I am being a bit sarcastic and I have said this before but Pitt needs to make season tickets $1 + a $499 donation to A412. I believe that currently, this is not allowed per NCAA rules but #1 that's going to be changing and #2, what's the NCAA going to do if we do this?
While this season may not be a great example of this because I believe Narduzzi (partly due to the Bell hire) has done one heck of a coaching job, players do win games in my opinion. Give me better players over better coaches or better weights, or better nutrionists, or better analysts. So how does a pro football team get better players? You have to pay them what they are asking for. So, if I were running Pitt football, I'd come up with a player salary number that would put us in the top third of the ACC and then reverse engineer that. Lets say that's $20 million. How can we pay the players $20 million? Well 20K season tickets (not sure what the number is) times $500 A412 is $10 million. Then you have to make up the other $10 million through general fundraising which should be helped by the (fingers crossed) elimination of the Panther Club.
The next question is what are we going to do without making any money on tickets? Well, trim staff, for one. Pay assistants less. Dont stay in a hotel on the night before home games. Dont stay in a South Side hotel during training camp. You make cuts like this. Are any of these good things? No. But if it came down to it, would you as a fan rather the team stayed in hotels during training camp and before home games if it meant we couldn't afford to keep Player X? Or, lets say, the choice next year is to either keep Kyle Louis but you have to hire a cheap LB coach from Youngstown State or you keep your current LB coach but you lose Louis to LSU? Which do you pick? I want players. The rest of the stuff, we'll deal with.
While this season may not be a great example of this because I believe Narduzzi (partly due to the Bell hire) has done one heck of a coaching job, players do win games in my opinion. Give me better players over better coaches or better weights, or better nutrionists, or better analysts. So how does a pro football team get better players? You have to pay them what they are asking for. So, if I were running Pitt football, I'd come up with a player salary number that would put us in the top third of the ACC and then reverse engineer that. Lets say that's $20 million. How can we pay the players $20 million? Well 20K season tickets (not sure what the number is) times $500 A412 is $10 million. Then you have to make up the other $10 million through general fundraising which should be helped by the (fingers crossed) elimination of the Panther Club.
The next question is what are we going to do without making any money on tickets? Well, trim staff, for one. Pay assistants less. Dont stay in a hotel on the night before home games. Dont stay in a South Side hotel during training camp. You make cuts like this. Are any of these good things? No. But if it came down to it, would you as a fan rather the team stayed in hotels during training camp and before home games if it meant we couldn't afford to keep Player X? Or, lets say, the choice next year is to either keep Kyle Louis but you have to hire a cheap LB coach from Youngstown State or you keep your current LB coach but you lose Louis to LSU? Which do you pick? I want players. The rest of the stuff, we'll deal with.
