Time to move on from Mark Alnutt?

[Big 4 Hoops Blogger]

I believe that Halcovage would be given 3-4 years to turn things around at UB regardless of if Alnutt was fired or not. Thats why I don’t believe my points contradict themselves.

You’re under the assumption that Halcovage would be gone if Alnutt left which I don’t believe would be the case. With SUNY’s outlook on sports, I’d find it hard to believe that UB wouldn’t be patient with Halcovage.

My point on the basketball program isn’t just about this year being their new low. They were a Sub-200 KenPom team at points last year as well. This is about Alnutt overlooking the major regression of UB football and basketball during his tenure. 

 

Edited December 4, 2023 by Big 4 Hoops Blogger

[Big 4 Hoops Blogger]

8 minutes ago, MuchMany said:

They do. Halcovage will not get "the time he needs to turn around the program" if Alnutt is fired. If you believe in being "patient" re: Halcovage turning things around, then Alnutt doesn't deserve to be fired. You're using a zoomed in analysis of the basketball program at its low point to make a zoomed out point regarding the department as a whole. Ie if UB is back in the mid 100s next year, this small data point of being ranked 360 doesn't really matter at all.

I responded above to this post already but I think you’re oversimplifying my point and coming to an incorrect conclusion. You can be patient with a coach while still making a change above them. It’s not normal but the SUNY system doesn’t operate athletics like most state university systems.

[rma]

22 minutes ago, Big 4 Hoops Blogger said:

I responded above to this post already but I think you’re oversimplifying my point and coming to an incorrect conclusion. You can be patient with a coach while still making a change above them. It’s not normal but the SUNY system doesn’t operate athletics like most state university systems.

Do you want Tripathi in charge of hiring a new AD, or would you take the field? 

Tripathi is 72, almost 73. As of 2016, only 11% of university presidents were 70+. 
 

I think the immediate future for the athletic program is not amazing (unless you are a volleyball/soccer fan) until there’s clarity about who is running the school in the future.

I don’t trust Alnutt to make future hires. I don’t trust Tripathi to make a good AD hire. There’s no vision for the athletics program that the school had under Bill Greiner. White (who was a Tripathi hire) had a vision but little institutional/community support, and more bitching from the local columnists than support for a flagship athletics program vision. Remember when UB made the big dance for the first time *ever* and all that was in the news was the NYBI logo?
 

Oats had a vision of success but did not get the support from the school (see: lack of student rec center years later). Both have moved on.

 

Wonder what Danny White thinks of Jerry “women can’t have opinions about football” Sullivan these days. Probably doesn’t think much about him….

[Big 4 Hoops Blogger]

8 minutes ago, rma said:

Do you want Tripathi in charge of hiring a new AD, or would you take the field? 

Tripathi is 72, almost 73. As of 2016, only 11% of university presidents were 70+. 
 

I think the immediate future for the athletic program is not amazing (unless you are a volleyball/soccer fan) until there’s clarity about who is running the school in the future.

I don’t trust Alnutt to make future hires. I don’t trust Tripathi to make a good AD hire. There’s no vision for the athletics program that the school had under Bill Greiner. White (who was a Tripathi hire) had a vision but little institutional/community support, and more bitching from the local columnists than support for a flagship athletics program vision. Remember when UB made the big dance for the first time *ever* and all that was in the news was the NYBI logo?
 

Oats had a vision of success but did not get the support from the school (see: lack of student rec center years later). Both have moved on.

 

Wonder what Danny White thinks of Jerry “women can’t have opinions about football” Sullivan these days. Probably doesn’t think much about him….

I’d take the field. The unfortunate part of this situation is the lack of leadership starts at the top and trickles down and impacts the coaches and players for all of their teams.

I always thought it was laughable how mad people got over the NYBI. I thought it was a great marketing tool to get the school’s athletics programs out there. Oats was a genius with his Blue Collar hard hat mentality.

It goes to show a little creativity can go a far way even when fighting an uphill battle with a lack of resources.

Your point is solid though. Do we really trust Tripathi to make the right hire? Probably not.

And even if he does, the battles will still continue. That’s why I think UB needs to heavily pursue an innovative young mind that wants to shake things up with a bold but attainable vision for the athletic department.

Edited December 4, 2023 by Big 4 Hoops Blogger

[clodney]

It's been nothing but amateur hour with Alnutt. He gave Whitesell an extension in Year 2 that bumped his buyout up $100k and then when we lost again after Year 3 we were stuck with a.)paying $500k to fire JW and restart with a new coach or b.) letting JW stick around to rebuild the team himself. We decided to stick with him, presumably because we didn't have the money, but then fired him the following year after a sub 0.500 season. Not only that, he fired JW 4 weeks before the buyout would have dropped to $400k so we didn't even end up saving any money vs firing him a year earlier! It was a completely wasted season that killed any of the national relevance Oats & Hurley had built.

As if that debacle wasn't enough, it appears we didn't even have a gameplan in place that would explain why we pulled the trigger right before the buyout decrease, since we spent the next 3 weeks enduring one of the worst coaching searches I've ever witnessed. Every day was another story about a coach turning us down (Cohen, McCollum, Calhoun, etc...) or someone claiming we were toxic and refused to pay reasonable salaries. Now, in the end a lot of the chaos turned out to be false but the PR was a nightmare and for that I blame the Athletic Director.

Alnutt is the reason we are where we are. He has made terrible contract decisions at inopportune times, he lacks vision or the ability to communicate effectively, and most importantly he doesn't appear to have an eye for coaching talent. I'm convinced we would be in a much better position with him gone.

Halcovage, on the other hand, still gets more time before we write him off completely.

[rma]

On 11/25/2023 at 3:41 PM, rma said:

This year during the first couple football games we tried something new and innovative by having a shout from both sides of the stadium (think WE ARE! PENN STATE! or LET'S GO! MOUNTAINEERS!) but it's clear that both whoever planned that and the PA announcer had never experienced something like that. The PA announcer said all three sides of it multiple times-so nobody knew if you were supposed to say what he was saying or say it afterwards. And "Go Blue, Go White, Go Bulls!" is much harder to execute than "Let's Go! Buffalo!"

Sorry to go a little bit off topic here but this was tried again at the Bonaventure game, modified to be “Go Blue” “Go White”. It went slightly better, considering one of the DJ’s was leading it, but was still pretty rough. I was very worried that it was going to turn into a SBU chant considering it’s quite a decision to try something new with opposing fans around. But alas neither team had much to cheer for during that game outside of some poster dunks and a rivalry (disputed?) win. 
 

Suggestion if anybody reading this is in charge of anything…coordinate with the cheerleaders. Announce beforehand that “We need your help, Alumni Arena! Watch the cheerleaders to cheer on your Bulls!” then don’t try to say anything and let the crowd take over  

 

See how the cheerleaders show the signs and move them to indicate when to say the words? And they don’t have anybody over the PA to cause ambiguity? Now this is making me wish I went back down to Virginia Tech this year.

[Chet]

Maybe an out of the mix hire like former Buffalo Bills VP, Russ Brandon.....although he just became CEO of the XFL. 

[MKBullsfan]

4 hours ago, Chet said:

Maybe an out of the mix hire like former Buffalo Bills VP, Russ Brandon.....although he just became CEO of the XFL. 

This is a joke, right? He didn’t do anything for the Bills.

[RapidsFan]

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Edited February 18 by RapidsFan

[UB Horns Up]

On 11/25/2023 at 3:41 PM, rma said:

I replied to you on Twitter but here's a more comprehensive view of my take of his performance:

Accomplishments:

• Kept Felisha Legette-Jack in Buffalo for 3 more years. It was reported by credible sources, but never 100% confirmed, that in 2019 Penn State offered Jack. Alnutt got the support to get her one, two, three contract extensions and one final offer after the 2022 season that she was never going to accept. There's no doubt in my mind that if the Syracuse job did not open up, she would still be here.
• Oversaw upgrades to S-A facilities. He did not get a lot of the work done on fundraising it, but the field house was started and completed under his watch. The football team is upgrading their training facilities from a garage, and the Nan Harvey Natatorium can finally be renamed back to Nan Harvey Field and is capable of holding softball competitions instead of deep sea fishing competitions. The UB football locker room is at the P5 level now after not being renovated in a long time.
• Made a good Olympic hire, and made a commitment to another good Olympic hire. Scott Smith (Alnutt hire) has done an an amazing job with UB volleyball, a team that was a perennial doormat. This year UB volleyball (co-)won the MAC East for the first time ever and was the #2 seed in the MAC volleyball tournament. UB beat Big East DePaul and SEC Mizzou in straight sets, both of which finished their season .500 or better in conference. Alnutt also got longtime UB soccer coach Shawn Burke on a multi-year contract shortly before UB got their first ever team win over an Ohio State program. I'm personally not a fan of multi-year contracts for coaches (specifically football and basketball) but if there's no chance of him getting fired in that timeframe (there is not) he earned it.
• Got the UB Athletics Hall of Fame Back into annual inductions. I'm not exactly sure what happened here, but late in the Danny White years the annual inductions into the UB Hall of Fame ended. I don't know if Alnutt specifically started it back up, but under his watch it is back, which is good to see.
• Tiny, minor, upgrades to the fan experience. Things like beer sales, a food truck in UB stadium, and better football concession stand food this year are a good start. Concession stands are also cashless (in contract to other Big 4 programs) which makes things go faster. The Coca Cola fan zone this year was nice for the few people that were there, and I liked that it had a big screen showing other college football games. There's a lot of UB fans that are UB (the school) fans and don't follow other college football. I'd like to see some more college football fans at UB games that are rooting for UB. Hard to do in the northeast outside of Pennsylvania though.
• Not really much of an accomplishment, but one thing that I did like about him is he seemed to be one of the most visible ADs in recent times. He is at a lot of UB athletic events. One year he was out selling 50/50 tickets before a football game because it was during a break and there was no team to sell them. During the MAC tournament in 2018-19 he was out with a very non-donor UB crowd. The anti-Danny White.

Shortcomings:

• I could beat to death the Whitesell hire but you all can do that better than me. But my problem with the coaching search was that in both instances the coaching search was being done through agents and on Twitter. Whichever search firm we used sucks. Candidates that didn't get offers said in public that they were declining it. When Leipold left we had this. Regardless of if the searches were a mess or not it looked messy to outsiders. During the Danny White years, all of the searches and hiring processes would have been quiet if not for an enthusiastic niece. Bobby Hurley was leaked as the hire an hour before he was introduced as the new head coach.
• I really can't complain about the Linguist hire because I was a huge fan of it when it happened. But the nonstop rotation of coordinators is concerning.
• Lack of upgrades to the fan experience. I listed above the small upgrades. These move the needle a tiny bit, but there's still large capital improvements that need to happen. Alumni Arena needs air conditioning. Our scoreboard is an abomination, which over two years ago was "first and foremost." What happened since then? We still have a track stadium that has a football field, and next year UB is set to be the only FBS football team that plays in a track stadium. Even worse than football in a track stadium (on a field with soccer markings) is soccer on a football field (with football markings) in a track stadium. Shawn Burke deserves a ton of credit for getting some of the top soccer talent in WNY despite the stadium situation. Which brings me to...
• No facilities master plan. In the Athletic article I linked Alnutt said “We have a master plan that’s been put together and we’re going to go public with in the near future” and so far the "near future" is more than 26 months. The most recent master plan is almost 10 years old and includes facilities for varsity programs that do not exist anymore. Since that Athletic article was posted the Bills secured a new stadium location and got $850 million of taxpayer money. And New York taxpayers paid for about half ($20 million) of the Syracuse Dome renovations.
• It seems like everything is the Wal-Mart/downgraded version of what it was during Danny White. Nothing in particular that's huge, but a lot of small stuff.
  • The UB Hall of Fame, though it has been revived, went without inductees for a few years under Alnutt.
  • Gameday: Things like not being allowed to bring outside food into Alumni Arena, that seemed to never be a rule or enforced previously. I complained previously on here about being told that I had to sit in my men's basketball seats for a women's side of a doubleheader.
  • Advertisements. Awesome, we're running TV ads during football games to get people to UB Stadium! Not so fast my friend, the ad that is being run as recently as Thanksgiving day was for the CMU game almost 2 months ago. The football season is over. I thought this was just a network screwing up but I've seen the ad on multiple networks multiple times. As I am typing this now, watching the Ohio State-Michigan game, the same ad aired AGAIN (now twice in the same commercial break)! What the hell.
  • This year during the first couple football games we tried something new and innovative by having a shout from both sides of the stadium (think WE ARE! PENN STATE! or LET'S GO! MOUNTAINEERS!) but it's clear that both whoever planned that and the PA announcer had never experienced something like that. The PA announcer said all three sides of it multiple times-so nobody knew if you were supposed to say what he was saying or say it afterwards. And "Go Blue, Go White, Go Bulls!" is much harder to execute than "Let's Go! Buffalo!"
  • It's small, but another example is the cheap crap they gave away to STH last year as a concession for having only 5 games. One of them was a license plate cover. A year later it's pretty faded.
  • I'm sure there's a ton more.
• The merchandise situation has not improved. I really want a UB football jersey that is more recent than the one I have signed by TG. I refuse to buy the cheap AliExpress crap that is being sold because I can get one from AliExpress for half the price. If you don't want to deal with NIL find out some way to sell Mack jerseys. Or for basketball I think a lot of people would buy a good quality 5, 33 or (WBB) 24 jersey. The retro bull shirt was great but the roll out took too long to get it online. I shouldn't have to be buying shirts and shipping them to UBFan members, though I gladly did.
• I think there was a lack of due diligence done on the Becky Burke hire.  I'm speculating a bit here but it's an absolutely terrible look when your new coach only has one returner from the previous coach, seemingly on purpose (another cryptic tweet from a WBB mom the day her daughter went into the portal). Then one player quits during the season citing mental health in a now-deleted instagram post. And all of your coaches leave, one not loving basketball and wasn't happy. And most of your roster leaves after that first season (toxic environment?). This seems to be similar to what happened at USC Upstate too. Not a lot of that roster stuck around. It also says quite a bit that only one (1) player followed Burke here.

The new Bills stadium is going to price out a ton of western NYers from live football. I've always touted UB as the family and budget friendly alternative to the Bills and Sabres. UB will never replace the Bills, but you will have Bills season ticket holders that will move to attending a few games a year. Bills fans that might attend 3 or 4 games a year might drop to 1 or 2. Ticket prices are already up. There has to be a way to get people that are now watching the Bills from their couches on Sunday into UB Stadium on Saturday to watch live football. But you can't do that with a track stadium and a scoreboard that is worse than the one in RWS over 20 years ago. Time is of the essence and I really don't have a ton of confidence in Alnutt to not fumble the opportunity out of the endzone for a touchback.

It really sucks listing all this stuff out, but right now there's people that care. And that's much better than not having people that care.

For UB Bulls football to become like the Buffalo Bisons with family entertainment. UB needs to make UB Stadium more like Buffalo Bisons Sahlen’s Field. That is UB Bulls football biggest problem UB Stadium is more dated than ever before. UB Alumni Arena has had a better scoreboard for almost a decade. UB wants to emphasize football you could have fooled me with UB Stadium that scoreboard is a major eye sore. Start there and I don’t get how a major state university can’t get player jerseys but tiny private schools like St Bonaventure Bonnies can? I got a Kyle Lofton, Daryl Banks III and two Bob Lanier’s home and away jersey’s. I was able to purchase a Anthony Johnson UB Bulls Alternate Black Nike Jersey really nice from a guy in Niagara Falls I have no idea where he got it for $55 and it had the MAC conference logo on the jersey and everything. That is a mystery to me but knowing this board UB alums will find excuses defending UB athletics for not selling jersey’s it’s strange in my opinion. UB Horns Up! Go Bulls! Let’s Go Buffalo 

[UB Horns Up]

5 hours ago, Chet said:

Maybe an out of the mix hire like former Buffalo Bills VP, Russ Brandon.....although he just became CEO of the XFL. 

Russ Brandon was fired for dating Buffalo Bills employee and was very unpopular in Buffalo because of the Bills Toronto Series. Knowing Russ Brandon he would move all the UB Bulls football and basketball games to Toronto. And be fired for dating UB employees? UB athletics wants no part of Russ Brandon trust me if UB alums want to finish off UB athletics for good that would be the hire. As unpopular as former UB AD Danny White was for some. Russ Brandon was the devil for Buffalo Bills fans because of the Bills Toronto Series that was completely unnecessary it was pure greed by Ralph Wilson. It cost Erie County and New York State game day revenue and Toronto got NFL football for very little $78 million dollars for 5 years when you think about it. All the hotels, restaurants and businesses that lost game day revenue in Buffalo even though Buffalo Bills had nothing to give back they still got all their goodies from Erie County and New York State. That Bills Toronto Series should never have happened. The New York Rangers have a clause in their MSG lease they have to play all there home games at MSG. Buffalo didn’t deserve that from the Bills and that was Russ Brandon idea no for me on hiring Russ Brandon in my opinion. UB Horns Up! Go Bulls! Let’s Go Buffalo 

[BrooklynBull]

6 hours ago, UB Horns Up said:

The New York Rangers have a clause in their MSG lease they have to play all there home games at MSG.

That is part of the property tax abatement that Madison Square Garden has had for years.  It was what MSG got from the city to not move to New Jersey in the early 1980s.  If the Rangers play a home game anywhere else they will lose the abatement.  Also not sure that they really have a lease since they are owned by the Garden.

[RapidsFan]

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Edited February 18 by RapidsFan

[dutchcountry7]

On 12/4/2023 at 4:28 PM, clodney said:

Not only that, he fired JW 4 weeks before the buyout would have dropped to $400k so we didn't even end up saving any money vs firing him a year earlier!

This was a big issue and one of my major complaints.

It was a complete mismanagement of the transition.  It also displayed a huge misunderstanding of the coaching labor market.

You only pay the elevated buyout if you need to move quickly to secure a coach that won't be on the market long.  But we couldn't do that.  And we couldn't do that because the job wasn't as appealing as the admin thought it would be.  

Coaching hires are not the main obligation of an AD and are done by committee with only a minority of the decision making coming from the AD.  Though they tend to be given the credit and the blame for the hires since they are the ones that announce them and lead the department.  

 

[everlast2504]

2 hours ago, dutchcountry7 said:

This was a big issue and one of my major complaints.

It was a complete mismanagement of the transition.  It also displayed a huge misunderstanding of the coaching labor market.

You only pay the elevated buyout if you need to move quickly to secure a coach that won't be on the market long.  But we couldn't do that.  And we couldn't do that because the job wasn't as appealing as the admin thought it would be.  

Coaching hires are not the main obligation of an AD and are done by committee with only a minority of the decision making coming from the AD.  Though they tend to be given the credit and the blame for the hires since they are the ones that announce them and lead the department.  

 

 

I still don't get why they just didn't keep JW on the "payroll" for those 4 weeks.

[dutchcountry7]

43 minutes ago, everlast2504 said:

 

I still don't get why they just didn't keep JW on the "payroll" for those 4 weeks.

It may not have been an option within his contract.  If his contact is specifically for the position of Head Coach of the program then moving him to another position would be a breach of contract.  You can't simply require someone to do a different job they weren't hired to do when they have an employment contract specifying the job.

Also, the NCAA will only permit one head coach of a program at a time.  There must be one, and only one, designated head coach.  So you would have to put off the new coach taking over for four weeks.  

When coaches move into an admin position, it is often based on a mutually benefitable agreement with the school--such as when the coach has really good relationships with donors that the school wants to retain and the coach doesn't want to relocate and is okay moving on from coaching.