Aaron I am working the basketball angle right now. Remember Bill Self lived in Tulsa for a long time. There are benefits to being a part of a booster club, long time season ticket holder, and having your son be a ball boy for the basketball team as well as one of their favorite kids the year they go to the Elite 8 among other things. Also remember his close association with OSU. This may or may not be a negative, it could possibly be a positive, I am waiting to hear back from him in that I did contact him this morning if you want to put a few pieces together from there okay but let’s wait and see on the basketball angel. By the way, if there is anyone who may have contacts with any of the coaches or administrative assistants, they are great angels to play in situations like this. I would still love to have a hundred or so people canvass the state capitol while our legislators are in session. I know how much things like this play into helping with things like this. We really need a contact with Phil Kline as well.

Office of Attorney General Phill Kline
120 SW 10th Ave., 2nd Floor
Topeka, KS 66612-1597
(785) 296-2215 Telephone
(785) 296-6296 Fax


For Attorney General Public Appearance Requests:
8 a.m. - 5 p.m., Monday - Friday
(785) 296-3178 Telephone
bob.murray@ksag.org

This may sound a little absurd, but has anyone thought about trying to contact Adidas? Adidas is one of, if not the biggest wrestling companies out there. It would be a lot of great advertisement for their company. It might just show the guys at KU that us Kansans are not the only people interested in having a wrestling program at the school.

a_wrestler_160

Good idea. Actually smokeycabin, Sean McCarthy, in a e-mail to me yesterday also suggested that possibility. I don't know if he has done that yet but why don't you send adidas an e-mail and/or letter on that. Even if Sean has already done that, I don't think it would hurt to have more than one person suggest that to them.

It is really amazing me all the great ideas that are being brought into action over this last weekend.

The KU athletic dept. just sent out a survey to KU students asking what can be done to improve our experiences with KU Athletics. So any of you KU students out there that receive this survey, take 30 seconds and tell them in this survey you would like to see an addition of a wrestling team.

Also finding fun and encouraging ways to publish letters in the student newsletters and other forums would be of benefit here.

Adidas wrestling products are handled thru Brute, not the big boy Adidas, so e-mailing them will probably do no good. Brute is the US distributor for Adidas Germany.

Besides the letters that you may be sending to the KU Chancellor, Athletic Director, legislators, Attorney General Kline, Other wrestling athletic directors, coaches, and former college or Olympic wrestlers for assistance in petitioning KU, we also need to mobilize somehow our other Kansas wrestling family members. I believe that Mike Furches was the one who pointed out that the overwhelming majority of them are probably off the forum and not paying attention. I am sure that is correct. We need to reach them as quickly as possible and tell them that they too need to send petition letters for the addition of men and women's wrestling at KU.

I think maybe what we should do is first contact the high school wrestling coaches to do that. They still have their wrestlers in school so they can get to them easier during the school day. Again I would suggest a petition letter to both the Chancellor and the KU Athletic Director from the team. In addition I also think the coach should suggest to the kids to write their own individual letters of petition to both the Chancellor and the KU Athletic Director. The high school wrestlers could ask their parents to do the same. The team and individual letters should be personalized so we will be giving them a variety of thoughts and personal appeals.

After that then I would concentrate on contacting Kids Clubs Directors and suggest to them to either get their kids to together to sign team petition letters (I think this will be difficult to do since the Kids are no longer in wrestling season) or to contact the wrestling families of their team and suggest for them to write individual letters.

So rally up into action first the high schools and then the Kids clubs. I think this is important to do because a few weeks ago when I wrote Larry Keating the Senior Associate KU Athletic Director about adding wrestling at KU, one of the things he mentioned in his reply was that there was just not enough interest. If they do not receive many petition letters or e-mails from us then that will confirm to them that there is not enough interest.

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Check it out, sign up, register and post.

mike, husker fan, aaron...

Someone mentioned contacting Adidas, which is probably a good idea too, they sponser ALL the sports at Nebraska, including wrestling and sponser the Brute Adidas Nationals held in Lincoln.

Eric could definately help in contacting KU, the Big 12 coaches, and any wrestlers you would want to endorse this also.

This would be very cool for the state of Kansas, the wrestling community really amazes me... and this coming from an Iowa girl.

steph,

That would be great if we could get Eric involved that way. I wonder if the Big 12 Commissioner's office could be of any influence. With only 5 Big 12 schools now having programs and one them being the NCAA champion for the last two years and the rest of the four doing well also, you would think the Big 12 office would want the rest of the schools to step up and start wrestling programs. I would think the Big 12 would particularly find it unacceptable for one of its schools not to step up and start a program when this much money is available to start a men and women's program as it now is at KU. Come on KU spend a little money on us!

I emailed Green and Keating, let'em know people...........just think Jayhawk Wrestling, could you imagine filling Allen Fieldhouse with a real sport.

Coach Peterman

Yeah! Way to go, Coach Peterman. Make sure to let everyone you know get on board. We are in off season and some need to be brought up from the traditional post season slumber. Let's keep going gang. Don't let them tell us that we don't have enough interest in Kansas!

Okay, going to paste the first response I have from another forum / Lawrence Journal World which is dedicated to KU and gets tons of hits here is the reply to my initial post. By the way it takes some time to get everything back once you register but make sure you do it.

They just received $70 million in funding, can't they give $5 million to the wrestling team, use $1 mil to get it started and put the other $4 mil in a bank account and then use the interest off it to run the program? seems pretty self suficient if you ask me.

Bronco Wrestler,

The KC Star articles that I read about the two contracts indicated that they would receive the money on an annual basis so it could not quite be done that way. I think you have about the exact percentage of the contracts that would be need to support the program, less than 10%. Maybe the percentage would be a little higher with the addition of a women's program.

Do you really think KU would need to spend $1 million upfront to start it? The Big 12 Athletic Director who replied to me did not state anything like that. He just said $600,000 a year in annual expenses. Of course revenue would lower the actual loss and maybe there would not even be a loss if we could build enough fan and media support. I think you would only be right about the $1 million if they needed some major facility renovation or upgrade that would require a big loan down payment and then annual loan service expense (principal and interest payments). I think they probably have the facilities already that could be utilized for a wrestling team.

I do know there would be some upfront costs for mats, uniforms, headgear, etc. I asked the AD for upfront costs but he did not give me that information. He answered me right away and since his school has had a team for many years, he may not have known what upfront costs would be. I have no idea either. Does anyone know who could itemize these upfront costs for us?

Coach Stovall at Newman would be a good source because they have such a new program.

With $600,000 annually you could have $100,000 for each mens and womens scholarships and room and board. That still leaves $200,000 for each program for coaches salary, travel, recruiting. They already have some practice mats. But, I think you could easily start up with a new mat, uniforms for both mens and womens, a few chin up bars in the rooms $25,000 - $50,000. You could run practices at them same time. The only time they would need to seperate the programs is for meets. If other teams travel by van like the minor sports I'll bet the cost savings there would start a program or two. Or if Administrators, gave up some of their pensions, car allowances, food and entertainment budgets, this would also allow for new programs to start.
These guys are living pretty high on the hog from us - WE THE TAX PAYERS already. It is time for them to listen to us.

Mike Furches and Sean McCarthy, we need to get our group started. Mike Juby has given me an enthusiastic go ahead and offered help from the USAW Kansas if we need it. He has already started that by sending word out to all the Officers and Directors of our intention and desire to organize a group. I have already received an offer from one of the Officers to do that. So we need to set up an initial meeting. Mike, it might be best to have it in the KC area but I am open on this. I am sure Sean would be willing to travel for the meeting too. For that matter if the initial meeting is smaller less than 15-20 people, we could have it at my house in Overland Park on a Saturday or Sunday. Mike and Sean you two need to get in touch with me to tell me what is best for you on an initial meeting. If anyone else really wants to be part of this committee from the start let me know. Thanks, Vince

I love the sport of wrestling and I love Kansas wrestling. I've sat back and watched this forum grow from the first post. My ONLY dissagreement is this. We as a state don't even begin to support our teams that we have. I know in Southeast Kansas we have a NATIONAL CHAMPION juco team and how many people come to support? How many people bought shirts from them to help pay for their team rings that they earned and deserve?? I know I have and did, but as all of you are mentioning in this KU post, one person cannot do it alone. I am not saying I am the only one, but still. Lets start packing some college gyms around the state. Labette, Colby, Neosho, Hays, Neuman... etc.. Lets take care of the kids we have then other schools will see that and start to add programs. Lets watch RPW and make it a household name. I believe wholeheartedly in wrestling and wrestling in Kansas, but lets help some kids out.