Last night I attended the "Your Team Town Hall" held at Blake Street Tavern in Denver. The turn out was fantastic and I had a great time listening to the discussion around Colorado athletics and meeting a lot of Ralphie Report readers and commenters. Athletic Director Mike Bohn and Head Football Coach Dan Hawkins did most of the talking and Charles Johnson himself even answered one of the questions. It was a very worthwhile event and I would highly recommend that you attend one of the two remaining in 2009 if you can. The best part of the evening had to be listening to Coach Hawk chatting with some Buff alums and getting very fired up about the future of the football program and some of the obstacles that are being overcome. I'm talking "It's Big 12 football!" fired up, making comments like "I lose a coach to Auburn and he goes from $200,000 to $400,000" and "we weren't at ground zero [when he took over the team], we were below ground zero!". I must say that I left extremely excited up about the direction of the Hawkins' team and the CU athletic department as a whole. I did my best to follow all of the action on the Ralphie Report twitter feed and I will post all of my tweets after the jump. If you arent already following our twitter feed or you don't even have a Twitter account yet you need to go and sign up as we will be doing many more live feeds like this.
See the transcript after the jump...
- Great turn out so far. Bohn said it's the best so far
- I'm standing right next to Hawk. He's chatting with NYCSkibum!
- Starting with some CU trivia
- Hawks voice is almost gone. He just said we are in the Northwestern, Stanford academic "genre"
- Bohn taking Internet questions.
- Talking about athletic support for athletes. Bohn just got corrected by Hawk when he said Charles Johnson was from LA
- CJ is here!
- Now discusing current facilities and the 500k QB simulator and basketball editing software
- Hawk - "you could tape a $500 bill to the inside of the playbook and you would get it back at the end of the year, we've done it"
- Football season tickets sold in 08 - 22,000. All time high - 28000
- Audience Q: why do you blast music at me before the games? Hawk A: for the players, if it was up to me I'd be fine with old blue eyes
- Q: is hockey on our radar? Bohn A: no, we are investing in our current 16 sports
- Bohn: plan on 10% in scholarship costs for athletes per year
- Bohn bringing up the fb and gb game times. Asking who sets em. Everyone knew it was the TV networks but it doesn't mean they like it
- Bohn: it's important for recruiting [being on national tv], you still need to show up and be excited
- Bohn is a hell of a salesman. I love it
- Haha. Bohn just called CJ up to explain what Forever Buffs is. Charles says, "pretty self-explanatory isn't it?"
- Bohn talking about season ticket prices and how little they have increased.
- Bohn: "you could almost put two of our stadiums inside Texas' "
- Q from the Internet: do you think the I line has a chance to be special next year? Hawk A:" I think they have a chance to be awesome. Really awesome."
- Hawk talking about Denver Johnson. Calls him a no nonsense, John Wayne type guy. Says he's a great recruiter and that the players loved him
- Bohn talking about new facilities. Showing Bball and volleyball practice facility drawings.
- New volleyball coach Liz Kritza speaking now
- Her first season as a Head Coach was at Tulane during Katrina in New Orleans
- She took Tulane from being ranked 150 to 13 in 4 years
- Bohn promises big updates coming about the football stadium in the coming months
- Q: what efforts are being made to change the legislature around assistant coach salaries? A: Bohn said they are working hard on it but they still have a lot of progress to make
- Bohn said that they will "probably" be back at Invesco in the future to continue to reach out to the Denver community
- Q: How do you feel about the incoming recruiting class? Hawk A: great students and individuals. Probably my best recruiting class so far
- Q: what frosh do you see making an impact this season? Hawk A: says he is excited about Polk and Lockridge next season. Calls Lockridge "8000" times better than freshman year.
- He also mentions Givens and Major
- Q: what about Katoa? Hawk A: "we're working with him" [Great response]
- All done! Hope you guys enjoyed the coverage.
