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Message: [QUOTE="IthaCuse, post: 5650444, member: 10689"] I don't waste my time with what Syracuse University paid media or "board insiders" say on these topics, as both have proven to just regurgitate the company line over the last decade. I tend to look at what neutral third parties say. From what I have seen people in that category say, Syracuse is somewhere around 7th-11th in NIL among ACC schools. If that is true, Syracuse is probably behind the majority of the B10, B12 and SEC in NIL funding as well. So let's say they're around 35th-50th in NIL funding nationwide. When you factor in NCAA Tournament auto bids, the default expectation is that Syracuse is a bubble team. In a good year we are probably around the 55th best team, in a bad year we are probably around the 70th best team. At no point do we have a legitimate shot at competing with the upper echelons of college basketball. When you factor in the bad economy, bad weather, relative lack of facilities, declining ranking of the school academically, it's hard to see why a great coach would come here. People don't seem to realize that the best coaches will gravitate to the high NIL schools the further into this era we go, so our ability to use great coaching to overcome a talent deficiency will be severely compromised. It's not like a coach who punches above his weight is just going to stay here, not when he can go somewhere that will advance his career further. A few weeks ago I got blasted by many on the football forum for openly asking whether the football program was a lost cause, and this conversation on the basketball forum was largely the reason why. From my perspective, the worst thing we can do is maintain the facade that we can compete at the highest level of college sports, and in the process lose our ability to compete at the top level of ANY major sport. That is what I see happening right now, and it appears to me that both football and basketball are circling the drain. If I were John Wildhack, I would completely change course on how I am operating the athletic department. I would keep football only as a means of generating ACC TV revenue, dedicating the amount of NIL to it required to keep us at the level of a MAC or CUSA school, and spending the rest on basketball. That would mean about $2 million to football and about $18.5 million to basketball. If you do that you turn Syracuse basketball into a top funded program, and we can actually be elite again. Financially it also makes sense. You can cover $18.5 million via ticket revenue to basketball games. At an average of $100 per ticket and an average attendance of 18,500 you cover it in 10 home games. When the ACC eventually drops Syracuse because football is no longer competitive, you move to the Big East and drop football completely. At that point you've oriented the community entirely around basketball, you have a money machine to pay top levels of NIL, and you have a chance of seeing Syracuse Basketball be great again. Instead it seems we are going to try to function as a back of the pack P4 program, as that will make money for the university due to the TV revenue we will generate. So we as fans will get to sit here and watch 22-9 seasons where we get a 7 or 8 seed become the goal, while 19-12 seasons where we just miss the tournament become the expectation. Both are better than the Red Autry dumpster fire, but neither is up to the standard we as fans had come to enjoy. [/QUOTE]

Verification: What is a Syracuse fan's favorite color?