Ask the AD - January 9, 2020 - Kansas State University Athletics

ASK THE AD - GENE TAYLOR

January 9, 2020

Brian: "Welcome to another edition of Ask the AD. Brian Smoller with the Director of Athletics, Gene Taylor. Ready to answer some of your questions, as we get back from the holidays and ready to go for the calendar year of 2020 and the wrap up and second half of the 2019-20 sports season. First of all, hope you had a great holiday."

Gene: "I did and hope everybody did. Happy New Year to everybody."

Brian: "We're in the throes of basketball season. We'll talk football in a little bit, but both hoops teams trying to navigate through a pretty tough stretch right now."

Gene: "Yeah, I think they're both frustrated, both the players and coaches. They were hoping to have a lot more wins at this point. Some injuries on the women's team has been affecting their depth. The other game I watched them, I think they had six or seven kids play. It's going to be tough without one of their best scorers. The men, they've been so close. You get up big on Oklahoma, and you lose it at the end. Against TCU, you're in a battle all the way through, and you think you have a chance to win it. They believe they can get it turned around. It's the second game of the Big 12 on the men's side. Women are in their first Big 12 game, so they have a lot more to accomplish. At least in the locker room on the men's side, they believe they can. They just got to get over the hump, and I think they will."

Brian - Q1: "Why can't we get our games back on Fox or on a station most people can get without going the ESPN+ route? Longtime fans hate the internet streaming, or it doesn't work well for them. Doesn't K-State know how many fans they are alienating with this new contact?"

Gene: "I understand the frustration. I really do. We talked a lot about it in our Big 12 meetings and as Athletic Directors. Of course, we were the first four schools…us, Kansas, Oklahoma State and Baylor were the first four, and now the rest of the schools are going to get on it so their fan bases are going through it. In the long run, and we have to think about where we want to be as a conference with tv rights and revenue, this is going to be better for the conference to have all the rights available to go out and market to whoever. Whether that's Fox, ESPN, CBS or whoever that is, having each individual school have their third-tier rights and the linear, that makes it harder to negotiate. So, from a revenue perspective for the conference, it's going to give us an opportunity to do more things. The long term is going to be better. In the short term, pain is real. There are a lot of people who don't have internet access. I think about 20 percent of our state doesn't have internet access. You think that's not a big number, but it's about 500,000. That affects all 10 schools in the Big 12. We understand it. It's gotten better from a production for those that have internet, but it is frustrating. I get it, and we're going to try to do everything we can to get you the games. We will still have stuff on ESPN, ESPN+, ESPNU, and we're going to find a way to get the product out there. The SEC has a linear network. A lot of their games, if they're not on the linear network, they are on their streaming service. So, there's a lot of conferences that are streaming their games. We are just another one. I think down the road you're going to see a lot more things streamed on different avenues to watch than your traditional tv networks. We just need to be in a position, as the Big 12, to be able to get our product out there the best we can and generate the most revenue for our conference. That's what we're trying to do."

Brian - Q2: "Has there been any outside interest in luring any football coach away (head or assistant)? What steps are you taking to ensure all the football coaches stay for a long tenure?"

Gene: "Always a great question this time of year. From our perspective, there is movement right now. You're never going to make sure that everybody is going to stay. We're doing everything we can from a contract perspective, from a financial perspective, to secure up our coaches and give them an opportunity to say that if they are getting asked they have a really good opportunity to stay here, whether it's contract length or salary increase. I'm currently doing that with Coach Klieman, doing some things to make sure that he's comfortable. I will tell you that our coaches are very happy here. They had a great year. I don't see any of them leaving, but we're going to do everything we can to keep them. There's no question about that."

Brian - Q3: "With all the fanfare with the new looks football and basketball have had over the past four months along with the commercial success with the merchandise for sale, what will the future partnership with Nike look like, as I believe it is set to conclude in 2021?"

Gene: "It's something we've talked about internally in terms of how we're going to get out and ready to have those conversations with Nike about either extending, renegotiating or putting out on the open market. These kinds of things, these new products and retail sales…which have gone up because of some of the new products that are out there on the market. It's going to help us a great deal when we go to Nike and say we feel our value is a lot more than what we're currently getting. We've got our eye on various schools that have renewed with either Nike or another competitor. We know where those numbers are and how we compare to those schools. We'll take a lot of data out to Nike. Matter of fact, we hope to go out sometime early this semester, maybe February or March, and sit down with them and say here's how we value us and here's some great information, new products, obviously success across the board with all of our sports, present that to Nike and try to get a new deal with them. If we don't like it, then we can turn around and put it out on the market."

Brian - Q4: "As an AD, do you ever talk to a coach about uniforms?"

Gene: "Yeah, we do. I think we've talked about it here. We don't want to lose our brand. We don't want to lose who we are. The powercat is our brand. It's our mark. It's something that will be the most powerful, most recognizable thing we have. To introduce new looks or new logos, is it temporary or to produce an opportunity for student-athletes from a recruiting perspective? But I think we have to stay true to who we are. When people watch us on television, they need to say, 'that's K-State'. We need to have K-State very proud across our jerseys and our logos. If we introduce the Cats or Wildcats occasionally, that's a good thing. I see schools getting too far away from who they are, color wise and schematic. We're never going to do that."

Brian - Q5: "How about the baseball program getting ready for their new facility?"

Gene: "They're going to see it in the next few weeks and have a chance to see it for the first time. Then hopefully the public will see it. It looks great. We have a great, big video board that's going to be awesome this spring. It will just add to what we think is going to be a tremendous baseball season coming up."

Brian - Q6: "How about the south football project?"

Gene: "You're probably going to start to see some activity very soon, within the next month at least. February or late February, you're going to see some fences going up and some construction starting. It's going to be starting very soon."

Brian: "Thanks, appreciate it."

Gene: "Thanks, Brian. Happy New Year, everybody. Let's have a great semester."

Kansas State University Athletics

Ask the AD - January 9, 2020

Related Videos