Ten For Wren – December 22, 2023
December 22, 2023 01:00 PM | General
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – It's been a couple of months since we last caught up with WVU vice president and director of athletics Wren Baker, who recently completed another head coaching search by announcing the hiring of Washington State's Jen Greeny on Wednesday to lead the Mountaineer volleyball program.
Greeny has impressive credentials, leading her alma mater to eight straight NCAA Tournament appearances, including a 26-8 record and a No. 11 ranking in the final American Volleyball Coaches Association (AVCA) poll this year.
WVU volleyball has made just one NCAA Tournament appearance in its 50-year history and is coming off 7-22 and 9-22 records the last two seasons.
We didn't get a chance to ask Baker about his latest hire, but we did ask him about some other hot topics going on in the department in our latest Ten Questions for Wren:
WVUsports.com: It's now been one year on the job. What are your thoughts on where things sit in the department right now?
Wren Baker: It's certainly been an eventful year, but it's been a year full of a lot of blessings, too. One of those is how quickly my family has acclimated and really enjoyed being here. There have been lots of accomplishments by our student-athletes and our teams, and I feel very blessed to be here. I'm more excited sitting here with a year behind us and more hopeful about the future of WVU and the athletic department than I even was when I took the job a year ago.
WVUsports.com: Men's soccer had a tremendous season, reaching the College Cup for the first time in history earlier this month, and Dan Stratford recently was named national coach of the year. What are your thoughts on what the team managed to accomplish this season?
WB: It was such an incredible team that gave us so many thrilling moments in one season. I look back at the number of sellouts, exciting finishes and the great moments they had, and I'm so proud of them. Coach Stratford, his staff and players represent the University in such a classy way, and he is just the kind of person you want to get behind and support.
He has a program full of those same kind of individuals, and to think the men's soccer world was focused on the state a couple of times this year with two really great programs. I think that was a special opportunity for the state of West Virginia, too.
WVUsports.com: Since the new Clark Mountaineer Club in the WVU Coliseum has opened we've had some great events in there, including the Don Nehlen celebration and a recent department Christmas party. In what ways will the new club impact the athletic department?
WB: No. 1, we haven't even started having our student-athlete training table meals there yet and that's the biggest benefit. We will begin those after the first of the year, and our student-athletes will be able to get catered meals there several times a week – meals that are designed and planned with their health and well-being in mind.
We have already been able to do a lot of functions in there when we really didn't have that space in the Coliseum before. Certainly, an enhanced game-day environment will enable us to generate some additional revenue, but also to provide some additional amenities for fans. Then, it will be a community gathering place where people can host events. I think it's just a great addition, and it gives us another facility to complement Club 35, the facilities over at the Puskar Center and the Diversified Energy Club and the Hartley Club, where we can be a resource for the community, but also be able to drive some revenue.
Initially, we have seen an uptick in giving to the MAC for our donors to be able to get in there for events. I like to mention whenever I can that the facility is available for rent because I don't think people know that we're in that business.
WVUsports.com: It was certainly an interesting Bowl Selection Sunday for you when everything came down. The net of it was West Virginia landed in a great bowl in Charlotte. It's an easy drive for our fan base and Mountaineer fans have responded with strong ticket purchases. Can you give us some insight on how the selection process transpired on that Sunday?
WB: The bowl process is so interesting because years ago, well in advance of the game you were having pretty detailed conversations with the bowls. Now, ESPN owns, I believe, 2/3 of the bowls and so they're kind of holding their cards close to the vest because they're interested in matchups and they're trying to find what games will be most interesting for college football fans to watch. Because of that, (athletic directors) don't really know as much.
Sometimes, fans think I know weeks in advance and I'm holding it back, and I really don't know a whole lot more than what they know. As it gets down toward the end, you kind of know what bowls have you on their radar screens, and I knew that the Big 12 could be long (on available teams). And I knew that other than Orlando, there is no other Eastern location among the current Big 12 bowl tie-ins. We'd love to pick up another one and so we had some discussions with the conference office and ESPN that we wouldn't mind being traded to another bowl if it made sense from an opponent standpoint and from a geography standpoint.
There were some thrown out there, and to be honest, Charlotte had never come up in the conversation, but two things happened on selection day. One, Oklahoma did not make a New Year's six bowl, and had it made one, we would have had the exact number of bowl-eligible teams to bowl tie-ins, so we would have gone to one of our contracted bowls. But when OU got pushed down, the Big 12 was long and sort of related to that, Missouri and Ole Miss in the SEC were bumped up and now the SEC was short one. That opened up the Charlotte opportunity and when we found out, we emphatically and enthusiastically raised our hand for it. When I went to bed the night before, Charlotte was nowhere on my radar screen, and it all happened on Sunday.
I think we're going to have a monster crowd, and we already sold out our allotment quickly. Just looking online and seeing that they are opening up new sections on our side, I'm expecting that we're going to have a monster crowd, and we'll have a great time. I hope we are singing "(Take Me Home) Country Roads" after a win in Charlotte.
WVUsports.com: NCAA president Charlie Baker's proposal about an additional or higher division in college athletics has stimulated a lot of conversation, including an interesting idea UCLA coach Chip Kelly came up with for college football. Have you put a lot of thought into this, or do you need more time to process it?
WB: There have been a lot of different discussions, and I think most of us recognize that there are going to be changes to the collegiate athletics model in the future. You would have to have your head buried in the sand not to understand that's coming. There is also a court case called the House Case (claiming all NCAA restrictions on student-athletes receiving money should be null and void) going on right now, and depending upon what happens with that case, some of these benefits could be happening, anyway.
There is some frustration by some of my colleagues that there wasn't more discussion about Charlie's proposal before it was put out there, but I think the reality is had he gone to the membership and asked them to flesh out a proposal, we would have never agreed on anything. The membership is just too vastly different right now in terms of the divisions even within the Power 5 between the haves and have nots – and even among the haves. Ohio State has a huge budget, but I think they have 36 sports, and Texas has a huge budget, and they are at 18 sports.
My guess is Charlie's strategy was to throw something out there for conversation. There isn't a final product yet, but he wants to show that college athletics leaders are considering some very major changes, and we acknowledge that there is going to need to be more benefitting the student-athlete. I think he was wanting the general public to see that, the media to see that, but more importantly, I think he wanted our congressional leaders to see that as we are asking them for consideration on a federal bill. Certainly, that makes sense to me that he would do this.
I've said many times, our budget is very tight and so we don't have that money sitting in our coffers today, but whatever the highest division college athletics allows, WVU is going to find a way to participate. I'm confident that our donors and our fans will rise to the occasion with the support that we get in a variety of areas, and particularly Country Roads Trust. I've seen the way their support is growing just because people are now understanding that's necessary for us to be competitive in this environment and it gives me great confidence that our fan base and supporters are always going to ensure what we need to compete at the highest level.
WVUsports.com: What it's going to take financially to get to the highest level?
WB: It is still a moving target. Based on what Charlie has proposed, I would say it would be around $10 million, give or take. But we still don't know what it will look like ultimately.
WVUsports.com: Have you had a chance to watch or read what Chip Kelly proposed recently? That seems to be resonating with a lot of the football coaches.
WB: I don't think what he said has not been articulated before in some form or fashion. There has been this theme of, should football be run with a commissioner-heavy structure like the NFL is run or professional basketball? But I have not seen a structure presented yet in any sport that speaks to the heart of the real issues.
The real issue is we have a lot of revenue flooding into institutions, primarily around football, some basketball and a little bit in other sports, but when you look at profitability, it's really football and basketball. I'll have fans sometimes say, 'Well, this sport makes money.' Bringing in revenue and profitability are two different things. The primary criticism is student-athletes should get a bigger share of that revenue, and they're not getting that fair cut.
Institutions, whatever they distribute, are beholden to distribute that in accordance with Title IX, which means for every male athlete there is an equal amount given to a female athlete. We can talk about different structures and different ways to reorganized, but putting people in a room and coming up with a commissioner-heavy structure or a new organization are not going to solve the conflict between those two issues. I really feel like we need to first figure out a model that follows the conflict between those two issues and then we can talk about the things that make sense to bifurcate these programs out of one big umbrella.
WVUsports.com: You have talked publicly about your strategic vision for WVU athletics. Where are you currently at in this process?
WB: Shortly after the first of the year, we will announce a reorganized senior leadership team. I'm very excited about that. I'm very excited about the addition of Erin Gibson (senior associate athletics director for marketing) and Omar Banks (Deputy Athletic Director/Chief Financial Officer) to our team. As for the actual planning process, we have a steering committee, and we are reaching out to those members now to see if they will be willing to donate their time, expertise and talent to help us. That steering committee will develop the six to eight pillars that we will implement. I have an idea what they might be, but I want to give them the freedom and flexibility, and hopefully by summer, we will have that plan finished, announced and released.
It will be publicly shared so people will know over the next five years exactly what it is that we're trying to accomplish. Beyond aspirational goals, I want people to know our strategy of how to get there. At North Texas, we had a website, and we would green, yellow and red every initiative so the general public could see where we were at in the process. Red meant we hadn't started yet, yellow was still in progress and green we had finished. I would envision we will have some type of website with a dashboard where people can see these are the things we said we are going to do to advance the department, and these are the ones on which we need to make progress.
WVUsports.com: The facility master plan is part of the strategic vision, of course. How far along are you in the process and how far does the department have to go in this regard?
WB: The RFP is currently out and so architects from all over the country who specialize in master planning, particularly collegiate athletics master planning, are submitting their proposals and ultimately from those submissions we'll select a firm that can best lead us through that. They will come on campus and interview our student-athletes and coaches. We will have a segment of our fan base be involved and from there they will help us build out what we want to be from a facility perspective when we grow up. I tend to want to be more inclusive. That leads to some images and some concepts that are a reach, at least in the immediate future, but I'd rather have that so people can see that there is a plan and a vision.
When I was at UNT, we had a very extensive facility master plan, and we did not have an on-campus golf practice facility on there. We had a donor step up after seeing a need. Our kids were driving 45 minutes to practice, and we released a plan we thought was a 20-year plan, and he comes in and funds a practice facility on his own that wasn't even on the plan. You never know who is going to come forward and support an initiative or an idea. The more vision you have for it the better chance you have to captivate that support and actually get it across the finish line.
WVUsports.com: West Virginia has been at the forefront recently of the NCAA transfer waiver process. Can you give us your thoughts on what's happened over the last month or so and where you are think this is heading?
WB: I'm not against the regulation of multiple-time transfers because I still believe we have a responsibility to graduate student-athletes and to have somebody transfer to three or four institutions during their career, their opportunity to get a quality education and graduate is being hurt by that. I think the mistake that was made is we went from a process where there were no free transfers in football and basketball and everybody having to sit a year to everybody got a free one, but there was this waiver process. To me, when we did that there should have been no waivers or there should have been objective waiver criteria and you either meet it or you don't.
Any time you put yourself in a position where you have a selective process you are inviting trouble. You are inviting criticism, and you are inviting people feeling like they didn't get a fair shake. We will see ultimately how this district court case goes between the attorneys general and the NCAA. My best guess is if they are able to keep those restrictions in that they will either do away with the waivers or make waivers where you need to meet A, B and C or you don't and there is not this subjective presentation to a committee that leads to hard feelings and people really questioning the motivations of others.
People ask me about the process of getting jerseys retired. There is a precise process to do this. When Chuck Howley got his jersey retired, he did so because he went into the Pro Football Hall of Fame, and being in a collegiate or professional hall of fame is one of the criteria. I would never want nor accept the responsibility to be able to arbitrarily make that decision, and it shouldn't be mine to make. I kind of feel that way about the current NCAA transfer waiver process.
WVUsports.com: What is your message to Mountaineer Nation for the upcoming holiday season? At this time last year there was a considerable amount of angst and uncertainty among the fan base and things seem to have calmed considerably this year.
WB: My sense right now is people are very hopeful for the future of the athletic department. I just want to tell everybody thank you. Thank you for your support. The attendance for our fall sports were up. Football was up almost 10% and men's soccer set all kinds of records, so people are coming out and supporting the Mountaineers. Our student-athletes feel that support. It helps create momentum, and as I sit here reflecting on being here a year, and during the holiday season I think you reflect even more, I'm just really grateful and thankful for the passion and the support of Mountaineer Nation. I hope everybody finds time to enjoy the holidays and celebrate with family and enjoy spending time with each other. Then, hopefully, let's get us a bowl victory in Charlotte and start the New Year off right.
Greeny has impressive credentials, leading her alma mater to eight straight NCAA Tournament appearances, including a 26-8 record and a No. 11 ranking in the final American Volleyball Coaches Association (AVCA) poll this year.
WVU volleyball has made just one NCAA Tournament appearance in its 50-year history and is coming off 7-22 and 9-22 records the last two seasons.
We didn't get a chance to ask Baker about his latest hire, but we did ask him about some other hot topics going on in the department in our latest Ten Questions for Wren:
WVUsports.com: It's now been one year on the job. What are your thoughts on where things sit in the department right now?
Wren Baker: It's certainly been an eventful year, but it's been a year full of a lot of blessings, too. One of those is how quickly my family has acclimated and really enjoyed being here. There have been lots of accomplishments by our student-athletes and our teams, and I feel very blessed to be here. I'm more excited sitting here with a year behind us and more hopeful about the future of WVU and the athletic department than I even was when I took the job a year ago.
WVUsports.com: Men's soccer had a tremendous season, reaching the College Cup for the first time in history earlier this month, and Dan Stratford recently was named national coach of the year. What are your thoughts on what the team managed to accomplish this season?
WB: It was such an incredible team that gave us so many thrilling moments in one season. I look back at the number of sellouts, exciting finishes and the great moments they had, and I'm so proud of them. Coach Stratford, his staff and players represent the University in such a classy way, and he is just the kind of person you want to get behind and support.
He has a program full of those same kind of individuals, and to think the men's soccer world was focused on the state a couple of times this year with two really great programs. I think that was a special opportunity for the state of West Virginia, too.
WVUsports.com: Since the new Clark Mountaineer Club in the WVU Coliseum has opened we've had some great events in there, including the Don Nehlen celebration and a recent department Christmas party. In what ways will the new club impact the athletic department?
WB: No. 1, we haven't even started having our student-athlete training table meals there yet and that's the biggest benefit. We will begin those after the first of the year, and our student-athletes will be able to get catered meals there several times a week – meals that are designed and planned with their health and well-being in mind.
We have already been able to do a lot of functions in there when we really didn't have that space in the Coliseum before. Certainly, an enhanced game-day environment will enable us to generate some additional revenue, but also to provide some additional amenities for fans. Then, it will be a community gathering place where people can host events. I think it's just a great addition, and it gives us another facility to complement Club 35, the facilities over at the Puskar Center and the Diversified Energy Club and the Hartley Club, where we can be a resource for the community, but also be able to drive some revenue.
Initially, we have seen an uptick in giving to the MAC for our donors to be able to get in there for events. I like to mention whenever I can that the facility is available for rent because I don't think people know that we're in that business.
WVUsports.com: It was certainly an interesting Bowl Selection Sunday for you when everything came down. The net of it was West Virginia landed in a great bowl in Charlotte. It's an easy drive for our fan base and Mountaineer fans have responded with strong ticket purchases. Can you give us some insight on how the selection process transpired on that Sunday?
WB: The bowl process is so interesting because years ago, well in advance of the game you were having pretty detailed conversations with the bowls. Now, ESPN owns, I believe, 2/3 of the bowls and so they're kind of holding their cards close to the vest because they're interested in matchups and they're trying to find what games will be most interesting for college football fans to watch. Because of that, (athletic directors) don't really know as much.
Sometimes, fans think I know weeks in advance and I'm holding it back, and I really don't know a whole lot more than what they know. As it gets down toward the end, you kind of know what bowls have you on their radar screens, and I knew that the Big 12 could be long (on available teams). And I knew that other than Orlando, there is no other Eastern location among the current Big 12 bowl tie-ins. We'd love to pick up another one and so we had some discussions with the conference office and ESPN that we wouldn't mind being traded to another bowl if it made sense from an opponent standpoint and from a geography standpoint.
There were some thrown out there, and to be honest, Charlotte had never come up in the conversation, but two things happened on selection day. One, Oklahoma did not make a New Year's six bowl, and had it made one, we would have had the exact number of bowl-eligible teams to bowl tie-ins, so we would have gone to one of our contracted bowls. But when OU got pushed down, the Big 12 was long and sort of related to that, Missouri and Ole Miss in the SEC were bumped up and now the SEC was short one. That opened up the Charlotte opportunity and when we found out, we emphatically and enthusiastically raised our hand for it. When I went to bed the night before, Charlotte was nowhere on my radar screen, and it all happened on Sunday.
I think we're going to have a monster crowd, and we already sold out our allotment quickly. Just looking online and seeing that they are opening up new sections on our side, I'm expecting that we're going to have a monster crowd, and we'll have a great time. I hope we are singing "(Take Me Home) Country Roads" after a win in Charlotte.
WVUsports.com: NCAA president Charlie Baker's proposal about an additional or higher division in college athletics has stimulated a lot of conversation, including an interesting idea UCLA coach Chip Kelly came up with for college football. Have you put a lot of thought into this, or do you need more time to process it?
WB: There have been a lot of different discussions, and I think most of us recognize that there are going to be changes to the collegiate athletics model in the future. You would have to have your head buried in the sand not to understand that's coming. There is also a court case called the House Case (claiming all NCAA restrictions on student-athletes receiving money should be null and void) going on right now, and depending upon what happens with that case, some of these benefits could be happening, anyway.
There is some frustration by some of my colleagues that there wasn't more discussion about Charlie's proposal before it was put out there, but I think the reality is had he gone to the membership and asked them to flesh out a proposal, we would have never agreed on anything. The membership is just too vastly different right now in terms of the divisions even within the Power 5 between the haves and have nots – and even among the haves. Ohio State has a huge budget, but I think they have 36 sports, and Texas has a huge budget, and they are at 18 sports.
My guess is Charlie's strategy was to throw something out there for conversation. There isn't a final product yet, but he wants to show that college athletics leaders are considering some very major changes, and we acknowledge that there is going to need to be more benefitting the student-athlete. I think he was wanting the general public to see that, the media to see that, but more importantly, I think he wanted our congressional leaders to see that as we are asking them for consideration on a federal bill. Certainly, that makes sense to me that he would do this.
I've said many times, our budget is very tight and so we don't have that money sitting in our coffers today, but whatever the highest division college athletics allows, WVU is going to find a way to participate. I'm confident that our donors and our fans will rise to the occasion with the support that we get in a variety of areas, and particularly Country Roads Trust. I've seen the way their support is growing just because people are now understanding that's necessary for us to be competitive in this environment and it gives me great confidence that our fan base and supporters are always going to ensure what we need to compete at the highest level.
WVUsports.com: What it's going to take financially to get to the highest level?
WB: It is still a moving target. Based on what Charlie has proposed, I would say it would be around $10 million, give or take. But we still don't know what it will look like ultimately.
WVUsports.com: Have you had a chance to watch or read what Chip Kelly proposed recently? That seems to be resonating with a lot of the football coaches.
WB: I don't think what he said has not been articulated before in some form or fashion. There has been this theme of, should football be run with a commissioner-heavy structure like the NFL is run or professional basketball? But I have not seen a structure presented yet in any sport that speaks to the heart of the real issues.
The real issue is we have a lot of revenue flooding into institutions, primarily around football, some basketball and a little bit in other sports, but when you look at profitability, it's really football and basketball. I'll have fans sometimes say, 'Well, this sport makes money.' Bringing in revenue and profitability are two different things. The primary criticism is student-athletes should get a bigger share of that revenue, and they're not getting that fair cut.
Institutions, whatever they distribute, are beholden to distribute that in accordance with Title IX, which means for every male athlete there is an equal amount given to a female athlete. We can talk about different structures and different ways to reorganized, but putting people in a room and coming up with a commissioner-heavy structure or a new organization are not going to solve the conflict between those two issues. I really feel like we need to first figure out a model that follows the conflict between those two issues and then we can talk about the things that make sense to bifurcate these programs out of one big umbrella.
WVUsports.com: You have talked publicly about your strategic vision for WVU athletics. Where are you currently at in this process?
WB: Shortly after the first of the year, we will announce a reorganized senior leadership team. I'm very excited about that. I'm very excited about the addition of Erin Gibson (senior associate athletics director for marketing) and Omar Banks (Deputy Athletic Director/Chief Financial Officer) to our team. As for the actual planning process, we have a steering committee, and we are reaching out to those members now to see if they will be willing to donate their time, expertise and talent to help us. That steering committee will develop the six to eight pillars that we will implement. I have an idea what they might be, but I want to give them the freedom and flexibility, and hopefully by summer, we will have that plan finished, announced and released.
It will be publicly shared so people will know over the next five years exactly what it is that we're trying to accomplish. Beyond aspirational goals, I want people to know our strategy of how to get there. At North Texas, we had a website, and we would green, yellow and red every initiative so the general public could see where we were at in the process. Red meant we hadn't started yet, yellow was still in progress and green we had finished. I would envision we will have some type of website with a dashboard where people can see these are the things we said we are going to do to advance the department, and these are the ones on which we need to make progress.
WVUsports.com: The facility master plan is part of the strategic vision, of course. How far along are you in the process and how far does the department have to go in this regard?
WB: The RFP is currently out and so architects from all over the country who specialize in master planning, particularly collegiate athletics master planning, are submitting their proposals and ultimately from those submissions we'll select a firm that can best lead us through that. They will come on campus and interview our student-athletes and coaches. We will have a segment of our fan base be involved and from there they will help us build out what we want to be from a facility perspective when we grow up. I tend to want to be more inclusive. That leads to some images and some concepts that are a reach, at least in the immediate future, but I'd rather have that so people can see that there is a plan and a vision.
When I was at UNT, we had a very extensive facility master plan, and we did not have an on-campus golf practice facility on there. We had a donor step up after seeing a need. Our kids were driving 45 minutes to practice, and we released a plan we thought was a 20-year plan, and he comes in and funds a practice facility on his own that wasn't even on the plan. You never know who is going to come forward and support an initiative or an idea. The more vision you have for it the better chance you have to captivate that support and actually get it across the finish line.
WVUsports.com: West Virginia has been at the forefront recently of the NCAA transfer waiver process. Can you give us your thoughts on what's happened over the last month or so and where you are think this is heading?
WB: I'm not against the regulation of multiple-time transfers because I still believe we have a responsibility to graduate student-athletes and to have somebody transfer to three or four institutions during their career, their opportunity to get a quality education and graduate is being hurt by that. I think the mistake that was made is we went from a process where there were no free transfers in football and basketball and everybody having to sit a year to everybody got a free one, but there was this waiver process. To me, when we did that there should have been no waivers or there should have been objective waiver criteria and you either meet it or you don't.
Any time you put yourself in a position where you have a selective process you are inviting trouble. You are inviting criticism, and you are inviting people feeling like they didn't get a fair shake. We will see ultimately how this district court case goes between the attorneys general and the NCAA. My best guess is if they are able to keep those restrictions in that they will either do away with the waivers or make waivers where you need to meet A, B and C or you don't and there is not this subjective presentation to a committee that leads to hard feelings and people really questioning the motivations of others.
People ask me about the process of getting jerseys retired. There is a precise process to do this. When Chuck Howley got his jersey retired, he did so because he went into the Pro Football Hall of Fame, and being in a collegiate or professional hall of fame is one of the criteria. I would never want nor accept the responsibility to be able to arbitrarily make that decision, and it shouldn't be mine to make. I kind of feel that way about the current NCAA transfer waiver process.
WVUsports.com: What is your message to Mountaineer Nation for the upcoming holiday season? At this time last year there was a considerable amount of angst and uncertainty among the fan base and things seem to have calmed considerably this year.
WB: My sense right now is people are very hopeful for the future of the athletic department. I just want to tell everybody thank you. Thank you for your support. The attendance for our fall sports were up. Football was up almost 10% and men's soccer set all kinds of records, so people are coming out and supporting the Mountaineers. Our student-athletes feel that support. It helps create momentum, and as I sit here reflecting on being here a year, and during the holiday season I think you reflect even more, I'm just really grateful and thankful for the passion and the support of Mountaineer Nation. I hope everybody finds time to enjoy the holidays and celebrate with family and enjoy spending time with each other. Then, hopefully, let's get us a bowl victory in Charlotte and start the New Year off right.
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