"I am confused, if ISU’s budget is on par with the rest of the league—why aren’t the results?"
That is the $25,000 question. Here are a bunch of answers:
1. No continuity in the athletic director's office. To raise money, you have to build relationships. You don't walk into the office of a potential donor and say, "Hi, I'm the latest in a long line of short-term ADs at ISU, and I'd like you to give me $5 M for a new arena." It takes years to get to know potential big money donors and build trust and a shared vision in order to get them to cough up cash. If you're constantly changing ADs, you're destroying relationships.
2. No continuity in coaching. Most people like to compare ISU with NAU -- very similar situations with regards to athletics. NAU has had the same football coach for 13 years now. They haven't been wildly successful, but they are usually competitive and they have made a few playoff runs. Again, you build recruiting relationships over time. McBride at Weber State has recruited players from Hawaii, Oklahoma and Colorado -- based on relationships he built over decades of recruiting at Utah and other places. You also build a "brand" for your program through continuity -- players and high school and junior college coaches know what you stand for, what kind of offense and defense you play, and how their players will fit into those systems.
3. Very difficult recruiting environment. I've told this story before, but it bears repeating. When I approached Mike Kramer about potentially coming to ISU back in the late 1990s when he was still at EWU, he said ISU was the one place in the Big Sky he would not consider because it doesn't have a natural recruiting base. Look at the two Montana schools -- a very large percentage of their recruits are in-state kids. Eastern Washington is 90 percent Washington kids. Weber gets a lot of Northern Utah kids. NAU has a lot of Arizona kids. But ISU has to share its best players with BSU, Idaho, Utah State, BYU, etc. And there are fewer of them in Idaho than more populous states like Washington, Arizona and Utah.
4. Lack of "big dollar donors." If you're going to do MAJOR upgrades of facilities, you have to have deep pocket donors available. ISU has very few major donors available to it. When the decision was made to pursue the performing arts center, that sucked about $30 M out of that small universe of potential donors -- and it's still not paid off. Folks wonder where the "Bengal Village" campaign went? Well, if you can't identify "lead gifts" of several million dollars to get the campaign off to a successful start, then you're really just holding an ongoing bake sale.
5. The "people" factor. You need good coaches, players and administrators, and the ability to recruit these is directly impacted by the above.
6. Finally, there is the legacy issue. ISU has had a few breakthrough years, but nothing sustained, particularly in football. Decades of bad performance leads to low expectations, diminished community support and huge difficulty in recruiting. It's a viscious cycle that is difficult to break for an extended period of time.
Is the budget at ISU an issue? Of course it is. The football team not flying charter anymore, for example, impacts recruiting. Having recruits fly into Salt Lake and bus up to Pocatello does as well. But if you look at the budgets of ISU and the other schools around the Big Sky (and I've spent a lot of time comparing them), they all look pretty much the same. Now, is it easier for Portland State, Sac or EWU to recruit when the majority of their recruits can DRIVE to their campuses or fly directly into a big city airport (PDX, Spokane, Sac) vs. flying into SLC and busing into Pocatello? Sure. But that goes back to the geography issue again.
No excuses, though. If you're going to have an athletic program you may as well run it right, and with success in mind. BSU has shown all the benefits that come with the huge success at that level. But it takes time and commitment to build a program and to overcome all of those things. Some schools have chosen to focus on other things and have been very successful. BYU-Idaho gave up athletics when it went to a four-year program because church leaders didn't want to make the multi-million dollar commitment it takes to be successful in athletics. That school continues to grow and thrive. Having an athletics program is NOT a requirement to be a successful institution of higher learning. But if you CHOOSE to have an athletics program, you should certainly exhibit the commitment to do it right.
One more thing: ISU is spending about all the state money it is allowed on athletics. You cannot spend state money on athletic facilities, and the State Board limits the amount of appropriated funds you can spend on athletic operations. The president might have a little leeway to spend a bit more on athletics, but not much, particularly in these times of deep budget cuts across the university. So STATE dollars are not going to solve ISU's athletic budget problems.
