Sorry that we’ve gotten away from the title of this post, but a couple of additional comments for Zipp…
The Crum departure was an unnecessary way to end a classy Hall of Famer’s career, with the bickering that went public for several months hardly being a shining example of navigating through a difficult coaching situation, with discussions that could have stayed behind the scenes, and which was salvaged by Shoemaker stepping in to negotiate financial terms and by Denny insisting that he was retiring on his own accord.
As for the specific handling of the Pitino departure, I think the timing (immediately after the FBI scandal broke) was appropriate, but it could well be that the contractual procedures weren’t followed well enough and if that costs extra money on our behalf, then I certainly don’t approve of the specific handling there.
As for basketball attendance, you are obviously citing “announced attendance” figures. (I now expect that I can now use those figures when proving that UofL has benefitted significantly from the new arena, something you denied earlier. An attendance increase of over 1,000 per game at the KFC Yum Center for seven years above the maximum capacity of Freedom Hall, plus approximately a tripling of the number of suites, has been responsible for a significant increase in revenue as a result of the move. More on that hopefully to come later, but thanks for allowing me to use announced attendance.) Excluding the 3 NIT games last year (which averaged over 11,000 in actual attendance, which amazed just about everyone), our attendance average was still FOURTH in the country. Yes, it was a noticeable drop and down to about 80% of capacity but nowhere near the 30% drop that I have seen mentioned elsewhere.
The Crum departure was an unnecessary way to end a classy Hall of Famer’s career, with the bickering that went public for several months hardly being a shining example of navigating through a difficult coaching situation, with discussions that could have stayed behind the scenes, and which was salvaged by Shoemaker stepping in to negotiate financial terms and by Denny insisting that he was retiring on his own accord.
As for the specific handling of the Pitino departure, I think the timing (immediately after the FBI scandal broke) was appropriate, but it could well be that the contractual procedures weren’t followed well enough and if that costs extra money on our behalf, then I certainly don’t approve of the specific handling there.
As for basketball attendance, you are obviously citing “announced attendance” figures. (I now expect that I can now use those figures when proving that UofL has benefitted significantly from the new arena, something you denied earlier. An attendance increase of over 1,000 per game at the KFC Yum Center for seven years above the maximum capacity of Freedom Hall, plus approximately a tripling of the number of suites, has been responsible for a significant increase in revenue as a result of the move. More on that hopefully to come later, but thanks for allowing me to use announced attendance.) Excluding the 3 NIT games last year (which averaged over 11,000 in actual attendance, which amazed just about everyone), our attendance average was still FOURTH in the country. Yes, it was a noticeable drop and down to about 80% of capacity but nowhere near the 30% drop that I have seen mentioned elsewhere.
