Missouri State football: Ryan Beard previews Montana
Missouri State head football coach Ryan Beard held his weekly press conference ahead of Saturday’s opener at Montana.
Patrick Ransdell, the former Deputy AD at Appalachian State, has been hired as the next athletic director at Missouri State.
Ransdell is now responsible for leading Missouri State into the future, including the school’s move to the FBS and Conference USA in 2025.
Missouri State hosted Ransdell on campus for an open forum on Aug. 16. Here are some of the notables from his appearance and initial ideas for the athletics program.
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Patrick Ransdell wants Missouri State to act more like a ‘professional organization’ instead of a college one
One of the more impactful items Ransdell harped on during his public forum as a part of his on-campus interview was the Missouri State athletics department’s lack of marketing expertise. He noted that athletics employs only one person in marketing to oversee all 18 sports.
Ransdell said staffing within the athletics department would be a major focus of his in the early months. Getting the sales staff up to speed and being more involved in the community are critical.
“I wanna have our sales staff look like a professional organization than a college staff,” Ransdell said. “We need to have an outbound sales team. We don’t need to just be answering the phone. We need to be picking it up and calling people. We need to be going and seeing people. We need to have community events to where we can engage this community better and more often.”
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Since 2017, Missouri State has had an exclusive partnership agreement with Learfield, a marketing group that employs a Missouri State-focused branch. Missouri State and Learfield are contractually tied through at least the 2025-26 academic calendar. Ransdell said at his former employer, Central Florida, they kept their rights in-house. Appalachian State has an expiring deal with Learfield he said they were evaluating.
“Our contract is what it is,” Ransdell said. “We’ll have to see how that goes over the next couple of years. I think, corporately, there’s a lot of potential here.”
Patrick Ransdell addressed Plaster Stadium and facility upgrades at his public forum
Plaster Stadium and the upgrades needed at various facilities across Missouri State athletics continued to be a popular topic with the second AD it’s brought in. Ransdell was given a facilities tour and noted that the football stadium needed upgrades.
“We are going to need to address some facility issues with football,” Ransdell said. “I’m not going to stand here and pinpoint anything but I want to get involved with architect immediately. I talked to Dr. Williams and we’re going to need to take a look at some stuff. I think there is so much opportunity and we’re all biting at the bit to get it going.”
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Ransdell didn’t go into dollar figures as much as Denny did during his open forum but it remains an open secret that Williams has publicly spoken of wanting to put $100 million into Plaster Stadium and the football program over time.
Ransdell said he tries to have a vision for the next 5-10 years, noting he wanted facility upgrade plans done on the front end of the timeline. He focused more on Plaster Stadium’s need to upgrade its premium seating rather than increasing its size.
“In football, we’re certainly wanting to get in some premium seats, coaches’ offices, locker rooms and all that type of stuff that’s massively important,” Ransdell said. “We’ve got a lot of catching up to do on the FBS level for the football program. We’ve got to make sure we’re caught up to really the upper quarter of Conference USA.
“We’ll get there. I think we’ll be able to get some stuff going here in the next year. It’s planning and we’ve got to have a strategic plan in place so we can address things 5-10 years from now and some things in this very moment.”
Patrick Ransdell has success in getting fans in seats
Ransdell’s resume touts his ability to get fans into seats, something Missouri State desperately needs. At App State, he’s led the football program’s record-breaking numbers in season-ticket sales. In 2023, ticket sales drove in $6.6 million and he projects $7 million for 2024.
“Winning cures all,” Ransdell said. “But you need to incentivize people to come. We need to make sure it’s a great environment. It’s a sports and entertainment industry, right? People have a million reasons to stay home. We need to make sure our environments are fun and high-energy and we need to compete with all so we can get people to come here and have a great time. Maybe we’ll focus on selling a couple games in a short period and then we’ll worry about selling out a full season. And then we need to get student involvement.
“We have to make it a big deal. We have to engage and we have to bring the energy. We can’t expect them to bring the energy to us.”
Patrick Ransdell talked about winning Conference USA championships
Ransdell said there are two things he wants student-athletes to leave Missouri State with — a diploma in one hand and a Conference USA championship ring on the other.
“That’s the expectation,” Ransdell said. “I told our coaches this morning that we’re here to win championships. We’re going to compete. I don’t want our coaches doing anything other than recruiting and coaching. A lot of them are probably fundraising right now and doing other things. That’s my job. We’re gonna have a staff that gets after it so they don’t have to do that. It’s hard to hold people accountable if they can’t do their job. We’re gonna get after it. I’m really, really excited.”
Patrick Ransdell is leading a $100M initiative at App State
With the money Missouri State needs to raise for the various projects it wants to complete, Ransdell’s successful fundraising is attractive. Until his hiring, he led the efforts on a $100 million initiative that had already raised $52 million by the third year of a seven-year project.
Money from the initiative are going toward capital projects including renovations to App State’s football stadium, an indoor football facility, basketball arena renovations and other athletics projects.
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Publish date : 2024-08-28 12:44:00
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