Welcome to the Friday Feedback, which honestly doesn’t have much to say here. I haven’t seen the football team, and won’t put eyes on it this weekend, so I can’t say for sure what’s going on there. Men’s basketball is in the past. Baseball is not yet on our plate. I’m not sure what the interest level here is for the WNIT.
That said, WVU’s all in on that thing. The WNIT has weird requirements for hosting home games. Teams have to pay for home games, and it starts to add up the longer a team lasts. There are two ways to go, and the simple way is the most common way. A first round game costs $6,500. The second round is $7,500. Then it’s $9,000 for the third round and $12,000 for the quarterfinal. The semifinal costs $15,000 and the final costs $20,000. That’s 70 grand right there, and WVU’s going beyond that by paying $5,000 to rent out the Charleston Civic Center and then, let’s say, maybe half of that to rent buses, travel to Charleston and get a block of hotel rooms for the night. Let’s call it, what do you think, $77,500?
The other way to do it offers a variable. The Civic Center and the transportation and housing there remains the same, but the WNIT can dig into your pockets if you do well. The per round guarantees are minimum guarantees. A school has to pay the WNIT 85 percent of the first $30,000 of net game receipts and 55 percent of the net game receipts above $30,000 if that sum is greater than the minimum guarantee.
That doesn’t often happen in the WNIT, and WVU hasn’t done that yet for the first five games and probably won’t for the final, but how nice of the WNIT to give itself that benefit when it does nothing to help teams advertise locally and spread the word so that a cooperative effort might benefit the sport or, heaven forbid, the student-athletes. The WNIT website, by the way, is proud to say it does all it does “because the WNIT is financially committed to promoting women’s basketball.”
To be fair, schools pay no more than $10,000 combined for all their road games in the WNIT, which does help a school like UCLA, which was 13-18 in the regular season and played at San Diego in the second round and at Michigan in the semifinal Wednesday. So there’s some assistance for high-cost travel, and that lets teams budget responsibly for their postseason play and not suffer financially for being successful.
Nevertheless, postseason basketball, and in particular ticket allocation for the NCAA tournament, is the biggest racket in college sports, and you figure it’s only a matter of time until the schools get around to rolling up their sleeves.
Onto the Feedback. As always, comments appear as posted. In other words, get your story straight.
Dann White said:
Rod was a classmate of my sisters, and occasionally visited the White household with other teens. A popular story is that while I was being potty-trained, I ran to the kitchen to get my pee-jar, (a Mason-Jar provided for me to prevent accidents) and proceeded to relieve myself in the presence of this dozen or so high-schoolers.
Hundley, who was among those in attendance, was totally cracked up by this, often reminiscing about the incident when he met up with my sisters later in life.
Imagine the contentment that Fred Schaus must have felt, having coached both Hundley and Jerry West in both college and the pros. I doubt there was ever a hoosier who could compare with the awesome talent of these Mountaineers, one of my life-long heroes has gone to play hoops with the angels.
God bless you, Hot Rod
Dann
Bless you, Dann.
Shoot4Show said:
If there is a Friday Feedback and Dann’s last post isn’t included, there is no justice in this world. I’d like to hear a journalist’s and author’s response because I’m at a loss. Where do you go with that?
I stared at the screen. Went back to the beginning, because sometimes I skim through comments, and read it again. Stared again. Laughed again. Committed to doing the F Double this week. Laughed some more.
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