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| Mike Alden, a man with a tough job. |
It should be hate week as the Tigers prepare to close the regular season in men's basketball against kansas, but I just don't feel the burn. The season has been a bit of a disappointment and I'm certainly more of a football guy, but playing the beaks in hoops has been something of a losing proposition since Norm Stewart roamed the sidelines at Hearnes. Instead, I've been thinking about the athletic department as a whole and how I feel about the success. To start off, if you've read this blog for long you know that I'm a big fan of Mike Alden. He's hired the people that, by in large, have kept Mizzou competitive in most of the 20 programs that the university supports. Yes, he's last in league titles, but that doesn't paint the entire picture. While receiving approximately 53 million dollars in funding last year, revenues were dwarfed by such departments as Texas at 120 million, Okie Lite at 88 mil, ku at 86, OU at 77 and A&M at 74 million. How hard can it be to be successful when you're operating with that kind of financial advantage?
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| The beaks pack the house. |
An obvious solution would be for the Tiger fans to step up to the plate and donate more money, but frankly, I don't believe that's realistic in this economy. I'm keeping up with my annual TSF donation, but with so much uncertainty I can't justify giving more. Hell, the gas pumps and Price Chopper are taking all the more. If there was some sort of consensus on allocation then it would make Mikes job easier. kansas made over 30 million dollars more than Missouri last year but outside of mens hoops, where's their success? One thing you can always count on is kansas fielding a national contender in basketball. That's where their passion is and that's where they get their identity. Oh, they may bitch about how bad their football team is, and they love to boast that they've played the all time series tightly against MU, but other than that, they aren't willing to demand a better football program or even to support one. They'll let every other program die on the vine as long as mens hoops is appearing regularly on Big Monday. I'm not saying it's right or wrong. It's just their strategy. Meanwhile, in COMO the strategy is to finish in the top 3rd of the conference in all sports. Compounding the problems is the fact that Missouri offers more programs than Texas, who brings in more than 65 million dollars more in revenue.
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| Do you know which squad this is? |
If I was running the show, which of course I'm not, I'd be figuring out how to whittle down the number to the minimum required, which I believe is around 14. I don't want to seem like I'm picking on programs but come on, when was the last time you went out to watch a swim meet? For that matter, what about womens gymnastics, golf or cross country by either gender? Yes, they are legitimate sports and I'm glad that kids have an opportunity to earn a scholarship for activities they've excelled in, but sooner or later you have to be able to pay your own way. I'd probably cut it down to 5 sports for men, with football, hoops, baseball, wrestling and track and field, and however many I could cut on the womens side to keep Title IX compliance. And frankly, it may come to that. And like I say, if your son is a great golfer and you were hoping he'd get a chance to play for the home school, I don't mean this as an insult. But don't complain that the basketball team isn't doing as well as you'd hoped. They simply are having to share too many funds with teams that don't begin to contribute anything to a strapped athletic department.
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