AppGrad78 wrote: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.
Best wishes for your time in Boone. We're thrilled to have you.
- 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 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.
Thanks for you pulling this initial list together. Gotta start somewhere, but here are my comments/additions:
1. Absolutely - clean program is a must.
2. Sofield Indoor Facility should be priority number 1 in this list you provided but I don't agree with spending funds on these non-revenue generating sports until we are back in the black.
3. Agree here, do whatever it takes to keep DJ here.
4. Make it Jerry Moore Field and put his name on the turf. Keep it Kidd Brewer Stadium unless we can secure a larger corporate sponsor and keep the other larger donors name as is on the home side stands. Agree with renaming stadium drive as Jerry Moore Drive.
5. Basketball schedule isn't going to be fixed overnight but we are trending in the right direction w/ our new coach. Need better game operations and more student involvement at games so I hope Gillin has new ideas to help accomplish this task.
6. Not going to happen any time soon nor do I think this is needed in the next 5-10 years. We just need to worry about fundraising and improving facilities which leads to better talent which leads to more wins.
7. Football stadium improvements are a must - agree with removal of track please. Anything that can be done to increase attendance and attract the best talent we can get is a must. Black endzones are a MUST AS WELL!!
8. Disagree completely on the current logos. LOVE the old school yosef and I constantly get compliments on the logo from both alumni and non-alumni alike. I could care less if the Block A is black or white, it still looks great. No need to change logo, especially not reverting back to the hideous Gorton Fisherman logo.
9. All day and everyday. Priority #1 above all
10. All of the other items take care of this by default.
Welcome aboard Doug Gillin.
GO 'NEERS!
