Such a generous gift. If you have the ability to support the program monetarily in any form please don’t hesitate. This 1 million is a great start to get to the excellence we all desire. While some may not agree, I will be pledging my support as well. If you’re not in a position to donate we all can still support the team by cheering and getting our butts in the seats!
Who would disagree? This is a wonderful, generous donation!
@usc4valpo there is a faction of college basketball fans that don’t believe college athletes should be compensated. I however am not one of those people.
I’m sure that Valpo will treat this similarly to how Davidson is using the ten million dollar donation from Steph Curry. They will aim to use only ten percent of the funds each year to maintain a consistent stream of money and rely mostly on that year’s earnings. This will give Valpo an annual six figure boost in NIL and other necessary costs. This will not be enough to keep players who are demanding $600,000 like Cooper, but it will help with retaining key role players, improving continuity within the team, bringing in more experienced transfers, and adding better freshmen. A huge thank you to the Schrage family for all they have done for this program. If you are a current player, how are you not feeling the buzz continuing to build around this program?
This is incredibly generous of them. Landmark day for VU basketball.
This is a phenomenal gift. In terms of logistics, Schrage also donated $2 million to the basketball program in 2021. NIL was in a completely different place back then, so I am curious how the funds are used differently.
I believe the first gift was designated for use in basketball recruiting.
It is in the press release, yet Schrage also donated the money for the Schrage Basketball Wing - the expansion on the East side of the ARC that has the basketball offices. This opened in 1999.
We are blessed to have them as long-term major donors. I doubt they are monitoring this board, yet I send my sincere thank you to the Schrage family!
They have certainly supported the program for many years and appear to be very generous individuals. Has anyone on the board met them in person? They must be in their late 80s or early 90s now and seem to have made philanthropy a central focus in their retirement years.
Reading some of the articles about their story was inspiring. Paul’s vision for marketing and promotion throughout his career stands out—he clearly worked hard to develop innovative ideas that delivered results; one could say his vison is on a legendary scale.
I truly hope this gift sparks many positive developments for the program moving forward.
Truly a very generous donation by the Schrage family. Fully agree with Roger Powell's comment in the press release that it is "transformational".
As a younger fan, I didn't know exactly who Paul schrage was. After doing a bit more research, Valpo is lucky to have this guy in their corner for Athletics. Not a lot of people can say they have one of the folks who built the largest fast food chain in the country and one of the most prestigious basketball awards for high schoolers in the country feeding your program. Paul deserved a movie more than Ray croc ever did from my foray into researching his role and accomplishments.
If anyone ever has the chance to meet the "father of advertising", there aren't enough words in the English language that could properly thank him for never giving up on this program and university
Yet another generous donation to add to Powells war chest.
This puts the "Total NIL" for next year at top of the league albeit one time donations are still one time donations. I am now perfectly fine if someone throws a blank check to some of our core pieces (especially pettigrew). I also think the challenge the CEO of CAT makes for other Valpo fans is significant as well.
https://twitter.com/i/status/2029603321640517688
