Omaha Herald: UNO plans to move DI, will drop football and wrestling

[bigticket1]

Re: Omaha Herald: UNO plans to move DI, will drop football and wrestling

And, as it was in the NCC, the bulk of those attending conference rivalry games will be from the visiting schools. What killed their revenue was the loss of visiting fans from SDSU, USD, Augie and Morningside. Heck, it came out last year that under the previous AD, as many as 90% of the tickets for those attending basketball games were freebies. Trev Alberts was pleased that they had cut that to around 60% for the 2009 season. Basically, the only people buying tickets were us suckers supporting the visiting team. They better hope that their hockey program stays strong.

Doesn't sound like real fertile ground to put in a competitive bid for the Summit tournament for quite some time.

[LakeJack]

Re: Omaha Herald: UNO plans to move DI, will drop football and wrestling

http://www.omaha.com/article/2011031...1/703169869/-1

[joeboo22]

Re: Omaha Herald: UNO plans to move DI, will drop football and wrestling

Doesn't sound like real fertile ground to put in a competitive bid for the Summit tournament for quite some time.

I don't see them in any position to bid for it until they are post-season eligible. How good of bid could Sioux Falls have put before SDSU was full-fledged members.

As far as how fast they can become viable economically/attendance wise. I think they have the opportunity to get some big games in Omaha, maybe they have to play a few at the Qwest Center, but them having UNL, Creighton, Kansas, Kansas State within a few hours, and many times schools will schedule a game before they play the big boys during the out of conference schedule. I think SDSU achieved a few of these at least on the womens side with of things with Minnesota and they have more universities closer. Minnesota is the closest to Brookings, and is further away than Kansas and Kansas State is from Omaha. The fact that they have a big airport, easy to get there and so on they have the ability to get some home games that SDSU and NDSU will never get.

Now I believe that if you put some talent on the floor people will show up and back them both in fan support and money. No one shows up to watch 3-28 teams.

There I think I'm done on this topic...

[Jacks#1Fan]

Re: Omaha Herald: UNO plans to move DI, will drop football and wrestling

A couple of points aimed at various posters. Everybody up here knew something was up when Alberts was in SF for the Summit tourney, and when Douple announced they would make a site visit in Omaha on Wednesday, you had to wonder exactly what was happening. So from the site visit on Wednesday and Thursday, to Friday, Douple got the vote from the presidents to extend the invitation (quit blaming Douple, who's just looking out for the conference, which, as we all know, needed another school in by 2012 to replace SUU).

So when the invitation to join the Summit (remember, UNO can't go D-1 now, since the rule was changed during the moratorium (which ends June 1) without FIRST having a conference invitation. With one in hand, UNO had to deal with: 1) We have an invitation in hand, and it may go away if we don't act on it. 2) We have a major financial problem, and football is part of the problem...we can't go D-1 in football and don't even have a conference for it if we join the Summit. 3) We have a gender-equity problem that has to be addressed...adding 27 football scholarships would make it FAR worse. 4) And, we don't have the minimum number of men's teams to join the Summit, unless we pledge to add men's sports.

So they decided, as we all know, to drop football and add men's soccer and golf to get to five men's teams to compete in the Summit. All of this happened in about 24 hours. If you don't think there were a lot of inquisitive people figuring things out (and who knows how many leaks from the mother ship) on Saturday, you would at least have some empathy for Alberts and the timeline. So from what I see, he did his best not to let the story out on Saturday, while the wrestling team was competing, but couldn't wait until Sunday to inform Mike Denny about the day's developments.

Finally, why drop wrestlng where they had their best competitive sport. While I don't know the exact answers and don't like it...face some facts: 1) we don't know the magnitude of the gender-equity problem, although it seems they were quite far out of whack. 2) Wrestling is not a revenue sport, and they know they are going to have to deal with the Summit League on number of coaches and scholarships as they try to move up to D-1. 3) They had to face the facts that winning D-II national championships (remember Augie was third and St. Cloud second on that national scene) is a far cry from fielding wrestling teams that are competing for national titles. Again, I am a wrestling fan and hate it that another university has dropped the program!

[Nidaros]

Re: Omaha Herald: UNO plans to move DI, will drop football and wrestling

A couple of points aimed at various posters. Everybody up here knew something was up when Alberts was in SF for the Summit tourney, and when Douple announced they would make a site visit in Omaha on Wednesday, you had to wonder exactly what was happening. So from the site visit on Wednesday and Thursday, to Friday, Douple got the vote from the presidents to extend the invitation (quit blaming Douple, who's just looking out for the conference, which, as we all know, needed another school in by 2012 to replace SUU).

So when the invitation to join the Summit (remember, UNO can't go D-1 now, since the rule was changed during the moratorium (which ends June 1) without FIRST having a conference invitation. With one in hand, UNO had to deal with: 1) We have an invitation in hand, and it may go away if we don't act on it. 2) We have a major financial problem, and football is part of the problem...we can't go D-1 in football and don't even have a conference for it if we join the Summit. 3) We have a gender-equity problem that has to be addressed...adding 27 football scholarships would make it FAR worse. 4) And, we don't have the minimum number of men's teams to join the Summit, unless we pledge to add men's sports.

So they decided, as we all know, to drop football and add men's soccer and golf to get to five men's teams to compete in the Summit. All of this happened in about 24 hours. If you don't think there were a lot of inquisitive people figuring things out (and who knows how many leaks from the mother ship) on Saturday, you would at least have some empathy for Alberts and the timeline. So from what I see, he did his best not to let the story out on Saturday, while the wrestling team was competing, but couldn't wait until Sunday to inform Mike Denny about the day's developments.

Finally, why drop wrestlng where they had their best competitive sport. While I don't know the exact answers and don't like it...face some facts: 1) we don't know the magnitude of the gender-equity problem, although it seems they were quite far out of whack. 2) Wrestling is not a revenue sport, and they know they are going to have to deal with the Summit League on number of coaches and scholarships as they try to move up to D-1. 3) They had to face the facts that winning D-II national championships (remember Augie was third and St. Cloud second on that national scene) is a far cry from fielding wrestling teams that are competing for national titles. Again, I am a wrestling fan and hate it that another university has dropped the program!

The timing of this decision to drop wrestling is horrible, but its part of the big picture. Trev, though to many may not appear to be doing the right thing, but in the big picture of things, its is the only way to go. Whether they can get all this together to host the Summit League BB tourney in 2013 remains to be seen, but its a tough road a head no matter how you cut the pie.

I too hate to see them cut wrestling, winning three NC in a row is a big accompolishment. The coach and athletes deserve a ticker tape parade, but instead they find this unfriendly welcome of changed locks on the doors. If I were Trev, I would personally have difficulty looking the wrestling coach in the eye after this happened and happened so quickly.

[LakeJack]

Re: Omaha Herald: UNO plans to move DI, will drop football and wrestling

http://columbustelegram.com/sports/c...cc4c002e0.html

[LakeJack]

Re: Omaha Herald: UNO plans to move DI, will drop football and wrestling

http://omavs.com/documents/2011/3/16...11.pdf?id=1725

[LakeJack]

Re: Omaha Herald: UNO plans to move DI, will drop football and wrestling

http://www.omaha.com/article/20110318/NEWS01/703189917

[JackJD]

Re: Omaha Herald: UNO plans to move DI, will drop football and wrestling

The Creighton AD sounds like a level-headed, classy guy.