we have several here who don't think it'll be a consideration at all for candidates. i said the same thing you have here, and several shot it down. its one of the first questions most candidates would ask for almost any hc job. it has to be.
Is that directed at me? Because I'm calling BS on that interpretation. What I said is that the capability to have baseline NIL resources is in place at Syracuse University, and will improve if a coach can deliver a winning product on the court. The failure our program is experiencing is one of coaching. NIL resources are not a systemic weakness that can't be provided.
Now, if the question is, will we have the same kind of disposable resources that an SEC team has, or frivolous b1g teams throw around? No. But that's not the only way to win. That's why I used to tune out when people would suggest that we need a top nil team to help Autry win. If that's the case, it was an even bigger sign that the coach was subpar.
And it certainly doesn't explain the fact that dozens of colleges, across all levels, across all conferences, are capable of fielding competitive teams without leading the pack in terms of NIL resources.
So to recap, anyone who thinks that our path back to the top 25 necessitates A small, private school like Syracuse with a limited alumni base always spending near the top of college basketball is setting themselves up for failure. Instead, a much more strategically viable path to success is to get a coach who knows what the heck they are doing, who can implement quality systems on both sides of the ball, who can recruit players to that system, and then you supplement that with the portal. There are lots of examples of programs that do this properly and well, like Purdue, like UVA.
Those are the type of programs we should emulate, not Arkansas that can just spend money because they have a benefactor with unlimited bankroll.
Hodgson checks a lot of the boxes. And for the record, there may be a lot of coaches who we wouldn't be able to pay enough, or have enough guarantees for. That's the problem with hiring a crappy coach to replace behavin, and letting the program slip into further irrelevancy, with bigger question are all marks than we had 3 years ago.
There are literally dozens of teams, even at lower conferences, contending for NCAA tournament appearance this year, who routinely show an efficient offense and get after it defensively, with a fraction of our nil resources. If they can do it, so can we. We just need to land a coach who is competent, who can implement systems that will enable us to be competitive in modern college basketball, and then get the fan base enthusiastic again so that our NIL coffers grow.
Because trying to spend like Ohio State or SEC teams probably isn't going to be a strategy that is viable for us long term. Nor is going cheap and trying to hope that we can cobble together success, nor is trying to live in the shadow of past Glory by hiring yet another unqualified coach from the Boeheim coaching tree and hoping for a different result this time.
We need to pick a lane, and get it right this time. Not just pick the fastlane when we're driving a car that tops out at 50 mph.
John Wildhack has done a lot of sensational things here at Syracuse, but his legacy is riding on getting this next basketball hire right.
