Sell me on Wildhack

[Cusefan0307]

The best argument I can make for Wildhack is that he is leading an athletic program which has been rendered structurally incapable of competing at the top level, despite that it has a history of being one of the best programs in both football and basketball. He is doing his best to maintain the programs in an impossible situation. If the NIL + Portal situation is not rectified, there's really nothing Wildhack can do anyways.

I believe the NIL situation is far, far worse than the "board insiders" on here like to claim. We often hear from that group that NIL is not a problem in basketball and we have plenty of money. That "inside info" just clashes with publicly available information far too often. Boeheim says we need $10 million to compete, public reporting puts our top 5 players at a combined $3 million NIL value (with #5 being at $186,000, meaning the other 8 can't even combine to hit $1.6 million). $1.1 million of that was from Kiyan Anthony, and that was a result of his 1 million Instagram followers, not his on the court play. I also doubt we are paying Kiyan that kind of money, and frankly it would be a huge waste if we did. So we probably have an NIL budget of around $3-4 million in total. That budget for a whole team doesn't even land you the top player per On3, and can get you at most 2 of the top 10 players in NIL value.

It has been publicly reported that an SEC caliber starter is now going for $600,000 on the college football transfer portal. That isn't an Alabama or Georgia caliber starter, that is a Kentucky or Mississippi State caliber starter. Per that criteria, we need $13.2 million in NIL funds annually just to pay for our starting 22 on offense and defense in football. At least if we want to compete at the top level. That would imply an overall roster budget of $25 million for football and $10 million for basketball. Again, it was publicly reported that our GOAL was to raise $6-8 million for football alone last year. Which means we MIGHT have $12 million in funds to put towards programs which require $35 million in spending just to compete at the highest level.

If that doesn't change, Wildhack will fail to turn these programs around, and he will be the scapegoat for the decline of Syracuse athletics. But that decline has nothing to do with him, he just happened to be the poor sucker who took the AD job right as the college sports landscape changed in a way which rendered his alma mater incapable of competing at the highest level. From what I can tell, other than keeping Autry and Babers around one year too long, he's done the best he can with the cards he has been dealt.

Boeheim says things especially when his guy is stinking up the joint. NIL is not the reason basketball stinks this year. They got all the players the prioritized in the portal.

 

[IthaCuse]

Boeheim says things especially when his guy is stinking up the joint. NIL is not the reason basketball stinks this year. They got all the players the prioritized in the portal.

It's tough, because two things can be true at the same time. It can be the case that our basketball NIL is insufficient for us to be competitive at the highest level of college basketball, AND that NIL is not even close to the reason we have 15+ loss seasons and lose to teams like Hofstra. In fact, that's the single most clear cut argument that Red Autry should be fired. College basketball has 350 D1 programs, and Syracuse is easily a top 50 program as far as resources are concerned. We do not get top 50 type results, as top 50 would be a result that usually places us on the good side of the bubble. It's not like football, where being ranked 50th puts you roughly in the 6-6/7-5 range.

I think a future coach will get better results with a similar NIL budget, but ultimately I don't see that we have the resources to be a top shelf program.

 

[cusefan88]

JB is talking money because his longtime assistant successor is stinking up the joint.

 

[Scooch]

It's tough, because two things can be true at the same time. It can be the case that our basketball NIL is insufficient for us to be competitive at the highest level of college basketball, AND that NIL is not even close to the reason we have 15+ loss seasons and lose to teams like Hofstra. In fact, that's the single most clear cut argument that Red Autry should be fired. College basketball has 350 D1 programs, and Syracuse is easily a top 50 program as far as resources are concerned. We do not get top 50 type results, as top 50 would be a result that usually places us on the good side of the bubble. It's not like football, where being ranked 50th puts you roughly in the 6-6/7-5 range.

I think a future coach will get better results with a similar NIL budget, but ultimately I don't see that we have the resources to be a top shelf program.

Good post. 2 years ago we had enough NIL according to some… until we clearly didn’t and ended up dumpster diving for CAA players

This offseason we had all the NIL we needed according to most. Although I expect that narrative to change if we start stumbling through the ACC schedule.

 

[Cusefan0307]

It's tough, because two things can be true at the same time. It can be the case that our basketball NIL is insufficient for us to be competitive at the highest level of college basketball, AND that NIL is not even close to the reason we have 15+ loss seasons and lose to teams like Hofstra. In fact, that's the single most clear cut argument that Red Autry should be fired. College basketball has 350 D1 programs, and Syracuse is easily a top 50 program as far as resources are concerned. We do not get top 50 type results, as top 50 would be a result that usually places us on the good side of the bubble. It's not like football, where being ranked 50th puts you roughly in the 6-6/7-5 range.

I think a future coach will get better results with a similar NIL budget, but ultimately I don't see that we have the resources to be a top shelf program.

It’s fair to have that opinion, but for this year the experts who follow recruiting had us having a top 20 class virtually by every service last year. Even without Freeman healthy most of this year we should be no worse than 12-2. As of right now the basketball program has more former top 50 HS players on the roster than we did on our last 30 win team in 2013.

 

[Cusefan0307]

Good post. 2 years ago we had enough NIL according to some… until we clearly didn’t and ended up dumpster diving for CAA players

This offseason we had all the NIL we needed according to most. Although I expect that narrative to change if we start stumbling through the ACC schedule.

We can thank JB for that moronic excuse. He dropped that in his last interview.

 

[richmondcuse03]

It was a miracle that Jake Crouthamel accomplished as much as he did (consistently ranked football teams, frequent bowl appearances, a National Basketball Championship and the nation's best lacrosse program). He had no money, no staff, no fund-raising apparatus ... and a bizarre reporting relationship (to the chief financial officer) that further crippled his ability to do anything. As soon as newly-hired Nancy Cantor fired him (because she didn't like him) and replaced him with Daryl, she gave Daryl everything Jake did not have (money, staff and a direct reporting relationship to her). Jake was universally respected within the greater college athletics community (e.g., several awards and the chairmanship of the NCAA basketball selection committee). It is sad that he is so unappreciated by some newer SU fans

Well said. It’s a shame he was quickly pushed out. We should have a statue of him.

He was also an incredibly kind thoughtful man, including to many young arrogant student journalists. Always enjoyed chatting with him.

 

[Scooch]

We can thank JB for that moronic excuse. He dropped that in his last interview.

Didn’t even need him to say that. When all else fails, some will always blame institutional issues to shield the ineptitude of the coach they like.

 

[Scooch]

It’s fair to have that opinion, but for this year the experts who follow recruiting had us having a top 20 class virtually by every service last year. Even without Freeman healthy most of this year we should be no worse than 12-2. As of right now now the basketball program has more former to 50 HS players on the roster than we did on our last 30 win team in 2013.

Well sure, but have you heard the weight room isn’t good???

 

[IthaCuse]

It’s fair to have that opinion, but for this year the experts who follow recruiting had us having a top 20 class virtually by every service last year. Even without Freeman healthy most of this year we should be no worse than 12-2. As of right now the basketball program has more former to 50 HS players on the roster than we did on our last 30 win team in 2013.

I see people say this a lot on the basketball side in particular, but the issue is that these high school ratings are being referenced after the players in question have gone to college, played at least one full season, and been re-evaluated within the context of the portal. We have exactly one non freshman on our team who came to Syracuse out of high school, that being Donnie Freeman. So it's not really accurate to reference the high school rankings of guys who we recruited when they were no longer in high school.

 

[OrlandoCuse]

JB is talking money because his longtime assistant successor is stinking up the joint.

Built in excuse. Ironically, JB is probably one that is capable of moving the needle on fundraising…….

 

[Cusefan0307]

I see people say this a lot on the basketball side in particular, but the issue is that these high school ratings are being referenced after the players in question have gone to college, played at least one full season, and been re-evaluated within the context of the portal. We have exactly one non freshman on our team who came to Syracuse out of high school, that being Donnie Freeman. So it's not really accurate to reference the high school rankings of guys who we recruited when they were no longer in high school.

That top 20 ranking this offseason included the transfers. Meanwhile you have schools like Clemson and Virginia who had classes outside the top 40 that are clearly better than us and it’s directly due to coaching. I think overall you can make an argument there’s only 3 ACC teams with rosters clearly better than ours in Duke, UNC and Louisville which is fine. This should be enough to win, but we are basically saying Red can only win if he has Duke like talent and Syracuse hasn’t won that way in decades.

 

[SUFan44]

The best argument I can make for Wildhack is that he is leading an athletic program which has been rendered structurally incapable of competing at the top level, despite that it has a history of being one of the best programs in both football and basketball. He is doing his best to maintain the programs in an impossible situation. If the NIL + Portal situation is not rectified, there's really nothing Wildhack can do anyways.

I believe the NIL situation is far, far worse than the "board insiders" on here like to claim. We often hear from that group that NIL is not a problem in basketball and we have plenty of money. That "inside info" just clashes with publicly available information far too often. Boeheim says we need $10 million to compete, public reporting puts our top 5 players at a combined $3 million NIL value (with #5 being at $186,000, meaning the other 8 can't even combine to hit $1.6 million). $1.1 million of that was from Kiyan Anthony, and that was a result of his 1 million Instagram followers, not his on the court play. I also doubt we are paying Kiyan that kind of money, and frankly it would be a huge waste if we did. So we probably have an NIL budget of around $3-4 million in total. That budget for a whole team doesn't even land you the top player per On3, and can get you at most 2 of the top 10 players in NIL value.

It has been publicly reported that an SEC caliber starter is now going for $600,000 on the college football transfer portal. That isn't an Alabama or Georgia caliber starter, that is a Kentucky or Mississippi State caliber starter. Per that criteria, we need $13.2 million in NIL funds annually just to pay for our starting 22 on offense and defense in football. At least if we want to compete at the top level. That would imply an overall roster budget of $25 million for football and $10 million for basketball. Again, it was publicly reported that our GOAL was to raise $6-8 million for football alone last year. Which means we MIGHT have $12 million in funds to put towards programs which require $35 million in spending just to compete at the highest level.

If that doesn't change, Wildhack will fail to turn these programs around, and he will be the scapegoat for the decline of Syracuse athletics. But that decline has nothing to do with him, he just happened to be the poor sucker who took the AD job right as the college sports landscape changed in a way which rendered his alma mater incapable of competing at the highest level. From what I can tell, other than keeping Autry and Babers around one year too long, he's done the best he can with the cards he has been dealt.

If you are taking public information from Jim Boeheim as the truth, when he has every reason in the book to change the narrative with his hand-picked successor and former assistant floundering, then I don't know what to tell you.

We are sharing $20.5M revenue and I would guess there is more from corporate sponsors. Does it compete with the highest level of the SEC & Big Ten? Likely not. But the basketball team has MORE than enough talent to beat Hofstra & Clemson at home.

 

[IthaCuse]

If you are taking public information from Jim Boeheim as the truth, when he has every reason in the book to change the narrative with his hand-picked successor and former assistant floundering, then I don't know what to tell you.

We are sharing $20.5M revenue and I would guess there is more from corporate sponsors. Does it compete with the highest level of the SEC & Big Ten? Likely not. But the basketball team has MORE than enough talent to beat Hofstra & Clemson at home.

The $10 million number comes from a CBS Sports article where they specifically name ten programs with a $10 million NIL budget. That was at the end of the 2024-25 season, which means it's likely increased significantly for the 2025-26 campaign. So this isn't taking Jim Boeheim at his word, it's actually Jim Boeheim articulating what has already been publicly reported.

I mentioned this on the football forum and it started a firestorm, but the reality is that Syracuse Athletics needs to see the writing on the wall and do everything possible to ensure that the one major sports program where we genuinely have a chance at competing at the highest level is maximized. If we heavily weighted the $20.5 million towards basketball we would have an elite level of funding. Even if we put 100% of it towards football we won't come within $10 million of the largest programs.

None of that is to say that our NIL problems are an excuse to lose to Hofstra, come in 14th in the ACC, not reach the 21 win mark since 2017-18, not lose fewer than 10 games since 2013-14, I can list a dozen more things that have happened in the last decade that should not and cannot happen in the future even with the NIL situation. In fact, the NIL situation in basketball ought to provide us with a much sturdier floor, as we are easily a top 20% program in terms of funding in a D1 basketball league with 350 programs participating.

My concern is that we are trying too hard to sustain both major sports, and as a result are woefully underfunded in both. Since we can solve that in basketball, I believe we should.

 

[baggerbob]

The $10 million number comes from a CBS Sports article where they specifically name ten programs with a $10 million NIL budget. That was at the end of the 2024-25 season, which means it's likely increased significantly for the 2025-26 campaign. So this isn't taking Jim Boeheim at his word, it's actually Jim Boeheim articulating what has already been publicly reported.

I mentioned this on the football forum and it started a firestorm, but the reality is that Syracuse Athletics needs to see the writing on the wall and do everything possible to ensure that the one major sports program where we genuinely have a chance at competing at the highest level is maximized. If we heavily weighted the $20.5 million towards basketball we would have an elite level of funding. Even if we put 100% of it towards football we won't come within $10 million of the largest programs.

None of that is to say that our NIL problems are an excuse to lose to Hofstra, come in 14th in the ACC, not reach the 21 win mark since 2017-18, not lose fewer than 10 games since 2013-14, I can list a dozen more things that have happened in the last decade that should not and cannot happen in the future even with the NIL situation. In fact, the NIL situation in basketball ought to provide us with a much sturdier floor, as we are easily a top 20% program in terms of funding in a D1 basketball league with 350 programs participating.

My concern is that we are trying too hard to sustain both major sports, and as a result are woefully underfunded in both. Since we can solve that in basketball, I believe we should.

No

 

[Cusefan0307]

The $10 million number comes from a CBS Sports article where they specifically name ten programs with a $10 million NIL budget. That was at the end of the 2024-25 season, which means it's likely increased significantly for the 2025-26 campaign. So this isn't taking Jim Boeheim at his word, it's actually Jim Boeheim articulating what has already been publicly reported.

I mentioned this on the football forum and it started a firestorm, but the reality is that Syracuse Athletics needs to see the writing on the wall and do everything possible to ensure that the one major sports program where we genuinely have a chance at competing at the highest level is maximized. If we heavily weighted the $20.5 million towards basketball we would have an elite level of funding. Even if we put 100% of it towards football we won't come within $10 million of the largest programs.

None of that is to say that our NIL problems are an excuse to lose to Hofstra, come in 14th in the ACC, not reach the 21 win mark since 2017-18, not lose fewer than 10 games since 2013-14, I can list a dozen more things that have happened in the last decade that should not and cannot happen in the future even with the NIL situation. In fact, the NIL situation in basketball ought to provide us with a much sturdier floor, as we are easily a top 20% program in terms of funding in a D1 basketball league with 350 programs participating.

My concern is that we are trying too hard to sustain both major sports, and as a result are woefully underfunded in both. Since we can solve that in basketball, I believe we should.

No we don't have 10 million, but we were just a tier down from that this year. The year for anyone to be making this NIL argument was last year. There's coaches and schools with a third of Red's budget this year having winning seasons.

 

[SUFan44]

The $10 million number comes from a CBS Sports article where they specifically name ten programs with a $10 million NIL budget. That was at the end of the 2024-25 season, which means it's likely increased significantly for the 2025-26 campaign. So this isn't taking Jim Boeheim at his word, it's actually Jim Boeheim articulating what has already been publicly reported.

I mentioned this on the football forum and it started a firestorm, but the reality is that Syracuse Athletics needs to see the writing on the wall and do everything possible to ensure that the one major sports program where we genuinely have a chance at competing at the highest level is maximized. If we heavily weighted the $20.5 million towards basketball we would have an elite level of funding. Even if we put 100% of it towards football we won't come within $10 million of the largest programs.

None of that is to say that our NIL problems are an excuse to lose to Hofstra, come in 14th in the ACC, not reach the 21 win mark since 2017-18, not lose fewer than 10 games since 2013-14, I can list a dozen more things that have happened in the last decade that should not and cannot happen in the future even with the NIL situation. In fact, the NIL situation in basketball ought to provide us with a much sturdier floor, as we are easily a top 20% program in terms of funding in a D1 basketball league with 350 programs participating.

My concern is that we are trying too hard to sustain both major sports, and as a result are woefully underfunded in both. Since we can solve that in basketball, I believe we should.

Not one single ACC school is allocating $10M to basketball through revenue sharing.

Each school is likely allocating $5M at most. And that, from all that I have heard, is more than enough to be competitive - and with good coaching, you can be a Top 25 school with that allocation.

If you want to be Top 10, invest more - likely $7-8M would get you there. But the roster put together this season has MORE than enough to compete for a Top 25 spot and be where we want it to be.

Generally speaking, the majority of fans want two things:
1) Consistent NCAA Tournament bids in the 4-5-6 seed range.
2) Ability to compete for a Top 3-4 spot in the conference.

I look at the stretch from 1991-2006 as a justifiable expectation of Syracuse basketball. 15 years, 13 NCAA Tournament berths. Seeds ranging from 4-8, mostly 4-5. Which equates to Top 16-20 in the country. The one year we were better than a 4 seed, we won the tournament.

Maybe the game has changed too much and I don't think the last 8-10 years of Syracuse basketball has helped at all. But that's what I hope Syracuse basketball to be. And while extra money wouldn't hurt, I don't think it is needed to get close to that level (and with a good coach, to that level and maybe beyond).