Ask the AD Transcript - July 19, 2018 - Kansas State University Athletics

In a mid-summer edition of Ask the AD, K-State Director of Athletics Gene Taylor (GT) sat down with Brian Smoller (BS) to touch on a number of topics including the current state of the Big 12, the recent Big 12 Football Media Days – including the suddenly popular public beer sales topic – K-State's relationship with Sporting KC and potential activation for women's soccer, balanced budgets and upcoming strategic plan.

BS: What can you tell us coming out of the Big 12's annual review and meeting of the ADs?
GT: Not a lot of heavy stuff, there were a couple football related issues with some of the new football rules. Not so much the kickoff rule, but more operational stuff. One is we're limiting the number of headsets that coaches can wear during the game – I'm not going to get into the details – but we were concerned with how we're going to manage that. How are we going to manage telling a coach that you can't have that many headsets? We've determined that the NCAA is going to do that for us. It's probably a good thing, but a frustration from an operational standpoint. That was one thing.

We talked about the new redshirt rule, that a player can play up to four games, how that was going to be administered. Was it going to be all four games in a row? Kind of updated on that, then we talked a little bit about where we are with our TV rights and we're doing some things with the third tier stuff.

The big thing again that I've said before and our fans have asked me a few times, where is the Big 12, where are we as a conference. I will tell you, everybody in the room, everybody on the phone – it's about making the conference better. Every decision we've made recently, it's not about one school or the other, and it continues to get reinforced. It was reinforced in some one-on-one conversations, we've got some new ADs. It just makes you feel pretty good about where the conference is as a group.

BS: You recently attended Big 12 Media Days, how was that experience?
GT: I was really impressed with Media Days, they did it over two days, split the conference up. There was a lot of media interest, I think there were over 500 media members there. The Big 12 has a lot of good messages – the Big 12 is the only conference in the country that plays a true No. 1 vs. No. 2, we're the only conference in the country in football that does a round robin where everybody's going to play everybody. Certainly the success the conference had this past year – we're the only conference with somebody in the College Football Playoff, the Final Four, the College World Series and the College World Series in softball. That was the message the commissioner got out there.

(Beer sales) did come up because of the Oklahoma State situation, about would we every consider beer sales. We've had just a little bit of conversation with our Senior Staff on Monday. It is a question, as more and more college campuses are beginning to provide alcohol sales at their venues, the NCAA has done it at the baseball World Series.

We've talked about it, but before we panic anyone that wants it or doesn't want it, there's a lot that goes into that. There are so many things on campus, security and police – if we decide to get serious about having open alcohol sales in our seats, there's a lot of people that are going to have to weigh in, including our fanbase, the university, Chief Grice and his staff, but we're not there yet. We do have (beer sales), we have the South Terrace that we provide some public alcohol sales. There's a lot that goes into it, we're not going to make a decision anytime soon, but it is something that we'll probably take a look at over the next several months.

BS: Let's get to the first question that we have for today for "Ask the AD". This comes from Twitter and it is about soccer. Children's Mercy Park which is home for the Big 12 Championship for women's soccer. The question is somewhat about K-State's relationship with Sporting Kansas City. Is there any talk about playing something there at Sporting?
GT: I don't know about Sporting, but we would like to get our women's soccer team and have them there (KC). We've talked to Coach Dibbini and he's in for it. There's a couple of venues we've already talked about taking our soccer team to, whether it's an early season soccer match or maybe even a conference match. There is big recruiting there for us, obviously, so it's be important for us to get over there. We do have a great relationship with Sporting KC. Cathy and her staff have been great. We obviously work with the Big 12 tournament. It's a fairly new endeavor for them. We'd love to see our soccer team compete there. It's a great relationship.

BS: The other question comes from Facebook, "What changes have been made since you have become A.D. to further the success of K-State Athletics?". We've had the balanced budget announcement that just came out here some time ago. In some respects, what are most proud of with year one in the books?
GT: I do appreciate the question. A lot of stuff in your first year you don't have a lot of public decision making that makes a big impact. We've done a lot of things internally. We've done some staff changes and some upgrades and some moving some staff around. Again, people don't really notice that. The budget thing is very, very important for us to be able to have a balanced budget and a strong financial place. Our CFO, Bruce Shubert, does a phenomenal job.

I think what we're coming out with in the very near future is our strategic plan for operationally, what's going to drive us for the next four or five years. We're going to get a chance to introduce that, probably in the next three to four weeks. Along with that is our master plan. We talked a little about that. The facility master plan is done. We're now putting the final pieces, getting some pricing and estimates on various projects within that. We'll get that out to the public in the next couple of weeks as well.

Those are the big things coming forward. The last year's been busy and we've got a lot accomplished. We've had a great year and I appreciate the question. The staff has been great and everyone's been working very hard. What our fans see in terms of success with our athletic teams, there's so much that goes into that to be successful. Certainly, the coaches and athletes have a big part but all our staff puts in a lot of time and effort that the fans don't see and they don't necessarily understand as much, and I get that, but without that we wouldn't have had the year we had.

BS: Well said, let's wrap this up by talking about the upcoming season. Before we know it, we'll be full on into practice for football, volleyball and soccer. Ticket sales, how are we doing and where are we at on that?
GT: Well, we kicked off the single game sales and I think they started strong, but right now we're a little under our season ticket sales compared to last year for football. We're in full swing with basketball sales, soccer sales, soccer single game and football single game. Our fans, if you've got a chance, there are plenty of tickets available. We'd love to see you, we'd love to continue to sell out Bill Snyder Family Stadium. We get to soccer, Coach Dibbini is really excited about the soccer team he has coming. We need to keep selling tickets, there's plenty of tickets available.

Kansas State University Athletics

Ask the AD Transcript - July 19, 2018

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