of them did some stuff for the diversity things they you've seen some of the stuff on the scoreboards about having fun with who they are as a person and then we get to know them a little bit better personally, those kind of things we asked them to do they don't necessarily have to but we do ask them to do those just to help promote their sport and most of them are pretty agreeable to do that but we try to limit it just because we don't want them out looking like they're advertising on behalf of K-State Athletic using them too and so that's a little kind of a gray area that people talk about image and likeness try to be very careful with that.

Brian: This is from our good friend Scott Wildcat on Twitter little bit of a fun one here any chance we get a full-scale craft beer event festival in cat town or other areas around the stadium before a football game?

Gene: Well you know we did a little thing before one of the basketball games in the West Stadium Center - it was very popular I think we had over a couple hundred people you know these are the things that we will look at more. We are going to do some things differently this year in Cat Town. I don't know all the details yet our marketing and promotion staff are working on that but that might be something that we might take a look at is having a game where that is a craft beer related opportunity so I will see. It went well for basketball.

Brian: I know that you have mentioned this before but in the facilities master plan of Bill Snyder Family Stadium there are ideas of perhaps adding different areas zoned areas kids areas whatever that could in in in the crux of his question other things going around the football game that aren't necessarily all inside the stadium about for the football game.

Gene: Plazas those sorts of things that you know more of fan engagement that's what we're looking for - an opportunity for fans to come and have certainly the football game of the main focus but other things for fans to enjoy to have them come here and have a good experience in many areas.

Brian: Yeah we get bang for the buck no doubt you're spending the money to come here we appreciate that and want to reciprocate all right so speaking of spending money. The Ahearn Fund is out there trying to find people to continue to join the Ahearn Fund and they're doing a campaign that's a little different this year called Calling All Cats.

Gene: You know we're asking our fans who are Ahearn Fund members to go find somebody else that doesn't know about the Ahearn Fund that's maybe somebody that says well I can't really afford to join the Ahearn Fund and we're giving them some incentives to come for 50 bucks and then the more membership we get the better offer for our program and certainly there's benefits to being an Ahearn Fund member but it's really an effort for our fans who are already Ahearn Fund members to go out and find somebody new - we're asking you to help us. It ends March first and we're really looking forward it's really been helpful we've got a lot of people to join which has been great and we want to continue to grow those.

Brian: So some of the prizes that are there you can check them all out by going to k-statesports.com and go to the Ahearn Fund and Ahearnfund.com directly if you just want the URL but you can have a Vanier Football Complex tour and exclusive open house you could have an on-field football experience in the pregame there's premium seat options and packages that are available for football and for men's basketball such as courtside seats or Lodge boxes or a baseball suite and then of course you refer ten members you could be eligible to win a white camouflage football helmet like the special alternate helmets the K-State has you can have one of those so it's pretty cool.
Gene: And we you know the more people that help us support a program the better for our student-athletes and that money goes directly to support our student athletes and that's so critical with everything we're doing these days and in terms of how to be successful.

Kansas State University Athletics

Ask the AD Transcript - February 16, 2018

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