Reply To: Would this interest Basketball/Football Fans?

Forum Forum Lehigh Sports Lehigh Men’s Basketball Would this interest Basketball/Football Fans? Reply To: Would this interest Basketball/Football Fans?

#5996
StablerBum
StablerBum
Participant

1.)Much depends on who you know. The fact that Jay Wright played for Bucknell certainly opened the Villanova door. I know we had the opportunity to play Duke a couple of times at Cameron over the years. I’m fairly sure that it was a case of one former quarterback helping another.
2.)Wake Forest was the grand opening of Stojke, was it not and if my memory serves me correctly, there was a very bif Bucknell connection there too.

This is 100% true. But we have connections between our staff and Billy Taylor and Fran McCaffrey as well as others. We haven’t gotten Ball State or Iowa to come to Stabler. It’s not about having the connects – it’s about making them work.

3.) Penn State is not as big of a catch as you might think. We had them on the schedule for years in the past. I attended a game at the Bryce Jordan Center recently and there were echos.

Getting Penn St on the schedule is not a big deal – getting a BCS home game is. Penn St does not have a great bball tradition or fan support, but getting a Big 10 team to visit a Patriot League team is a big catch in my eyes. There is a lot of support for the Nits in the lehigh valley and I’m sure this would put some butts in the seats and give the program a good chance to get a BCS win. That seems like a big deal to me.

4.)And perhaps the biggest, I’ve been told that there are guarantees required for all of these games. If we only drew 2,500 for St. Joes, we may have possibly lost money on it. I know it’s the chicken or the egg situation but I think 1st you need to draw a steady crowd like Bucknell before you can draw the competition you are looking for.

I find it very hard to believe that any Patriot League school has ever paid an oppenent to come and play them. The athletic departments just don’t have the resources. And even if we DID pay gaurantees, how does having 2500 for St. Joe’s become more financially viable than having 800 for Monmouth assuming we are paying either of them to come? I highly highly doubt that Bucknell is paying Mason and LaSalle to come to Sojka.

  • This reply was modified 12 years, 9 months ago by StablerBum StablerBum.