Put up or shut up (St. Peter's NIL)

[willdurant]

Gene O'Connell has established an NIL for St. Peters. He would like to organize a meeting of St. Peter's fans interested in offering their ideas on how best to develop the organization. You know, offer their two cents, or more.

He is trying to generate some energy and is looking forward to hearing from you, gathering your ideas because this entire concept can't work without you. He may be reached at 201-963-3668,

[peacockpride]

Personally, I will continue to donate to the Athletic Department but I won’t consider donating to a NIL collective. Not that I have the means to make any sort of donation that will make a significant difference, but I can’t justify giving my money for the privilege of watching a rental player with no loyalty to SP play basketball for a year before he leaves for a bigger paycheck.

But in general, if the department/collective wants to move in the right direction, there needs to be more engagement and transparency with the fan base. I get that we had two very late additions and the roster was not finalized, but there’s little to no communication or social media content from a team that was one of the greatest March Madness stories of all time just a few years ago and the current defending conference champions. If you follow many other programs, you see signing announcements, videos of summer workouts, short features on the players on and off the court. We have none of that, and this isn’t a Bash problem because it goes back to Sha and Dunne. Give us something to get excited about instead of leaving us in the dark just trying to figure out who’s on the team.

[latigo]

Very well said Pride.

[cindycrawford]

I could not agree more !
Your best post ever, Pride

[youngalum]

Unfortunately this is needed just to keep pace with the rest of the Maac. I’m glad it’s in the works then everyone can make a decision whether it’s something they feel worthwhile donating to or not. Would be nice if they were able to capitalize on some business opportunities that the school has been unable to make happen. Either way I applaud Mr OConnell for trying to help.

[loyal]

It’s less than ideal to pay, say, Juju $50K to play one more year at SP. Agree with Cindy there.

The other side of the coin involves donating directly to the school that can’t update 🏀 info, runs an amateurish website, appears not to have monetized the 2022 run, promoted from within, etc. To
my knowledge neither the new Prez or AD has strong fundraising experience….guess what….fund raising CV success could arguably have been skill set requirement #1. “Don’t Rock the Boat” appointments?

In that context, re-directing 💰 helping a Rupert or JuJu to stay doesn’t seem distasteful to me. 🤷🏻‍♂️

[peacockpride]

Sept 3, 2024 16:27:06 GMT -5 loyal said:

 To
my knowledge neither the new Prez or AD has strong fundraising experience….guess what….fund raising CV success could arguably have been skill set requirement #1. “Don’t Rock the Boat” appointments?

Correct, especially when we chose to fill the AD position before a president was named. 

[Peacock]

I’m of a negative opinion of the total NIL program and feel it will run afoul of the abundant greed. For us, the low fan base and its potentially lower income bracket can not provide enough revenue to actually make a difference. What bothers me the most, other than TM and guys like Gene we do not high income bracket people interested in athletics. The school exists in one of the wealthiest business communities with the potential of gaining support from some Name corporations. Inability to attract some support is more a product of not trying than them not wanting. Wish we still had Felt.

[oldtimer1]

Wrong ! Talk like we have "pick of the litter' in any position from selecting an AD on down....we don't and really never had. That's why we selected our AD's from lower down assistant's from Seton Hall ( and Manhattan) on down. Maybe we "got lucky' with one or two but we were never in a position where anyone was knocking down our doors. Amazing , to me , that many of us have our demands without having any idea of the realities of the situation.

Case in point to me was Bryan Felt. Don't get me wrong. I liked and respected Bryan very much. He turned out to be an outstanding AD but at Seton Hall one of his main jobs was Fundraising. At SP he had little, if any, time to purse fundraising with all the duties he had in just running a very, very small Athletic Department. Had no time nor did he do any major fundraising ( including corporate ) efforts. And he did have the experience. And if one mentions Tom McMahon's donations that was Tom's idea entirely.

So forgive me if I get a bit irritated each year when I hear some of our otherwise great posters talk and talk ( and post and post ) that we need an AD with fundraising experience in addition to handling the myriad of the day to day activities of running a very, very small department.....impossible ! One simple solution, of course, would have been to hire a specific person to do the fundraising under the authority of the AD. But no, the powers that be are so small in their overall thinking even to consider that practical option that some of us have mentioned here.


And by the way did anyone ever ask or consider how many tuition funds paid by our athletes go to other college resources. Most, if not all, of our Athletic Scholarships, outside of basketball, are partial. The balance is paid for , out of pocket by the athletes. Where does all of that money go? Not arguing that it should all go to the Athletic Department. Of course not ! But if one takes our various Track Teams, for example, those partial scholarships generate a flood of tuition receipts. A formerTrack Coach, now in our Hall of Fame, frequently made that argument when asking for more funding for his various teams. Indeed with almost all his various teams, he did bring a lot of tuition payments into the University. So go figure. Most of our requests for a "fundraising" AD which I've read for years are just not practical or possible given the size of our Department. Not to say that a larger Department ( budget wise ). couldn't do both but certainly not us.


Sorry, my response was not directed at Peacock's post

[loyal]

The rush to name a permanent AD before a new Prez was appointed discloses everything you’d ever want to know about the quality of organizational decision making at SPU.

🙁

[peacockpride]

We've now had five AD's since Bill Stein retired. In my opinion, two have been successful, two have been failures, and Katie is still a TBD. For me, it's not a coincidence that the successful ones have two things in common: meaningful experience at Division 1 schools other than SP and most of that experience coming in areas of finance, business, and fundraising.

Katie would've served as the interim AD until a president was named and he could've participated in the search. Loyal is correct that this approach would've been the logical process for a well run organization. Regardless of the person, the decision to make a permanent hire of an internal candidate makes little sense.

Maybe the correct process would've yielded the same result, but that doesn't mean you don't try. OT, you correct and I do recognize that we have far from the "pick of the litter." Looking at our hirings as a whole this summer should create some concern:
-Golf coach is still vacant and softball has an interim coach
-Much talk has been made about the basketball roster, but what about the staff? Still only one assistant coach listed.
-We had an opening for an Asst AD in Marketing and Content, a position that is fairly new in the department and in theory should help the AD with all of those other duties OT mentioned. The recent hire seems underwhelming (at least to me) with little to no experience in marketing. There's also still an opening for Asst AD of Strategic Communications.
-Katie's compliance position was posted when she became AD. They moved the Director of Academic Support to fill that position, which created a new vacancy in June. It's now the second week of the semester and the Academic Support position is still vacant.

[oldtimer1]

To Prides point ( and I agree for the most part ) even our hires with all their marketing and so called business backgrounds were able to do little if any fundraising and none had top AD experience. Add to that almost all couldn't wait to get out the door.

Additionally, to Pride's other point about all the open and unfilled positions doesn't that tell you something? The hubris of those who want to think that they are CEO's and tell us the type of person we need to hire and the job that they need to do stuns me and totally flies in the face of the history of our previous hires. Sure we can continue to look for that "needle in the haystack" but, at some point there is the reality that we are not almost anyone's ( Coach's, Administrator's AD's ) prime objective needs to be understood. Just look at the record.

Hope my posting doesn't mean that I'm down on SPU. I am not and like to think that I am a loyal supporter. However, one of my first speeches to my Golf recruits was for them to be honest with themselves regarding both their abilities and what they need to do to get better. IMO what is common to golf , and I think most other sports, is that the players think that they are so much better than they really are. To me, the first step to improvement is facing reality. Think we suffer the same when we evaluate what we can do and what we cannot. I want success but some of the criteria we post is fantasy without an appropriate size budget and staff.That's not negative but realistic.

[spc91]

Ever notice how the women are much more active of social media than the men? Aside from introducing all of their signees, they frequently post practice pics, as well as, other happenings.

x.com/peacockswbb/status/1831415456655405266?s=46&t=uMBjdt8AeMlCpxml0h-qow

[bluebird]

patriotnationcollective.com - That's an example of how George Mason University set up their NIL collective.

(The website is slightly outdated from when Kim English and Josh Oduro went to Providence but we'll use it as an example for now)


1. Any Peacock NIL collective needs a website. It needs to be clearly laid out/easy to navigate with clear links for fans to join or learn more about it.

2. There needs to be a clear leadership and support structure of donors for this to work. Mason has Kathy McKay a Chevy Dealer and Chris Durlak a political consultant. They play a critical role in Mason's NIL. They often have the Mason players promote Kathy's Chevy Dealership. Something similar could be done for the Peacocks with a local business.

3. There needs to be "buy in" from the team and administration. Donors to the NIL should get access to a reception or some event where they would get to chit chat with players and or coaches.

3.5. The President of Saint Peter's and the Athletic Dept. should promote this endeavor as a way for fans to help the Basketball Program survive and thrive in the new reality of college athletics.

4. There should be updates to keep the fanbase informed. The days of the fanbase being in the dark all offseason and looking for white smoke when it comes to guessing who is on the roster or what games are being scheduled need to go by the way side.

5. This needs to be done the right way. It can't be done crumb bun style. Hire a website team if needed.

[eport]

Bluebird.....very well put. I'm in total agreement.