OT: Phil Knight providing Oregon with unlimited NIL Resources

[retired711]

While we can appreciate your Don Quixote quest regarding NIL and the all important fieldhouse at RU, I just don’t think it is realistic unless RU finds a very, very rich Sugar Daddy who likes to throw around tens of millions of dollars. It seems a very small portion of Alumni are interested in contributing anything.

Bingo! @rutgersal can say we need a field house and more NIL money. One question is: "which is more important?" It's hard enough to get donations for one, let alone both. Second, how do we raise the money for either in the absence of Phil Knight-type alums? It's a lot easier to fund-raise when you have several large gifts to point to as seed money. At the same time, fans should, to the extent they can, help with donations.

Let's suppose we can't raise money for either. The next-best solution is for us to make up for it through superior recruiting, player development, and game-day management. Yet no matter what Schiano does, @rutgersal seems to consider him above criticism because, after all, he doesn't have e field house or NIL; instead, in @rutgersal's mind, we're to blame for not producing enough money. . In truth, though, Schiano and his staff simply have to find ways to do more with less. If they succeed, they pave the way for greater fan enthusiasm, which makes it a lot easier to produce fans, some of whom will be rich enough to help the program. Success breeds success, but the success has to start with the resources we have.

 

[yesrutgers01]

Irrelevant.

The point is UNC fans have decided to provide their football team the resources to succeed.
Syracuse fans are doing the same.

I don’t know about UNC but the NIL money last year at Cuse was not from fans…

 

[RUAldo]

I’ve never once cried about peoples donations or lack there of. You keep struggling with that fact. Maybe your lack of comprehension is why you aren’t successful.
And yea, zero chance I tell you my name. Enough people here know who I am

Ahh OK - you made a donation to RU that’s worthy enough of being displayed publicly in the Hale Center but you won’t post it here. That’s what I thought.

 

[LETSGORU91]

This means nothing because it’s speculative.

It's speculative programs will lure players to their program with riches and/or cut corners to keep players on the field? Were you high, drunk or heavily medicated last night?

 

[yesrutgers01]

Bottom line- the influx of 8 figures to the football team for NIL this year should be used aggressively. Maybe we can't buy 30 players like the elites do but we should find a way to buy some studs in the areas of need.

Meanwhile- I sort of like getting the stud players from a level down to come up. They stay hungry. We have also had a couple of good classes come in as well...and for the most part, we have done well to hold our good players here as part of the family.

What Greg has done is get us solidly into the middle to upper middle of the pack of the B1G...now, he needs to find a way to beat a better team on the field. That is the huge thing that I think really holds us back.

With the football share of the new $20 mil - I was use a good chunk of money to try to pull in an elite OL and DT. Maybe an edge rusher as well. Stick with AK as QB, our WR/RB rooms look good and Greg usually finds a way to get some stud DB's back there.

 

[rutgersal]

Bingo! @rutgersal can say we need a field house and more NIL money. One question is: "which is more important?" It's hard enough to get donations for one, let alone both. Second, how do we raise the money for either in the absence of Phil Knight-type alums? It's a lot easier to fund-raise when you have several large gifts to point to as seed money. At the same time, fans should, to the extent they can, help with donations.

Let's suppose we can't raise money for either. The next-best solution is for us to make up for it through superior recruiting, player development, and game-day management. Yet no matter what Schiano does, @rutgersal seems to consider him above criticism because, after all, he doesn't have e field house or NIL; instead, in @rutgersal's mind, we're to blame for not producing enough money. . In truth, though, Schiano and his staff simply have to find ways to do more with less. If they succeed, they pave the way for greater fan enthusiasm, which makes it a lot easier to produce fans, some of whom will be rich enough to help the program. Success breeds success, but the success has to start with the resources we have.

The first thing Greg Schiano said he needed when he took the job, was a Fieldhouse. Now he has to discount its value because there is no support to build it.

Ultimately it’s talent we need. Superior recruiting isn’t an avenue available to us, because To recruit the best talent, you need a superior value proposition, something we don’t have, because we don’t have a Fieldhouse and we don’t have NIL support. If we had both, we would recruit our share of the best. Instead we land the kids we are able to land and hope to develop them into productive football players. We recruited 2 out of NJ’s Top 10 and 5 out of NJs Top 20 for the 2025 Class, if you use Rivals rankings. Despite recruiting this 2025 Class since they were freshmen. A lot of our recruiting effort is being wasted because our value proposition is weak. So we have to take a lot of risks.

Most kids aren’t going to make it, so we have to erase our recruiting mistakes through the portal. Mostly recruiting lower division kids and hoping their ability scales to the Big 10. It worked out in Dymere Millers case, and he turned out to be everything we expected. But many of the other transfers have not worked out.

It’s hard to be successful without adequate support, but thankfully we have successive winning seasons thx to Schiano’s force of personality and his recruiting. No one else could have replicated his success because no one else would have spent the same effort, or had as effective a recruiting strategy. That’s why he gets a pass. Because he is optimizing the results of this situation.

 

[retired711]

The first thing Greg Schiano said he needed when he took the job, was a Fieldhouse. Now he has to discount its value because there is no support to build it.

Ultimately it’s talent we need. Superior recruiting isn’t an avenue available to us, because To recruit the best talent, you need a superior value proposition, something we don’t have, because we don’t have a Fieldhouse and we don’t have NIL support. If we had both, we would recruit our share of the best. Instead we land the kids we are able to land and hope to develop them into productive football players. We recruited 2 out of NJ’s Top 10 and 5 out of NJs Top 20 for the 2025 Class, if you use Rivals rankings. Despite recruiting this 2025 Class since they were freshmen. A lot of our recruiting effort is being wasted because our value proposition is weak. So we have to take a lot of risks.

Most kids aren’t going to make it, so we have to erase our recruiting mistakes through the portal. Mostly recruiting lower division kids and hoping their ability scales to the Big 10. It worked out in Dymere Millers case, and he turned out to be everything we expected. But many of the other transfers have not worked out.

It’s hard to be successful without adequate support, but thankfully we have successive winning seasons thx to Schiano’s force of personality and his recruiting. No one else could have replicated his success because no one else would have spent the same effort, or had as effective a recruiting strategy. That’s why he gets a pass. Because he is optimizing the results of this situation.

Thanks for your thorough and well-reasoned response. First, let's keep in mind that the NIL problem is going to be less of an issue next year when the House v. NCAA settlement comes into force and when schools will all have the same budget to pay players and when outside NIL for the sake of recruitment will be banned.

As for the fieldhouse, it is what it is. A Phil Knight is not going to come down Rutgers' chimney this Christmas or any other. When a school has as thin a record of success as Rutgers does, it is hard to generate large donations. Guilt-tripping the fan base about that doesn't help. Our coaching staff is, I'm sure, smart enough to realize that we must emphasize finding diamonds in the rough, and then making those diamonds shine. Only through success on the field will we generate the kind of financial support needed to build the facilities we want.

 

[retired711]

Thanks for your thorough and well-reasoned response. First, let's keep in mind that the NIL problem is going to be less of an issue next year when the House v. NCAA settlement comes into force and when schools will all have the same budget to pay players and when outside NIL for the sake of recruitment will be banned.

As for the fieldhouse, it is what it is. A Phil Knight is not going to come down Rutgers' chimney this Christmas or any other. When a school has as thin a record of success as Rutgers does, it is hard to generate large donations. Guilt-tripping the fan base about that doesn't help. Our coaching staff is, I'm sure, smart enough to realize that we must emphasize finding diamonds in the rough, and then making those diamonds shine. Only through success on the field will we generate the kind of financial support needed to build the facilities we want.

Can I add something? From what I can tell, the majority of regular posters here are season-ticket holders who make at least the required donation and (mostly) pay for parking as well at a stadium that is not comfortable to go to (security hassles, poor food, inadequate bathrooms.) Even the implication that our fans are not doing enough -- that they are to blame for our lack of success -- really troubles me.

 

[RUAldo]

Can I add something? From what I can tell, the majority of regular posters here are season-ticket holders who make at least the required donation and (mostly) pay for parking as well at a stadium that is not comfortable to go to (security hassles, poor food, inadequate bathrooms.) Even the implication that our fans are not doing enough -- that they are to blame for our lack of success -- really troubles me.

Unfortunately it’s not enough and doubt it ever will be. Take a trip to some remote college towns especially in the Midwest and South and those college fans would rather donate money to NIL funds than save for their kid’s college. It’s religion. In NJ we just have too many competing interests and folks aren’t nearly as interested. We view going to a game and routing for RU as fun. They view it as a way of life.

 

[yesrutgers01]

Unfortunately it’s not enough and doubt it ever will be. Take a trip to some remote college towns especially in the Midwest and South and those college fans would rather donate money to NIL funds than save for their kid’s college. It’s religion. In NJ we just have too many competing interests and folks aren’t nearly as interested. We view going to a game and routing for RU as fun. They view it as a way of life.

Dumb question- in those MidWest and Southern towns- are their tickets and parking etc as expensive as up here?
It seems the normal fan at Rutgers are paying out thousands each year in donations and tickets/parking etc plus cost of living and are just tapped out in many cases.

 

[RUAldo]

Dumb question- in those MidWest and Southern towns- are their tickets and parking etc as expensive as up here?
It seems the normal fan at Rutgers are paying out thousands each year in donations and tickets/parking etc plus cost of living and are just tapped out in many cases.

Not sure but it seems that donating or paying money to the schools for sports is the same as how they view making donations to church.

FWIW, RU can’t win the NIL game on the football field - too many players needed and too few donations. On the other hand, RU could turn the wrestling world upside down if it can raise enough money for Bo Bassett and Jax Forrest and whoever else it takes to get the Bishop McCourt pipeline open especially now that we got Devon Magro and already have Gibson. Those are generational talents. We are in the mix. Same goes for some of the studs at Faith Christian. These kids would put RU as a title contender perhaps even give PSU and Iowa a run for their money. Would be way cheaper than trying to buy a football team.

 

[vkj91]

Ahh OK - you made a donation to RU that’s worthy enough of being displayed publicly in the Hale Center but you won’t post it here. That’s what I thought.

Totally different. Someone sees my name in hale center they google it and it’s done. Here crazy people try to out or publicly destroy people all the time. We already know you are a jealous person regarding money.