Okay, maybe just one question about what the new Marquette athletic director had to say in an extended 1-on-1 interview.
A couple of days into Mike Broeker’s new role as Marquette University Vice President & Director of Athletics, our friend Andrei over at Paint Touches got a chance to chat with the guy who is elevating from 18 years as Deputy Athletic Director to running the entire show at 770 N. 12th Street in Milwaukee. I highly encourage you to go read the entire thing, because it’s important to know about where to set the baseline for a notable alteration if not outright change in the operation of Marquette’s athletic department.
As you might expect, I had a “is that so?” reaction to a couple of things in there. Going in order through the way PT laid it out:
PT: One of the questions that’s related to that is that you have run point on a lot of the Marquette basketball administration and strategy for the last decade across multiple coaching staffs, is that something you foresee continuing in your new role or do you think there’s going to be a replacement, whether it’s internal or an outside hire, into what you used to do for your day-to-day for basketball?
MB: You know, I haven’t given an enormous amount of thought to that yet.
Hang on.
You’re telling me that after 18 years as the Deputy AD at Marquette and a hiring process for this specific job that dates back to May 2024, you haven’t thought how you would change your day-to-day operation if you had the top job? Even though I’m sure that you had conversations with outgoing AD Bill Scholl in the last two-ish years that indicated that Scholl was closer to retirement than people outside the department suspected?
Just to make it clear that I’m not picking on Broeker here: This didn’t come up in the hiring process? Dr. Kati Berg and her search committee didn’t ask this question during the interview process, even though the university is currently undergoing a process of cutting $31 million from the yearly operating budget? “Hey, if we give you the job, what are you going to do about your current day-to-day responsibilities, seeing as you’d be elevated to a spot on the University Leadership Council and have new leadership responsibilities?” I’m expected to believe that didn’t come up? That feels like a pretty important question to ask, doesn’t it? If Marquette was going to, as a hypothetical, steal Wisconsin athletic director Chris McIntosh, that’s a situation where you just drop him into the open job and let him do the work. But moving a guy from one job to another job inside the university requires discussion of how the guy’s old job is going to be covered going forward, doesn’t it? Especially when said job involves administration of a multi-million dollar program that’s on national television twice a week for four-plus months a year?
And Broeker says he hasn’t given an enormous amount of thought to it.
Okay. Sure.
Emphasis mine here on this next part.
PT: There’s a general desire to cut costs across the university and athletics being part of that. How does that affect the expectations, then, that you have set for the teams? And for the athletic department as a whole.
MB: We haven’t really charted the path as to how we’re going to be more sustainable and more efficient yet. We’re considering a number of strategic measures now. I said this last week, we have to come together and accept our reality but not allow it to drive our future, right. We have the ability to shape our future. One of the things I’m trying to be most committed to is not just making assumptions cause I’ve been here 21 years, right?
If I’m going to have critical questions about some things, I have to point out my positive reactions to other things, right? Gotta be fair here.
My biggest reason for hiring someone from outside the Marquette sphere of influence was the level of change that’s quickly heading towards college sports, both short term with the House settlement expected to kick in this summer and then who knows what else down the line. “We’ve always done it this way at Marquette” is not a good mindset to attack problems, and hiring an outside person immediately undercuts that possibility. But, I have to acknowledge that if Broeker is cognizant of the fact that he needs to take a step back and look at things with a second view from outside what he knows to be the way things are done here, that’s good.
PT: I want to touch on one thing you mentioned in terms of Fiserv. So looking through past articles, I think the lease, unless something else has been kind of signed without public knowledge, expires either this year or next season.
MB: No, we’ve extended that lease. Without getting into particulars, it was a long lease with multiple options within it. We’ve already exercised one of those options and those guys have been terrific partners. We have had good conversations with Peter Feigin already about how can we help grow this together and they’ve been phenomenal in that regard.
PT: That’s good to know. And so then I did have another related question. I don’t know if you saw but Anonymous Eagle had a really nice piece last week about the the Fiserv concessions and how it seems like there is a limited amount of concessions compared to a similar size Bucks game for a weekend sell-out.
MB: I did see that and that we do not share in food and beverage, but we have a vested interest in making sure that Fiserv is healthy.
Hey, that’s me! They’re talking about me! They read the thing I wrote!
[smooths hair, straightens tie, regains professional-ish composure]
It’s important to note here that 1) Marquette has a new deal to play men’s basketball at Fiserv going forward past this season and 2) Marquette does not get a cut of concessions sales as I had found mentioned in a Journal Sentinel article from back when the arena was under construction. Very curious about what changed between Dr. Michael Lovell saying that would be the case and the present where that’s not happening.
And so, Andrei followed up with a question about the apparently lack of dedication to concessions at Fiserv Forum for sold out Marquette men’s basketball games.
PT: So in that vein, are concessions something that you speak with with them about or have input on?
MB: They’ve been great partners and we’re constantly dialoguing with them about all things around the experience and, ultimately, they have to make the decisions that make sense for them. The question, and that’s a great one, that’s a perfect example, for us, of what it’s about. It’s asking, “are we providing an experience for our fans from the minute they leave their house to the minute that they go home that’s consistent with the value we put on that experience.” And I can’t speak to the differentiation between their games and our games, I haven’t haven’t been to a Bucks game in that way where I’ve explored the facility, but if there’s noticeable difference like that, we absolutely have to sit with them and ask the question and and simply say, how can we make this better or how can we improve upon that? We’ve done this in other ways throughout the building and they’ve met us at that place every time. I can’t stress enough how great partners they’ve been since the day that building opened and before that building opened, candidly.
Our fans should have high expectations for the environment we’ve created in their experience (at Fiserv) because we continue to raise those expectations. So again, I’m hopeful when we sit with Bucks leadership and Fiserv staff at year end or throughout the summer, we talk about these things. We’ve got to continue to find ways to grow how we’re providing that experience for our people down there.
Last thing! I’ve published a possible idea for a men’s college basketball Champions League for the past couple of off-seasons. The last question in the Q&A followed up on that, or something like it, and have to say, Broeker seems to be a proponent of finding a way to drive interest (and therefore money) to the sport with something along those lines.
PT: It seems like there’s a potential opportunity still for a secondary revenue source in the non conference, something like the NBA Cup or in-season tournament. Is that something you’ve thought about or seen discussed?
MB: One I I’m unbelievably inspired by your passion to make this a reality. I would say we have to look at all opportunities, all assets and our ability to leverage them to create more revenue, whether it’s the broadcast inventory we own, how we distribute our games. I think there’s some inherent challenges in the way rights agreements work for what you’re suggesting. But is there an opportunity to reconfigure portions of the schedule and still on a rights agreement but create more value in the way you’re doing it? You know maybe I don’t know the answer to that, but I think we have to be more open than ever to looking at things differently. And you know your concept is right. Your concept is a thoughtful one and it could be one where we say maybe it’s not as much creating value as much as it’s creating awareness. And what’s the residual of the awareness in terms of the impact on our business, right? I do feel like a little bit of this dovetails to where MTEs and stuff goes and how do we look at creating if MTEs start to evolve and change and we have some inventory. Within that 31, are there ways that our coaches would be comfortable trying to leverage that inventory in different ways and I’m actually very excited to be a part of those discussions with the other athletic directors in the league, in the conference office and the coaches at the appropriate time.
And number 2, it’s got to make sense for our student athletes. We can’t lose sight of that, right? Like the NBA Cup is amazing, but they have the ability to flex and move around a bit, but we’re working with kids, we’re working with class schedules and these other things. And I say that not to say that something can’t be accomplished, but those are the obstacles in the way. So those are the things we’d have to consider as we still navigate to and you’ve seen some of this already, like I think that’s what Fox is doing with their college basketball crown event.
I’ve only mentioned about a quarter of what was discussed in the Q&A, so again: Go read the whole thing to get an idea where Mike Broeker is standing as the new athletic director.