After netting his 4th non-losing season in 5 years, Rickey Bustle has just one year left on his contract. 27 wins in 5 seasons in Lafayette should be enough for a contract extension, but Bustle will be forced to enter the recruiting season to tell recruits he won´t be there if they sign with the Cajuns. A likely poor recruiting season, created by the administration´s indecision, will hurt Bustle´s final year, which will, in turn, drive down interest in the coaching vacancy, all of which will destroy the first year or two of a new coaching regime.

Bustle should get a contract extension. The win over K-State, even if the game was poorly attended, was a huge boost for the program. A 6-6 finish, not what everyone wanted (7-5), may not be perfect, but the Cajuns cannot fire a coach who has won 27 of his last 55 games, and expect to garner interest from anyone who is markedly better than Bustle. Plus, there´s no obvious coach who would take the Cajuns to 7 wins and who wants the job.

But for any coach, Bustle or someone just like him, to succeed, the Cajuns must overcome and correct 5 problems.

1. A poorly crafted and often unforgiving schedule – The Cajuns have 4 out of conference games. For budget reasons, one must be a money game (best examples: Texas, Georgia Tech, Miami (FL), TCU…all games in fertile recruiting areas). The next three are up to the Athletic Department. The Cajuns have made some scheduling blunders in the past (McNeese, Tennessee <0 recruiting>, UTEP, La Tech) and next season is no different.

In 2010, the Cajuns and Bustle are put at an extreme disadvantage. With games against top SEC schools, Georgia and Mississippi, the Cajuns will go 0-2. The home game against Oklahoma State might be well attended but the Cajuns will likely get crushed and no one will return to Cajun Field. The Cajuns only winnable game is at Ohio, which just won their division in the MAC. The Cajuns will likely start out 0-4.

Solution: Play one money game (loss), one 1aa game (home win), one easy to beat MAC team (home or away win – expensive on travel, but it´s a win), and one relatively easy to beat CUSA team (Rice, Memphis). Such a schedule would yield a guaranteed 2-2, and a realistic potential for 3-1. The Cajuns need 7 wins to get to a bowl game.

2. Poor treatment of past and current successful coaches - Jessie Evans, J. Kelly Hall, and soon to be Tony Robichaux and Rickey Bustle have one thing in common: they get no help from the administration. All were underpaid (Hall´s replacement makes 15 more than Hall did according to the Daily Advertiser), all worked with poor facilities (rumors were that Evans had to buy practice jerseys, Robichaux has to cut the grass, and the softball lady had to do her own fundraising) and all when given a chance to make a lateral move (Hall did make an upward step) ditched UL in a heartbeat.

Evans went 20-11 just about every year, took the Cajuns to the NCAA and NIT tournaments, got 3,000 people in the seats, was on ESPN and...got no contract extension. Since his departure-firing-allowing him to be let go, Cajuns basketball has never recovered.

Hall won in women´s basketball at UL, and got an at-large birth in the NCAA tournament, all of which happened after he was originally signed to year-to-year contracts, the coaching equivalent of making minimum hourly wage at McDonalds. Since choosing only to match Cincy´s offer (UL liked Hall exactly as much as Cincinatti), UL basketball is not the same.

Bustle has a mile limit on his UL car (limits his recruiting ability), has some of the lowest pay in the NCAAs, but beats K State, Houston, UAB, multiple MAC teams, goes 6-6 every year in spite of a terrible schedule and ... might be shown the door because he´s 6-6 and not 7-5 (one win).

UL´s past history of treating coaches poorly only hurts the Cajuns ability to attract new coaches. UL must get better facilities (football coaches cannot have video rooms in trailers) and winning seasons (even at .500) ought to be rewarded with contract extensions, unless there is a better option available (there rarely is). Successful coaches (Bustle, Evans, Robichaux and Hall) cannot be treated poorly. History shows that UL still hasn´t recovered from treating Hall and Evans poorly.

3. An aging, local fan base in the backdrop of a young, rapidly changing city and state - Each year, the Cajuns fan base gets a year older. A large core of the fan base is elderly, and their dedicated passion is important, but a growing majority of residents in Lafayette and Louisiana have no long time connection to the Cajuns, and most known nothing about the university.

The far too common comment on RaginPagin is, When is the community going to get involved? But, the university gives the community no reason to get involved. The Cajuns leave their press releases to a poorly written and rarely read Daily Advertiser and insists the locals get their news about the Cajuns from a rarely watched local news broadcast.

The core of passionate Cajuns fans will soon die out or be unable to travel to home games. There is a young alumni association, but its effectiveness prompted RaginPagin poster BabbForHeisman (a less than convincing cause) to wonder, ¨We have a Young Alumni Association?¨ The fan base is aging, and the city is getting younger - but UL isn´t getting younger with the new citizens of the city.

Cajuns´ fans desire for local athletes and coaches who ¨know the Acadiana area¨ is admirable, but the results are telling. Lee and Rogers are both local with local rosters and the results on the court and attendance in the stands is terrible. By contrast, Evans and Hall are both not from Louisiana, and the results were amazing (though not good enough to be retained) and attendance was through the roof.

Solution: Drop the local only requirement for coaches, RCAF members and recruits. Lafayette is less Catholic, less Cajun and less Southern on a daily basis. Begin working beyond the borders of Acadiana to grab new fans (admittedly tough when the Cajuns keep bad coaches like Lee and Rogers, and refuse to promote good programs), have events at high schools, on the UL campus (posters, pep rallies), and begin promoting the university the way it ought to be promoted (see following item).

4. An inability to promote the Cajuns in the city and the state - The Cajuns bring in Southern, the game is promoted, and Cajun Field looks like a full parking lot (40, 000 or more). After the game, the Cajuns do absolutely nothing to promote the upcoming game against Kansas State. No ads in the newspaper, no radio spots, no posters on campus, no university professors wearing team jerseys a few days before the game, and the Cajuns get 16,000 for a huge win over a Big 12 program (though not enough to keep the coach who engineered the win).

During the last great Evans team which went to the NCAA tournament (2004, but hardly enough for a contract extension which would´ve added stability to the program), only one game - the Jake Delhomme game - was promoted. The promotion led to a crowd of nearly 5,100. The casual fans will come to UL if the product is good and the game is promoted correctly. But, the Cajuns waste many opportunities to get new fans.

The Cajuns have a good core of supporters, but relying on posters at Judice Inn and Old Tyme grocery is not enough. The university needs a large presence in Lafayette, an overwhelmingly LSU city, in order to get fans to return to Cajun Field. Billboards, advertisements before movies, radio spots, constant tweets, facebook updates, and personal contact with high schools and businesses, small and large, will help the Cajuns grow.

Solution: Promote the event and not the product. At the moment, the Cajuns products, through their own doing, stink. The product alone won´t bring enough fans (Lee, Rogers and the poorly promoted football program are the perfect examples), so the Cajuns ought to begin promoting the event. If the Cajuns promote the opponent, it´s a one game ticket sale. However, if the event is promoted, customers might be more inclined to return. As such, each program must have the following five events in order to boost attendance and sell tickets.

a. Honor the Troops Night

b. Former Ragin Cajuns great Night - Bring back Ike Taylor, Charles Tillman, Oriene Greene, BJ Ryan and all the former Cajuns the Athletic Department never promotes.

c. Local HS band night - Local HS bands get to perform during the game and at half time. Might bother the UL band, but tickets need to be sold.

d. Local Heroes Night - A bit of a take off on Honor The Troops night, but the local heroes, the firefighters and police officers, need to be honored.

e. Local Heritage Night - The Cajuns can´t probably pull of Jewish (Cayanne the Pepper sports a Yarmulke and tallit while saying the pre-game prayer in Hebrew) or Italian Heritage night, but Cajun Heritage Night might sell a few tickets.

5. The boosters don´t act like boosters - RCAF is a step in the right direction. It´s poorly promoted (the announcement came on a Friday and not a Monday), insular, and will make an effort to get new members in January, long after football season. There´s the Quarterback Club, Rebounders Club and RCAF. They should all be joined under one umbrella.

And while there is desire to improve the product, RCAF has very few members, very few donations, and most in Lafayette don´t know what the group does or how it helps UL. This RaginPagin board has less than 4,000 members, and not all of them donate.

And the few who donate to UL complain that Bustle isn´t good enough (6 wins and not 7), Lee is doing the right thing (losing 20 games a season) and Robichaux isn´t winning enough anymore (no other SBC team has gone to the CWS since UL went in 2000). The donations are far too low for UL to compete on a regional level. In order to increase donations, given the current product, the Cajuns need to increase the field of donors - no easy task when basketball wins 10 and the coach stays.

The boosters often have motives which keep UL from being the best. The most recent QB club meeting focused on ULM (6-6 and behind the Cajuns) and Troy (a team the Cajuns have beaten once). The boosters demand the Cajuns play Tech to prove the Cajuns are the best team in the rivalry (the Cajuns are 6-6, the Bulldogs have 2-3 wins). Games against McNeese and Tulane, which prove nothing, are a must to satisfy the small group of donors. McNeese is a 1aa team, and Tulane hasn´t been good in 11 years (1998).

Fact is, UL is the second best school in Louisiana for athletics. But, it has to act like it. It can´t expect to be good when it doesn´t spend money. It can´t expect to get good coaches when the good ones are hung out to dry like Evans and Hall. It can´t expect to keep high crowds if good programs are ruined by the administration(men´s and women´s basketball), and it can´t expect to compete with wealthier schools if the boosters have competing factions (games against McNeese).

All of these 5 problems make UL an unattractive job for incoming coaches, which makes the reason to fire Bustle all the more flimsy. UL, because of the 5 problems, will only get interest from coaches who are starving for the opportunity (Bustle, and Greg Robinson at Syracuse...didn´t even visit the campus before he took the job). The new coach will probably be exactly like Bustle, especially if the schedule doesn´t change. Why uproot stability for the exact same results from someone with a different last name?

If the Cajuns want different results, change the schedule. The Cajuns are close, and just one win away from the magical 7-5 season (still mediocre) Cajuns fans desire.

The Cajuns can correct these 5 problems. But if they don´t, it doesn´t matter if it´s Bustle or Mike DuBose, the results will be more of the same -- everything fans have to come to expect at UL.

Can't say I disagree with anything you have said. It's not the coaches it's the situation.

There are some good points in the article but there are also a number of inaccurate statements.

String points, but plenty of holes. I agree that the K-State game was a huge win, but what about the FAU, or FIU losses? FAU hangs 49 on us and you accept that, or chalk it off to UL admin.

Also, most points made are issues under a previous administration, I do believe that with the new President new concerns will be addressed.

Quote:

Originally Posted by ragincrazy _ String points, but plenty of holes. I agree that the K-State game was a huge win, but what about the FAU, or FIU losses? FAU hangs 49 on us and you accept that, or chalk it off to UL admin. Also, most points made are issues under a previous administration, I do believe that with the new President new concerns will be addressed. _

Yes, Dr. Savoie will be addressing our new concern.... shrinkage.

if you think these schedules are tough, go back and look at the schedules played in the 90's.

Quote:

Originally Posted by rgamers _ if you think these schedules are tough, go back and look at the schedules played in the 90's. _

Ul's best and toughest schedule was in 1996 when we went 5-6:

Florida (A)
Texas A&M (H)
Southern Miss (A)
LA Tech (A)
Houston (H)
Ark. State (H)
UAB (A)
Memphis (H)
Virginia Tech (A)
Northern Illinois (H)
Texas Tech (A)

Personally, I would prefer to see us as an Independent playing this kind of schedule again.

Quote:

Originally Posted by TillmansNumber1 If the Cajuns want different results, change the schedule. The Cajuns are close, and just one win away from the magical 7-5 season (still mediocre) Cajuns fans desire. The Cajuns can correct these 5 problems. But if they don´t, it doesn´t matter if it´s Bustle or Mike DuBose, the results will be more of the same -- everything fans have to come to expect at UL. _

Well said. Our problems go well beyond coaching.

Some fans want a band-aid - keep the coach and hope things work out.

Some fans want a pain killer - new hire numbs the pain but the euphoria runs out.

The university wants us to rub some dirt on it, take two aspirins and call them next year.

What we need is open heart surgery for the fans (and more accurately the community).

What we need is brain surgery for the administration.

While I don't agree with some of your options, I can definitely respect someone that has a complaint about the University and a solution to go along with it. Most people that post complaints do not have a solution to the problem. This post has great points & great solutions. Good reading.

Quote:

Originally Posted by TillmansNumber1 _ After netting his 4th non-losing season in 5 years, Rickey Bustle has just one year left on his contract. 27 wins in 5 seasons in Lafayette should be enough for a contract extension, but Bustle will be forced to enter the recruiting season to tell recruits he won´t be there if they sign with the Cajuns. A likely poor recruiting season, created by the administration´s indecision, will hurt Bustle´s final year, which will, in turn, drive down interest in the coaching vacancy, all of which will destroy the first year or two of a new coaching regime. Bustle should get a contract extension. The win over K-State, even if the game was poorly attended, was a huge boost for the program. A 6-6 finish, not what everyone wanted (7-5), may not be perfect, but the Cajuns cannot fire a coach who has won 27 of his last 55 games, and expect to garner interest from anyone who is markedly better than Bustle. Plus, there´s no obvious coach who would take the Cajuns to 7 wins and who wants the job. But for any coach, Bustle or someone just like him, to succeed, the Cajuns must overcome and correct 5 problems. 1. A poorly crafted and often unforgiving schedule – The Cajuns have 4 out of conference games. For budget reasons, one must be a money game (best examples: Texas, Georgia Tech, Miami (FL), TCU…all games in fertile recruiting areas). The next three are up to the Athletic Department. The Cajuns have made some scheduling blunders in the past (McNeese, Tennessee <0 recruiting>, UTEP, La Tech) and next season is no different. In 2010, the Cajuns and Bustle are put at an extreme disadvantage. With games against top SEC schools, Georgia and Mississippi, the Cajuns will go 0-2. The home game against Oklahoma State might be well attended but the Cajuns will likely get crushed and no one will return to Cajun Field. The Cajuns only winnable game is at Ohio, which just won their division in the MAC. The Cajuns will likely start out 0-4. Solution: Play one money game (loss), one 1aa game (home win), one easy to beat MAC team (home or away win – expensive on travel, but it´s a win), and one relatively easy to beat CUSA team (Rice, Memphis). Such a schedule would yield a guaranteed 2-2, and a realistic potential for 3-1. The Cajuns need 7 wins to get to a bowl game. 2. Poor treatment of past and current successful coaches - Jessie Evans, J. Kelly Hall, and soon to be Tony Robichaux and Rickey Bustle have one thing in common: they get no help from the administration. All were underpaid (Hall´s replacement makes 15 more than Hall did according to the Daily Advertiser), all worked with poor facilities (rumors were that Evans had to buy practice jerseys, Robichaux has to cut the grass, and the softball lady had to do her own fundraising) and all when given a chance to make a lateral move (Hall did make an upward step) ditched UL in a heartbeat. Evans went 20-11 just about every year, took the Cajuns to the NCAA and NIT tournaments, got 3,000 people in the seats, was on ESPN and...got no contract extension. Since his departure-firing-allowing him to be let go, Cajuns basketball has never recovered. Hall won in women´s basketball at UL, and got an at-large birth in the NCAA tournament, all of which happened after he was originally signed to year-to-year contracts, the coaching equivalent of making minimum hourly wage at McDonalds. Since choosing only to match Cincy´s offer (UL liked Hall exactly as much as Cincinatti), UL basketball is not the same. Bustle has a mile limit on his UL car (limits his recruiting ability), has some of the lowest pay in the NCAAs, but beats K State, Houston, UAB, multiple MAC teams, goes 6-6 every year in spite of a terrible schedule and ... might be shown the door because he´s 6-6 and not 7-5 (one win). UL´s past history of treating coaches poorly only hurts the Cajuns ability to attract new coaches. UL must get better facilities (football coaches cannot have video rooms in trailers) and winning seasons (even at .500) ought to be rewarded with contract extensions, unless there is a better option available (there rarely is). Successful coaches (Bustle, Evans, Robichaux and Hall) cannot be treated poorly. History shows that UL still hasn´t recovered from treating Hall and Evans poorly. 3. An aging, local fan base in the backdrop of a young, rapidly changing city and state - Each year, the Cajuns fan base gets a year older. A large core of the fan base is elderly, and their dedicated passion is important, but a growing majority of residents in Lafayette and Louisiana have no long time connection to the Cajuns, and most known nothing about the university. The far too common comment on RaginPagin is, When is the community going to get involved? But, the university gives the community no reason to get involved. The Cajuns leave their press releases to a poorly written and rarely read Daily Advertiser and insists the locals get their news about the Cajuns from a rarely watched local news broadcast. The core of passionate Cajuns fans will soon die out or be unable to travel to home games. There is a young alumni association, but its effectiveness prompted RaginPagin poster BabbForHeisman (a less than convincing cause) to wonder, ¨We have a Young Alumni Association?¨ The fan base is aging, and the city is getting younger - but UL isn´t getting younger with the new citizens of the city. Cajuns´ fans desire for local athletes and coaches who ¨know the Acadiana area¨ is admirable, but the results are telling. Lee and Rogers are both local with local rosters and the results on the court and attendance in the stands is terrible. By contrast, Evans and Hall are both not from Louisiana, and the results were amazing (though not good enough to be retained) and attendance was through the roof. Solution: Drop the local only requirement for coaches, RCAF members and recruits. Lafayette is less Catholic, less Cajun and less Southern on a daily basis. Begin working beyond the borders of Acadiana to grab new fans (admittedly tough when the Cajuns keep bad coaches like Lee and Rogers, and refuse to promote good programs), have events at high schools, on the UL campus (posters, pep rallies), and begin promoting the university the way it ought to be promoted (see following item). 4. An inability to promote the Cajuns in the city and the state - The Cajuns bring in Southern, the game is promoted, and Cajun Field looks like a full parking lot (40, 000 or more). After the game, the Cajuns do absolutely nothing to promote the upcoming game against Kansas State. No ads in the newspaper, no radio spots, no posters on campus, no university professors wearing team jerseys a few days before the game, and the Cajuns get 16,000 for a huge win over a Big 12 program (though not enough to keep the coach who engineered the win). During the last great Evans team which went to the NCAA tournament (2004, but hardly enough for a contract extension which would´ve added stability to the program), only one game - the Jake Delhomme game - was promoted. The promotion led to a crowd of nearly 5,100. The casual fans will come to UL if the product is good and the game is promoted correctly. But, the Cajuns waste many opportunities to get new fans. The Cajuns have a good core of supporters, but relying on posters at Judice Inn and Old Tyme grocery is not enough. The university needs a large presence in Lafayette, an overwhelmingly LSU city, in order to get fans to return to Cajun Field. Billboards, advertisements before movies, radio spots, constant tweets, facebook updates, and personal contact with high schools and businesses, small and large, will help the Cajuns grow. Solution: Promote the event and not the product. At the moment, the Cajuns products, through their own doing, stink. The product alone won´t bring enough fans (Lee, Rogers and the poorly promoted football program are the perfect examples), so the Cajuns ought to begin promoting the event. If the Cajuns promote the opponent, it´s a one game ticket sale. However, if the event is promoted, customers might be more inclined to return. As such, each program must have the following five events in order to boost attendance and sell tickets. a. Honor the Troops Night b. Former Ragin Cajuns great Night - Bring back Ike Taylor, Charles Tillman, Oriene Greene, BJ Ryan and all the former Cajuns the Athletic Department never promotes. c. Local HS band night - Local HS bands get to perform during the game and at half time. Might bother the UL band, but tickets need to be sold. d. Local Heroes Night - A bit of a take off on Honor The Troops night, but the local heroes, the firefighters and police officers, need to be honored. e. Local Heritage Night - The Cajuns can´t probably pull of Jewish (Cayanne the Pepper sports a Yarmulke and tallit while saying the pre-game prayer in Hebrew) or Italian Heritage night, but Cajun Heritage Night might sell a few tickets. 5. The boosters don´t act like boosters - RCAF is a step in the right direction. It´s poorly promoted (the announcement came on a Friday and not a Monday), insular, and will make an effort to get new members in January, long after football season. There´s the Quarterback Club, Rebounders Club and RCAF. They should all be joined under one umbrella. And while there is desire to improve the product, RCAF has very few members, very few donations, and most in Lafayette don´t know what the group does or how it helps UL. This RaginPagin board has less than 4,000 members, and not all of them donate. And the few who donate to UL complain that Bustle isn´t good enough (6 wins and not 7), Lee is doing the right thing (losing 20 games a season) and Robichaux isn´t winning enough anymore (no other SBC team has gone to the CWS since UL went in 2000). The donations are far too low for UL to compete on a regional level. In order to increase donations, given the current product, the Cajuns need to increase the field of donors - no easy task when basketball wins 10 and the coach stays. The boosters often have motives which keep UL from being the best. The most recent QB club meeting focused on ULM (6-6 and behind the Cajuns) and Troy (a team the Cajuns have beaten once). The boosters demand the Cajuns play Tech to prove the Cajuns are the best team in the rivalry (the Cajuns are 6-6, the Bulldogs have 2-3 wins). Games against McNeese and Tulane, which prove nothing, are a must to satisfy the small group of donors. McNeese is a 1aa team, and Tulane hasn´t been good in 11 years (1998). Fact is, UL is the second best school in Louisiana for athletics. But, it has to act like it. It can´t expect to be good when it doesn´t spend money. It can´t expect to get good coaches when the good ones are hung out to dry like Evans and Hall. It can´t expect to keep high crowds if good programs are ruined by the administration(men´s and women´s basketball), and it can´t expect to compete with wealthier schools if the boosters have competing factions (games against McNeese). All of these 5 problems make UL an unattractive job for incoming coaches, which makes the reason to fire Bustle all the more flimsy. UL, because of the 5 problems, will only get interest from coaches who are starving for the opportunity (Bustle, and Greg Robinson at Syracuse...didn´t even visit the campus before he took the job). The new coach will probably be exactly like Bustle, especially if the schedule doesn´t change. Why uproot stability for the exact same results from someone with a different last name? If the Cajuns want different results, change the schedule. The Cajuns are close, and just one win away from the magical 7-5 season (still mediocre) Cajuns fans desire. The Cajuns can correct these 5 problems. But if they don´t, it doesn´t matter if it´s Bustle or Mike DuBose, the results will be more of the same -- everything fans have to come to expect at UL. _