In the bleak midwinter

[TheDarkHawkReturns]

I will not pay for a ticket. I will not even use a free ticket. I will not support, in any way, this program, or the University for that matter, while a usurper and a fraud is allowed to remain in the big chair. They clearly do not care about success, so why should I?

I consider myself a college sports "free agent" and am currently shopping around for a new program to devote my time and attention to. Could be Marquette. Could be Wisconsin.

[dylanrocks]

Goose raises a great point. After all, there is an operating budget and men's basketball HAS to be the economic engine for a D-1 program that doesn't sponsor football. It's just a matter of dollars and sense.

So without further adieu, here are our attendance numbers from the last 10 years (exhibitions not included):

2007-08 -- 3,622
2008-09 -- 2,440
2009-10 -- 2,883
2010-11 -- 4,154
2011-12 -- 4,154
2012-13 -- 2,266
2013-14 -- 2,847
2014-15 -- 3,419
2015-16 -- 2,841
2016-17 -- 1,247

I'll let people draw their own conclusions from these numbers, but do remember that the 2012-13 year marked the move back to Klotsche.

[BBF]

Now we're getting to it. The disastrous events surrounding the coaching transition have had devastating consequences on the program's fan interest. We are quite literally trending rapidly towards WIAC territory as far as program support goes. The economic consequences of this are devastating.

As dr put it so succinctly -- the AD can't fire Rob Jeter again. There's no one else to blame now.

The economic collapse of the program is 100% the administration's responsibility. It's time for the Chancellor to excise the true bad actor and give the fan base some hope that we could once again have a program that can both be successful and that we can be proud of. There's not one of us who wouldn't rally behind LaVall Jordan immediately. Despite the catastrophically bad season the team is having, I would be on the phone to the ticket office buying season tickets within the hour, and I know with direct, first person certainty that I would not be alone in doing so.

If this does not happen, then prepare to accept that our proud program is becoming Chicago State-Milwaukee. If it survives in D1 at all.

[Jimmy Lemke]

In the name of full disclosure, the two games this past weekend were the first I've not been to this season, so if Dylan decided to finally show up (which I doubt) I wouldn't know.

To be fair to dylanrocks, he does have a hot girlfriend now. The bachelor life is over for our dear friend, so we can only mourn his absence.

[Jimmy Lemke]

On average, it costs $340,000 per year to have the arena called UW Milwaukee Panther arena. I'm not sure if averaging less than 2,000 per game is going to cover that expense, not to mention other expenses associated with the basketball program. This should have been a year with increased attendance and elevated excitement building toward a possible league title and NCAA bid.

I do want to make a couple notes here.

- The money for the naming rights isn't coming out of the athletic department. The university correctly pulls it out of its marketing budget. It is, after all, advertising for the university, as is that banner ad in the visitor's bullpen at Miller Park that has been on Sportscenter about 6,000 times.

- The Panthers' putrid attendance isn't the only attendance; the Admirals move to the Arena brings thousands through the doors a few dozen times a year now. Those people are also not as connected to the university; unlike high-majors like Marquette and Wisconsin, mid-majors like Milwaukee don't have tons of casual fans that make up the crowd. I would say a grand majority of our game attendees have attended, graduated from, worked for or have business with Milwaukee. So having a team like the Admirals move into the Arena is a big deal because a great deal of their fans aren't connected to the university, yet they're slammed with the brand all the time. Now if only the brand they're getting slammed with would be coherent.

- Speaking of our poor attendance, you can attribute that to the fact that the "Director of Tickets and Event Operations" job has been totally vacant since Eric Becker left for Pitt. His last day at Milwaukee was August 15th, so the latest Amanda Braun knew she would need a new ticket manager was August 1st. That job is still not filled, and it will be six months in a week since she learned of the pending vacancy. That's if she found out August 1st (spoiler alert: she knew before then). What makes it all the more infuriating is that a big part of the reason Becker left was because he was the assistant ticket manager who was filling in on an interim basis ever since B-Mo went to Marquette. Not only did Amanda not promote him to the Director job, I never heard anything about his pay increasing with the increased workload or added job responsibilities.

You don't even need to go to last school year to find evidence of Amanda Braun being wildly incompetent at her job. See her fail to fill an incredibly important position for half a year and know exactly why there were 422 fans in the crowd Sunday. Oh yeah, I counted...by hand...the amount of fans in the crowd during the first half. Even if I give an incredibly generous margin of error of 100, that's still more than 100 less than they claimed. Of course, I didn't count the arena employees, the coaches, the players, the refs, the band (they're paid to be there), or the people walking past the building outside. I'm surprised they didn't try to mask the attendance even more. It's something a ticket managers do across the country, and while I'm not a fan of it, in this instance I probably would have at least asked if we could nudge it over 1,000.

I give her credit for owning the doofus mistake of moving the game to accommodate the Packers - not that she moved it, but that she moved it to finish around the start of the Packer game and not earlier to the morning, like 11 am - and not fudging the numbers.

I grew up Catholic on the southwest side, and my family always went to 11 o'clock mass. It would get out between 12:05 and 12:15 every Sunday, except when the Packers were playing - none of the priests ever failed to get us out after 11:45 those days. It's not like she's an outsider; she grew up in this state and has now spent 10 years of her (so-called) professional life here. The Packers are the religion here.

[Jimmy Lemke]

On average, it costs $340,000 per year to have the arena called UW Milwaukee Panther arena. I'm not sure if averaging less than 2,000 per game is going to cover that expense, not to mention other expenses associated with the basketball program. This should have been a year with increased attendance and elevated excitement building toward a possible league title and NCAA bid.

I do want to make a couple notes here.

- The money for the naming rights isn't coming out of the athletic department. The university correctly pulls it out of its marketing budget. It is, after all, advertising for the university, as is that banner ad in the visitor's bullpen at Miller Park that has been on Sportscenter about 6,000 times.

- The Panthers' putrid attendance isn't the only attendance; the Admirals move to the Arena brings thousands through the doors a few dozen times a year now. Those people are also not as connected to the university; unlike high-majors like Marquette and Wisconsin, mid-majors like Milwaukee don't have tons of casual fans that make up the crowd. I would say a grand majority of our game attendees have attended, graduated from, worked for or have business with Milwaukee. So having a team like the Admirals move into the Arena is a big deal because a great deal of their fans aren't connected to the university, yet they're slammed with the brand all the time. Now if only the brand they're getting slammed with would be coherent.

- Speaking of our poor attendance, you can attribute that to the fact that the "Director of Tickets and Event Operations" job has been totally vacant since Eric Becker left for Pitt. His last day at Milwaukee was August 15th, so the latest Amanda Braun knew she would need a new ticket manager was August 1st. That job is still not filled, and it will be six months in a week since she learned of the pending vacancy. That's if she found out August 1st (spoiler alert: she knew before then). What makes it all the more infuriating is that a big part of the reason Becker left was because he was the assistant ticket manager who was filling in on an interim basis ever since B-Mo went to Marquette. Not only did Amanda not promote him to the Director job, I never heard anything about his pay increasing with the increased workload or added job responsibilities.

You don't even need to go to last school year to find evidence of Amanda Braun being wildly incompetent at her job. See her fail to fill an incredibly important position for half a year and know exactly why there were 422 fans in the crowd Sunday. Oh yeah, I counted...by hand...the amount of fans in the crowd during the first half. Even if I give an incredibly generous margin of error of 100, that's still more than 100 less than they claimed. Of course, I didn't count the arena employees, the coaches, the players, the refs, the band (they're paid to be there), or the people walking past the building outside. I'm surprised they didn't try to mask the attendance even more. It's something a ticket managers do across the country, and while I'm not a fan of it, in this instance I probably would have at least asked if we could nudge it over 1,000.

I give her credit for owning the doofus mistake of moving the game to accommodate the Packers - not that she moved it, but that she moved it to finish around the start of the Packer game and not earlier to the morning, like 11 am - and not fudging the numbers.

I grew up Catholic on the southwest side, and my family always went to 11 o'clock mass. It would get out between 12:05 and 12:15 every Sunday, except when the Packers were playing - none of the priests ever failed to get us out after 11:45 those days. It's not like she's an outsider; she grew up in this state and has now spent 10 years of her (so-called) professional life here. The Packers are the religion here.

[TheDarkHawkReturns]

But Braun has succeeded in one respect....she has ticked a whole lot of Social Justice Warrior boxes off, so despite her utter failure to perform her stated responsibilities to even a minimum level, she is to be considered a raging success by the University Administration, the Snowflakes in the student body, and the non-sports media (and even parts of the sports media).

After all, in those people's minds, WHO you are is the ONLY thing that matters....What you actually DO is secondary, and as long as WHO you are is good, substandard performance is forgiven.

Identity politics is not just some harmless thing employed by a political party....it is a way of life for it's adherents and it has real consequences....we are witnessing them on a daily basis at Milwaukee.

And before some of you blow up over me "injecting politics" into this, remember one thing....she was hired DUE TO POLITICAL INTERFERENCE. I am not injecting politics into this, I am merely pointing it out.

[BBF]

Hawk, I simply don't agree with your take on this, but even if you were right, I think you are missing the bigger picture. "Identity politics" clearly had nothing to do with the previous disastrous AD hires. As Jimmy just explained on the Eunuch board using the APR ban as an example, the administrative incompetence that has hamstrung our program even while our coaches and players were competing proudly and well is a systemic issue lasting over years and extending well beyond the current officeholder. In my opinion she has just mismanaged it further, and to crisis levels. Bluntly, I believe that ever since Bud Haidet retired our program has been mismanaged, unsupported and yes, even sabotaged.

It seems to be important to you that change occur so as to rectify what you view as the consequence of bad ideology. I couldn't care less about that. We need change because we are failing. Incompetence and lack of integrity are immensely more persuasive reasons for change than "identity politics." The stuff you are talking about just invites reactionary arguments that will not advance the ball.

This actually reminds me of a conversation I had with Senator Johnson last year. I was lobbying him about a justice system issue. We come from very different ideological perspectives but we had some sympathetic resonance, too, because we both recognized the same systemic problem. Focusing on the real issue is the bottom line. Our problem isn't why someone was hired. Our problem is the state of the program.

[BBF]

And by the way, great job on the other board Jimmy. That false trope about the APR ban being Rob's fault has always rankled the hell out of me. Let's face it, it's expedient for those who don't like Jeter (and in some cases never liked him) to blame him for that too, just like they blamed him for everything else ("everything else" being, of course, not being Bruce Pearl). The reality is that Rob was elevating this program when Geiger sent it reeling by banishing it to Siberia (aka, the Klotsche). Then, after recovering with a fantastic tournament run the next season, it was sent reeling again with the APR ban that was, as you well explained, purely the result of administrative mismanagement.

By the way, what are the 73 remaining engaged fans going to do when it turns out that LaVall Jordan isn't Bruce Pearl either?

[TheDarkHawkReturns]

Fran: I appreciate your position, and I agree that the University as a whole has been mismanaged for a very long time, and not just Athletics. I would argue the root causes of all that failure is, at least in part, the one I point out in my previous post.

The hire of Nancy Zimpher was a great move. After that many of the hires at the key positions have all been about many other things besides than execution and experience, IMO. Some of that is to be expected, and I am not saying that it is entirely wrong to look at all aspects of a candidate's resume, but as time has passed, the "WHO" part has risen higher and higher on the criteria list, until eventually we hired an demonstrably incompetent and inexperienced person simply because of the "WHO".

The reason why Braun still has a job at all is still the "WHO" part, too. Not only does this elevation of identity taint hiring, it prevents consequences of failure from being implemented, prolonging the suffering.

Until the "WHO" is made substantially subordinate to the "HOW GOOD", we will continue to flail around aimlessly. At a University, I hold out little to no hope that this will ever occur.

If you need more details, ask Jimmy privately about the hiring practices in the Braun era.