Wren Baker Discusses State of Athletics, Scheduling, Future of Coaches + More
Big 12 expanding
"When you look at where we were at two years ago in the Big 12, the league was on the verge of extinction. I certainly wouldn't have wagered anything of value, not that I ever would, but on the survival of the Big 12 at that point. So, when you look at where we're at today, in my opinion, clearly in the top three of most stable, best-positioned conferences moving forward in college athletics."
The biggest problem he's dealing with right now
"We've got to find a way to bring in more revenue. We do not have a spending problem. Compare us across a variety of spending categories, we're very efficient with the dollars that we have. But we've got to eat, breathe, sleep, and think 24/7/365 how can we bring in more revenue? If you go back and look historically at when our team's have been the most successful, I would venture to say we probably were around the average if not around higher in the league in terms of budget. We're not there right now. We've got to find a way to do that. If that's outside revenue, if that's finding ways to get more money coming in through licensing, if that's creating more premium space opportunities - all of those things are additions to that revenue stream."
Conversation with the Arizona State AD after the comments he made
"I suspect he didn't mean that the way it was taken, but it definitely hit a sore spot with all of us who are proud of West Virginia. And as somebody who had really not spent a lot of time in the state before I moved here, I'm a champion for people giving West Virginia a chance. As a place to live, as a place to visit, as a place to vacation, it is a beautiful place full of some wonderful people and not enough people know about it. He was gracious. He was kind. He started the call by saying, 'I'm really sorry. It was an attempt to be funny. President Crow knows I hate cold weather," and he said it just didn't land like I thought it would."
Future football scheduling
"I've said this before and I believe having a Power Five regional rival on the schedule every year is important. We prefer that game be Pitt. I'm not a brain surgeon, but it didn't take me very long to figure out that's a very important game to our fan base and to theirs, and this area, and this region. But in years where it's not Pitt, who's another regional rival that we could take on? Is it Virginia Tech? We have Penn State. And then, can we get a meaningful Group of Five FBS opponent that we either pay some money to come in here or we do some type of two for one scenario. But you would like for it to be a game with some kind of regional meaningfulness. So, one of the MAC schools, maybe a Sun Belt school. We're not eager or probably willing to go to Huntington, but I don't know that we'd say no to Marshall if they wanted to come here. As you're building a schedule out, that's probably the perfect schedule."
Possibility of giving naming rights away to stadiums/other sports venues
"We're exploring that in really all of our venues and have had some third parties engaged just to do some valuations on what that could bring. Certainly the juice needs to be worth the squeeze because people get pretty attached to certain names of venues and I get that. But they also get attached to winning and as I outlined earlier, winning takes money. It's something we're evaluating and are definitely going to look at."
Evaluation of Neal Brown so far
"I've been really impressed with not just Coach Brown, but all of our coaches here. I've spent one-on-one time with all of them. I've tried to get over here. I think I've made all the scrimmages and several practices. But I'm excited. I feel good about where we're at. Feel good about the team, their resolve. I think the prognosticators not having a very high expectation has helped motivate them. We want to go out and prove people wrong. But there's a lot of things that are done right inside this program. My core belief is that you have to value the person over the player and if you value the person first and foremost, eventually you'll get the full abilities of the player. And this staff does a really good job of pouring into developing people. Helping them grow their character, have some success academically, helping them really plan for the rest of their life. So, there's a lot of positive things going on inside of this program. We know that we have to win games. Coach Brown has said that. I read his commentary all the time. He knows where we're at and everybody knows that that's an expectation. I'm really proud of the way that this team has come together and there's a great camaraderie between that group right now."
The men's basketball job
"I think Coach Eilert has done everything we've asked him to do and would hope he would do. During that time, there were lots of people that were offering lots of opinions on what we should do and the timing of it. But the reality is when we had the situation we did in the coaching change and the portal was re-opened for everybody. There was going to be some roster attrition. That was going to happen no matter what we did or how quickly we did it. You basically have unrestricted free agency at the most inopportune time. We've tried to give Coach Eilert everything he needs to be successful. He's made some changes and additions to his coaching staff. They've been able to make some additions to the roster. We haven't played a game and he's been in his season in terms of practice and stuff but I think up to this point, he's handled everything as well as you could possibly ask and I'm really proud of the work that they've been able to do."
If there are any benchmarks Coach Eilert has to meet to keep the job
"He and I have had a lot of discussions about the expectations and how you run a program and the integrity of it that we expect and ethically what we're looking for. We have not and I've been pretty consistent saying this about every sport, I'm not a big you got to win x number of games guy. But we're all very supportive of Coach Eilert and I hope that he has a great year and gives us a lot to think about. If you go back to May, I set the tone for the expectation for us is and that is that we're going to give him full autonomy, full decision making, do the very best that he can do this season and at the conclusion of this season we'll conduct a search for a coach. My hope is that he does a great job and that he's part of that search. As the season goes along, I evaluate every day."
Any conversations with Pitt AD Heather Lyke about extending football series
"I've told her we want to play as much and as long as they want to play. I called her several months back to express our interest in continuing the basketball series. Football didn't even come up at that time because it was more of a basketball perspective. I know there's willingness on our part to extend in pretty much every sport our series with Pitt. I believe that's the case on their end. She was pretty positive when I talked to her, but we probably need to follow back up, circle up, and see what that really looks like."
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