By: Justin Walker
Every year several West Virginia coaches, along with Athletic Director Wren Baker, travel the state to meet with fans and donors at a fundraising event called the Coaches Caravan. During the stop in Southern West Virginia at the Resort at Glade Springs, Baker spoke to the audience about the current landscape of college sports and some of the challenges facing all college athletic departments. He also laid out part of his plan and explained why WVU will remain competitive.
“Well, I think we have to look at every revenue stream we can,” said Baker. “That’s first and foremost. So you see announcements coming from us. We’re moving to a per seat model and donations in men’s basketball. That’s going to cost some people less money, but it’s going to cost some people more money; and the better the seats, the more money it’s going to cost.”
Baker also mentioned plans for new opportunities with advertising partners that are in the works. “You’ll probably see us start to name some facilities. We’ve got some of that we’re negotiating through now.“
Earlier this week, the WVU football program announced a throwback uniform that was very popular among most Mountaineer fans. Baker even talked about how that can be used to earn more revenue for the athletic department. Fans will also be able to benefit from it with an opportunity to purchase new merchandise. “You’re going to see us, well, things like the throwback uniform we just announced. So, every time we do something like that, we’re doing really three things. We’re trying to make sure that we’re bringing awareness to our programs. So, those releases do massive amounts of engagement on social media. You love it, you hate it, whatever. Like, we will have hundreds of thousands of engagements. We will sell more tickets because of a uniform release. That’s unbelievable. We’re also trying to help people remember back to those great moments in those great times, and trying to remember and honor those people. But, I also will tell you we’re trying to sell some baby blue merchandise. Because that’s something new and it’s something that people don’t have. And we’ll sell some of that and everything that’s sold, we get 15% of it. And so it just comes back to trying to raise as much money as you can.”
Baker went on to stress that, although West Virginia will never have one of the largest budgets in college athletics, he is confident WVU will still be able to compete. “We’re probably never going to be one of the largest budgets or having more than anybody, and our coaches know that. I’m very candid with them about that. But I do think we can have enough to be highly competitive and because of and how important it is in the state and how much people care.”
When expanding on the importance of WVU athletics to the state of West Virginia as a whole, he said, “Everybody’s athletic department is important. It helps brand your university, it helps brand, you know, everything that goes on. But in this state, we help bring awareness to this state. And we have a state that is rich in natural resources. We’re rich in human resources; great hardworking people, and we need more jobs, we need a better economy, we need those things. And the best way to bring visibility to that, in my opinion, is through WVU athletics being great. And, so it’s too important to our state, our trajectory. We have to find a way to be successful and we have.”
Several WVU coaches, including football coach Rich Rodriguez and men’s basketball coach, Ross Hodge, were also in attendance at the caravan. Stay tuned here at WVSportsChat for more news from this event.
Photo Credit: WVU Athletics
