This past week on the Landon Tengwall Show on TFN Radio 98.7 The Fox, host Chris Buchignani and guest Dave Jones discussed the current state of the Penn State men’s basketball program and what needs done to make them consistently competitive with the top-tier teams in the Big Ten and the rest of the country.
Jones is a retired columnist for the Patriot-News and for PennLive.com and he covered Penn State men’s basketball since 1989.
Tradition and resources were the two main topics of discussion in the 18-minute interview that is available below.
As far as tradition goes, Jones mentioned how Central Pennsylvania sports’ fans just don’t have a passion for basketball like other parts of Big Ten Country.
“If they’re (Penn State basketball) not competitive, they’re (fans) not going to show up. If the weather is bad, they’re not going to show up. If they have to drive too long at night on a weeknight, they’re not going to show up…and that’s what people who grew up around Central Pennsylvania do not understand about the rest of this conference.”
Jones continued discussing how no matter what the circumstances are for basketball programs and games in the Midwest, even for teams with losing records, fans still show up in droves to support their teams because they have a passion for the game.
For the resources part of the interview, Jones stated how Penn State basketball doesn’t receive near the amount of financial support that their Big Ten counterparts get on a yearly basis, and with today’s college sports’ landscape of Name, Image, and Likeness, money unfortunately, now plays a huge role in helping to build a talented roster.
For example, this year, in No. 3 Michigan’s starting line-up, four of their five starters were on different teams at this time last year.
According to Jones, the average NIL amount for this year’s middle-of-the-road Big Ten basketball program was somewhere between $8-10 million. The bottom half of the conference received around $6 million and then Penn State was even below that NIL payroll number.
He then said he heard from some really good sources that Kentucky’s NIL payroll this year was near $20 million.
Add Nittany Sports Now as a preferred source in Google! Click here to add us.He continued how Penn State’s athletic director, Pat Kraft, and the rest of his administration, need to “mine” and “tap” those highly successful Penn State alumni such as Terry Pegula (known for contributions to Penn State hockey) Ira Lubert (Penn State wrestling) and Alex Mather to help financially support the men’s basketball program.
With all this being said, we can all agree that winning can cure anything, even tradition, but it’s just that in, especially, today’s college sports’ landscape, a lot of intentional, direct, financial support sure does help to compete with the top-tier teams and to bring in top-shelf talent.
“Mike Rhoades is a really, really good coach and people don’t know because he’s got pebbles and twigs here,” said Jones.
Rhoades has said, though, in past press conferences how supportive Kraft has been to him and to his program.
He also had this to say after their first round Big Ten Tournament loss last Tuesday.
”We’ll do everything we can to bring the guys back that want to be here for all the right reasons and do it and build on it and get them some really good players around them and do this right. Since I’ve been here, we’ve had some really good wins. We just don’t have enough, and that’s got to be the goal. It starts with the guys that are in that locker room for all the right reasons.”
We shall see this offseason if Penn State’s athletic administration puts their money where their mouths are.
Stay with Nittany Sports Now for all of your Penn State men’s basketball news.
