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rabbit74

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ok, everytime i look at this thread title, only one thing comes to mind....

 

 

Coach Sutton as Mr Kotter and the "names have all changed since you hung around" (lots of new coaches in the Summit)

 

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Was I over-the-top in my comments above?  Yes.  As I stated above, the Southland did have some very good athletes and schools.  However, overall as a conference they are about as low as you can get in D-I athletics.  I do not hate the Southland and actually feel sorry for teams that are stuck in that conference because I see it going nowhere.  There are too many former D-II and FCS/I-AA teams who either do not have or will not commit the resources to move the conference up the food chain.  Our main programs were and will remain both MBB and WBB and Men's Baseball.  That is not to diminish the other sports programs at ORU.  The Southland is not and for the foreseeable future will not be a basketball conference.  Further, take a look at the commitment schools like the Dakota schools, UNO, Denver and even IUPUI have put into upgrading facilities and you will see a vast chasm between schools in the Southland and schools in the Summit.  There is no guarantee that just because you spend millions on upgrading your facilities that you will automatically become a powerhouse, but if you are willing to commit millions in resources to get better facilities, it shows me you are headed in the right direction and at least are making an attempt to improve not only your school but the conference as well.  Sorry, but I do not see ACU, IWU, Houston Baptist, UNO or a lot of the other schools in the Southland making that commitment.  Finally, if I were an AD at an established D-I university, the Southland is the last place I would look to park my school's athletic teams.  I would be looking for a conference/league where the member schools are showing a commitment in actual dollars to try and improve what they have.  The Summit may not be the final solution for ORU, but in my humble opinion it is a move in the right direction.  Oh and by the way, in both MBB and baseball no Southland team blew us off the court/field.  As a matter of fact, we exhibited a talent for blowing leads and giving away games.

 

GO GOLDEN EAGLES! 

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Was I over-the-top in my comments above?  Yes.  As I stated above, the Southland did have some very good athletes and schools.  However, overall as a conference they are about as low as you can get in D-I athletics.  I do not hate the Southland and actually feel sorry for teams that are stuck in that conference because I see it going nowhere.  There are too many former D-II and FCS/I-AA teams who either do not have or will not commit the resources to move the conference up the food chain.  Our main programs were and will remain both MBB and WBB and Men's Baseball.  That is not to diminish the other sports programs at ORU.  The Southland is not and for the foreseeable future will not be a basketball conference.  Further, take a look at the commitment schools like the Dakota schools, UNO, Denver and even IUPUI have put into upgrading facilities and you will see a vast chasm between schools in the Southland and schools in the Summit.  There is no guarantee that just because you spend millions on upgrading your facilities that you will automatically become a powerhouse, but if you are willing to commit millions in resources to get better facilities, it shows me you are headed in the right direction and at least are making an attempt to improve not only your school but the conference as well.  Sorry, but I do not see ACU, IWU, Houston Baptist, UNO or a lot of the other schools in the Southland making that commitment.  Finally, if I were an AD at an established D-I university, the Southland is the last place I would look to park my school's athletic teams.  I would be looking for a conference/league where the member schools are showing a commitment in actual dollars to try and improve what they have.  The Summit may not be the final solution for ORU, but in my humble opinion it is a move in the right direction.  Oh and by the way, in both MBB and baseball no Southland team blew us off the court/field.  As a matter of fact, we exhibited a talent for blowing leads and giving away games.

 

GO GOLDEN EAGLES! 

 

I think the emphasis in basketball is greater in the Summit League than the SLC.  I can see improvements in the Summit League in Baseball.  Oral Roberts has great facilities as do other universities in the Summit.

 

I also believe comments about SLC investment might be a little harsh.  Below are a few examples.

 

Houston Baptist University - Announced a $160,000,000 Investment.  Part of the plan is a new multipurpose arena which will be the new basketball home.

 

http://www.hbu.edu/About-HBU/The-Campus/The-Future-of-HBUs-Campus.aspx

 

More details here starting on page 20-21 (page 11 of the pdf file):  http://www.hbu.edu/HBU/media/HBU/publications/hbunews/NewsV-50_N2_09-2013.pdf

 

"...A new basketball arena will anchor the space, providing

the only entertainment venue in Houston that can cater

to audiences of 3,000 to 5,000. This distinction will enable

the University to lease the facility for a variety of concerts,

conventions and other public events... (Excerpt from Page 22)

 

University of New Orleans - Basketball - 10,000 seat on campus basketball arena - Lakefront Arena, home of the 1991 NCAA Women's Basketball Final Four and home of the 2014 Sun Belt Conference Basketball tournament.

 

Link to arena website:  http://arena.uno.edu/building_info_overview.aspx

 

 

Baseball - Maestri Field - $3,000,000 renovation in 2013  http://www.uno.edu/news/2013/SignsofProgressVisibleatSiteofUNOsMaestriFieldRenovationProject.aspx

                                                            and http://www.uno.edu/news/2013/UniversityofNewOrleansCelebratesRenovationsatMaestriField.aspx

 

Abilene Christian University - Recently received $55 Million from three donors toward $75 million academic and athletic facilities fund raising campaign.  A portion of the money will be used to build a new track and soccer stadium in addition to a new on campus football stadium.

 

Link to "Vision in Action" fund raising campaign (Track & Field/Soccer Stadium page):  http://www.acu.edu/via/soccer.html

 

University of Incarnate Word - I haven't seen any specific announcements for UIW.  There are plans for enhancements, but they made end up using off-campus facilities for some of their athletics like UTSA is doing.

 

Others

 

Texas A&M - Corpus Christi - Completed construction in a $9.6 Million New Track and Field / Soccer Stadium last year.

 

Link to Stadium website:  http://www.tamucc.edu/marcom/stadium/index.html

 

Basketball - Off-campus Arena - American Bank Center -  http://americanbankcenter.com/info/history/

Baseball - Off-Campus Field - Whataburger Field and other TAMU-CC Facilities - http://goislanders.com/information/facilities/index

 

Sam Houston State

 

Baseball - Sanders Stadium opened in 2006 - http://www.gobearkats.com/ViewArticle.dbml?&&DB_OEM_ID=19900&ATCLID=1275332

Basketball - Johnson Coliseum - Four years younger than the Mabee Center - http://www.gobearkats.com/ViewArticle.dbml?&DB_OEM_ID=19900&ATCLID=1275315

 

There are some others also.  For example, my university just completed a five year campaign raising $132,000,000.  The original goal was $100,000,000.  Of that amount over $20,000,000 was spent on athletics as part of over $60,000,000 in athletic improvements over the last five years.  We have a new on-campus softball stadium that will be built this year.  Also, coming up is $5,500,000 in renovations to our baseball stadium.  Central Arkansas built a new baseball stadium opening in 2009.  They have made improvements to other athletics facilities also.

 

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Below is a link to some pictures of SDSU's $32 million indoor practice facility that is scheduled to open this fall (Oct, I think).  It will serve all of the outdoor sports as a place to practice during the winter when weather prevents that up here.  It should be especially beneficial for baseball, softball, track (we will be hosting a number of indoor track meets this year, a first for us) soccer and of course football.  Hopefully it will move us to a more competitive position with ORU in baseball and other sports.

 

https://twitter.com/leonmcostello

 

look at post on July 15.

 

The link below is to some artist renderings and videos.

 

http://sdsudevelopingchampions.com/facility

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impressive facility rabbit74.  i'm sure the coaches are happy.  the Dakota schools sure are investing bigtime in athletics.

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You probably all know that NDSU is spending about $41 million to gut and rebuild the BSA(our primary athletic building and basketball home). You may not know we are putting a bubble this fall over one of our outdoor football practice fields/soccer competition field. It should be a good help for baseball and softball.

 

 

Here's the first of a series of monthly videos that NDSU will be making about the BSA construction progress(still in the demo and foundation phase):

http://t.co/lHzLHuPRME

Besides the bubble over Dacotah Field, other minor improvements have been going on. While you guys were in the Southland, we moved soccer from the track complex over to our old football stadium. Only weird thing is that the field has been shifted west twice since the original stands were built(the most recent time as prep for the BSA rebuild). That means the seating is now significantly off-center. Some before and after photos(we really let the place go after FB moved to the Fargodome):

attachment_zps64139c92.jpg

attachment2_zps50b152b4.jpg

Finally, we built a new indoor track & field facility while you were gone(or maybe it was already under construction as you were leaving). Nothing super exotic, but it's nice that they've got their own home now.

small_ElligIndoorTrack2013FloorPanFromSo

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I didn't mention our new football stadium that will begin construction this fall since ORU doesn't play football, but I have to keep up with Hammersmith in the bragging rights.  :)   Here is a link to information about the $65 million facility.

 

http://danajdykhousestadium.com

 

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Impressive! This is what I was talking about above. While you are at it, go to either Denver's, UNO's or IUPUI's websites and look at the multimillion dollar facilities they are working on.

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I feel like I am at a family reunion with everyone sharing pictures, so I figured I might as well join in.

 

Here is the new facility the Yotes will move in to for the 2016-16 season:

 

8038193.jpeg

 

8038170.jpeg

 

Here is the new track and soccer facility that will host the outdoor track and field championship in 2016:

 

8038180.jpeg

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All the facilities upgrades look great!  (I'm kind of a facilities junkie regardless of the location.  I love to see that stuff.)

 

Speaking of facilities, I've been doing some edits on our Wikipedia pages lately after finding a lot of stuff either incomplete, out of date, or flat out incorrect.  It might be worthwhile for someone to review the Summit League Wikipedia pages also, especially with all the improvement going on in the conference.  If you don't have anyone actively maintaining the pages, anyone can sign up on Wikipedia as I did last week.  :)  It's a very painless process and researching the stuff is fun if you have the time. 

 

I updated one of my pet peaves on The Summit League site changing "Unranked" to "RNP" (Ranked Not Published) and adding a classification of Regional or National for those universities.  The reason it is a pet peave of mine is that US News & World Report uses the "Unranked" classification for universities that either aren't accredited, don't use SAT's or ACT's for admission, or are non-traditional.  There are a lot of well known National universities with a "RNP" listing like University of Memphis and Wichita State.  I suspect the same thing occurs with the Regional universities.

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ORU likely learned their lesson with the last move. Unless the Missouri Valley came calling and paid the exit fee (which they won't) ORU has found their home for the forseable future.

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Something to consider the next time the Dakota fans are on the MVC board begging to be let in.

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You are correct that there are a lot of Dakota fans who would like to be in the Valley just like there are a lot of ORU fans who want the same thing.  I am not one of those. I think the Summit is an up and coming league that has moved from well below any of the other conferences in the mid west to one that now challenges the Valley, Horizon, and MAC in different sports.  I can see the Summit continuing to improve over the next 5-10 years to the point where a move to any of those three would be at best a lateral move.

 

(By the way, one of the moderators should change the heading for this set of threads to The Summit and NCAA instead of Southland and NCAA)

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