Scheduling to strategically raise our national profile

[BroadwayVik]

Cleveland State..................Georgia State....................Indiana State

Green Bay........................Milwaukee........................Florida Gulf Coast

Belmont
.................others?

 

[Pounder]

You have to establish yourself regionally before you establish yourself nationally.

Of course, none of this matters if you only play two non-conference road games. Pre-season college basketball is not a TV event unless you're a Kansas / North Carolina / Duke / Kentucky / etc., and they have to play each other to get ratings. I'll put this another way: the big schools have to play each other to get ratings. Portland State should be challenging themselves more on the road because most of the battle of the Big Sky is being able to win on the road. So you need to travel a little. Some of that has to be challenging, but at the same time winnable. Doing it in big markets wouldn't hurt, but doing it against schools with a moderate amount of attention is even better.

If I could cherry-pick a relatively "accessible" schedule, I'd include 4-5 of these on the road in a given year:

Long Beach State
Seattle U (assuming UW is inaccessible most of the time)
USF (Santa Clara or San Jose State are somewhat acceptable alternatives)
Denver (or Colorado or Colorado State in a pinch)
Arizona State or Grand Canyon
Utah State (strictly as a road challenge; that place is what MacArthur Court used to be)
I'm not sure if San Diego State is accessible at this point... but I'll put it this way. If you do covet the possibility of the Mountain West Conference, never pass up a game with them... except Boise is a basketball black hole. They even had a good team last year, but there's no value in playing there. Football would be a different story, of course.

 

[BroadwayVik]

The idea is to play teams nationally that may very well help us establish a more solid identity. This helps us in playing teams regionally. Playing strategically-selected teams nationally builds greater self-knowledge. A breath of fresh air. Limiting play to teams of the West is not only repetitious, but narrows focus.

One example in which opening play more nationally helped was when Oregon football played Iowa back in 1989. From 1985, the Ducks began building their program in earnest and discovered they were able to beat Hayden Fry's Iowa team 44-6! This was huge!

This gave them tremendous reason to have the confidence to believe in themselves, especially when they played against traditional powerhouses like USC. Since that particular game in 1989, Oregon is 9-8 versus USC whereas, prior to that time, Oregon was only 10-28-2. I believe the Iowa game was the key variable to transform their identity and belief in themselves.

Playing Iowa was a brilliant stroke of good fortune. The game was strategically-selected but the Ducks had no idea they would be able to handle them they way they did. The added self-knowledge gained from that victory paved the way for the Ducks to see themselves in a new and positive light.

The same thing can happen for PSU in basketball and football. The games need to be judiciously selected for the sake of discovering who we are in truth without risking being destroyed. In our traditional games, there are too many presuppositions in place that go largely unchallenged or are challenged going against the current. Shifting the paradigm needs to be done in a wholesale fashion.

By opening up things nationally (and strategically), we say to our traditional rivals: We don't really take our cues from you so much anymore. The old paradigm's "validity" then becomes highly challenged as the old ways just no longer apply.

 

[sacstateman]

Oregon's rise had as much to do about Phil Knight as it did about a game with Iowa. Find another Phil Knight who loves PSU and you too will rise in prestige and confidence.

 

[BroadwayVik]

That's true and the simple, direct answer. However, Phil Knight was not always that personally involved with Oregon football until it appeared at the 1994 Rose Bowl game. Frankly, before that time, the Ducks were an embarrassment and many alums chose not to acknowledge them. Sometime later, he even withdrew his support because of some radical-student politics countering his company's interest (WRC).

Starting with the lowly Independence and Freedom Bowls, Oregon splash-landed in the Rose Bowl against Penn State after the 1993 season. Being a track alum, Knight's primary focus was always Oregon track & field and cross-country, that is, until Oregon made its splash in the 1994 Rose Bowl.

His support was always there, but in a behind-the-scenes kind of way ... until it was safe to come out and publicly associate with the program. The era of uniforms eventually followed. So did rebuilding of Autzen Stadium and the building of Matthew Knight Arena. His largess is now legion.



To get the attention of a sugar daddy (or mamma) requires doing all the program can do to get things along the right vector. When confidence builds and people notice things going the right way, that's when those with money say that they want to be in business with them.



That is why Arlene Schnitzer, a wealthy Portlander, made a donation in excess of $2 million to the College of the Arts here. She saw they were going in the right direction and that it was a worthy program in which to invest. The arts are her passion and PSU-Arts was doing it right.

Make wise decisions, develop as best as you can and members of the business universe will come to associate with you and bring their support and enrichment. But you must first get yourself going persistently in the right direction.

 

[martymoose]

You have to establish yourself regionally before you establish yourself nationally.

I agree with this.

We're not in a position to travel all over the place to try to build our national profile.

I agree with BroadwayVik that we should strategically want to raise our national profile. It's not easy with athletics and constrained budgets.

We had a person that recently joined the team that I'm on at work. In small talk, we were talking about where we went to school. He mentioned that he received his MBA at a small school on the east coast and didn't mention what school it was. He said he went to St. Bonaventure University, and said that I probably have never heard of it. Of course I had, they damn near beat Florida State in 2012 in the NCAA tourney.

I'm not saying that athletics dictates national profile, but it helps. Put your name in the NCAA bracket every year and it doesn't hurt.

Point being; win the conference on a year in and year out basis...

 

[BroadwayVik]

You say we have insufficient funds, therefore we are constrained to playing in the West only, where we concentrate on winning our conference. The path to greatness, though, develops out of finding ways to make things work, against the odds.

We could limit ourselves, for now, to a single East-West match-up a season, a home-and-home scheduling agreement with the Viks volunteering to take the first game out. Since the following season would give the Viks the return game in, we can then also afford to schedule a next east home-and-home game out. This way, we can afford to rotate through an entire series of outside-of-region opponents (for a very profitable benefit to identity within regional play).


What is it Famous Amos said? "Just get started." Do what is possible right away. Begin the process any way you can. Not getting started is putting a stopper cap atop the bottle and things don't progress but stagnate.

And what potential mega-sponsor would choose to associate with stagnation?

 

[BobWoodshed]

I agree with martymoose. The only path a school like Portland State has completely within its control to raise a national profile is to win the conference and appear in the NCAA tournament. Scheduling higher profile home-and-home games is going to continue to be difficult or impossible until the Viking Pavilion is complete.

 

[BroadwayVik]

And when is that scheduled?

 

[BobWoodshed]

I don't think they're done fundraising the remainder that they need to start the project yet, so I'm not sure. My guess is the absolute earliest they could start construction if they finished fundraising today would be next Spring.

 

[BroadwayVik]

Would it make sense to schedule now for the anticipated date of finished construction and opening?

 

[golfer]

Broadway, forest green and pounder. I don't post much but enjoy your posts. keep it up. use Viagra if necessary.

 

[BobWoodshed]

Would it make sense to schedule now for the anticipated date of finished construction and opening?

That would be a great idea. Once they know what that date is, I hope they start making phone calls.

 

[BroadwayVik]

Let's begin planning now (contingently) in anticipation of the Grand Opening ... !

 

[forestgreen]

And when is that scheduled?

"Construction is expected to start in fall 2014." This is from a goviks.com article dated 07-08-13.

http://www.goviks.com/news/2013/7/8/athletics_0708134335.aspx" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

 

[forestgreen]

Broadway, forest green and pounder. I don't post much but enjoy your posts. keep it up. use Viagra if necessary.

Not needed at this time. Cannot speak for the other two. Thanks for the advice, though. :lol:

 

[BobWoodshed]

"Construction is expected to start in fall 2014." This is from a goviks.com article dated 07-08-13.

http://www.goviks.com/news/2013/7/8/athletics_0708134335.aspx" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

This is entirely anecdotal, but my wife works at PSU and heard that date has been pushed back due to fundraising taking longer than expected. Sometime in 2015 is apparently the new target, but again, I don't have a printed source for that.