Bryant basketball upgrades and other news

[Obadiah]

In discussing capital investment - primarily athletics facilities - I neglected to mention the important role of philanthropy and in my thinking there two aspects that drive philanthropy - probability and randomness.

On probability, a state like California with 40 million residents has a higher probability of having deep-pocket donors than a state of one million residents like Rhode Island. URI is at a disadvantage on this point.

At cross currents to high probability is the occurrence of randomness or just plain luck. The best example of this is small population North Dakota where the terrific hockey facilities at the U. of North Dakota - a luxury, 11,600 arena whose $100 million cost was provided by Ralph Engelstad who made his money in construction and Las Vegas casinos.

At URI, we are lucky to have Tom Ryan and Mike Fascitelli who are big donors to the university and have wisely given more to the academic side than athletics which is the opposite to the Engelstad gifts.

Somehow URI must improve athletics donations and cultivate donors beyond Ryan and Fascitelli, if we are to improve athletics facilities at URI because state funding cannot be relied upon. At present, other than the Ryan Center, URI facilities lag our peer institutions especially those schools we aspire to compete with.

[SmartyBarrett]

[JimSidd]

Even if his college career so far has been disappointing compared to his rating, this is a huge get for Bryant. Schools like that don’t often get players with that background.

[Jersey77]