Kansas State University Athletics
Ask the AD Transcript - March 20, 2019
Mar 20, 2019 | General, Athletics
BS: Welcome to another edition of Ask the A.D., Brian Smoller with the Director of Athletics Gene Taylor. I am glad you could join us. It is an exciting time. The month of March, it is a crossover month, we got basketball, baseball, spring sports all cranking up. We got spring football as well in the mix of things. It is a month that goes by very fast. I would like to jump in and answer some questions from fans and get an update of how things are going.
BS: You guys usually have a get together in Kansas City with all the A.D.'s during the Big 12 championships. How did that go?
GT: Yeah we did. We had a couple of days of meetings. Actually about a day and a half. We talked about a lot of things, everything from the current state of athletics and the lawsuit that the NCAA is facing with the Alston case and the impact of that. I could spend a lot of time talking about that but we would be here for a half an hour. So I got an update on that. We talked a little bit about some of the new legislations. We had our football rules official come in and give us an update on some calls and direction of some new rules. Targeting next year is going to be handled a little bit differently. Then, we talked about where we are going to do from a T.V. perspective across the league and what we wanted to do with our package from an individual and linear package. It was a short period because people started playing pretty quickly. We did cover a lot in a day and a half and it was all good. It was nothing official. We typically do not do anything official in terms of voting and passing conference wide legislations until our main meeting here in a few weeks.
BS: You got to watch the Wildcats play in Kansas City and next year you will be able to watch both teams play as the women's are moving there from Oklahoma City. Which will be great for the fans and both the teams.
GT: We talked a little bit about that logistically and how that is going to impact the meetings we have because really everybody meets whether that be administrators or athletic trainers or fundraisers we have a lot of groups from the Big 12 meet. So how are we going to balance that with both men and women. It will be an exciting time next year.
BS: Guys of course don't quite finish it off semifinal loss to the eventual champion Iowa State. It is a pretty banged up team hopefully they get a couple of days of rest then they will be headed out to the NCAA tournament here.
GT: Like you said it is an exciting time. For both the men and women to qualify and to be heading unfortunately to separate ends of the country. We are looking forward to it. We hope we get to play a lot more basketball in March. It is a good thing for the men to be a four seed and for the women to have such a strong finish at the end of the year to really put themselves into position to qualify and obviously heading out to Louisville.
BS: As the number nine seed, even though in years past that would be a death now to having to play the one in the second round. K-State is playing pretty well now. Only two losses to the number one team in the country since February 2nd. We will see how they handle it if they do get that far.
BS: Let's get to our questions from fans. We jump into Twitter first. Scottwildcat who is always great with questions constantly. A Boscoe Boys shout out here, he says he acknowledges many factors are at play but the football sellout streak ended last season. With a conference championship men's basketball team there has only been six games with over 10,000 in attendance. Is anything being discussed to increase these numbers? First I guess to say you talk about this a lot this does not go unnoticed.
GT: We do a lot, our fan experience and media relations crew, everybody really. We spend a lot of time talking about attendance. We start preparing well before the season is over. We started talking about how to improve attendance next year for football during our football season this past fall and they are talking about basketball for next year during basketball season. It is literally a 12-month a year conversation. There is so many things that affect attendance. Whether it is our opponents, our T.V. time; basketball is it a Monday night or a Wednesday night or Saturday. We constantly evaluate that. Our goal is to still provide sellouts and get as many fans out there but we are doing it on so many different factors. In the football season everybody's attendance is down. So how do we make sure our fans our coming. Our goal is still to sellout and we work on it constantly in terms of what we can provide from a fan experience perspective, student perspective, season ticket packages, how do we price those things. All of that is pretty much talked about 12 months a year.
BS: Yeah this is something that is not just K-State either in college sports or sports in general. Everyone is trying to keep attendance up. It is harder as the stay at home experience becomes better and better. It is a good question but something that is going to take some time.
GT: We do have a great staff. We spend a lot of time making sure we can do everything we can to make sure people are coming to our venue because it is important.
BS: So let's jump back from Twitter to Facebook. The next one we have talked about a couple of times, the facility stuff, the master facility plan; redoing the east side of the football stadium to look like the west side and it talks about south end improvements. From Cody Abshire on Facebook.
GT: Yeah obviously the upgrade to the east side specifically from an aesthetic standpoint is not in our master plan. One of the pieces of the master plan is a football practice facility on the east side which I know there is frustration to where that could possibly be but if it doesn't end up on the east side we could really tie the look of that into the west side. As opposed to spending significant dollars just on an aesthetics standpoint. So nothing specifically for the east side but if we tie in the practice facility that will look like and feel like the west side. In terms of the south side we are still talking to donors and presenting our overall master plan to donors to see where their interests lie. There is a lot of interest in the south end zone project and there is still interest in the volleyball olympic sport venue and the football practice field. We are getting to a point where we are getting close to our donor interest to see which project we are doing first.
BS: The last question comes from kstatesports.com and that in another venue to get questions in and this one was actually sent in from the portal on the website. This was emailed to us from inharmsway10 the summary of this question in essence brings up the fact that there is no national championships in any sport and football and men's basketball has the line share of focus from fans as we talk about that before. Do you try to invest in Olympic sports to have them win a national title. Where does winning a national championship rate on the level of hey that is the ultimate goal.
GT: Well I think every coach tries to put themselves in a position where they can win a conference championship and get into the NCAA tournament. We all know how difficult whether it is baseball NCAA tournament or volleyball, soccer, basketball, how difficult it is once you get in that tournament to advance. Only one team wins. You're right we haven't won a national championship. We fund our programs at the top level we fund them so they can win a Big 12 championship. With recruiting, travel, equipment they have the funding necessary to do so. If a coach feels like they do not, we sit down and see how we can fund them better. Ultimately the goal is to put us in position to win Big 12 championships and getting to the NCAA tournament then getting as far as we can. Whatever it takes that comes down to recruiting and getting the best athletes. You got facilities that is a part of that. Going back to the facility master plan the better we can improve our facilities the better chance we have at winning. So obviously that does not pertain to one particular program it is literally all of them combined. How do we best promote them and get them moving to win Big 12 championships.
BS: As your strategic plan outlined it is kind of a multi-pronged effort.
BS: As we wrap this thing up. Speaking of Olympic sports congratulations to Grant Robbins and Men's Golf for coming away with a big win down in Florida.
GT: They are playing well they had an individual champ as well in Jeremy Gandon. Grant feels really good about where his golf team is in the spring and for them as well the more tournaments they can finish high in or win then the better chance they have for an NCAA postseason and women are battling pretty well too.
BS: Tennis is obviously off to a big start as well with Jordan Smith they have a couple of big wins. We can't name every sports here but before we go baseball is finishing up a 10-game homestand. Pete Hughes has already seemed like he has made an imprint with this team. They are a tough fighting team.
GT: It seems like it. It seems like his demeanor and how they are playing together. They are on a little bit of a roll winning some games here as opposed to the end of our most recent homestand. They are getting into Big 12 and hopefully they can keep going.