If you listened to the Podcast about Leath, you'll know that things are supremely fuck within the Athletics Department. If you didn't here are a couple of high points "or low points"
- Leath was such a micromanager that he clamped down even on the costs of making copies. Yes a 150 million dollar AD budget and he was worried about paper copies.
- We were the only team that bused our players to their Super Regional locations. NCAA would only pay for 35 people to make an airplane trip. So rather than pony up the additional funds, Auburn Baseball was told to bus it to Chapel Hill. Our players got in at 3 am and had to play baseball the next day.
Now there is this- From Nom Nom
It’s understandable that spending $60 million or more on a football-only complex can cause heartburn for some. That’s a huge investment. It’s money that must be spent and apparently will be spent.
But a much less expensive and badly needed baseball player development facility, one that was promised to head coach Butch Thompson when he took the job and again when he spurned Mississippi State last year to stay at Auburn? The status of that one is uncertain.
Thompson deserves better.
The playing area at Plainsman Park is as nice as any. The player amenities and developmental areas are last in the seven-team SEC West, and not even close to sixth. Not only that, should Auburn host a regional next season, unless something changes, national media people will be welcomed to a press box with windows that can’t open and have been stuck for three years. That is not much fun on hot summer days.
Even if the promised facility were already built, Auburn would still be behind the programs with which it must compete on the field and in recruiting and would still be in last place in the SEC West
So what’s the plan? What is the timetable? No one seems to know. At least nobody is saying.
Our Jason Caldwell takes a look today at the baseball situation, which was seemingly not changed by the departure of president Steven Leath.
Thompson has revived Auburn baseball, He took his fourth Tiger team to Omaha for the College World Series. He had an opportunity to leave last year and didn’t do it. He’ll have opportunities again. He deserves to get what he wants and needs, especially considering that $4 million of the original $4.8 million price tag has been raised. Apparently, the cost has gone up by half a million dollars or so. That’s enough to put the whole project on hold when Thompson and the baseball program have already raised most of the money from private sources? As Jason reports, Arkansas announced plans Tuesday to spend $27 million on a baseball developmental facility.
The Auburn facility was supposed to be under construction already. It’s not, and there is no indication when it will be. That’s on the heels of Auburn’s first trip to the College World Series in 22 years and its first-ever super regional championship.
Thompson took over a program in turmoil. He arrived in the fall of 2015 when Sunny Golloway was fired. Fall practice was already over. There was dysfunction and division within the program, things that could not be fixed overnight.
Since struggling through that first season, Thompson has taken three consecutive teams to regionals, winning two of them. He’s taken two straight to super regionals, winning one and losing the other in heartbreaking fashion. He has the most loaded Auburn roster since at least 2010 coming back.
Baseball isn’t the only program with urgent needs. Jane B. Moore Field is even further behind the competition than Plainsman Park. The plan is to start construction on a player development facility for softball in the fall. But the plan was also to start construction on the baseball facility as soon as the season was over. Facilities for soccer and track are well behind, too.
It costs money to compete at the highest level. It just does. No one is going to spend the least and win the most. Outside of football and basketball, what does the Auburn administration really want and what is it willing to do to get there? Maybe that’s the biggest question of all.
https://247sports.com/college/auburn/Article/PMARSHONAU-Auburns-Butch-Thompson-deserves-better-133200661/
God I hope Dr. Gouge can get this shit unfucked. Hard to believe this guy was worse than Jay Jacobs.
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