Missouri State athletic director Kyle Moats repeatedly said he understands.
"People evaluate us – right or wrong – on football and men's basketball more than anything else," he said in a sit-down interview at the Missouri Valley Conference Women's Basketball Tournament.
Those two sports are going through growing pains right now, and the public might be tuning out. The men's basketball program drew an average crowd of 4,140 at home this year, roughly 37 percent of JQH Arena's 11,000 seat capacity. If you remove the home date against Wichita State – which drew an outlier 10,506 fans – the average drops to 3,686.
"You're always concerned about that because the attendance part is really the annual giving if you will," Moats said. "We need our fans' help and support for many reasons. First is financially for our budget. Second is it helps recruit. When you come into an arena and it's not what you want it to be the kids see that as well."
Still, Moats isn't inclined to make a change. "I'm fully behind [men's head basketball coach] Paul Lusk. I'm excited about where we're headed. I understand what we've done, but I'm more interested in where we're headed."
He cites MVC all-freshman team selections Jarred Dixon and Obediah Church, MVC Newcomer of the Year Dequon Miller, and swingman Chris Kendrix (who was named to the all-improvement team) as reasons to be optimistic about next season. But he said recent history doesn't change Coach Lusk's job security going forward.
"I don't think there's any more pressure than there has been before," Moats said. "Our goal is to win the conference and get to the NCAA Tournament. That hasn't changed from day one. Paul's working every day as hard as he can to make that happen. If I didn't think he was doing that he wouldn't be here."
Football attendance may not seem as dire when looking at raw numbers, since the Bears have finished top-25 in FCS home attendance each of the past two seasons (since expanding Plaster Stadium's capacity). But, on the list of their 15 most attended home games in school history, only two are in November – and those are from 1996 and 1997. Seven of the 15 games are dated September 14th or earlier. The Bears have a hard time sustaining attendance during the football season.
This year's team struggled to compete in the FCS as new head coach David Steckel began re-shaping the team in his image. Moats says he wanted to enforce stricter discipline in the program, and the wins are coming.
"What I told Stec when we were negotiating for him to come here was I wanted to change the culture completely," he said. "I wanted to break it down and start from the beginning. He did that. It's very hard to make it happen right away. He's going to get all the time he needs to get it done.
"I'm not going to pinpoint 'you'd better have it done in two years,' because I don't think that's fair. I think you'll see more progress this year than last year, and hopefully even more in years three and four."
Balancing these two programs out are the baseball and women's basketball programs. They each made their conference championship games a season ago, and the Baseball Bears went to the NCAA Super Regional (and should've hosted it). The Lady Bears were picked as the favorites in the Valley this pre-season, and have the third seed in this weekend's tournament.
"As an athletic director I have to take all of it into account," Moats said on the health of the department. "Our graduation rates and APR are in great shape. There's a lot of good things going on. Track, women's golf, softball, soccer's won two out of three. Swimming's an eight-time champ.
"There's nobody that wants to win in football and men's basketball than me. If we can't get it done then we'll make changes. I believe we can get it done and I hope our fans support these kids because we need them to. "
