I'm baaaaaaack (Long-ish read).

[UCF_Grad11]

Several years ago, I posted about our Knights - in particular, my views on certain decisions made by our controversial coaching staff and underwhelming marketing department. The board became a bit volatile and I decided that I didn't want to be associated with it.

In 2012, you folks voted me "Coach-hater of the Year". Honored, really, but hate is a powerful word, and it doesn't accurately describe how I objectively felt about the (mis)-management of our football program.

In 2013, we won our conference and a BCS bowl. Hard to argue that this wasn't one heck of a feat.

Although everybody involved worked hard to achieve that level of success, I felt that the program ignored the reality that it's just as difficult to stay at the top, or to descend gracefully (analog: Everest). We simply plucked a logo on our stadium, truck, what have you, and carried on. Recruiting did not appear to realize the magnitude of improvement you'd expect - even regressing some - many of our best players moved on, and we had another go at the assistant coaching carousel.

The underlying source of my frustration with the program is this: to the average / somewhat involved fan (e.g., me), we appear to operate very inefficiently.

• We do not seem to take advantage of superior talent, training, or facilities. I understand that this is a very general statement, but our team seems physically slow and at times unathletic / apathetic. Teams like Furman and FIU have nowhere near the magnitude of advantages that our supporters have provided to our team, yet we are unable to translate that into performance on the field. Historically we have played down to a handful of very poor teams. We also seem to have difficulty evaluating players and fielding the right ones for given scenarios.
• Our marketing department has never impressed me, but at least they gave it an effort in previous years. Yes, "the patch" was DOA, but I haven't seen us rally around anything since - including the 'gift' of months of positive press during the 13-14 offseason. Our commercial this year is heart-warming and makes me feel good as an alumni, but it fails as an advert for the school: it's too complicated, it takes place at an Orlando a City Soccer game, very little to no 'product' (logo) placement, and it's verbose.
• The magnitude of our success is underscored by the scope of our failure. If Porsche designs a supercar that spontaneously catches fire, which facts do you believe will be highlighted the most? What do people remember about the Dreamliner? The iPhone 4's antenna? There are dozens of analogs, but my point remains.
• Our administration has made it difficult to show our support for the team. I'm a young alumni, but I'll support the team as much as possible given my means. Since I don't have a ton of liquidity about me, I'll buy some tickets (even a season ticket or two), convince others to join me at games, convince colleagues who may have graduated from UCF to pay more attention to the program, donate what I can, etc. When I was a student-tutor at UCF, I would premise my slides with athletic updates. In other words, I have converted a few "Gator-Knights" to simply "Knights". Took several people to their first game. Influenced a family member's college application or two. Lately, UCF has made it hard for me to go on about my usual business touting our program in this way, for a few reasons:
  • Thursday games on premium channels. I'm several hours away and work full-time. This influences my ticket consumption, ability to see my favorite team live (or at all, see premium channels). Went to about half a dozen bars and restaurants looking for someone who has CBS Sports. I didn't find one, but I'm almost glad I didn't (see point below).
  • Scheduling. Our marquee game is a sputtering rivalry with a team barely better than our own, and it's on a family holiday. Many of us will try to make it, but rather than cater to TV - especially given our performance - why not throw the fans a bone? Isn't our support important, too? The second tenet of scheduling is the poor quality of opponents via-a-vis our conference. A bit chicken/egg, but notwithstanding is the fact that it's hard to get excited to see us...
  • Losing to really bad teams. It's making me look like a sadist at work. Honestly, it's embarrassing on a personal level to talk up a team that does what it's doing.
  • No accountability. People are surprisingly willing to forgive others who own up to their mistakes. Granted, there's a limit to acceptable failure, but it would feel good on days like this to hear someone say something like, "Know what? We shouldn't have pulled Harris on that drive. We shouldn't have run Wild Patti seven times in a row then thrown the deep ball. That was my call, and it was wrong."
• Lack of vision: I'd love to hear more about our plan to improve the team and the program as a whole. Now that on-the-field performance can no longer be used as a crux, what advantages are we touting to the powers that be? The program needs something to rally around.

More upsetting than last night's result was monitoring the popular #ChargeOn hashtag, where first-time game attendees - most of them students - tweeted about returning to following the Gators. Die-hards throwing their hands in the air. This is the antithesis of our mutual effort, folks.

Where do we go from here?

I'm not a sports expert. I've followed UCF for 6 years, and several of them have been good. I'm a businessperson, and I earn a living evaluating marketplace trends. I'm deeply concerned about ours.

If I were competent enough to be in charge, I'd urge fans to attend our next televised home game. I would make it as easy as possible to attend and portray a unified front (t-shirts, discounted tickets, etc.). I would dig deep - phone campaigns, ads, letters and emails - to rally our fans and attract new ones. I'd lay down my cards and demonstrate that our only shot is to show our support en force for a team that is struggling and needs to see it. A group of Power 5 hobnobs that need to see it.

The time has passed for slow and steady; make a move.

Thanks in advance to anybody who has had the patience to read this post, and to anybody who replies, regardless of whether you agree with some or none of my points above,

 

[HerdChemist89]

..

Damn.

That was long and unnecessary.

I'll cut to the chase: Get rid of O'Resume'. Cut your losses while you can. Embrace the sucking that will come with a completely new HC, and a new, separate AD person. Start afresh and clean out the funk. Take your licks now and in another 5-6 years you will maybe win at a higher level again.

Just sayin'.

..

 

[firm_bizzle]

That fact that you beat me out for Coach hater of the year in 2012 was a travesty.

 

[mattropolis]

Several years ago, I posted about our Knights - in particular, my views on certain decisions made by our controversial coaching staff and underwhelming marketing department. The board became a bit volatile and I decided that I didn't want to be associated with it.

In 2012, you folks voted me "Coach-hater of the Year". Honored, really, but hate is a powerful word, and it doesn't accurately describe how I objectively felt about the (mis)-management of our football program.

In 2013, we won our conference and a BCS bowl. Hard to argue that this wasn't one heck of a feat.

Although everybody involved worked hard to achieve that level of success, I felt that the program ignored the reality that it's just as difficult to stay at the top, or to descend gracefully (analog: Everest). We simply plucked a logo on our stadium, truck, what have you, and carried on. Recruiting did not appear to realize the magnitude of improvement you'd expect - even regressing some - many of our best players moved on, and we had another go at the assistant coaching carousel.

The underlying source of my frustration with the program is this: to the average / somewhat involved fan (e.g., me), we appear to operate very inefficiently.

• We do not seem to take advantage of superior talent, training, or facilities. I understand that this is a very general statement, but our team seems physically slow and at times unathletic / apathetic. Teams like Furman and FIU have nowhere near the magnitude of advantages that our supporters have provided to our team, yet we are unable to translate that into performance on the field. Historically we have played down to a handful of very poor teams. We also seem to have difficulty evaluating players and fielding the right ones for given scenarios.
• Our marketing department has never impressed me, but at least they gave it an effort in previous years. Yes, "the patch" was DOA, but I haven't seen us rally around anything since - including the 'gift' of months of positive press during the 13-14 offseason. Our commercial this year is heart-warming and makes me feel good as an alumni, but it fails as an advert for the school: it's too complicated, it takes place at an Orlando a City Soccer game, very little to no 'product' (logo) placement, and it's verbose.
• The magnitude of our success is underscored by the scope of our failure. If Porsche designs a supercar that spontaneously catches fire, which facts do you believe will be highlighted the most? What do people remember about the Dreamliner? The iPhone 4's antenna? There are dozens of analogs, but my point remains.
• Our administration has made it difficult to show our support for the team. I'm a young alumni, but I'll support the team as much as possible given my means. Since I don't have a ton of liquidity about me, I'll buy some tickets (even a season ticket or two), convince others to join me at games, convince colleagues who may have graduated from UCF to pay more attention to the program, donate what I can, etc. When I was a student-tutor at UCF, I would premise my slides with athletic updates. In other words, I have converted a few "Gator-Knights" to simply "Knights". Took several people to their first game. Influenced a family member's college application or two. Lately, UCF has made it hard for me to go on about my usual business touting our program in this way, for a few reasons:
  • Thursday games on premium channels. I'm several hours away and work full-time. This influences my ticket consumption, ability to see my favorite team live (or at all, see premium channels). Went to about half a dozen bars and restaurants looking for someone who has CBS Sports. I didn't find one, but I'm almost glad I didn't (see point below).
  • Scheduling. Our marquee game is a sputtering rivalry with a team barely better than our own, and it's on a family holiday. Many of us will try to make it, but rather than cater to TV - especially given our performance - why not throw the fans a bone? Isn't our support important, too? The second tenet of scheduling is the poor quality of opponents via-a-vis our conference. A bit chicken/egg, but notwithstanding is the fact that it's hard to get excited to see us...
  • Losing to really bad teams. It's making me look like a sadist at work. Honestly, it's embarrassing on a personal level to talk up a team that does what it's doing.
  • No accountability. People are surprisingly willing to forgive others who own up to their mistakes. Granted, there's a limit to acceptable failure, but it would feel good on days like this to hear someone say something like, "Know what? We shouldn't have pulled Harris on that drive. We shouldn't have run Wild Patti seven times in a row then thrown the deep ball. That was my call, and it was wrong."
• Lack of vision: I'd love to hear more about our plan to improve the team and the program as a whole. Now that on-the-field performance can no longer be used as a crux, what advantages are we touting to the powers that be? The program needs something to rally around.

More upsetting than last night's result was monitoring the popular #ChargeOn hashtag, where first-time game attendees - most of them students - tweeted about returning to following the Gators. Die-hards throwing their hands in the air. This is the antithesis of our mutual effort, folks.

Where do we go from here?

I'm not a sports expert. I've followed UCF for 6 years, and several of them have been good. I'm a businessperson, and I earn a living evaluating marketplace trends. I'm deeply concerned about ours.

If I were competent enough to be in charge, I'd urge fans to attend our next televised home game. I would make it as easy as possible to attend and portray a unified front (t-shirts, discounted tickets, etc.). I would dig deep - phone campaigns, ads, letters and emails - to rally our fans and attract new ones. I'd lay down my cards and demonstrate that our only shot is to show our support en force for a team that is struggling and needs to see it. A group of Power 5 hobnobs that need to see it.

The time has passed for slow and steady; make a move.

Thanks in advance to anybody who has had the patience to read this post, and to anybody who replies, regardless of whether you agree with some or none of my points above,

Welcome back. Nice read. We're a G5 school. With the business environment that is college football, we, nor any other G5 program, is going to be able to recruit any better than we currently do. There is a definite pecking order for high school players when they commit. It's pretty obvious if you just look at the rankings each year. Some G5 schools will find some assistant coaches or coordinators that can pull in some elevated talent before they bolt for a bigger paycheck but it is unsustainable for G5 programs.
As far as applying our resources, we are successful both on and off the field, with us having two first round NFL draft picks in the last two years. In the 2014 draft there were three G5 players taken in the first round: from UCF, Buffalo, and Northern Illinois. In 2015 there were two G5 players: from UCF and UConn. I'd say that is applying resources and developing players.
As far as being "embarassed" or whatever people want to call it, that is each persons choice. I was a proud knight fan when we essentially sucked from 1999 to 2004, I was still a proud fan when we had successful seasons, and whatever happens this year i'm still a fan. Being a fan is the point. Nobody gets to sit at the top forever and everybody losses games that they should win on paper. Ole miss best bama, stanford beat usc, georgia southern beat florida, usf beat fsu, wake forest has beat fsu, and on and on.
I agree our marketing sucks. When you're not a big, massive company like IBM, Lockheed, Siemens, etc... and you're a smaller company trying to compete with them for "work" you can't think or plan like them. To call out Moneyball, "If we try to play like the Yankees in here, we will lose to the Yankees out there."
As far as when games are played, TV always comes first. That is where the money is. That us the business of college football. The amount of money made by people in the stands compared to the tv money is peanuts, esepecially for P5 schools, where we'd like to be feeding off that trough one day.

 

[(Art_Vandelay)]

 

[YouSeeF]

Another great post. The middle-of-the-road GOL apologists are going to have a hard time arguing with the onslaught of fans with this same line of thinking.