Ask the AD: January 27, 2023
Jan 27, 2023 | Athletics
Brian Smoller (BS): Hello and welcome to another edition of Ask the AD. Brian Smoller with the Director of Athletics, Gene Taylor. We're glad you can join us. Boy, we got a lot to talk about on this edition of Ask the AD. Many more questions that we didn't get to we'll try and get to them on social media when we can. We'll start first right out of the gate with lavender - it's the hot topic right now. Even going on the road to other schools, other teams, other coaches, other staff they come to you and say "Oh I love what you guys are doing with the throwback Wildcats and the lavender", all that sort of stuff. It's a hot ticket item. And there is lavender gear available periodically. There's more coming. But boy, it's everybody wants it.
Gene Taylor (GT): Yeah, that's great. And obviously, you know, I think anything right now that coach Tang wears people want and we can't get it all in retail. But we do our best to make sure we get as much in retail as we can. One of the things we have to do is work with Nike. And we have our sideline gear or you know, our coaches gear. And that usually comes out just to the coaches and staff and then eventually Nike, we'll get it out on the retail market. It takes a little while. What our fans need to do and would help us if they could, you know, tag Nike and say, "Hey, we want this, we want this" because then that'll help Nike understand that there's a high demand for it. And the more they see demand for our material, our gear, the more they'll make it a rush to get into the retail store. So fan base, you can help a lot by tagging Nike and say we'd love this on retail, we'd love this and retail. Retailers will know that we want it and they will sell and Nike will know and that'll speed up the process.
BS: Yeah. And that's just backing up. I mean, we're making those conversations and saying those things, but this just helps reinforce it. Yes, we're not making it up. There is a huge market that really wants it.
GT: Major demand for it.
BS: For this question, we're gonna go from that to NIL. This question got emailed in this week, and it's a good one probably for a longer conversation. But I'll ask you for the 40,000-foot view. And it comes from K-State Doug who asks, "Will the AFCA, NCAA or the Big 12 coordinate to place guardrails in place for NIL? It seems like it is out of control at some places". Now, I don't know that that's the case in conference. But what's your take on that?
GT: Yeah, obviously there are some that are out of control. And it's being used for inducements, which is recruiting violation, which is illegal. We know that. Obviously, with our institution and here at K-State, that's not happening. And that's a good thing. But we've worked on guardrails. We actually had NCAA legislation ready to keep guardrails around it when it was first coming out. We got pushed back for a lot of reasons. One being the NCAA came to our ADs and said, "no, let's not put those through right now", which is probably a mistake. And I think we know that now. And so now we are working together with the NCAA presidents that oversee the NCAA, athletic directors, conference commissioners, anybody that can help us. We're trying to get guardrails, but we're trying to help it from a legislative perspective in Washington, and it's a big lift. But as more and more stories come out about the misuse of NIL, about athletes being taken advantage of, I think there's going to be more interest. There's a give and take in terms of what we have to give to get help from Washington DC. But there's also an understanding that we have to keep pushing to help them understand the bad side of NIL, the good side of NIL and how we can make it so it's fair across all states. Right now we have different states with different laws. And we just got to really get it under control because it is, in some cases out of control.
BS: As you said, the differences between states I think is one of the bigger concerns just across the landscape of college athletics. Alright, so we go from that and the NIL news to what also has been a hot topic here lately. And that is football scheduling. This comes from @cdiederich04, "When will we know the football schedule for next year?" We're right there with you.
GT: Yeah, you know, I understand. And folks, normally it's out earlier. There are just a lot of things going on, obviously with it with the new members coming in and trying to work through that. But I think we'll see that schedule come out sometime soon. And when I say soon, by the end of the month. There are some contractual obligations. But I think we'll get it done. And just, just a lot of moving parts with the four new members coming in. How to make sure the schedule is done the right way for everybody. But you'll see it probably by the end of the month, hopefully.
BS: One last thing on this. By the way, I'm just going to head this question off before it gets even asked. We do not have a whole lot of say in what the schedule is. We can't campaign or lobby for certain games
GT: You know, when the schedule comes out like it normally does, or anytime any of our schedules come out, we do look at it as ADs before it gets public. And we look at are they are we hitting our principals in terms of the number of road games, the number of home games, how far we travel. There are some new principals with our new members coming in. And so trying to work through that has really been the biggest part of the delay, but we will get a chance to look at that and make sure at least our principles are being met. We can't say "hey, we don't really want to play this team then", we don't get that option.
BS: Alright, so from that we go to facilities. We get a number of facility questions we're going to get to. The first one comes from @AllenWalter11 on Twitter. "Will there be an opportunity for the public to tour the new football practice facility (the Shamrock indoor practice facility) and the new volleyball facility (Morgan Family Arena) in the coming months as we did for the Shamrock Zone?"
GT: So as far as football, there will be. February 4, we're having a ribbon cutting at 1:30 open to the public. The public will have a chance to go in there and view that and walk around and see it. It's a beautiful facility for those of us that have had a chance to see it. The players have already been in practicing and coaches. So, it's going to be a great facility. So February 4, at 1:30 we'll have a ribbon cutting and opportunity for the public. Volleyball is going to wait until it's completely done, which will be sometime in June or July of this year, 2023. We'll probably do a similar public ribbon cutting with the fans and then obviously, that particular facility will be open obviously for volleyball games, and they'll get a chance to walk around. But I would anticipate sometime later this summer. So we'll have a ribbon cutting for the volleyball venue.
BS: And excited to see Jason Mansfield, new volleyball coach for the Wildcats, who's put together great staff and see how they go out. They just began practices here in the spring as well. Alright, we'll take a bookmark there for a minute on facilities. Speaking of football, this question comes from Dan Burdiek on Facebook: "Will there be upgrades on season tickets, with all the upgrades will there be an increase in season tickets and or parking for next year?"
GT: Yeah, we've been talking about that a lot and you will anticipate and see an increase in ticket prices this year. We haven't raised ticket prices in over five years. Parking will remain the same but do anticipate various price ranges of increases for various seating for the 2023 season.
BS: And again, that'll be announced at a later time. We can go through that then, but seven straight sellouts for the Wildcats as they go into this football season. Absolutely. Now back to facilities and the master plan. We've talked about this before the master plan is just there. It's not an end-all, be-all hard and fast rule but when it first came out it showed numerous Bramlage Coliseum renovations. This is from @ScottSandersEsq: "One of which was a mid-level interior concourse walkway. Is that specific renovation still in the works?"
GT: Well, it's in the master plan. Like you said, a master plan is good for kind of guidance. And we filled a lot of those master plan goals with the Shamrock zone, the indoor football facility and then the Morgan Family Volleyball and Olympic Training Center. We have touched some things and Bramlage, other new entrances on the east and west side were part of that and also a piece of the upgrades to the club area. So there were pieces of that we had planned for. In terms of what he's specifically talking about, it's probably going to be a while before we get to that. We want to kind of take a breather, once these big projects are done and take a step back. Let our donors get a rest. We could use donors for some other things that we'll talk about here in a little bit. But I think that's going to be probably a while before we get back on that topic.
BS: But I love the fact that K-State fans are all about what's next. What's the next thing? That's been great. That's why we're sitting in some of these facilities. And we did have a question about the old football indoor - what's the plan for that?
GT: Right now we're going to take that because the Ahearn building, we're going to be moved out of that for various reasons. We will take that facility and turn that into an indoor track. We'll put a bank track in there with some seating and we'll upgrade the lighting, we'll upgrade the HVAC. That project needs to start pretty soon. And we're just going through with the architects and the planning for that. But hopefully, we'll be in it by the track season of 2024.
BS: All right, from that back to basketball. This is from @leemodesittks: "Fans have been discussing basketball court redesigns on Twitter with several great suggestions."
GT: There's one out there that I really liked, by the way.
BS: There are great suggestions and then there are some that are a little bit iffy. "What are the chances of an update to design for the court?"
GT: There will be because the court has reached its lifespan. And so we will be putting a new court in by next season. Probably based on the timing of getting the court built and designed, it's probably going to be sometime in the mid part of the season, November or December. That redesign hasn't even been talked about yet. Obviously, Coach Tang is in the middle of his season but we'll start working on that and because of the useful life of the current court, we will be getting a new one for next season.
BS: You mentioned in Coach Tang, what a year for men's basketball so far. It's been great to see. I'm sure you'd love to say "yeah, I knew it all along."
GT: I can't quite go that far. But we'll take it, certainly, we've been a heck of a year so far.
BS: With football coupled with that Coach Klieman, Coach Tang obviously as K-State fans, the first thought beyond that is "boy we just want to keep this rolling forever". So, for fans that are interested in how do we keep Coach Klieman and Coach Tang staying here for all time? What's the answer to that?
GT: Well, obviously, you know certainly the demand for those guys has a tendency to go up, the more success they have. And certainly, there are schools that can pay more than then we can. I think both of them really want to stay here and they know they have a good thing. But you know, donors, as I mentioned earlier, we're moving away from the big capital campaigns and donors can certainly help us with that process. We have a program within the Ahearn Fund called Powering Excellence. And one of the deals is making sure we keep good coaches, and we can hire good coaches. One of those is salaries, and how can we increase salaries. If somebody is interested and want to help, that's one way to help is to increase your Ahearn Fund donation to the Powering Excellence campaign. And you can even indicate it for you know, coaches' salaries, and we could certainly make that happen.
BS: Visit AhearnFund.com for more information. As Gene mentioned, right in there, it has that coaching description in there as one of the tenants that they're looking to do. And so as we wrap up basketball, this isn't a question necessarily right here, but it's been a topic on Twitter. Jacob Pullen, the all-time leading scorer for Kansas State. You know where I'm going with this.
GT: Yeah. There will be something in the rafters in the time that works for Jacob. Obviously, he's still playing and he's got folks that he wants to bring back to Manhattan to celebrate that. And it's well deserving, and it's going to happen. It's just timing with Jacob, his family and other friends that he wants to bring back. It's really going to be at a point that is good for him and good for our fan base. You'll probably see a Jacob Pullen jersey in the rafters in the very near future.
BS: Yeah, that was a decision that kind of been made a long time ago and just trying to make it out there. Hey, yeah, we're not done. We understand he should be up there. Gene, appreciate the time. Thanks so much. Congratulations, I guess in some respects on the success of hitting with Coach Tang and Coach Klieman and the way it's rolling right now. Here in a month or so we'll be talking about postseason basketball for both, hopefully.
GT: I actually had a lot of help in those processes and was very fortunate.
BS: All right, that's Gene Taylor for you. He'll continue to answer questions on Twitter. We'll shout out and give as many interests as we can. In the meantime, if you got another question after this, shoot it our way we'll save it for the next edition. For Gene Taylor, I'm Brian Smoller. Thank you for watching Ask the AD.
Gene Taylor (GT): Yeah, that's great. And obviously, you know, I think anything right now that coach Tang wears people want and we can't get it all in retail. But we do our best to make sure we get as much in retail as we can. One of the things we have to do is work with Nike. And we have our sideline gear or you know, our coaches gear. And that usually comes out just to the coaches and staff and then eventually Nike, we'll get it out on the retail market. It takes a little while. What our fans need to do and would help us if they could, you know, tag Nike and say, "Hey, we want this, we want this" because then that'll help Nike understand that there's a high demand for it. And the more they see demand for our material, our gear, the more they'll make it a rush to get into the retail store. So fan base, you can help a lot by tagging Nike and say we'd love this on retail, we'd love this and retail. Retailers will know that we want it and they will sell and Nike will know and that'll speed up the process.
BS: Yeah. And that's just backing up. I mean, we're making those conversations and saying those things, but this just helps reinforce it. Yes, we're not making it up. There is a huge market that really wants it.
GT: Major demand for it.
BS: For this question, we're gonna go from that to NIL. This question got emailed in this week, and it's a good one probably for a longer conversation. But I'll ask you for the 40,000-foot view. And it comes from K-State Doug who asks, "Will the AFCA, NCAA or the Big 12 coordinate to place guardrails in place for NIL? It seems like it is out of control at some places". Now, I don't know that that's the case in conference. But what's your take on that?
GT: Yeah, obviously there are some that are out of control. And it's being used for inducements, which is recruiting violation, which is illegal. We know that. Obviously, with our institution and here at K-State, that's not happening. And that's a good thing. But we've worked on guardrails. We actually had NCAA legislation ready to keep guardrails around it when it was first coming out. We got pushed back for a lot of reasons. One being the NCAA came to our ADs and said, "no, let's not put those through right now", which is probably a mistake. And I think we know that now. And so now we are working together with the NCAA presidents that oversee the NCAA, athletic directors, conference commissioners, anybody that can help us. We're trying to get guardrails, but we're trying to help it from a legislative perspective in Washington, and it's a big lift. But as more and more stories come out about the misuse of NIL, about athletes being taken advantage of, I think there's going to be more interest. There's a give and take in terms of what we have to give to get help from Washington DC. But there's also an understanding that we have to keep pushing to help them understand the bad side of NIL, the good side of NIL and how we can make it so it's fair across all states. Right now we have different states with different laws. And we just got to really get it under control because it is, in some cases out of control.
BS: As you said, the differences between states I think is one of the bigger concerns just across the landscape of college athletics. Alright, so we go from that and the NIL news to what also has been a hot topic here lately. And that is football scheduling. This comes from @cdiederich04, "When will we know the football schedule for next year?" We're right there with you.
GT: Yeah, you know, I understand. And folks, normally it's out earlier. There are just a lot of things going on, obviously with it with the new members coming in and trying to work through that. But I think we'll see that schedule come out sometime soon. And when I say soon, by the end of the month. There are some contractual obligations. But I think we'll get it done. And just, just a lot of moving parts with the four new members coming in. How to make sure the schedule is done the right way for everybody. But you'll see it probably by the end of the month, hopefully.
BS: One last thing on this. By the way, I'm just going to head this question off before it gets even asked. We do not have a whole lot of say in what the schedule is. We can't campaign or lobby for certain games
GT: You know, when the schedule comes out like it normally does, or anytime any of our schedules come out, we do look at it as ADs before it gets public. And we look at are they are we hitting our principals in terms of the number of road games, the number of home games, how far we travel. There are some new principals with our new members coming in. And so trying to work through that has really been the biggest part of the delay, but we will get a chance to look at that and make sure at least our principles are being met. We can't say "hey, we don't really want to play this team then", we don't get that option.
BS: Alright, so from that we go to facilities. We get a number of facility questions we're going to get to. The first one comes from @AllenWalter11 on Twitter. "Will there be an opportunity for the public to tour the new football practice facility (the Shamrock indoor practice facility) and the new volleyball facility (Morgan Family Arena) in the coming months as we did for the Shamrock Zone?"
GT: So as far as football, there will be. February 4, we're having a ribbon cutting at 1:30 open to the public. The public will have a chance to go in there and view that and walk around and see it. It's a beautiful facility for those of us that have had a chance to see it. The players have already been in practicing and coaches. So, it's going to be a great facility. So February 4, at 1:30 we'll have a ribbon cutting and opportunity for the public. Volleyball is going to wait until it's completely done, which will be sometime in June or July of this year, 2023. We'll probably do a similar public ribbon cutting with the fans and then obviously, that particular facility will be open obviously for volleyball games, and they'll get a chance to walk around. But I would anticipate sometime later this summer. So we'll have a ribbon cutting for the volleyball venue.
BS: And excited to see Jason Mansfield, new volleyball coach for the Wildcats, who's put together great staff and see how they go out. They just began practices here in the spring as well. Alright, we'll take a bookmark there for a minute on facilities. Speaking of football, this question comes from Dan Burdiek on Facebook: "Will there be upgrades on season tickets, with all the upgrades will there be an increase in season tickets and or parking for next year?"
GT: Yeah, we've been talking about that a lot and you will anticipate and see an increase in ticket prices this year. We haven't raised ticket prices in over five years. Parking will remain the same but do anticipate various price ranges of increases for various seating for the 2023 season.
BS: And again, that'll be announced at a later time. We can go through that then, but seven straight sellouts for the Wildcats as they go into this football season. Absolutely. Now back to facilities and the master plan. We've talked about this before the master plan is just there. It's not an end-all, be-all hard and fast rule but when it first came out it showed numerous Bramlage Coliseum renovations. This is from @ScottSandersEsq: "One of which was a mid-level interior concourse walkway. Is that specific renovation still in the works?"
GT: Well, it's in the master plan. Like you said, a master plan is good for kind of guidance. And we filled a lot of those master plan goals with the Shamrock zone, the indoor football facility and then the Morgan Family Volleyball and Olympic Training Center. We have touched some things and Bramlage, other new entrances on the east and west side were part of that and also a piece of the upgrades to the club area. So there were pieces of that we had planned for. In terms of what he's specifically talking about, it's probably going to be a while before we get to that. We want to kind of take a breather, once these big projects are done and take a step back. Let our donors get a rest. We could use donors for some other things that we'll talk about here in a little bit. But I think that's going to be probably a while before we get back on that topic.
BS: But I love the fact that K-State fans are all about what's next. What's the next thing? That's been great. That's why we're sitting in some of these facilities. And we did have a question about the old football indoor - what's the plan for that?
GT: Right now we're going to take that because the Ahearn building, we're going to be moved out of that for various reasons. We will take that facility and turn that into an indoor track. We'll put a bank track in there with some seating and we'll upgrade the lighting, we'll upgrade the HVAC. That project needs to start pretty soon. And we're just going through with the architects and the planning for that. But hopefully, we'll be in it by the track season of 2024.
BS: All right, from that back to basketball. This is from @leemodesittks: "Fans have been discussing basketball court redesigns on Twitter with several great suggestions."
GT: There's one out there that I really liked, by the way.
BS: There are great suggestions and then there are some that are a little bit iffy. "What are the chances of an update to design for the court?"
GT: There will be because the court has reached its lifespan. And so we will be putting a new court in by next season. Probably based on the timing of getting the court built and designed, it's probably going to be sometime in the mid part of the season, November or December. That redesign hasn't even been talked about yet. Obviously, Coach Tang is in the middle of his season but we'll start working on that and because of the useful life of the current court, we will be getting a new one for next season.
BS: You mentioned in Coach Tang, what a year for men's basketball so far. It's been great to see. I'm sure you'd love to say "yeah, I knew it all along."
GT: I can't quite go that far. But we'll take it, certainly, we've been a heck of a year so far.
BS: With football coupled with that Coach Klieman, Coach Tang obviously as K-State fans, the first thought beyond that is "boy we just want to keep this rolling forever". So, for fans that are interested in how do we keep Coach Klieman and Coach Tang staying here for all time? What's the answer to that?
GT: Well, obviously, you know certainly the demand for those guys has a tendency to go up, the more success they have. And certainly, there are schools that can pay more than then we can. I think both of them really want to stay here and they know they have a good thing. But you know, donors, as I mentioned earlier, we're moving away from the big capital campaigns and donors can certainly help us with that process. We have a program within the Ahearn Fund called Powering Excellence. And one of the deals is making sure we keep good coaches, and we can hire good coaches. One of those is salaries, and how can we increase salaries. If somebody is interested and want to help, that's one way to help is to increase your Ahearn Fund donation to the Powering Excellence campaign. And you can even indicate it for you know, coaches' salaries, and we could certainly make that happen.
BS: Visit AhearnFund.com for more information. As Gene mentioned, right in there, it has that coaching description in there as one of the tenants that they're looking to do. And so as we wrap up basketball, this isn't a question necessarily right here, but it's been a topic on Twitter. Jacob Pullen, the all-time leading scorer for Kansas State. You know where I'm going with this.
GT: Yeah. There will be something in the rafters in the time that works for Jacob. Obviously, he's still playing and he's got folks that he wants to bring back to Manhattan to celebrate that. And it's well deserving, and it's going to happen. It's just timing with Jacob, his family and other friends that he wants to bring back. It's really going to be at a point that is good for him and good for our fan base. You'll probably see a Jacob Pullen jersey in the rafters in the very near future.
BS: Yeah, that was a decision that kind of been made a long time ago and just trying to make it out there. Hey, yeah, we're not done. We understand he should be up there. Gene, appreciate the time. Thanks so much. Congratulations, I guess in some respects on the success of hitting with Coach Tang and Coach Klieman and the way it's rolling right now. Here in a month or so we'll be talking about postseason basketball for both, hopefully.
GT: I actually had a lot of help in those processes and was very fortunate.
BS: All right, that's Gene Taylor for you. He'll continue to answer questions on Twitter. We'll shout out and give as many interests as we can. In the meantime, if you got another question after this, shoot it our way we'll save it for the next edition. For Gene Taylor, I'm Brian Smoller. Thank you for watching Ask the AD.