One man's wish-list for Doug Gillin

[AppGrad78]

Open letter to Doug Gillin:

Doug, I put together a top 10 wish-list, or rather a to-do list, that I'd like to see you accomplish during your time at App State. It's only one man's list but it's important for you to know that there are lots of hurdles awaiting you. Lots of challenges ahead.

• 1) First and foremost, run a clean program. We're not impressed with some of the things that went on at Missouri. Hopefully those were random issues and not a culture of allowing coaches to work "the gray areas" of intercollegiate athletics. You'll lose our support the second you bring in a crook to run one of our programs. If there is a choice between winning or running a clean program, we'll take the latter.
  
  2) Develop an athletics village. Our men's and women's soccer programs need a home closer to campus. Our track and field programs should be moved out of Kidd Brewer Stadium into their own home. Softball is being squeezed. We have other programs that could benefit from the symmetry of an athletic village. Ideally the space currently occupied by the Broyhill Inn would fit the bill. Barring that, the property at old Watauga High School is on the market. These ideas have been bandied about for years. Somebody needs to make them happen. Oh, and while you're at it, the Sofield Indoor Center needs to be expanded to 100 yards.
  
  3) Promote David Jackson. I can think of dozens of reasons why Jackson is the most under-utilized resource we have. Need one? He's the best play-by-play man in the country. Leverage that strength. Make him your right-hand man and pay him accordingly.
  
  4) Properly honor Jerry and Margaret Moore. Thanks to Chancellor Everts and Jackson and several behind-the-scenes heroes like Steve Brown, we made inroads in that department last fall. But there's more to do. Rename Conrad/Brewer/Murphy Stadium to Moore Stadium. Erect a statue beside The Rock. Rename Stadium Drive to Moore Way. Jerry Moore is the George Washington of our Mount Rushmore. He needs to be treated as such.
  
  5) Fix the men's basketball schedule. Give us a reason to drive up the mountain on a cold, snowy Saturday afternoon in January. We have the right coach. Gone are those insufferable D-II and D-III matchups. Now give us some power conference teams at the Holmes Center. Get us excited about men's basketball.
  
  6) Move us into a regional conference. Our move to the Sun Belt was probably a necessary first step in our desire to move out of FCS. But our travel budget is hemorrhaging money and this move will be a failure if we don't take another larger leap into a regional conference. Work with Carl Benson and the other commissioners. Make a regional conference a priority.
  
  7) Upgrade our football stadium. Drop the playing field 10 feet and add seats closer to the field. Those who say that it's an unnecessary expense probably haven't seen the competitive advantage teams like Montana get at their stadiums. Sure there's rock to move, but it can be done. Don't believe it? Go look at what they've done in Blowing Rock. Bowl in one end zone. Pick one. It doesn't matter which. Give the stadium a unified, quality look. Increase capacity to 30,000 seats. Leave room for future expansion. Oh, and while you're at it, black end zones and a App State football Hall of Fame room, please.
  
  8) Develop a unified marketing/branding program. This should be in your wheelhouse. Knock it out of the park. The past five years have given us a Hillbilly Yosef logo that is the embarrassment of many of our students and alums, plus woefully bad uniforms for wrestling and baseball, and a black block A logo for football that almost nobody likes. We can do better. And by better, we don't mean those clown outfits in vogue today worn by schools like Maryand and Miami and Oregon and, yes, Missouri. Keep it simple. Keep it classy. Appalachian State is a classy university. Our branding should reflect that. Our fans prefer the white block A.
  
  9) Raise money like our lives depended on it. Because it does. We've fallen short in this area over the years and we need your expertise in turning this around. We have a lot of wants and needs that only money will solve.
  
  10) And finally, don't go kicking and screaming into this "cost of attendance" era we live in. Be a leader. We knew this was coming. It's an inevitable cost of doing business. We either embrace it or limp back to FCS with our tails between our legs. Let's do what we do best, lead.

Many of these ideas are already being worked on. It's now your turn to see them through.

Best wishes for your time in Boone. We're thrilled to have you.

[EastHallApp]

Just to be clear, Haith's and Snyder's hirings both predated Gillin's tenure at Mizzou (Snyder by more than a decade).

Now, if you want to question whether hiring an alum from the D2 coaching ranks to replace Haith was the right move, go right ahead.

[Appftw]

Woah woah woah, I agree with nearly all of your points except for old school Yosef. I think it was a mistake to revive the more primitive version of the logo, but there's nothing inherently embarrassing about the logo or our use of it in the past (that CBS sports article that was so "embarrassing" didn't even know that it was an old logo, they thought it was brand new) . Heck, I'd love to see more throwback uni's/logos in the future (snow capped A or 80's Yosef would be sweet on a one-off uniform!).

Very excited to see what kind of changes come to Appalachian during Gillin's tenure. It seems like an impressive hire at first glance.

[T-Dog]

The past five years have given us a Hillbilly Yosef logo that is the embarrassment of many of our students and alums, plus woefully bad uniforms for wrestling and baseball, and a black block A logo for football that almost nobody likes. We can do better.

I guess the fact that Vintage Yosef sold much more than the other logos in a shorter period of time means nothing to you.

[appgrad]

Just to be clear, Haith's and Snyder's hirings both predated Gillin's tenure at Mizzou (Snyder by more than a decade).

Now, if you want to question whether hiring an alum from the D2 coaching ranks to replace Haith was the right move, go right ahead.

Kim Anderson is not only an alum, but a former NBA player, and a very successful D2 Coach. Time will tell on that hire...though this year isn't a great sign.

Either way - we don't know if he had any say that. I guess that's my only concern - this is a guy who has been mostly on the marketing side. What will his process be for making any necessary coaching hires? Seems like we have football and Men's BB taken care of for the next few years, at least...

[Gonzo]

Did you really send him this?

I like the list, but the first bullet point is pretty accusatory. I hope he doesn't feel indicted by it.

[Gonzo]

If I were to write him a letter I'd ask him to spend every second he could outside of day-to-day responsibilities increasing alumni donation percentages and getting corporate sponsorship.

Everything else will fall into place effortlessly with enough money and involvement. It seems to be a big strength of his and thrilled with the hire

[AppGrad78]

Hillbilly Yosef is a yellow-faced, two-dimensional, Greek-looking, balding, tiny-corn-cobb-pipe-smoking, beady-eyed, stove-pipe-hat-wearing cartoon of a mountain man with an oyster-shell ear that could have been drawn by a 3-year-old. No, I think we can do better,

Can you provide links that support your belief that sales of the logo are anything more than hum-drum? We're two years into the adoption of this abomination and I rarely see it. Many people, myself included, refuse to wear it.

[AppGrad78]

Did you really send him this?

I like the list, but the first bullet point is pretty accusatory. I hope he doesn't feel indicted by it.

No. Just wanted to stimulate conversation on this board. My intent wasn't to be accusatory but to set the tone for high ethical standards.

[hapapp]

Hillbilly Yosef is a yellow-faced, two-dimensional, Greek-looking, balding, tiny-corn-cobb-pipe-smoking, beady-eyed, stove-pipe-hat-wearing cartoon of a mountain man with an oyster-shell ear that could have been drawn by a 3-year-old. No, I think we can do better,

Can you provide links that support your belief that sales of the logo are anything more than hum-drum? We're two years into the adoption of this abomination and I rarely see it. Many people, myself included, refuse to wear it.

I prefer it to the hideous one you display.

[Gonzo]

Hillbilly Yosef is a yellow-faced, two-dimensional, Greek-looking, balding, tiny-corn-cobb-pipe-smoking, beady-eyed, stove-pipe-hat-wearing cartoon of a mountain man with an oyster-shell ear that could have been drawn by a 3-year-old. No, I think we can do better,

Can you provide links that support your belief that sales of the logo are anything more than hum-drum? We're two years into the adoption of this abomination and I rarely see it. Many people, myself included, refuse to wear it.

I'd have higher regard for your opinion about our logo and brand if you didn't have Davy Jones as your avatar.

Good post though. I laughed out loud.

[APPARJ]

Open letter to Doug Gillin:

Doug, I put together a top 10 wish-list, or rather a to-do list, that I'd like to see you accomplish during your time at App State. It's only one man's list but it's important for you to know that there are lots of hurdles awaiting you. Lots of challenges ahead.

• 1) First and foremost, run a clean program. We're not impressed with Frank Haith or Quin Snyder. You'll lose our support the second you bring in a crook to run one of our programs. If there is a choice between winning and running a clean program, we'll take the latter.
  
  2) Develop an athletics village. Our men's and women's soccer programs need a home closer to campus. Our track and field programs should be moved out of Kidd Brewer Stadium into their own home. Softball is being squeezed. We have other programs that could benefit from the symmetry of an athletic village. Ideally the space currently occupied by the Broyhill Inn would fit the bill. Barring that, the property at old Watauga High School is on the market. These ideas have been bandied about for years. Somebody needs to make them happen. Oh, and while you're at it, the Sofield Indoor Center needs to be expanded to 100 yards.
  
  3) Promote David Jackson. I can think of dozens of reasons why Jackson is the most under-utilized resource we have. Need one? He's the best play-by-play man in the country. Leverage that strength. Make him your right-hand man and pay him accordingly.
  
  4) Properly honor Jerry and Margaret Moore. Thanks to Chancellor Everts and Jackson and several behind-the-scenes heroes like Steve Brown, we made inroads in that department last fall. But there's more to do. Rename Conrad/Brewer/Murphy Stadium to Moore Stadium. Erect a statue beside The Rock. Rename Stadium Drive to Moore Way. Jerry Moore is the George Washington of our Mount Rushmore. He needs to be treated as such.
  
  5) Fix the men's basketball schedule. Give us a reason to drive up the mountain on a cold, snowy Saturday afternoon in January. We have the right coach. Gone are those insufferable D-II and D-III matchups. Now give us some power conference teams at the Holmes Center. Get us excited about men's basketball.
  
  6) Move us into a regional conference. Our move to the Sun Belt was probably a necessary first step in our desire to move out of FCS. But our travel budget is hemorrhaging money and this move will be a failure if we don't take another larger leap into a regional conference. Work with Carl Benson and the other commissioners. Make a regional conference a priority.
  
  7) Upgrade our football stadium. Drop the playing field 10 feet and add seats closer to the field. Those who say that it's an unnecessary expense probably haven't seen the competitive advantage teams like Montana get at their stadiums. Sure there's rock to move, but it can be done. Don't believe it? Go look at what they've done in Blowing Rock. Bowl in one end zone. Pick one. It doesn't matter which. Give the stadium a unified, quality look. Increase capacity to 30,000 seats. Leave room for future expansion. Oh, and while you're at it, black end zones and a App State football Hall of Fame room, please.
  
  8) Develop a unified marketing/branding program. This should be in your wheelhouse. Knock it out of the park. The past five years have given us a Hillbilly Yosef logo that is the embarrassment of many of our students and alums, plus woefully bad uniforms for wrestling and baseball, and a black block A logo for football that almost nobody likes. We can do better. And by better, we don't mean those clown outfits in vogue today worn by schools like Maryand and Miami and Oregon and, yes, Missouri. Keep it simple. Keep it classy. Appalachian State is a classy university. Our branding should reflect that. Our fans prefer the white block A.
  
  9) Raise money like our lives depended on it. Because it does. We've fallen short in this area over the years and we need your expertise in turning this around. We have a lot of wants and needs that only money will solve.
  
  10) And finally, don't go kicking and screaming into this "cost of attendance" era we live in. Be a leader. We knew this was coming down the pike. It's an inevitable cost of doing business. We either embrace it or limp back to FCS with our tails between our legs. Let's do what we do best, lead.

Best wishes for your time in Boone. We're thrilled to have you.

I wanted to address your points because some of them I agree with and some I don't. This is MMB so where else are we going to discuss this stuff!

1) First and foremost, run a clean program.

- Yes!

2) Develop an athletics village. Our men's and women's soccer programs need a home closer to campus.

-Why do we need to spend precious money on prime Boone real estate moving a non-revenue sport that is currently in a complex barely 5 years old? Why is this a need? Is there standing room only for this free event?

3) Promote David Jackson.

- Agreed. DJ is awesome. I hope he spends his career in Boone.

4) Properly honor Jerry and Margaret Moore.

- Sure. There are some creative ways to honor his time in a meaningful way. Jerry Moore Stdium sounds nice to me.

5) Fix the men's basketball schedule.

- I'd like a better schedule too but that isn't the only problem with hyping Men's BBall. The athletic department has completely ignored the students (which should be priority #1). Also, it is very difficult to get quality teams to travel to Boone.

6) Move us into a regional conference.

- I mean... and go to what conference? CUSA? I believe Gillin could've gotten us into CUSA if he was here instead of CC but I think every G5 school wants a regional conference. The reason regional conferences don't exist is not because other programs don't want them.

7) Upgrade our football stadium. Drop the playing field 10 feet and add seats closer to the field. Those who say that it's an unnecessary expense probably haven't seen the competitive advantage teams like Montana get at their stadiums.

- Sorry but have we not had a competitive advantage at KBS for almost a decade now? There was an entire group of seniors that never lost at KBS from '03-'06. Did they miss out not having their field lowered for more seats? Having the field 10 feet lower wouldn't have added to our competitive advantage during the last two years of lower attendance. We need to win! Let's pay off the stadium before we spend MILLIONS adding a few rows.

8) Develop a unified marketing/branding program. This should be in your wheelhouse. Knock it out of the park. The past five years have given us a Hillbilly Yosef logo that is the embarrassment of many of our students and alums, plus woefully bad uniforms for wrestling and baseball, and a black block A logo for football that almost nobody likes.

- I really am surprised to read that. I understand you and some folks that you know may not like vintage Yosef but you are not everyone. Also, I love our current uniforms and outside of MMB, I haven't heard anything complain about them. Actually, the only complaints I heard were about those gray ALWAYS ATTACK jerseys. You DO have a point about some of the baseball uniforms though.

9) Raise money like our lives depended on it.

- YES!

10) And finally, don't go kicking and screaming into this "cost of attendance" era we live in. Be a leader.

- I'm sure there are elements at play that no one on MMB is privy to that Gillin will address properly.

[Appftw]

Hillbilly Yosef is a yellow-faced, two-dimensional, Greek-looking, balding, tiny-corn-cobb-pipe-smoking, beady-eyed, stove-pipe-hat-wearing cartoon of a mountain man with an oyster-shell ear that could have been drawn by a 3-year-old. No, I think we can do better,

Can you provide links that support your belief that sales of the logo are anything more than hum-drum? We're two years into the adoption of this abomination and I rarely see it. Many people, myself included, refuse to wear it.

This coming from a guy who's rocking the Gorton's fisherman logo as his avatar; the most generic, bland logo we've ever been associated with. Old school yosef is perhaps the most unique logo in the NCAA and a pipe-smoking badass to boot.

[EastHallApp]

Hillbilly Yosef is a yellow-faced, two-dimensional, Greek-looking, balding, tiny-corn-cobb-pipe-smoking, beady-eyed, stove-pipe-hat-wearing cartoon of a mountain man with an oyster-shell ear that could have been drawn by a 3-year-old. No, I think we can do better,

Can you provide links that support your belief that sales of the logo are anything more than hum-drum? We're two years into the adoption of this abomination and I rarely see it. Many people, myself included, refuse to wear it.

Can you provide a link to support your claim that it's "an embarrassment to many students and alums"?

You're certainly entitled to your taste, but that was one of a couple points where it seemed like you drifted from "one man's opinion" to purporting to speak for the masses.

[Gonzo]

I think it would be pretty easy to find evidence of Victory Yosef's popularity before we made it an official secondary logo, and equally easy to find examples of embarrassed alumni after the media made fun of us for it.

What you will have trouble finding is a single alumnus hating on the logo before 3rd parties off the Mountain made jokes about it.

The insecurity of Victory Yosef's detractors was always reactionary.

[App91]

Hillbilly Yosef is a yellow-faced, two-dimensional, Greek-looking, balding, tiny-corn-cobb-pipe-smoking, beady-eyed, stove-pipe-hat-wearing cartoon of a mountain man with an oyster-shell ear that could have been drawn by a 3-year-old. No, I think we can do better,

Can you provide links that support your belief that sales of the logo are anything more than hum-drum? We're two years into the adoption of this abomination and I rarely see it. Many people, myself included, refuse to wear it.

Man, you could not be more WRONG on this very myopic view. Just last night, waiting to pick up dinner, noticed a guy with a white dri-fit hat with victory yosef on it. commented that i liked the hat, just like that, another chimed in and in a pretty empty restaurant waiting on food, 3 different era's of App grads discussing our program, all 3 of us preferred that logo. You made a broad brush statement as a fact that is nothing more than opinion.

[moehler]

couple of things, I agree that lowering the stadium would be a great thing, we have one of the most unique, and beautiful stadium settings in the country, unique, in that, because the mountains are so close to the stadium, sound has no where to go but back into our faces, 25 thousand sounds like 50 thousand, I see 30 thousand sounding like 60 thousand, with the students closest to the field, that would be intimidating as hell, and a great marketing tool!! I think the village idea is nice, but probably unrealistic, land is at a premium in Watauga county, got to take it where we can get it. Finally I would add one more:

11. commit to App for atleast 4 years, you are now employed by App, we are giving you the opportunity you want to be an AD, repay the school by being totally committed and don't start applying for the next bigger and better job after only 6 months or a year on the job. Unlike other mid majors ie: Georgia Southern, there is great potential at App to take the athletics to the next level, but that cant be done if you are not totally committed for an extended period, please don't leave until the major projects, you start, are completed.

[ASUMountaineer]

Open letter to Doug Gillin:

Doug, I put together a top 10 wish-list, or rather a to-do list, that I'd like to see you accomplish during your time at App State. It's only one man's list but it's important for you to know that there are lots of hurdles awaiting you. Lots of challenges ahead.

8) Develop a unified marketing/branding program. This should be in your wheelhouse. Knock it out of the park. The past five years have given us a Hillbilly Yosef logo that is the embarrassment of many of our students and alums, plus woefully bad uniforms for wrestling and baseball, and a black block A logo for football that almost nobody likes. We can do better. And by better, we don't mean those clown outfits in vogue today worn by schools like Maryand and Miami and Oregon and, yes, Missouri. Keep it simple. Keep it classy. Appalachian State is a classy university. Our branding should reflect that. Our fans prefer the white block A.

Best wishes for your time in Boone. We're thrilled to have you.

Do not presume to speak on our behalf when proselytizing your opinions. I know you hedged your bets by using "many" and "almost," but I seriously doubt you have any "proof" of these statements/measurements besides you and yours. I absolutely love Victory Yosef. I bought a shirt off ebay in 2003 that is an actual shirt from the 70's with that logo on it. I've worn it to many games, and my buddy wore it to THE game in Ann Arbor. I SUPPORT VICTORY YOSEF! I completely detest Gorton Fisherman Yosef.

As for the black block A, can you define "almost nobody" because that's absurd. I've said it before and I'll say it again, "if you want to be my helmet decal (and secondary logo) it don't matter if you're black or white."

Now, most of your other points--well done. Number 1 did seem a bit accusatory.

[AppGrad78]

At the request of one of our members, I reworded No. 1 a bit in hopes it would sound a bit less accusatory.

[moehler]

love the block A, white or black, hate the hillbilly head, has no business on the helmets, on the sleeves or pants, fine, but we don't need a nationally televised game, showing the country a cartoon hillbilly head on our helmets, doesn't exactly portray us in a positive light to the rest of the country.