Ask the AD Transcript - April 19, 2019 - Kansas State University Athletics

K-State Director of Athletics Gene Taylor touches on a number of timely topics, including the Big 12's expanded streaming and championship media rights, a wrap-up of spring football, a red hot baseball team, highway exit signs and some facilities plans, in the latest edition of Ask the AD, hosted by K-State's Brian Smoller. A partial transcript is below.

BS: The Big 12 recently announced a new deal for third-tier rights and the football championship game with ESPN, how does this benefit K-State and the Big 12?
GT: There's two pieces, short-term and long-term. In the short-term it gives our fanbase one place to go to watch all of our games. If you have ESPN+ you can go there and even if we're on ESPN or ESPN2 and you're on your digital device, you can watch it on ESPN+. That's where ESPN is going, they're putting their money into ESPN+, it's going to be a digital network. From the short-term we know exactly how to find all our games, no matter football, basketball, baseball, volleyball, we can go to ESPN+ and it's going to be on there. In the long-term, it puts ourselves and the Big 12 in a better bargaining position as we go to start renegotiating our grant of rights for our linear network in a few years, in a much stronger position. Now the Big 12 has the rights to every live content. That's the big thing, live content is key. Television stations and networks, and whoever else is going to bid, want as much live content as they can get. We'll provide that now for the conference and put ourselves in a position to, hopefully, generate more revenue for our conference and our institutions. Short-term and long-term, both of them are very positive.

BS: Even though Texas and Oklahoma aren't part of this at the outset, they seem to be onboard. Everyone seems to be together on this.
GT: Both of their presidents have come out very strongly in support of this move. It was an all-in decision, it wasn't about us vs. Texas and Oklahoma, they're absolutely very supportive. As we go down the road we'll see. I know they're very supportive, it's just what role will they play. Even the Texas fans will now be a part of ESPN+ because if they're going to want to watch Texas when they come to K-State they're going to have to be on ESPN+ as well.

BS: Looking forward to seeing it simplified and of course as we approach the fall season we'll have more information about the exact games and what will be on, all that sort of stuff as we get closer to '19-20.
Football spring showcase just wrapped up, what was your take on from the spring practice and the showcase of that?
GT: The feedback that I got from our fans as I walked around the stadium, they enjoyed the format, they enjoyed the interaction with coaches and players, interviews, they certainly learned a lot about what the offense and defense might look like going forward next fall. The activities around the game were very well attended, we had an apparel sale that went very, very well. Then obviously our traditional Powercat Auction on Friday night, was our biggest crowd we have ever had. We generated a significant amount of revenue from donations, thank you for all that participated. I thought it was very good. How we will tweak it next year, we'll sit down and kind of do a review and see what we are going to do next year, but for the most part, I thought it was well-received.
BS: It was kind of out of necessity, how it was born out of injuries. The promotion staff and fan experience staff does a great job here and fine-tuning and staying on top of it. We'll see how it goes here on out.

BS: The Wildcat Baseball team is red hot right now…
GT: They're on a roll. In talking to Coach Hughes I think the team has gained a lot of confidence. They're feeling that if they put the pressure on teams they put themselves in a much better position. They're having fun. I think they're having fun playing baseball. And that is turning into some success and really good wins, to take two out of three against Texas and going to Nebraska and beating a good Nebraska team and having a couple of shutouts back to back. Certainly starting off well with TCU. They're having fun, and they're getting more and more confident. It's still a long season, got a lot left, but you can see the improvement in my opinion and a great deal with the baseball program.
BS: It's early so it's...
GT: Got some great young pitchers.
BS: No doubt. I was going to say, it's early in the whole process right? The rebuilding process for Pete Hughes, but so far it seems to be a perfect fit. He has endeared himself very quickly to Wildcat fans and to the players. A lot of fun to be around.

BS: We have one question that came from Facebook, talking about the Exit 313 signs on I-70, there used to be some Powercats that identified that was the exit for K-State. How do we get them back?
GT: I've seen them before, I didn't realize they were gone. That's something we'll look into. I like the idea, it's a branding thing. Obviously people are driving up and down looking for an exit, it's great to have that Powercat on there. I don't know if it's a state highway issue that we need to go back to and ask them if they've gotten away from that and if they did can we bring it back. It's something we'll look into and see if we can get some of that signage back. Great question.

BS: Construction continues on Buser Family Park and the renovations for Tointon Family Stadium, seems like everytime we're out there, we're seeing something new being done, it's exciting. What's the next project is the next question of course?
GT: We're getting closer. Probably something this summer or the early part of the fall, we'll have a better idea which project or projects we're going to focus on from a fundraising perspective and maybe the first one getting a shovel in the ground. We're getting much closer. We've had a great response from our donors showing their interest in various projects. Once we get that figured out we'll have an announcement, but we're getting closer and it's getting pretty exciting to be honest with you.

BS: Year three. Believe it or not, here we are. Getting ready to kick off year number three for you here at Kansas State. What are some of the goals you'd like to have here as we get to the summer and then to 19-20.
GT: Well we've talked about one of them. Certainly the biggest one is probably announcing and figuring out our master plan, what is the first piece or pieces. Continuing to fundraise for those other pieces of the master plan once we figure out the priorities. So that's number one. I think number two is monitoring how we can continue to improve for our fans with ESPN+ and what are some other options we can come up with in terms of coaches' shows and how we are going to handle that and some of the extra programming that we have. For me personally, I need to get out and spend a lot more time with our teams. I don't travel with volleyball, I have gone with men's and women's basketball and football but I don't get over to practices. For me I need to get to know our student-athletes better. It is very very important for me to get the chance to know them. And then, continuing to look at our budgets and where we can improve from a fundraising perspective, from a revenue generation perspective. As costs continue to go up we need to continue to manage that budget. But the biggest one is really going to be the facility piece in the next 9-12 months.

BS: Even though the seasons are winding down it should be a pretty exciting next couple of months for K-State as we see the stadiums come to life over at baseball and soccer and also the realization of the master facility plan when that gets launched and started again.

Kansas State University Athletics

Ask the AD Transcript - April 19, 2019

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