Sean Miller: The Thread

One major sway that OSU would have in its favor is money from that huge media contract.

Miller might not care about his own salary, but coaches do put in a lot of time throughout the year helping to fundraise. When you have the size media contract that the Big 10 does, a lot of those athletic department money concerns are lessened. I know football soaks up much of that, but resources for all the sports are there in abundance.

Then the shift towards a massive alumni base focuses in on NIL fund raising and making sure you have assistants with the charisma to recruit top level talent. All that media money helps pad these needs for infrastructure. Things that Miller might wonder if XU can keep up.

The Big East is in the middle of media contract negotiations right now, supposedly. Fox has back-end rights. We've heard nothing. And as the SEC and Big 10 are expanding their future games available to air, the Big East has a number of programs trying to figure out how to stay on top. It's unfortunate that our larger schools aren't doing really well. UCONN is, obviously, and the Big East is a big reason why. But will it stay that way?

Fox, Warner Brothers Discovery, and Disney are creating a streaming venture, and programming inventory will be shifting. This could all impact the Big East and XU.

Part of me feels that Miller knows a program like Xavier can't be taken for granted and there's tremendous value in its position in the Big East. But if he's concerned about how strong the Big East can compete going forward he might just jump to a safer bet while the opportunity exists now. Even if the Big East gets a bigger contract (they will), will it be enough in this fast changing landscape?

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Originally Posted by sirthought

One major sway that OSU would have in its favor is money from that huge media contract.

Miller might not care about his own salary, but coaches do put in a lot of time throughout the year helping to fundraise. When you have the size media contract that the Big 10 does, a lot of those athletic department money concerns are lessened. I know football soaks up much of that, but resources for all the sports are there in abundance.

Then the shift towards a massive alumni base focuses in on NIL fund raising and making sure you have assistants with the charisma to recruit top level talent. All that media money helps pad these needs for infrastructure. Things that Miller might wonder if XU can keep up.

The Big East is in the middle of media contract negotiations right now, supposedly. Fox has back-end rights. We've heard nothing. And as the SEC and Big 10 are expanding their future games available to air, the Big East has a number of programs trying to figure out how to stay on top. It's unfortunate that our larger schools aren't doing really well. UCONN is, obviously, and the Big East is a big reason why. But will it stay that way?

Fox, Warner Brothers Discovery, and Disney are creating a streaming venture, and programming inventory will be shifting. This could all impact the Big East and XU.

Part of me feels that Miller knows a program like Xavier can't be taken for granted and there's tremendous value in its position in the Big East. But if he's concerned about how strong the Big East can compete going forward he might just jump to a safer bet while the opportunity exists now. Even if the Big East gets a bigger contract (they will), will it be enough in this fast changing landscape?

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"our larger schools aren't doing really well."
who are the larger schools?

Outside of UConn they are DePaul and gtown.

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Originally Posted by bleedXblue

If Miller isnt going anywhere, I would love to hear him say that. Maybe he did, but i doubt it. Consider me scarred from the last 5 guys that we felt the same way about.....only to have them leave.

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Excluding Steele, 4 of the 5 guys that left did so while Xavier was still in the A10.

Our now 10+ year membership in the Big East has further shrunk the number of jobs that would be considered more attractive than the Xavier position. Sean also is as about as loyal as a HC of a D1 program can be. He also is a Big East guy (PITT).

Maybe he doesn't feel a need to say anything about that specifically, given everything else he's talking about now in terms of building Xavier for the future.

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Originally Posted by Tim

Claude has no heart and I'm sure Miller is targeting him in his comments. It's stunning to me that posters i respect think he's developed significantly from last year to now.

Also, at least the same hysterical poster that keeps pointing fingers at Miller is being taken to the woodshed so there's that.

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Well I guess it also depends on what your expectation was of him. If you thought he was going from a 4 PPG scorer to all Big East, then I'm not sure what to tell you. He's made some very good progress and of course needs to shoot 3's at a higher clip, be a better leader and defend better. He's the only guy on the roster right now with a legit shot at an NBA career. All in, I think he's had a pretty good year and look for him to continue improving next year.

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Originally Posted by sirthought

One major sway that OSU would have in its favor is money from that huge media contract.

Miller might not care about his own salary, but coaches do put in a lot of time throughout the year helping to fundraise. When you have the size media contract that the Big 10 does, a lot of those athletic department money concerns are lessened. I know football soaks up much of that, but resources for all the sports are there in abundance.

Then the shift towards a massive alumni base focuses in on NIL fund raising and making sure you have assistants with the charisma to recruit top level talent. All that media money helps pad these needs for infrastructure. Things that Miller might wonder if XU can keep up.

The Big East is in the middle of media contract negotiations right now, supposedly. Fox has back-end rights. We've heard nothing. And as the SEC and Big 10 are expanding their future games available to air, the Big East has a number of programs trying to figure out how to stay on top. It's unfortunate that our larger schools aren't doing really well. UCONN is, obviously, and the Big East is a big reason why. But will it stay that way?

Fox, Warner Brothers Discovery, and Disney are creating a streaming venture, and programming inventory will be shifting. This could all impact the Big East and XU.

Part of me feels that Miller knows a program like Xavier can't be taken for granted and there's tremendous value in its position in the Big East. But if he's concerned about how strong the Big East can compete going forward he might just jump to a safer bet while the opportunity exists now. Even if the Big East gets a bigger contract (they will), will it be enough in this fast changing landscape?

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Ohio State has over 1,100 student athletes. And we all know that Ohio State football is KING in Columbus. We'll see how all this shakes out, but those abundant resources are now going to have to fly some/most of their Olympic sports to 3 destinations on the West Coast, in addition to their current travel schedules, along with funding the balance of Ohio State's Income Statement.

NIL is an issue for us vis-a-vis a large state school due to the numbers, as you point out, but I wonder how much NIL is being mandated by the contributors to flow to football. We could guess, but NIL at a school like Ohio State may not be a panacea for its hoops program. Maybe they're so big it does enough.

We obviously only have to manage for basketball. Our facilities are top notch. If we have a weak link, it almost has to be in assistant coaching salaries.

If we end up "times 2 or better" with the media agreement - $8 million or more - then I would have to think that the powers that be on Victory Parkway and Sean Miller are going to like their position for the future. Use some of the additional $4 million for increased assistant coaching salaries and, maybe at some point, depending upon how things break, direct compensation to highly valued players.

Streaming may or may not become a problem. Streaming must still be monetized by the provider the same as they monetize linear. Streaming will certainly get to more precise viewership readings since it is digital, but perhaps part of it will be about how it is packaged moving forward. This one is a long term concern, but it isn't Armageddon yet.

I continue to hope for Sean staying at X, the media agreement going to at least "times 2", and having that media agreement last at least through the end of this decade. IMHO, that will enable the Big East brand to strengthen within the existing but evolving landscape, and it will further enable Xavier to thrive within the Big East and in NCAA D1 hoops in general.

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Originally Posted by bleedXblue

Well I guess it also depends on what your expectation was of him. If you thought he was going from a 4 PPG scorer to all Big East, then I'm not sure what to tell you. He's made some very good progress and of course needs to shoot 3's at a higher clip, be a better leader and defend better. He's the only guy on the roster right now with a legit shot at an NBA career. All in, I think he's had a pretty good year and look for him to continue improving next year.

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Swains ceiling is higher than des and he could be an nba player. He has a long way to go but he has the size, athleticism that nba Gms love and he is just scratching the surface. Again, a very long way to go but he has the god given tools.

I haven’t been able to verify it, but have heard he’s on an nba mock draft or two for ‘25

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Originally Posted by Tim

Claude has no heart and I'm sure Miller is targeting him in his comments. It's stunning to me that posters i respect think he's developed significantly from last year to now.

Also, at least the same hysterical poster that keeps pointing fingers at Miller is being taken to the woodshed so there's that.

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My opinion only, but I don't see what you see with Desmond. I hope you're mistaking "no heart" with a quiet disposition. Could he have become more animated and vocal with his teammates? Perhaps, but that might not be in is personality.

I know this much, notwithstanding his woes behind the 3-point arc, Desmond Claude driving down hill to the rim is a scary proposition for the competition. I'm glad we have him.

I would think Sean's frustrations reside where most of our frustrations reside: with the front court.

My guess is that we see Nzeh starting tomorrow night.

At this point I don’t think it’s fair to begin speculating who won’t be here next year, but I think that if we watch playing time in these last 5 games (hopefully more!) we will get a pretty good indication of what the future holds for certain players.

I’ll also be watching the transfer portal to see who the rebounders that enter it are. Pretty sure X is going to do everything they can to bring in the best rebounders they can get out of it.

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Originally Posted by xudash

My opinion only, but I don't see what you see with Desmond. I hope you're mistaking "no heart" with a quiet disposition. Could he have become more animated and vocal with his teammates? Perhaps, but that might not be in is personality.

I know this much, notwithstanding his woes behind the 3-point arc, Desmond Claude driving down hill to the rim is a scary proposition for the competition. I'm glad we have him.

I would think Sean's frustrations reside where most of our frustrations reside: with the front court.

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The talent is there. But the issues I see with Claude are...

1. He does not have the clutch gene.
2. Every player makes mistakes, but it seems to me his are almost always the most critical, pivotal, tone-setting, or momentum changing.
3. His constant attempts at the 3 have become selfish at this point.
4. In addition to lacking consistency from one game to the next, he lacks consistency from one half to the next in the same game.
5. I have no evidence other than the eye test, but he looks lazy to me the way he plays, especially mentally.

I don't mean to pile on Claude, I'm harder on him compared to the Euros and bigs because he DOES have the talent and my expectations for him are higher than what he is delivering, but they are NOT higher than what he CAN deliver, and part of that is passion.