Dave Brandon Q&A with AA.com
How he sees the last year, and how he hopes to grow the program(s) in the future.
I was worried that Mr. Brandon would still be tired from traveling to 6 cities in 5 days.
Football is the most important sport at Michigan, but I love that he takes all sports serious.
Pimp hand making it go.
What he means is "I am going to make the Big House look like a minor league ballpark with all of the advertising I am going to bring in."
What he says is this:
I want to grow our revenue streams to afford us the ability to reinvest in the program.
Would a: "Greater Detroit Area Chiropracter's Credit Union Drum Major Back Bend®" really be that bad?
And has made it clear in the past (like after the Big Chill) that advertising at football games was off the table. And frankly, without maximizing our revenues, we wouldn't be able to support a couple of new lacrosse teams, our Big Ten Champion softball team, our National Champion gymnastics team or are incredibly successful men's soccer team and golf team. Yes, football is the most important to me too, but I still take pride in the accomplishments of our entire athletic department, and those wouldn't be possible without a steady revenue stream.
While I'm very resistant to advertising in the stadium, I think the reason we don't have to worry about it (or "pro-combat uniforms") is BECAUSE our AD has been so focused on maximizing revenue.
listen I dislike ads as much as the next guy but the fact of the matter is to remain competitive facilities will always need to be upgraded. The options to pay for this are to raise ticket prices beyond what the average fan can play or allow some ads. Living in a fantasy world where somehow michigan makes enough money to stay competitive will ignoring possibly the largest untapped source of income while every single one of our competitors is using that resource is not helpful. If we can get by with no ads than that is the obvious course of action. If the AD needs more money to remain competitive and the options are raise tickets even higher or put in some ads I think a poll would show ads aren't as bad as you might think.
p.s. sorry for not being good at the english language, I've never been good at spelling
At what point does it just become a shameless money grab? It's always going to be something else. "We need another 20,000 seats." "We need more perks for luxury seating." "We need another home game." "We can't afford to schedule home-and-homes" (which is thankfully changing). "We need such-and-such facility to 'stay competitive.'" Those things are nice when they're justified, and annoying when they're shameless attempts to pad the surge into the black.
Advertisements have been long-resisted for a reason. Does Michigan need that little oomph of revenue as much as Belle Tire needs to pay to bring you your third-down replay? Do we need an adidas logo plastered on every flat surface within sight of a TV camera?
There's playing the "we need more revenue!" card when you really need to play it, and then there's gratuitous money-grab just for the sake of the money-grab. As far as I'm concerned, Michigan's need for revenue in no way merits turning our back on one of the few things left in our stadium that makes us an exception to the rule. We've already got Bob Seger and Sandstorm. We don't need a Subway logo on the end zone wall.
The problem is with college athletics in a major conference is there is never a time when you don't need money. To stay competitive in sports you pretty much need to always be ugradding, maybe football doesn't need 20k more seats but lacrosse needs a stadium now. Maybe we don't need more luxury seating but the crew team needs a new boat. The football team provides a majority of the athletic departments budget, every extra dollar it brings in benefits the AD as a whole. I for one am willing to see ads in the big house if it means our secondary sports can do better. But hey maybe thats just me.
listens to this song everyday.