Monthly bill Haisten: ‘This tire is flat,’ Rick Dickson states of TU’s advertising and marketing/attendance crisis | Basketball

For University of Tulsa athletic director Rick Dickson, there are difficulties (like fundraising) and there are challenges (like the very last-location effectiveness of the Golden Hurricane basketball method, as well as the worst dwelling-activity attendance for TU basketball because just before Nolan Richardson was employed in 1980).

When you do overhear Hurricane basketball speak about city, it usually facilities on irrespective of whether TU is about to make a coaching change just after eight seasons with Frank Haith.

Dickson had a large amount to say during a Saturday interview, but wouldn’t say substantially about his basketball coaching problem: “I in no way have and never ever will handle (a coach’s status) right until factors are concluded.”

Tied with South Florida for past place in the American Athletic Conference, Tulsa is 9-19 over-all, 7-8 in house game titles, 3-14 in league perform and on the brink of what would be the program’s first 20-decline season given that 2004-05.

At 1 p.m. Sunday, TU closes the normal year by internet hosting UCF. If the Hurricane stumbles, the TU application would be doomed to a losing house history for the very first time considering the fact that 1976-77 and for only the 2nd time in 60 a long time.

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With 136, Haith is a person victory shy of tying for Clarence Iba at No. 2 on TU’s vocation wins checklist. The chief continues to be Doug Wojcik, who in 2005-12 experienced 140 wins. Haith’s 2019-20 squad was 1 of 3 teams that shared the AAC regular-year title.

A previous TU athlete and the university’s athletic director in 1990-94, Dickson paused his retirement and returned to his alma mater in September 2020 as the interim successor to Derrick Gragg. Ultimately, the “interim” label was dropped as Dickson agreed to a 3-year deal that expires through the summer months of 2024.

Similar to COVID-19, there were being attendance limitations and rampant abnormalities through Dickson’s operate via the 2020-21 TU sporting activities calendar. In 2021-22, he’s gotten a clearer look at TU’s internet marketing failures (my terms, not his) and attendance crisis (in 2021, a 16,077 soccer normal at 30,000-seat Chapman Stadium and a current 2,866 basketball regular at the 8,355-seat Reynolds Center).

In 1991, Dickson recalled, “we took 23,000 Tulsa people today to the (Freedom Bowl) in Anaheim, California. To a next-tier bowl. Assume about that. We don’t get 23,000 for a house match now.”

Dickson did not mince text when speaking about TU’s advertising and marketing problems.

“This tire is flat,” he claimed right before heading to a Saturday fundraising appointment in downtown Tulsa. “We’ve got to do a deep dive on anything — on our full game-day encounter.

“The encounter has to be much better, and it will be. That is the determination I have designed.”

This is the essence of a marketing and advertising failure: In an e mail, a Tulsa Planet reader stated that he and his wife are TU graduates and for several years have been football period-ticket holders. Not as soon as, the reader included, had he or his spouse been contacted by the university concerning basketball tickets. Unbelievable.

I forwarded that facts to Dickson, who contacted the few, invited them to a basketball match and sat with them at the Reynolds Centre. By their conclude of their time with Dickson, the pair indicated they would grow to be Golden Hurricane Club members and were committed to buying period tickets for football and basketball.

If Dickson’s common perception and Client Relations 101 acumen could be applied to all sides of athletics advertising, TU would rating important gains.

While Oral Roberts University has a few acres of free of charge parking on the Mabee Heart house, Dickson is knowledgeable of the persistent problems about the deficiency of TU parking near Chapman Stadium and the Reynolds Heart. Also, 11th Street can be a difficult and darkish crossing for pedestrians who park south of the campus.

Just before TU hosted Wichita Condition for basketball previous 7 days, Dickson had a simple but excellent thought: “Let’s change on the stadium lights. Lo and behold, that full place was lighted up. It is not the long-term solution. We have acquired to get the metropolis to include an additional stoplight or a crosswalk.”

The prolonged-expression resolution would be the development of a 4-tiered parking construction straight away east of the Reynolds Middle.

“That would be suitable,” Dickson claimed. “That becoming claimed, my time and tenure now is much more about the speedy — more of the triage mode.

“We’ve obtained a quite major (on-campus parking) ability, if it is available. The trouble is, we never make it readily available. Very long term — would a (parking garage) be the alternative? Certainly, but I’m not heading to be all-around extended-expression. I’m making an attempt to determine out how to make it get the job done with what we have now.”

Immediately after Oklahoma Condition received the 2011 Large 12 football title, the university experienced a 2012 freshman course of 4,280 — the largest in college historical past.

During the 2000 football period, as the Sooners have been 13- countrywide champions, athletic director Joe Castiglione was the driving power driving OU’s greatest fundraising marketing campaign at any time.

Immediately after the Golden Eagles’ Sweet Sixteen surge very last 12 months, ORU experienced a 133% maximize in enrollment programs. A key donation allowed ORU to crack ground on the design of the 10,000-sq.-foot Mike Carter Athletic Center, which ought to be open up for organization in about a 12 months.

At the Mabee Middle this season, university student attendance was at its optimum degree considering that the ’70s. ORU athletic director Tim Johnson suggests strong university student attendance resulted from a 6-year internet marketing marketing campaign.

For most online games at the Reynolds Heart this season, the college student part was sparsely populated.

Dickson now is at the eight-month mark of a doing the job partnership with Brad Carson, TU’s new president. How does Carson price as a president who recognizes the importance of effective athletics?

“Whatever the leading score is — four stars or five stars — Brad Carson would get that ranking,” Dickson claimed. “He understands the value of what we’re striving to do for the college.”

Just before rolling downtown for his fundraising presentation, Dickson shut with this information that pertained to TU’s marketing and advertising and energy: “I just know we can be improved than what we have been. When we’ve peaked in athletics listed here, we were engaged with this metropolis. I was component of it. I’ve noticed it.”