Inside Syracuse’s rough off-season: How portal misses and a lack of NIL money led to a lost year

[littlereg]

Some of yall are so worried about and blinded by protecting your precious Alma mater you can’t see the bull turd going on. I made this same comment maybe 2 years ago and a lot of people didn’t like it but stands true even more so today than it did that day.

 

[Sbucketball]

Maybe I just look at things differently, but when I hear MBB has 2 treadmills, I translate that to don’t give SU AD another penny because they waste it. Millions upon millions on ticket sales, tv money and donations and they can’t buy cheap workout equipment. If true, they don’t care about their supposed flagship program the way us fans do. What’s the point of donating.

 

[tptcuse]

You can come with me to the melo center to see for yourself. They have 2 treadmills that work in the smallest workout room I’ve ever seen

I promise this is not snark: Isn't that just bad design? And if it is just about the treadmills, isn't the coaching staff making enough money to buy a few for the team if the situation is that dire?
Edit: I see that several other posters had the same thought.

 

[Sbucketball]

Maybe we can kill two birds with one stone: cancel the buses and make the team run to the games? Conditioning and cheaper?

 

[HRE Otto IV]

The YUM Center was empty last year and they’re filling it up again. All it takes is winning and some talented players and I think fans will return rather quickly. We will have a strange Home schedule next year with none of the Carolina schools. Our home schedule next year should be:
Pitt, BC, ND, Cal, Stanford, SMU, Clemson, VT, Miami, FSU and SEC game plus the usual non conference games. Not a high interest home schedule.

My fear is how does SU define "winning"? If we go 21-14 every year we are winning 2/3rds of our games. Is that winning? IMO it won't be to our fanbase. We need to be 25-10 to really be back to Cuse BBall.

I don't think SU is committed to being the latter team, and thinks people will blindly follow the former. People showed up when we had 21-14 type teams at the end of the JB era because of 1. JB and 2. our prior recent history. With both of those gone, 21-14 won't get people to show up IMO.

I do not think SU is committed to being that 25-10 team. They will spend for the 21-14 team and then wonder why we are not 25-10. At the same time they will not act like a 25-10 team when it comes to holding the HC accountable.

 

[DilemaCuse]

I will be there.
More out of a sense of loyalty than anything
Though playing a bad team, there is a chance it will be at least entertaining..

And I have attended all but 2 games at the Dome this season.


Multiple times the crowd actually there was less than 10,000.
You know the crowd is low when there is no line to use the bathroom, maybe a one minute wait to get inside the dome and usually no wait to get a beer or soda. And maybe waiting 5 minutes at most for a shuttle back to Manley.

Parking and concessions revenue have to be in the toilet.

Related to that, I attended the Bucknell game and couldn't believe how many concession stations were not operating. Never seen that before.

 

[Cstate]

Interesting interaction between Waters & Weitsman on X…

Exactly. And we wonder why we aren’t competitive, and have a “BIG” upcoming game tomorrow to stay alive for the ACC Tournament. How sad is that. And we also wonder why our 3 of our 4 portal additions came from Hofstra, Delaware, and Georgia State!

Meanwhile, AW is going to put his funds to use for a summer TBT Tournament instead.

 

[Cuse12]

Is this a joke? Kam Jones is getting 1.9 million. Marquette even has an NIL collective that pays their walkons to stick around.

It’s money people. Coaching too but money.

When Marquette is leaps and bounds ahead of Cuse in this current landscape…. Just wow. Marquette is exactly what our program needs to be. Top 25, in the conversation, perennial tourney team. When we left the BE, if you told me in 2025 we would die to be Marquette I would’ve spit out my drink.

 

[Irishsecra1]

Exactly. And we wonder why we aren’t competitive, and have a “BIG” upcoming game tomorrow to stay alive for the ACC Tournament. How sad is that. And we also wonder why our 3 of our 4 portal additions came from Hofstra, Delaware, and Georgia State!

Meanwhile, AW is going to put his funds to use for a summer TBT Tournament instead.

I personally thought the SU administration was very arrogant how they handled Adam Weitsman.
Now he is helping JB with Boeheims army.
And I bet he steps in to help GMAC with NIL - he will need some decent NIL to keep Doty.
And some more to get other players of Dotys quality.

 

[Cuse12]

This whole situation just makes me laugh. How good does everyone at the university feel about booting this guy now? Not saying he was the exact reason we stink now, but when you put out a sympathy article about not having NIL, while simultaneously you booted one of the most important donors we have because you were what, scared? The SEC type programs would have NEVER done that.

It’s just comical. All of it. And hey a lot of people here just spout out things to justify it. Maybe some of it is warranted, I don’t know. All I do know is when you have that much of a help with your NIL in this landscape it probably would be a great idea to do everything to reason with each other to find a solution. But hey, here we are begging for money and blaming it as the main reason we are at “rock bottom”.

Either you go all in on this NIL thing or get left in the dust. It’s priority 1 or 1A for major sports, and to drop the ball completely with him, is showing to be not smart IMO.

But I understand I guess he’s just a really bad guy/liability (that sums up most of the justification and support heard to boot him) even tho nothing officially surfaced as a problem with the NCAA.

 

[Capt. Tuttle]

Where are you getting this info from?

IMO, its how it is done. The players can now have agents. Therefore, folks reach out to agents, agents let players know what’s out there, then the player enters the portal.

 

[Hopkins16]

Our problem goes way beyond Red being an inept coach. If we don’t figure out NIL and we’re not able to get a donor or two with an open wallet, a top tier coach cannot help us. Sadly, I don’t see the show that is SU basketball ending any time soon.

 

[Scooch]

This whole situation just makes me laugh. How good does everyone at the university feel about booting this guy now? Not saying he was the exact reason we stink now, but when you put out a sympathy article about not having NIL, while simultaneously you booted one of the most important donors we have because you were what, scared? The SEC type programs would have NEVER done that.

It’s just comical. All of it. And hey a lot of people here just spout out things to justify it. Maybe some of it is warranted, I don’t know. All I do know is when you have that much of a help with your NIL in this landscape it probably would be a great idea to do everything to reason with each other to find a solution. But hey, here we are begging for money and blaming it as the main reason we are at “rock bottom”.

Either you go all in on this NIL thing or get left in the dust. It’s priority 1 or 1A for major sports, and to drop the ball completely with him, is showing to be not smart IMO.

But I understand I guess he’s just a really bad guy/liability (that sums up most of the justification and support heard to boot him) even tho nothing officially surfaced as a problem with the NCAA.

He could be back to giving money to the program tomorrow if he did like 2 things SU asked of him. He didn't get booted. He took his ball and went home like a spoiled child.

Everyone needs to read up on the St. John's donor who's bankrolling Pitino. All Weitsman needs to do is act like that guy and it'd all be good.

 

[Red2003]

For those expecting to get back to top 15 status but resigned to never winning a bidding war with a big 10 or sec school, well we’re going to have to figure out a way to win at least some of those battles. You need dudes to be a legit top 15 team otherwise our ceiling is probably that of a frisky mountain west type of bubble team. It’s too difficult of a needle to thread to expect to be very good without spending major $ on talent.

Thank you!. This can't be repeated enough.

 

[DilemaCuse]

So 2 pros and cup of Joe on Fox Sports radio were talking about Woj and SBU on my commute this morning. I couldnt understand the context other than Woj is on the street corner begging for money and they talked about his burner phones. Well here it is

https://nypost.com/2025/02/24/sports/adrian-wojnarowski-hawking-old-iphones-for-st-bonaventure-nil-money/

 

[Red2003]

He could be back to giving money to the program tomorrow if he did like 2 things SU asked of him. He didn't get booted. He took his ball and went home like a spoiled child.

Everyone needs to read up on the St. John's donor who's bankrolling Pitino. All Weitsman needs to do is act like that guy and it'd all be good.

Here we agree. Appreciate the the banter last night by the way.

I was not impressed with the whole AW thing early on and felt the same. Now I'm at this point there's a compromise somewhere.

 

[Scooch]

Interesting quote from Val Ackerman, Commish of the Big East, on John Ourand's podcast the other day...

“Right now, the revenue-sharing model allows opt-in by the non-defending conferences. All of our schools are going to opt in to the model. That’s been established for our league,” she said. “I think, in other leagues, there’s still questions about … whether certain schools are in and certain schools are out. So I think you may see realignment on the basis of who’s opting in and who isn’t.”

When I keep beating the drum about SU needing to recognize the looming player compensation inflation, this is precisely what I'm talking about.

The Big East schools are opting in to the $20.5M payment model and don't have Power 4 football to worry about. They're clearly going to put the majority of that money towards men's hoops.

SU's gonna need more than $1 million for their next Center. And a helluva lot more than that for a good PG.

 

[DilemaCuse]

Here we agree. Appreciate the the banter last night by the way.

I was not impressed with the whole AW thing early on and felt the same. Now I'm at this point there's a compromise somewhere.

Regarding AW, are we to the point where we can say SU needs him more, than AW needs SU?

 

[hoopsupstate]

Interesting quote from Val Ackerman, Commish of the Big East, on John Ourand's podcast the other day...

“Right now, the revenue-sharing model allows opt-in by the non-defending conferences. All of our schools are going to opt in to the model. That’s been established for our league,” she said. “I think, in other leagues, there’s still questions about … whether certain schools are in and certain schools are out. So I think you may see realignment on the basis of who’s opting in and who isn’t.”

When I keep beating the drum about SU needing to recognize the looming player compensation inflation, this is precisely what I'm talking about.

The Big East schools are opting in to the $20.5M payment model and don't have Power 4 football to worry about. They're clearly going to put the majority of that money towards men's hoops.

SU's gonna need more than $1 million for their next Center. And a helluva lot more than that for a good PG.

Good luck with a tv contract at $10 million to be able to afford $20.5 million pay to play. They still have to pay yearly expenses, coaches salaries, support staff, travel, recruiting, etc.

 

[NKR1978]

As someone said earlier in this thread, that article leaves it pretty clear that Red has done a terrible job and been wholly unprepared for what was required.

You might think that's "very smart" PR, but it's not going to put fannies in the seats, as they say.

Unless his goal is to build a case and prepare the fan base and the money people for Red's firing.

 

[Scooch]

Good luck with a tv contract at $10 million to be able to afford $20.5 million pay to play. They still have to pay yearly expenses, coaches salaries, support staff, travel, recruiting, etc.

And yet, they've opted in. That money has to go to the players.

The Big East schools aren't dummies. They've been standing their ground in a chaotic environment for 40 years.

 

[Chip]

My fear is how does SU define "winning"? If we go 21-14 every year we are winning 2/3rds of our games. Is that winning? IMO it won't be to our fanbase. We need to be 25-10 to really be back to Cuse BBall.

I do not think SU is committed to being that 25-10 team. They will spend for the 21-14 team and then wonder why we are not 25-10. At the same time they will not act like a 25-10 team when it comes to holding the HC accountable.

I don't think it's just spending anymore. If we hire a top coach from outside or an up and comer from outside, question 1 is how much will I make. Question 1A is how much money do I have to work with.

And what he wants to hear from question 1A goes beyond what money the school has available (before donations).

Fans need to be committed to the 25-10 team. And based on the feverish activity of this board, it looks like you all haven't lost your passion, so that's good.

 

[IthacaMatt]

Unless his goal is to build a case and prepare the fan base and the money people for Red's firing.

That would be great, IMO. But every sign we are seeing / hearing is that Red is back for at least another year.

 

[Red2003]

This whole situation just makes me laugh. How good does everyone at the university feel about booting this guy now? Not saying he was the exact reason we stink now, but when you put out a sympathy article about not having NIL, while simultaneously you booted one of the most important donors we have because you were what, scared? The SEC type programs would have NEVER done that.

It’s just comical. All of it. And hey a lot of people here just spout out things to justify it. Maybe some of it is warranted, I don’t know. All I do know is when you have that much of a help with your NIL in this landscape it probably would be a great idea to do everything to reason with each other to find a solution. But hey, here we are begging for money and blaming it as the main reason we are at “rock bottom”.

Either you go all in on this NIL thing or get left in the dust. It’s priority 1 or 1A for major sports, and to drop the ball completely with him, is showing to be not smart IMO.

But I understand I guess he’s just a really bad guy/liability (that sums up most of the justification and support heard to boot him) even tho nothing officially surfaced as a problem with the NCAA.

Now we know I guess. To be fair though. Has the NCAA questioned any major donor for NIL violations? Tennessee right and the NCAA got their butts kicked then stopped.

There was likely a backlog of a ton of NIL violations piling up, then in March last year the NCAA said they would halt all NIL investigations. We'll never know if AW and Cuse were on that list. AW is sitting on Twitter saying no harm no foul but there's no ref around.

Also if I were a betting man and there were 25 programs under NIL investigation I wouldn't be surprised if Syracuse got bumped to the top the list somehow over other Blue Bloods or SEC schools.

 

[Cuse12]

He could be back to giving money to the program tomorrow if he did like 2 things SU asked of him. He didn't get booted. He took his ball and went home like a spoiled child.

Everyone needs to read up on the St. John's donor who's bankrolling Pitino. All Weitsman needs to do is act like that guy and it'd all be good.

I respect your thoughts and opinions. But, I will rebuttal with, did we handle it in a manner to come to a mutual agreement? I mean this is sales 101. Sometimes you have to give an inch to take a mile. I think we were extremely naive and ignorant to think we would be just fine with out him (heard that on here a lot).

All I’m saying is, whether you love him or hate him - he was helping the NIL immensely and we completely shut the spigot off. We couldn’t close a deal that worked for all parties.

It was a risk that officials took, and it just looks so stupid after that article especially.