OK, it's time for boosters to boost DePaul

DePaul basketball boosters must have been ticked off the other day.

Their whining helped get head coach Jerry Wainwright fired and the move was buried in the media by Mark McGwire's steroids confession.

Well, folks, how about doing your part to make the Blue Demons relevant again?

The days of succeeding as the little mom-and-pop shop under the "L" tracks are over.

College athletics are big business. You don't get a Mark Aguirre/Terry Cummings bang for your buck unless that buck is industrial size.

Neither athletic director Jean Lenti Ponsetto or Wainwright - Wainwrong some might say - is responsible for the sorry state of DePaul basketball.

You are, you low-rolling alums who profess to want so badly to return to the loud and proud days of "We are! - DePaul!"

Hate to break it to you but fun comes with a price tag here, just as yelling "Hook 'em horns!" does at Texas and "How 'bout them dawgs!" does at Georgia.

You have to pay up if you expect DePaul firing a basketball coach to be more significant than the Fire hiring a soccer coach on the same day.

NCAA Tournament bids are expensive now, yet DePaul's basketball budget is paltry compared to those of quality opponents in the Big East.

So you better do something about it, you blue Blue Demons fans, or eventually the school will have to drop to a less prestigious conference.

Presumably because of the cost, Ponsetto is downplaying talk of building a new home arena closer to campus than Rosemont's Allstate Arena is.

Well, boosters, if DePaul basketball is important enough to you, raise the money to finance a new place to play.

The biggest donor gets his name on the new arena and the second-biggest gets his name on the floor. As disgusting as that sounds, it's how the game is played nowadays.

Boosters wind up having too much power, administrators defer to them too much, and sports become more professional than collegial - but that's the 21st century.

So, tell me, do you want to keep complaining about losing or start paying for a gaudy new arena, obscene recruiting resources and lavish coaches' salaries?

How much would a new place cost? Millions? Tens of millions? Heck, who knows, maybe even hundreds of millions in a union town?

But the time might be right as DePaul embarks on a new era with a new coach. Interest rates remain low if you can get a loan. Maybe in a soft real-estate market there's affordable land to the east along Clybourn Avenue.

The way it's done elsewhere, affluent alums ante up and ground is broken. So why not at this school?

We hear a lot about what a DePaul education is worth. Some local alums must have the financial means to boost the Demons like, say, Pat Ryan has Northwestern.

DePaul basketball can be a big winner again in this sports-loving city that boasts a big pool of prep talent and a big-market fan base.

It won't be easy, won't be cheap and won't happen until boosters pay up.

If they don't want to, they should stop demanding anything better than the product they're currently suffering.

mimrem@dailyherald.com