Why not a Basketball team as good as the Football team?

First—there is a commitment to improve the hoops program, or they wouldn’t have decided to pay a coach not to work. This is significant when you consider that revenues are down based on the economy. It is tough to invest a ton of money in the program immediately, and expect a conference champion next year if the school is cutting teachers and programs.

Second—the whole discussion evolves around money. The FB program has had many facilities expansions, raises in coaches pay, increases in travel and recruiting budget, etc that allow the football team to compete on a more national level. This has taken years to build. The money spent on hoops isn’t even comparable in conference—let alone at the national level.

I think this has been a key factor in Graham’s lack of success—-if he has less money, it is harder to be successful. Check out the table in the Statesman yesterday that compares the budgets of Boise State vs the other open hoops jobs—-the jobs with higher budgets will get better applicants. I don’t think that this is the only factor in Graham’s accomplishments, but it is tough to do any job well if you don’t have the financial support of the organization.

I think that the two sports are different as well. In football, coaching and schemes win games. Win games and you will gradually get better recruits. In basketball, a couple of talented players push you over the top. BSU hasn’t really had the NBA level guys to win games.

You also have more opportunity to develop FB athletes—-grayshirt a kid like Colledge, feed him and run him through weight programs, and an NFL guy can pop out the other side of a six year period. Players switch positions and end up in the NFL—Naanee and Hall. In hoops, the best players only go to college for one year and will never come to Boise.

There are a series of chicken and egg issues here—-get a new coach, get new recruits, win games. Fill the Pavilion, raise ticket prices. Expand facilities, get better coaches, get better players. Rinse and repeat. A new coach and some wins is step number one.

Additionally—remember that the football team’s success is a historical anomaly—-name a similar situation where a team has grown so dramatically and maintained such a high standard for so long (with budgets growing to match)? It is not reasonable to expect the hoops program to compete with the FB program in the short term. In fact—-you might argue that Gene is spending all extra moneys on the FB team, which prevents investment on the hoops side. Would FB fans be willing to pay Coach Pete and staff less in the future to grow the basketball program? I doubt it.

This, by the way, is the same reason that Idaho will never be consistently good at D1 FB—too many of these obstacles can’t be overcome.