Ask the AD | November 19, 2020 - Kansas State University Athletics

Brian Smoller (BS): "Welcome to another edition of Ask the AD brought to you by Mammoth Sports, Brian Smoller with the Director of Athletics, Gene Taylor, who is kind enough to join us here in November to talk a little thing about Kansas State fans, about their attendance with of course the announcement about limited fan attendance or no general public attendance I should say in November. Then moving forward into the plans moving forward in December and beyond for basketball. We'll also get into a little bit of football news and notes, as well as a recap of K-State soccer and volleyball and their fine seasons that were just capped off. First up, though, Gene, is the big announcement K-State athletics made, both on campus with commencement being canceled at least in person and then athletics following up with an announcement about fans. No general public allowed for the month of November. We had some questions right out of the gate about this, so let's just jump into the fans. The first one is from Facebook which says, with the Corona Virus going on, do you think you'll have to cancel the entire sports season because of the rising numbers? We've seen that elsewhere. What's your response to that?"

Gene Taylor (GT): "Well certainly, obviously what's going on across the country is concerning and you know, our fans so far have been great in terms of wearing face masks and doing the things we've asked them to do in terms of social distancing and will continue to do that with our basketball. We do have a little concern because of the spike right now, and we did cancel graduation so we made the decision from a basketball perspective, at least these first games over the course of the Thanksgiving holiday, to not have fans at those. We're going to see cancellations not necessarily directly because of the spread but because I think we'll have teams that won't be able to play just like you've seen in football. Whether a team has too many athletes with COVID or with contact tracing, whether it's ours or another team. I think you will see cancellations. We'll try to make those up like we have across in football, but it's certainly concerning the more it goes up and we just have to continue monitoring it."

BS: "It certainly doesn't seem, at least at K-State with the sports we have, there aren't any preemptive season cancellations made by K-State. I think that's the nature of the question. There have been some other schools in different conferences across the country that have preemptively canceled seasons. That doesn't seem to be the case in the Big 12."

GT: "No, and certainly we've talked about that in the Big 12, and we still plan to move forward with our basketball season and our winter sports season then as we get into the spring, as well. You're right. I think, as you know, some programs did, at least for the fall sports, and then they've come back and played. The Big Ten has come back and played. The Pac 12, the Mountain West and then some of their other fall sports are going to play in the spring. As of right now, we have not talked about it and don't anticipate any preemptive cancellations of any of our seasons."

BS: "Of course it's hard to predict the future. You get into a danger zone when we try to predict even three weeks from now. Some of the concern expressed on Twitter and social media as we go to our next fan question. This kind of sums it up. With all the recent restriction announcements, do you see a scenario with no fans for the Texas football game on December 5th? If so, refunds and all those sorts of things. Football wasn't mentioned on the release. Obviously we're talking about the month of November, but for fans that are concerned about that December 5th game, what would you say?"

GT: "It's a fair question, and we do talk to our county health people as things begin to change across the landscape with COVID. We have talked to them about football in December when we talked to them about our November information and we asked about the December 5th game. They said no. They still like our plan we have in place for football. Again, they haven't seen any major issues. It is an outside venue, and that's the biggest concern right now is an inside venue versus an outside venue. They've indicated that football on December 5th is going to be fine."

BS: "Speaking of football, our next question as we get out of that, and by the way, if you have any more questions about that feel free to hit Gene up on social media or we'll try to get the best answers to you. Staying with the football theme, this one also came about the south end zone project, the Shamrock Zone, about the hustle boards that were there for years, that were on Bramlage Coliseum. Someone asked, will we get the stats boards back at BSFS coming up in the '21 season? What's your take on that?"

GT: "Obviously, we do plan to have what we call a fascia board which will go across the front of the south end zone. It will be used primarily as a replacement for those stat boards. Those stat boards were, I won't say they were ancient, but they had certainly been around a long time. But that's what we're going to use once the south end zone is finished for the 2021 season is a board across the front of the club area that will carry most of our stats during the game. There will be other things carried, advertisements etc., but that's going to be primarily its use is to replace that stats board."

BS: "For the longest time, those stat boards actually had light bulbs that were no longer made. I remember that being a huge issue for many, many years trying to replace those. The facilities group here at K-State had a heck of time just trying to find the bulbs to go back in them. Speaking of football, this was an interesting question which was sent via email that was sent for the last Ask the AD. We didn't get to it, but it was from a quote that was right before all the seasons started and the craziness in college football when we were trying to determine the best path forward for Covid-19 conference by conference. It was a quote from Mack Brown, where he said he really wished there was a commissioner of college football to unify league policies and eliminate uncertainty. What are your thoughts on the idea of a commissioner or de facto person in charge of college football?"

GT: "It is interesting and it's a good question. I don't know if you've ever followed Mike Krzyzewski who has said similar comments about college basketball, but we have the NCAA for that currently. As you know, they made a recent announcement on how they're going to handle this year's tournament. That was the NCAA's selection, but football is a little different. It is not overseen by the NCAA. It's overseen by the five conference commissioners, and although we did a lot of good things together collectively in making some decisions, there are some things where it probably would've been very helpful to have those five commissioners take to their boss, so to speak, and their bosses are the presidents currently. It would be an interesting scenario. You know, I wouldn't be shocked if those kinds of conversations continue to happen across the country, whether the Power Five or the Power Five and Group of Five schools, because football is a little bit of a different animal and something that may come about. I would say that it'll be interesting. I can't say I would agree with it or not. We would just have to determine how it would lay out, the role it would play and how it would work within our current system."

BS: "Also whether or not the idea is heightened because of the pandemic or if it makes sense in a non-pandemic type of year. Of course, one area where it might come into play, if there was a college football commissioner, is in the role of bowl games. We are getting near to that point where this year, of course, eligibility requirements for bowl games have pretty much been waved. What's your take on K-State's future as far as a bowl game, and the Big 12 tie in with that sort of thing?"

GT: "That's another perfect timing question. We did talk about it in our recent Big 12 AD's call. We have talked to all of our bowl partners, and they all are still very committed to hosting bowl games this year. Whether there are tie ins to our other conference opponent will be the same is yet to be seen. You're right, there may be schools in a bowl that are less than a .500 record. Hopefully that's not us, and currently if we do what we can do, that won't be the case. But the financial situation will be very different in terms of the payouts by the bowls. They are committed to helping us at least with our expenses for the bowl games. You're going to see a very different approach. Instead of a four, five or six-day bowl experience, it'll probably be a one or two-day experience. But the bowls that are tied to the Big 12 are very committed to us. If we finish strong like we're capable of, I absolutely expect us to be in a bowl game this year."

BS: "Stay tuned for that as for the most part you can find the dates for those bowls usually around the last week of December for most of the tie ins for the conference and K-State. We'll be finding out where K-State will be traveling later this year. As we wrap up this edition of Ask the AD, a few little housekeeping things to take care of. First of all, an announcement in a press release that just came out here the other day about graduation rates here at Kansas State, high marks no doubt, everyone to be commended in the staff here at K-State."

GT: "Yeah Brian, it's a tremendous accomplishment. Hats off to our athletes. Our coaches make that a priority. Our academic staff, Kristen Waller and our academic staff that support these student-athletes at such a high level. We have great tutors. Obviously our faculty and staff are very supportive. I think we had seven teams with a perfect 100 percent graduation rate. Football was the highest it's ever had at 91 percent. I think we were second in the Big 12 with the highest graduation success rate. That's quite an accomplishment, and again, the pressure that everybody has just generally in terms of maintaining their academics with their athletics and all the things we ask them to do outside, those are very impressive numbers and hats off to a lot of people and our academic support staff really, really work hard with our teams to make sure these athletes are successful."

BS: "Well said. We appreciate the time, Gene. I know you're a busy man, as well. In the crossover into basketball, we look forward to hoops getting started hopefully safe and healthy. You stay safe and healthy. Have a great Thanksgiving. Thanks for joining us."

GT: "Yeah, same to you. Happy Thanksgiving to all our fans, and appreciate your support. Let's stay safe and have a great Thanksgiving."

BS: "That'll do it for Ask the AD brought to you by Mammoth Sports. Check us out @kstatesports on Twitter. Keep those questions coming. We'll see you next time. For Gene Taylor, I'm Brian Smoller. Thank you for watching."

Kansas State University Athletics

Ask the AD | November 19, 2020

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