MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – Wren Baker recently surpassed his 60
th day sitting in the big chair overseeing Mountaineer athletics, and while it's been somewhat chaotic, it's also been informative for the Valliant, Oklahoma, native.
"My family is still in Texas, and they are going to finish the school year before they come to Morgantown," he said.
The time away from his family has enabled Baker to focus solely on his first 100 days as West Virginia's director of athletics, and during that time, he's been able to learn more about the strengths and weaknesses of the department.
"I've had lots and lots of meetings," he said. "People keep asking me if I've bought a house yet, and I've only had a chance to look at one or two, so there just hasn't been a lot of time for that. After basketball season is over there will be a little more time on the schedule and we're also kind of getting past the listening-tour stage and starting to think about, 'Okay, what are the steps here that we need to take to build out a strategic plan and our five-year model for the things that we want to get accomplished?'"
Wren managed to carve out some time in his busy schedule recently to sit down for a quick Q&A, focusing on some of the key questions that he's been getting from Mountaineer fans during the last couple of months.
Therefore, here's Ten for Wren, if you will:
WVUsports.com: It's my understanding that you get a lot of questions about uniforms. The school colors are Gold and Blue, but some would like to see the return of black uniforms. Knowing this can be a polarizing subject with some of our fans – what are your thoughts on uniforms?
Wren Baker: I think you have to respect your history and traditions. Our traditional Gold and Blue uniforms will always be a staple of what we do, but having coached and having two young daughters, I know how they feel about the opportunity to have some alternative uniforms and I think it's something that we really need to look at. As long as we stay true to our colors for the regular game day and then having those alternatives for special occasions, I think makes a lot of sense. It's something we will look at, but we'll look at it in a way that we will have a philosophy on it for all sports and not one-offs here and there.
WVUsports.com: Student seating at the WVU Coliseum is another subject that seems to come up a lot these days. With a 52-year-old arena that does not have a lot of premium seating options, there are really no perfect solutions to this dilemma, are there?
WB: No. Sometimes, I will see people who will say the way that we have our student seating isn't conducive to a great game-day environment, and I always wonder if those are people who are actually coming to games because I think we have a really good game-day environment. Could it be better? Of course, but we've had a really good year for women's basketball attendance, we've had a top-five year all-time for men's basketball attendance and I think our students are engaged and do a really good job. I've alluded to this before, but just coming in and doing some initial assessments, we have a budget that is in the bottom third of the conference, we have travel costs that are No. 1, and we have a pretty high debt-service cost. So, the reallocation of lower-level seats - and we already have a significant number of floor seats dedicated to our students - means we don't have a lot of premium seats to sell. That is our most expensive inventory so we're allocating a lot of seats to students and to give up additional lower-level seats to students would eat into our bottom line significantly, and we are just not in a position to do that. I get lots of suggestions on social media that I should do this or that, but a lot of those suggestions come at the expense of revenue. To be totally transparent and candid, game environment will be part of our strategic plan, but I can't imagine right now anything is going to get elevated above increasing revenue. Something that decreases revenue is going to be really hard for us to do in the foreseeable future.
WVUsports.com: Tip and kickoff times are not in your control; what do you want fans to know about game times?
WB: We desire our kickoff and tip times to be at a time that most people can either come and physically be at the game, but if not, to be able to watch the game. People have to understand there is a reason why TV has all of those windows throughout the day. There is a reason why the Big 12 strategically got into another time zone and why commissioner (Brett) Yormark talks about picking up other time zones because the more windows you can fill, the more expensive your TV package is. Certainly, with where we're at right now, we have a lot of buckets of revenue, but our No. 1 bucket of revenue is our TV contract. TV is going to set those tip times and kickoff times, and we're going to fight for our homecoming to always be at a time that makes sense and to not have all noon kickoffs for football and not always have our games at 8 or 9 p.m. ET for basketball. However, the reality is we're going to have some games that are not at ideal kickoff and tip times, especially when BYU comes into the league. I would imagine we're going to have some that are later than what we've had here in the past, so it's just something that is a part of what we have to deal with. There are a lot of discussions about being able to set those times more in advance instead of having to wait for that 10-day window, and any time we can control those times we're going to put them for what is best for our fans.
WVUsports.com: Athletic facilities are always a popular topic among fans. I just saw where Oklahoma State revealed its ambitious facility master plan and Texas Tech continues to make preparations to add to what it has already done, and Baylor is moving into a new basketball arena next year. What is the next step, facility wise, for West Virginia University?
WB: As I get fully onboarded here, we're going to take some time to develop a strategic plan. There will be a public version where everyone can kind of follow the general progress, but we'll have five year's-worth of specific initiatives behind the scenes. Just for an example - and we haven't started the planning process - but to make sure our student-athletes have the very best access to nutrition advice, food and so forth, on the backend of that it might be hiring this many nutritionists, open this many training tables for athletes that we'll know, but the general public will just have a sense of what our goal is. One of the things that will definitely be a part of that strategic plan is to update our facility master plan. Oklahoma State's plan they released is very similar to the plan we had at North Texas in that we put out kind of a 20-year road map, instead of doing one project at a time. We wanted people to see the bigger vision and my philosophy is you never know who may have an affinity or a desire to partner with you on a project they don't know about. So, we might as well put it out there because you never know. Let's take money out of the equation for a second: who do we aspire to be when we grow up, so to speak? If there is a certain facility project, and we don't necessarily have a pathway for funding on it today, I'm of the opinion that we still go ahead and get it out there.
WVUsports.com: You've touched on this topic quite a bit since your arrival, but what can the Mountaineers do to keep up in the name, image and likeness (NIL) game?
WB: When you look at the growth of NIL opportunities for our student-athletes, I'm excited about the opportunities that they are receiving. There is not a national disclosure database, so I don't know exactly what every school in the country's student-athletes are getting, but I think when you look at the total experience of our student-athletes and what we provide them in life development, mental health, physical health with our sports medicine offerings and our partnership with WVU Medicine, nutrition, coaching and academic support, then add in the NIL opportunities, I think the opportunities we provide to student-athletes to come here are as good as anywhere. You can't rest on your laurels, and everybody is trying to get better, so we have to keep pushing to increase those opportunities. I think relative to most of our peer institutions with similar-sized budgets and similar-sized fanbases, season-ticket holders and donors, our NIL opportunities for our student-athletes are very competitive.
WVUsports.com: WVU's Day of Giving is on March 22 – It's a University-wide initiative, but it also impacts the athletics department. Can you explain to the fans the importance of financially supporting Mountaineer athletics?
WB: I know there is a lot of need out there, certainly on campus, certainly in this community and certainly in this state, but I do believe at the core of what we do is take young people and provide them opportunities to grow and develop. Over the course of their time here, not only are they getting the academic support and the support to grow as people with mental and physical health support, I think the biggest thing we do in this day and age is we provide young people with an opportunity to fight through adversity and help them get ready for life. To get along on a team, they have to take constructive criticism and feedback and make adjustments and get better. They have to reconcile the pursuit of team goals with individual goals, and those opportunities, in my opinion, are declining in our country. When you look at a lot of Fortune 500 companies and businesses, they target many student-athletes and they do that because of those experiences they get in collegiate sports. For all of the other reasons that we've always talked about, I think the support is important but now more than ever, avenues that help develop leaders and leadership are things that are worthy of our support.
WVUsports.com: Football and men's basketball are playing the most difficult schedules in school history and rank among the toughest in the country in their respective sports. Football is one of the few teams in the country that has played 11 Power 5 opponents over the last three years, and it will be opening on the road against a Power 5 rival for the third straight year. What is your philosophy on balancing a schedule that is appealing to the fans, but doesn't put your teams at a competitive disadvantage?
WB: I certainly understand some of the games that we've scheduled and our desire to rekindle some of our regional rivalries with Power 5 programs, because we are in a league where we didn't have those. I understand the philosophy. I think once the Big 12 moved to nine league games and the quality of the league from top to bottom is where it is now, as long as we're going to play nine games, we have to limit our nonconference to one Power 5. Now, there is not a lot I can do about games that are scheduled already. We are shopping some of those just to see if it would be possible to do something about them – and moving forward I think you will see there is a desire to play some regional opponents, Power 5 and Group of 5, but we have to balance our schedule. No program I am aware of that has made huge strides recently has done that by playing a highly difficult, top-five-type, nonconference schedule. Now, there are programs who get top-10 good and then they'll play those types of schedules. If you look at what has happened at Baylor, TCU and Kansas State, all of them have tried to come out of nonconference with good records with some confidence and are healthy, and then they get ready for conference play. You are balancing that by trying to play games that are meaningful to fans and are of interest to fans, and I get that and that's all part of the equation, but I think you can do those things without putting your team at a disadvantage.
WVUsports.com: A subject that pops up from time to time is adding sports. Is that realistic at this time?
WB: Right now, short of somebody walking in and writing us a substantial check to underwrite not only the facility but also the annual budget cost, it really isn't. We have a lot of student-athletes that get a great experience here, but we have some student-athletes that I don't believe are getting the experiences that are competitive, nationally, with what others are getting specific to their sport. You take our track and field kids. If you go to the Shell Building and look at what they have to work with on a daily basis, it's bottom four or five in the Power 5. That's something I feel an obligation to find a way to rectify and make that situation better. Adding teams is not going to jump ahead of providing great experiences for our current student-athletes – if it comes at the cost of resources. Again, if somebody walked in off the street and said, 'Hey, here is enough money to build a new softball stadium and to underwrite the program and it won't cost you a dollar' we would look at that really hard. But to peel dollars away from our current student-athletes just doesn't make sense. I think what we will be able to do once we have our strategic plan and our facility master plan is everyone will have a clearer picture of what needs to happen to give all of our student-athletes a championship-level experience. Once those things are happening then you can look at bringing in additional teams. Diluting resources for some of our programs who are already really struggling does not seem like a strategy that makes sense to me.
WVUsports.com: You mentioned in your first
video chat with Tony Caridi last week posted on our
YouTube channel your desire to grow West Virginia's athletic budget to increase revenue. Can you expand on that a little bit more?
WB: As I've looked at our expenses, I don't think we have an expense problem. None of our expenses, outside of travel, are greater than our peer institutions, and our travel costs are something we really can't control because we are a geographic outlier in our conference. If we want to grow, and you take our budget and you net out debt service, you net out travel, what we have to work with on a daily basis to operate on is less than anybody in the conference. We're running numbers now, and I think it will still be close to the least, even with the new teams coming in. There is an assumption that we're bringing these new teams in and we're going to have more money than them, and I think that's not accurate. If we want to compete for championships, we don't have to have the biggest budget, but we need to be somewhere in that middle third of net operating when you take out travel and debt service. To me, the only thing that is left to do is to find additional revenue streams, and that's something that we need to do. Whether that's the creation of amenities and premium seating … even Club 35 has brought in some additional revenue. There was an initial capital expense, but that has brought in additional revenue. We're looking at the addition of another club, potentially, on the apron that will bring in additional revenue. As we build out these spaces, can we host events? It doesn't have to be a $100,000 net concert. It can be $2,500 to $5,000 for a wedding reception or some of these big blowout birthday parties. If you can start to put those things together it can add up. I'm just not sure we've thought about making every dollar we can, every chance we can. A lot of athletic programs don't, but if you talk to pro sports, that's what they think about constantly. We're really going to have to spend some time doing that. I used the analogy the other day - not every revenue stream will be a home run and that's fine. We can get some singles and doubles and that puts runners on base, which is what we need to do right now. If you look at all of these pro venues, they are exploring these things. The (Texas) Rangers built a new stadium, and they took a parking lot and made a place called "Texas Live" and there are hotels and an outdoor concert venue. As we build out the future, we just need to be thinking of how can we monetize this? Everything that can be monetized we should because just expecting to sell more tickets and charge more for those tickets, that's just not where people are at. One thing that is universal, no matter where we are, is if you can give people a white-glove experience where they can get to a restroom quickly and easily, they can get premium concessions, drinks and all those things, and they can do it quickly, they can have a seat that's comfortable, and they can park close to the venue, those are the things people will pay for. People will pay a surprising amount of their expendable income for a team that they love when they have access to those things. We just have to find a way when we look at every single project we do to think, is there a way that we can make money off of this?
WVUsports.com: A lot of the details have yet to be completely ironed out when the Big 12 reconstitutes itself once Texas and Oklahoma depart the conference, but based on the vast geographical footprint, it would seem logical that the Olympic sports are going to have to go to some sort of divisional format. What are your thoughts on this?
WB: My hope is that happens, and I've definitely been pushing for that. We'll see if there is any further realignment or any other additions to the league at some point, and if those additions are west of the teams we currently have, it just makes no sense (not moving to divisions for Olympic sports). Whether it's baseball, soccer, volleyball or whatever, we should send those teams to BYU as little as possible, and BYU should send their teams to West Virginia as little as possible. There is not major TV revenue coming off those, those are not events with a real high volume in ticket sales and even if there were, we are not going to drive a meaningful amount in ticket sales going there, and we're going to spend a lot of money to travel, and we're going to take kids out of class for longer periods of time. They are going to get home later, and they are going to cross multiple time zones. I get doing that when you're talking about football and basketball where there are charter flights and you are making massive amounts of TV money, but when you are talking about sticking kids on commercial flights and having to catch connections and it's taking a full day to travel, it just makes no sense. My hope is that's something the league can agree on. I realize if you go to geographical divisions one side might be better than the other, but that's all cyclical and it all works itself out, and my hope is to hold down everybody's travel costs because if we can hold down everyone's travel costs that gives us more money to spend on programmatic things, which will help us be better as a league when we compete against other leagues for championships.
