Ask the AD Transcript - March 20, 2018 - Kansas State University Athletics

K-State Director of Athletics Gene Taylor (GT) sat down with Brian Smoller (BS) for a quick updated on recent events in K-State Athletics, as the department and Wildcat Nation pauses for a brief moment to catch its' breath between rounds of the NCAA and WNIT Tournaments and K-State spring sports roll along.

BS: Welcome to another edition of ask the A.D. Brian Smoller with the Director of Athletics at K-State Gene Taylor. Nothing going on to talk about right now for K-State Athletics, right? As we are in the middle of March, it is hoops postseason and baseball cranking up. Tennis is off to a fantastic start but let's start with basketball. You're just fresh off the plane here last couple of 48 hours, 24 hours coming out from a great sweet 16 win by the Wildcats on the men's basketball side. Pretty impressive.

GT: It was a lot of fun obviously. It was, you know, two really good teams and you know I think everybody (with) the Cinderella we were certainly not the fan favorite in Charlotte. I thought defensively we just played a great game, without Dean and his ability, everybody stepping up with him being out - I think it really just shows what our coaches have done in terms of adjusting their game plan and to be in the Sweet 16 that's really hard to do so hats off to our men's team. And, our women's team in the Sweet 16 of the WNIT, Coach has got them playing very well at the end of the season which is very good to see.

BS: And they'll be hosting a game on Friday night at Bramlage Coliseum hopefully a big crowd for that one, UC Davis is a pretty good team.

GT: That's what I hear and don't know much about them but certainly I hope our fans continue to come out and support the women as they march through the WNIT.

BS: The men played Thursday night so no chance of what we had on Sunday where we had two teams running into each other so chances to watch both. Alright, so we've got plenty of questions here from the fans we'll jump right into it and it's kind of with a basketball theme. Our first question comes from Twitter, any long-range plans for life after Bramlage Coliseum. For reference in the first part of this he talked about the building being thirty years old I know we've talked about renovations for Bramlage but I guess this is more long-term. Everyone's so excited about a Sweet 16 win looking at building a new arena.

GT: There we go, you know I think Bramlage is gonna be around for a while - there's no plans that we've looked at or even talked about that we're going build a new arena but we like we mentioned before through the master planning facility master planning process we are going to look at what we
can do to Bramlage to update it, to modernize it, to bring in some nice entry ways and some new seating areas and we're really going to look at what we can do to Bramlage to expand the lifespan beyond the 30 years that it is. But it's a still a very solid building and I don't see it going away anytime soon.

BS: No, and a lot more renovations to come here during the
summer getting into next year. Alright, so the lavender uniforms have been a big discussion as well for men's basketball this season. We've had a couple of questions on here as well. We can't wear the lavenders in the postseason per the NCAA rules, but the question came from our good friend @scottwildcat about the throwback logo that's on those lavender uniforms and also used in the women's basketball warmups. The question's about adding it as the official secondary or tertiary logo for branding purposes?

GT: I think we want to promote the Powercat and that's our main mark and that's the one we want to push out there. I think we do have an opportunity to use those sparingly. It is part of our licensed logo marks and we probably don't use it a ton, but it may come out and what they might call tradition type stuff like our throwback uniforms. So it won't be out there a lot, but we may see it occasionally, you know once in a while and kind of in tradition lines or throwback lines.

BS: And as far as media merchandising great work Tami Breymeyer and the staff who handles all the licensing for K-State Athletics, continues to do a good job there. This question comes about a sport, I feel like we've asked this many different other ways and this question is actually two-fold – a question about softball and this one's about wrestling. The addition of other sports seems like every now and then we get the same question for ask the A.D.

GT: Yeah it's interesting. You know the NCAA wrestling championships were this past weekend and had a lot of my friends texting me and saying hey we miss you and what are you going to do, are you going to add wrestling at Kansas State. As much as I like the sport of wrestling and softball, right now we're going stick with the sports we have. You know you just never say never at this point in time, but right now for us to add any sports is not on any future plans anytime soon.

BS: Well in continuing to fund the scholarships, facilities and the student-athlete experience as a whole, it's nice to be able to have it trimmed down a little bit on the sports.

GT: We do, I mean we don't have a large sport makeup, but that's okay. That's not a bad thing and when you, you know, if you add two more sports it just takes the money and spreads it. Then there's facility issues on both of those sports that you need to come up with so nothing anytime soon for wrestling or softball.

BS: Alright, so speaking of facilities we'll wrap up our questions today with one about baseball which goes back to the Tointon Family Stadium project that's part of the baseball-soccer campaign. This one talks about a video board in the outfield, I know some of the renderings show one out there.

GT: Yeah, you know, as we continue to raise money for that - although we've reached our goal and we're going to do the groundbreaking pretty soon - we want to be able to continue to raise money so we can make the video board a part of that project. Right now, it's tentatively in there and a couple of alternate - they say add alternates - and it's something that if we can make it happen we're going to add a video board out there it's just all going to be about funding, what the project comes in when it's bid by the contractor, if we can make all that work. Learfield has been a great supporter of our program in a lot of ways and so they've obviously wanted to step up and help us with that, so if we can get one out there we'll definitely do it.

BS: Yeah, incremental increase of revenue from them over the next decade or so from Learfield has really helped quite a bit. As we wrap things up, talking about raising revenue, I know the Ahearn Fund just finished up Calling all Cats campaign. How'd that turn out?

GT: I think we had 170-some members, new members which is good. A great effort and I think the more we can get people involved - again kind of going back to what you said about the scholarships and the support, it's every bit helps. Whether it's a $50 Ahearn Fund member or $10,000 Ahearn Fund member. It all helps our student-athletes. That money goes directly to our scholarships and operational support. The student-athletes continue to have a great experience based on our donors and fans and friends of the Ahearn Fund.

BS: Absolutely, and then you mentioned all those funds go right to the athletes. It's not you give $50 to the Ahearn fund and it's earmarked for Football, the facility or anything else. There are ways to do that, but that specific fund is for the scholarships of student-athletes so they can have their experience.

We appreciate the time, I know you're right back out of here headed to Atlanta. Enjoy the trip, hopefully it's another long stay.

GT: You know as much as those long stays are fun, I want to continue to have long stays, because it was a great experience, we had a great turnout. Hopefully have a great turnout in Atlanta this weekend.

BS: Yeah, no question about it. Wildcats headed back into postseason play - men's and women's basketball later this week.

Kansas State University Athletics

Ask the AD Transcript - March 20, 2018

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