Ask the AD - March 2, 2020 - Kansas State University Athletics

BS: "Hello and welcome to another edition of Ask the AD. Brian Smoller with the Director of Athletics, Gene Taylor. Glad you could join us. A lot of good questions for this week's edition of Ask the AD. In fact, couldn't get all of them in. We'll try to get as many as we can with respect to time.

We start first with what's been circulating a little bit around. This time of year, really when you're in the offseason of any major sport, you get the stuff circulating about coaches, assistant coaches and all those things. From a philosophical perspective here at Kansas State, assistant coaches' salaries and trying to stay competitive with Power 5 peer institutions, what's your philosophy? What's K-State's ability there?"

GT: "That's a great question. I understand that I don't want to lose any staff member to another institution, and we want to be as aggressive as we can with our salaries. We're the lowest budget in the Big 12 from a revenue perspective. We're at 83 million dollars. The highest is Texas at 200-plus million. Every Power 5 institution has that range, whether in the Big 10, SEC or ACC. There's always a range within institutions, so we look at our salary ranges. Can we be competitive in the upper half of the Big 12? In all cases, not necessarily. We've been very aggressive with our football assistants when Bill Snyder retired, and we were able to change some money around. We just actually upped some contracts this year at the end of the football season pretty aggressively with our assistants. But there comes the point where we have to be able to say, we don't have a max necessarily, but we do have comparative positions that we have to look at. We want to be as aggressive as we can, but at some point, there are institutions out there that can pay a lot more than we can. We have to be fiscally responsible based on the money we have. Everything is tied together, right? The more money we can generate, whether it's through ticket sales or donations. We talk about ESPN3 and Big 12 Now, and that was a frustration. Well, in the future, those kinds of connections will help us go out and negotiate a much better contract, which is more revenue than we can get on a higher plane. So, we do everything we can to keep them. We are aggressive as we possibly can, but there is going to be a limit at some point where we have to say thanks for being here, but they're going to pay you a lot more, and that's the kind of money than we can probably get to."

BS: "From a revenue standpoint, just for those who may not understand. They see construction projects ongoing, which we're going to talk about in a second. It's not all tied together, I suppose, in some respects. The question I think was raised. How can you spend x amounts of millions of dollars on construction, but not be able to have it for coaches?"

GT: "That's a fair question, and you kind of have to look at it from an operational perspective. Operationally today with salaries, schedules, travel, equipment, etc., that's our 83, almost 84 million dollar budget. The facility projects, those are separate fund raised projects that we go out…and like this sound end zone is a 50+ million dollar project. We've gone out and raised that money specifically for that. It really doesn't come into play of our overall operational budget. They're separate, and we do separate campaigns for those in terms of where the money comes from."

BS: "It's been great to see the Wildcat fanbase get so excited about each project that's been going on. We'll talk about baseball in a minute, but speaking of the south end zone project, our first questions are really a two-fold question. When will the south end zone project be completed and will the general public have access to the lower level/lounge area?"

GT: "Those are great questions, and I appreciate that. We haven't had a chance to talk about it since construction started. It's basically a two-year construction project. This year when you come in the fall of 2020, the new video boards will be up and there will be a sound system in place. You'll see a lot of steel connected to Bramlage that will eventually be the new premium seating area. You will have access to the concourse. There obviously won't be restrooms or concessions areas. There are no restrooms there currently. They still use the east and west sides. Every game, you'll be able to get through the concourse to get to your seats, but you'll be walking under steel. That will be in place, and you'll probably see each week a progression more and more. The lounge area won't be available until 2021. That's when that will be fully completed."

BS: "Will fans in the upper rows of the south end zone still have their seats during the 2020 season?"

GT: "I believe our ticket office has reached out to those fans who have season tickets that are affected. There are the top two or three rows that will no longer be in existence. We have reached out to those fans to let them know their options. One thing we haven't talked about is the visiting section. That has been changed, so we opened up a lot of seats. We moved the visiting section up to the upper deck, similar to what we get when we go. That will open up a lot of seats in the south end zone for those people to move to and obviously there will be some non-renewals. Those people have been contacted. They have priority to reseat in the south. Those top three rows were affected in this project."

BS: "The Baseball/Soccer project has a bow on it. It has been completed and unveiled for everybody. Baseball is going to get 16 of 18 games in March at home in the new renovated look of Tointon Family Stadium. It looks great."

GT: "It is awesome just like soccer was, a phenomenal facility and the athletes really enjoy it. We had a great event a week or so ago with the national leadership circle members to go through and see it. Everybody was so impressed. It's such a change and it's going to be a welcomed addition. It's going to help our baseball program a great deal. It's a beautiful facility."

BS: "One of the things they've added at baseball are chairback seats all across the seating bowl, new green chairbacks. That led to our next question. Why hasn't Bramlage added chairbacks to the rest of the arena minus the student section?"

GT: "That's a great question and if you go back to our overall capital project, our facility master plan, there is some plans for Bramlage. If you look at that price tag, it's about 80 million, and a lot of that is in that piece of the puzzle. We're going to wait until we finish the south end zone and some of the other priorities, and then at some point, we'll come back and have a fundraising effort specifically to Bramlage and do a lot of upgrades to Bramlage. For now, we're going to focus on the south end zone. There are some pieces of Bramlage touched. The east and west entrances and obviously the Legends Room."

BS: "Back to football, has a decision on general concession beer sales for the 2020 football season been made?"

GT: "There hasn't been. What we are going to do, at least the plan is during this fall is coming up with a survey to ask that question of our fans. Do they prefer to have alcohol, not have alcohol, have pass outs, not have pass outs? We haven't finalized that survey yet. We don't know exactly at what point it will be ready in the season. We want to focus on our season ticket holders, individual game buyers, so some people will get them electronically, the season ticket holders probably. Some people will get them at the game. Some may get a chance to answer it twice. We'll go through that in the fall. We'll evaluate it at the end of the season and then determine what our next steps are going forward."

BS: "Are there any plans for electric vehicle parking spots around the sports complex with all of the plans and renovations? Can there be?"

GT: "That's a great question. I did see that on Twitter. I really haven't thought about it. When I was in Fargo, there were a lot of plugins just to keep your engine from freezing. There's a lot more electric vehicles out there. I don't know what the cost of that would be as we do some renovations. It's probably a good question for us to take forward to architects and our construction folks. It's a great question, something that hasn't crossed my mind, but it makes a lot of sense."

BS: "I appreciate the time, know it's a busy time of year. Basketball is nearing the end of the season. It's been kind of a tough year. You spoke very well the other day at our all-staff meeting about how hard they're continuing to work at the end of the year."

GT: "I had a chance to visit with them. It is hard. One of my favorite parts of my job is watching our athletes prepare and compete and have success. I know how hard they work. I know how much time and effort they put in. One of the hardest parts of the job is when they prepare and aren't having the success they would like. The frustration, I hurt for them. I'm very proud of our men's basketball coaches and staff and the fact that they are working extremely hard every game, and they want to continue to win and be successful. I feel terrible for the seniors, but they are representing K-State at a high level. They're going to continue to battle the rest of the season and do what they can. I know they still have a lot of future ahead of them. The women are playing well right now. They're putting themselves in a position to finish in the top part of the Big 12 and positioning themselves for hopefully an NCAA playoff run."

Kansas State University Athletics

Ask the AD - March 2, 2020

Related Videos