Bleeding Green

Boisture Personal Observations and Thoughts

It was a pleasant surprise to many MSU fans that Saline QB Joe Boisture committed to MSU last week after initially giving a verbal to Boston College this March.

Goran Suton and the NBA Draft

Well, the NBA Draft is upon us and it appears that only one MSU player, Goran Suton, has a chance to be drafted.  The Detroit Free Press has reported that he has recently worked out for 11 NBA teams.

Leadership, Collaboration, and Contribution

Back in late April and early May I was really happy to see the level of smart, insightful participation in discussing MSU’s marketing challenges.  It’s linked here if you’d like to check it out:    http://noise.typepad.com/bleeding_green/2009/04/the-marketing-problem-what-do-we-do-.html

 

A few themes from that blog caught my eye and kicked up the questions below:

 

1. Today we have MSU athletics leadership that is changing the Spartans’ football, hoops, and campus marketing efforts, and of which we will be proud.   Coaches Dantonio and Izzo, along with President Lou Anna Simon’s and Athletics Director Mark Hollis’s wise coordination at the top, have already solved some areas of historical neglect.  But, we know there is a long way to go to live up to the potential that most of us recognize quickly when we look back at our years on campus, what MSU has meant to us, and what it has to contribute today. 
2. Where there is terrible neglect is in the alumni network.  I’d have to say it’s painfully weak given the scope of MSU and what we find on campus and amongst members of the Spartans family.  I always wonder why there is such a lack of visibility and sense of collaboration among alumni association members and chapters.  I simply don’t ever get emails, despite paying membership dues reliably, about a national or even local coordinated effort to grow our influence in Michigan and across the nation.  In fact, in the few alumni meetings I attended a several years back here in the Bay Area it was a lot like herding cats.  And, I was struck with a lack of sense of community and mutual interest among attendees on a personal level.  It’s a problem -- without a sense of community as the alumni association’s foundation, or dynamic and visionary local leadership, we cannot go far vis-à-vis the competitive environment we face.  Maybe, just maybe, we can start with focusing on what we can contribute, rather than what we can get.  Just a thought.
3. Frankly, my experience is that my Grand Rapids high school had both far better leadership (most of whom were Spartans too as educators) and better followers as well. So, I wonder:

          a.  Why does this go unaddressed?  

          b.  Why are the energy and the leadership so diluted? 

          c.  Why do bars and tailgaters, with the requisite focus on alcohol, generate a hundred times more energy than the idea of getting these same groups to show up, collaborate in a friendly but intellect-driven context, and run the Spartans program right over the Weasel-rines’ foam-at-the-mouth attitude?  

 

Yes, our top-down Athletics Department leadership is strong at last.  Now, how do we catch up on the bottom-up flow of contribution, vision, local leadership, and commitment to excellence that are the core of Dantonio’s, Izzo’s, Hollis’s and Simon’s recent breakthroughs (and not principally just tippin’ ‘em at the tailgate) that our alumni associations across the U.S. and around the world have not yet attained?

William Gholston (reportedly) Commits to MSU

Scout.com is reporting that William Gholston committed to MSU early this morning. In fact they have him as a commit on the Scout.com website.