There is a version of this story where Old Dominion University's basketball program stays exactly where it is — losing in the first round of the Sun Belt tournament, averaging 5,000 fans a night in an 8,600-seat arena built for something better, cycling through portal rosters without a coherent identity, and gradually fading from the consciousness of Hampton Roads until the fanbase that stuck around through the lean years finally exhausts its goodwill and stops coming. That version requires no decisions, no risk, and no leadership. It just requires inertia.
There is another version. It is harder and more expensive and demands the kind of institutional boldness that this administration has not yet demonstrated. But it is achievable. The tools are there. The market is there. The facilities are there. The tradition, buried under a decade of dysfunction, is there too. What is missing is a plan and the will to execute it.
This is the plan.
Step One: The Coaching Change That Everything Else Depends On
There is no sequence in which you build a championship-caliber mid-major basketball program without the right coach in place first. Everything that follows in this piece — the infrastructure, the revenue sharing commitment, the brand rebuild, the student section, the ROI conversation — is premature, even counterproductive, unless the right person is leading this program. Pouring resources into the wrong vessel doesn't fill it. It just makes the eventual drain more expensive.
Mike Jones is not that person. Two years of data and a trajectory pointing the wrong direction have made the case. This is not an argument about his character or his connection to this institution — both are worthy of respect. It is an argument about fit and results. Mid Major basketball’s new economic reality demands a head coach who is fluent in transfer portal mechanics, who understands how to allocate a revenue-sharing budget across a roster, who has recruited and developed players in this landscape rather than trying to learn it in real time. Mike Jones is learning things on the job that a program in ODU's position cannot afford to wait for its head coach to figure out.
The coaching market has been restructured by the House settlement in ways that actually benefit ODU's search. With total coach and player budgets of approximately $3 to $5 million becoming the competitive mid-major standard, the new economic realities of college sports fundamentally change who you should hire and what you should pay them. A mid-major head coach consuming 20 to 40 percent of a program's total basketball budget in salary may not be a sustainable model when that same money competes directly with player compensation. The right hire for ODU is not necessarily the highest-priced name available — it is the coach who maximizes the resources ODU is about to commit, who can recruit to a clear identity, and who walks into this situation understanding that the front office infrastructure being built around him is a genuine competitive advantage.
The day ODU announces that coach is the day this program turns its page. Not before.
Step Two: The Infrastructure Is Already Taking Shape — Use It
The decision to add Dr. Michael Reutt to the athletics staff is the most quietly significant move ODU basketball has made in years. Reutt's background — Stanford operations, two years managing NIL and compliance infrastructure for USC under one of the most portal-aggressive coaches in the country, a completed doctorate in global sport leadership, executive leadership experience with TopConnect — represents exactly the kind of professional front-office expertise that sets a foundation on which an excellent portal operation can be built.
The indications are that ODU is building toward a professional front office structure in which recruiting decisions, player valuations, and NIL commitments flow through a layer of institutional oversight rather than sitting solely with the coaching staff. That kind of accountability framework is a significant structural upgrade, and one that the right head coach will recognize as a competitive advantage.
The honest assessment, however, is that this infrastructure will only function at its potential with the right coach. A talented front office working with the wrong head coach is like installing a high-end engine in a car with no transmission. The parts are good. The output will still disappoint.
But when the coaching hire is made correctly, ODU will have something that sets them apart from most Mid Major basketball programs: a modern basketball front office that can give the coaching staff a headstart in portal recruiting.
Step Three: A Financial Commitment That Changes the Conversation
Here is the number that matters: $3 million.
That is what ODU needs to commit to men's basketball revenue sharing, announced publicly, on the same day it introduces its next head coach. Not quietly, not buried in budget documents, not described in careful language about "competitive packages." Announced. With conviction. With a fundraising campaign attached to it that makes clear this is a floor, not a ceiling.
The context for why this number moves the needle: Power Four conferences are preparing to spend in excess of $10M on revenue sharing and NIL for their basketball teams. At bare minimum mid major schools will need to piece together a $2 to $3 million player compensation budget to field a nationally relevant roster. The Sun Belt's current top basketball “salary” budget is around $1M. That gets you a 14 seed and a 20 point drubbing in the first round of the NCAA Tournament. That reflects what it costs to compete in the 22nd best league in the nation. It does not reflect what it costs to be elite.
A $3 million commitment from ODU, announced as the foundation of a stated ambition to become the Sun Belt's flagship basketball program, does several things simultaneously. It sets a new conference standard that forces peer programs to respond or fall further behind. It gives the new head coach a recruiting pitch that is quantifiably better than anything in the league. It signals to every donor, every season ticket holder, and every recruit's family that this institution is serious in ways it has not been before. And it opens the door to the fundraising conversation that pushes ODU further — toward a $4 million, $5 million program that competes at the level of the Atlantic 10's best and the Missouri Valley's top tier.
The objection that this costs money is real. The response is that winning generates money — and the university needs to demonstrate that it understands this cause-and-effect relationship, rather than continuing to treat basketball as an expense to be managed rather than an investment to be leveraged.
Step Four: Building the Brand Back From the Ground Up
The ODU basketball brand has not just declined. It has hollowed out. What was once one of the most respected mid-major programs in the country — a program that went to the NCAA Tournament eight times at the Division I level, that routinely sold out a venue Pollstar Magazine once voted the number one arena on a college campus in the country — is now a program people in its own market don't talk about much anymore.
That damage is reversible. But it requires a mindset shift that has to come from the top and filter down to every person in the ODU athletics building, from the AD's office to the person scanning tickets at the Chartway Arena door. The standard being communicated internally right now is something like: "we're competing." The standard that needs to be communicated is: "we expect to be the best program in this conference, and every decision we make is filtered through that expectation."
Those are not the same thing. The first creates a comfortable middle. The second creates accountability.
Concretely, this means several things. It means the administration publicly declaring ODU's intent to be the Sun Belt's premier basketball institution — not hedging, not qualifying it, just stating it as the organizational goal. It means communicating to Hampton Roads how that goal is being pursued: the new coach, the $3 million commitment, the front office infrastructure, the fundraising campaign. People invest in programs that are going somewhere. They disinvest from programs that seem content to tread water. ODU needs to give the community a reason to believe the destination has changed.
It also means holding people accountable to a championship standard at every level of operation. Game day experience, digital content, social media, fan communication, ticket sales strategy — all of it needs to reflect a program that is building toward something significant, not maintaining something marginal. The difference between a program that operates with championship energy and one that operates with middle-of-the-conference energy is mostly attitudinal, and attitude starts at the top.
Step Five: Reclaim the Crowd
Chartway Arena on a big night is one of the best mid-major venues in the country. The place holds 8,600 in an intimate bowl, where a full house is physically overwhelming, where the noise compounds itself until you feel it in your chest. The demand is in Hampton Roads. The building is ready. What has been missing is the consistent reason to show up.
Student engagement is both the most immediately achievable and most neglected piece of this puzzle. ODU is a university of 24,000 students. That is a built-in fan base that needs invitation and permission more than it needs convincing. The students who pack Cameron Indoor are not fundamentally different from ODU students — they have been given an identity, a tradition, a permission structure for being loud and absurd and fully invested. ODU's student section, one of the program's genuine strengths in its peak years, has been managed into mediocrity.
Stop that. Encourage chaos. Let the students build something. Give them ownership of the student section atmosphere rather than rules governing it. Partner with student government, Greek life, residence halls, and athletics organizations to create the kind of pre-game culture that makes coming to a game feel like participating in something rather than attending something. The difference between those two experiences is the difference between a full student section and one with a handful of students that are spending more time watching Tik Toks than the basketball game.
When Chartway Arena is loud and full — not occasionally, not for one game a year, but consistently across conference play — it becomes a weapon. Visiting coaches notice when their players look rattled in warm-ups. Visiting players notice when the building is shaking. That environment cannot be manufactured with a marketing budget alone. It has to grow from investment in the student experience and wins worth celebrating.
Step Six: Close the Loop — Connect Success to University Health
This is the argument that the administration needs to hear in its own language, because it is the argument that unlocks the full financial commitment this program requires.
When Shaka Smart took VCU to the Final Four in 2011, something happened at that Richmond commuter school that no enrollment campaign, no advertising budget, and no institutional initiative had been able to accomplish in decades: people across the country knew what VCU was. The degree you earned from VCU went up significantly in value because of the basketball team, because people took VCU more seriously — it was a direct correlation to the work Smart did. Applications climbed. The quality of applicant improved. The alumni giving conversations changed because donors wanted to be part of something people had heard of. That is not a sports story. That is an institutional transformation, and it happened because a basketball team played a game people watched.
George Mason's Final Four run in 2006 worked the same way. JMU's football success under Curt Cignetti — a program that won a national championship as an FCS member, then stepped into FBS and immediately became one of the most recognizable brands in Group of Five football — has built institutional identity for James Madison University that extends well beyond the sidelines. These are not isolated phenomena. They are documented, reproducible examples of what competitive athletic success does for a regional university's broader profile.
ODU leadership needs to understand this in quantifiable terms and communicate it to the entire ODU community in quantifiable terms. What is the value of 100,000 additional television impressions on a Saturday night in February when ODU wins a nationally televised Sun Belt game? What does a conference championship run in March add to name recognition in the Mid-Atlantic recruiting market? What is the dollar value of the applications generated by a program that appears in the NCAA Tournament consistently — the earned media that no advertising contract could replicate? These numbers are calculable, and they dwarf the $3 million investment being asked of this institution.
The administrative commitment to transparency here is as important as the financial commitment. When ODU starts winning and the downstream effects begin to materialize — more applications, higher donor engagement, renewed corporate partnership interest, a Hampton Roads community reconnected to its flagship university — name it publicly. Show the math. Tell the story. Complete the feedback loop so that donors understand their investment in basketball is an investment in the university, not a subsidy for athletics. That reframing changes the conversation from charity to strategy.
The Full Picture
What is being described here is not a fantasy. It is a program operating at the level that High Point is building in a town best known for furniture, that Utah State is building in Logan, that VCU built in Richmond — programs that took stock of what they had, committed to a standard, put the right leadership in place, and built something their communities could not stop talking about.
ODU has the arena. It has the market. It has a connected community that will show up for a winner. It has 24,000 students who want a reason to be loud on a Tuesday night. It has a Hampton Roads donor base that has demonstrated, through thirty years of athletic investment, that it will write checks for a program that makes them proud. It has a basketball tradition that made a generation of Monarch fans believe this program could be something genuinely special.
What it needs is a coaching change that signals seriousness. A financial commitment that proves it. An infrastructure already being built that makes the investment work. A brand posture that demands excellence from everyone in the building. A student section given permission to be electric. And a leadership team willing to close the loop by showing the Hampton Roads community that winning on that floor lifts the entire institution.
The path from where ODU is to where it could be is not a mystery. It is a series of connected decisions that require will more than wisdom, boldness more than budget, and a genuine belief that this program — with this fanbase and these facilities — deserves to be treated as the asset that it could be rather than the liability it has become.
The window for this kind of rebuilding is not infinite. Fanbases that drift away take years to recapture. Students who grow up attending games at other venues develop habits that are hard to break. Donors who stop believing eventually redirect their generosity. ODU has time. But it does not have unlimited time.
ODU Unfiltered covers Old Dominion University athletics and institutional affairs with the honesty the official channels won't provide.