What can money do? Worth a watch

[Mr Lisle]

Grand Canyon University located just west of down town phoenix is a small (7,500), for profit, religious university. They are now in the process of moving up from D II to the reconstructed WAC and will begin their first of four "probationary" seasons moving up to D 1. This school has dedicated itself to making the Antelope basketball team into a competitive program and go head-to-head with both Arizona State, Arizona and the rest of D 1 when they are tournament eligible. They are driven by a bizillionaire and former Phoenix Sun owner, Jerry Colangelo. Colangelo was appointed "special assistant" to the CGU president for the purpose of making it all happen. For starters they now have a beautiful new, on campus, 5,500 seat basketball arena...part of a $200,000,000 building plan. I've heard numbers like $50,000,000 for the arena. CGU's young coach for the past few years was terminated at the end of the season and just replaced with former Phoenix Sun All-Star Dan Majerle who was a Sun's assistant from '08-'13. This really resounded with the valley of the sun sporting community. Now they are searching for "top-flight" assistants who can recruit and teach. Doesn't seem like money is an object as respects anything.
Anyway, this is a program with a vision and goals...and lots of cash, and will be worth watching. I'd like to believe we have some of that at MSU.

[SonomaCat]

It's hard to get past the fact that they are a "for-profit Christian University." Those two phrases seem kind of jarring together. It's sort of like saying, "Yes, we are using religion as a marketing tool to try to enrich ourselves, and we're not even going to hide it, unlike the televanagelists of the world."

This will be interesting to watch. When you have a for-profit University getting involved in college sports, it may really push the envelope in terms of what people think of college sports. Their primary mission is to make a profit, whereas all other universities in the NCAA have mission statements that put the educating of students as their exclusive focus. If this school becomes an NCAA power, how will the other schools react to what amounts to a professional sports franchise (for-profit entity) among their ranks?

[Mr Lisle]

We are both on that page BAC. Great response.