So what are your ideas man? Every idea we’ve come up with to try to get some donors you’ve shot right down.
You certainly don’t wanna be basketball centric as I don’t, but you’re not providing any ideas or positive input. It’s all negative and we can’t do this and we can’t do that, this has never worked and the state only supports a winner
If not basketball centric, and not a grass roots effort to reach out to current students, young alumni, all living alumni and all major corporations within 150 to 200 mile radius, then what the hell are your ideas?
Sometimes there are no good solutions. In this instance, there are none. But doing something worse with a "got to do sumthin'" attitude is neither wise or realistic. As best I can tell, your two ideas are (a) spend all the NIL money you have on buying one superstar basketball player, and (b) ask people for more donations. The first is a bad idea because other schools that have essentially already taken that course of action over the last 30 years are in far worse shape than we are. The second is something we already do; you didn't invent begging people for money.
Here's the truth: You are not a fan of a school that values intercollegiate athletic success. Rutgers only started to pretend to care if it was successful in athletics about 20 years go. Some of our competitors started caring 100 years ago. And at those competitors, they have 75-80% buy-in from those affiliated with the school. At Rutgers you probably have 10-15% buy-in (administration, faculty, staff, students, alumni, local news media, politicians). Under the old system, we were making small progress for the last 20 years.
Small progress. We're less than ten years away from hiring an athletics director specifically because she was a lesbian; that's not a school that makes athletic success a priority. Under this new NIL system, we basically have no chance of competing. It was not designed for us to compete; it just wasn't.
The only possible ways we could become competitive in the current landscape are:
1. A rabid Rutgers fan becomes a billionaire overnight,
2. The Big Ten bans NIL for all member schools,
3. Pro-Rutgers forces overtake the NJ governor's mansion and legislature and specifically earmark state money for athletic upgrades (on that note, we just got a mass influx of money from the state - which is great - but it's barely a blip compared to the money available to our competitor schools),
4. The US Congress grants an anti-trust exemption to the NCAA.
None of these are likely to happen, but that's basically it. These are the potential solutions.