Totally agree.  As soon as i heard about this 'target ten' nonsense, i pictured a situation just like this one.  There is something kind of silly about donating money with all kinds of qualifications, you would be less of a dick of you just told THON to f-off in the first place.

But oh no, why simply make money off of overly loyal alum when you can take advantage of kids with cancer.  Really, though, is there anything worse than, in effect, stealing from KIDS with CANCER?  Every time I say that i throw up a little in my mouth.  

just going to throw this out there, i'm calling bullshit and sending an email, i'm even linking your post mike:

presidnt@psu.edu

You had me from the non-beating-around-the-bush title.

Utterly disgusting.

Not a big deal but just wanted to let you know that Loren Crispell is a man, yeah odd first name for a man but nonetheless a man.

And hey this was never about Thon, this was about making PSU look like they actually had fans at Basketball games, which clearly we don't. I highly doubt Thon was depending on the money raised by the Basketball program to help them meet their goal, they do pretty well with the money raised from all of the student organizations, of course everything helps. This whole plan was to get people out to the games and after it they just look foolish.

I am sure some will say it's harsh to criticize Target 10 and to say it wasn't about raising money, but the numbers you put together are enough to show poor judgement on the athletic department's part or at least a total lack of common sense.  

was this a ploy by THON and PSU BB ?  So if everything worked out, the max THON could make is what?  $20k?  Thats less than one half of a percent of the total amount THON raises.  

I'm going to ramble with some numbers here.  MSU had 1,600 students.  Lets say OSU hits 10k, that means 8,000 people went simply to suppor thon.  Well then only 3k or 4k are going to go for the MSU game anyway, not a full 10k.  That means you have 8k (OSU) + 4k (MSU) = 12k students simple to suppor thon, at $5 a person, thats $60,000 the BB team is making off this thing. But THON is only taking home 1/3 of that, $20k.  I would think somone at THON would have thought this out and said for all the effort lets just do our own thing.  (Did any of this make sense?)

But did anyone really thing that 10k students would show up?  The THON people had to know that wouldn't happen.  So were they doing the BB team a favor?  Why not just try and get the frats and sororities out to the game w/o the crazy Day After Tomorrow fundraising nonsense.

this thing with Thon and Penn State hoops, but just make a general statement.  Money and greed are turning out to be the downfall of this country.  Period.  The disparity between haves and have nots is at it's worst since right before the Great Depression.  And furthermore, look at how money is corrupting college football:  There is no playoff because nobody wants to offend the bowls (who shell out millions of dollars) and look at how TV gets to dictate the kickoff of games because of the money the networks have paid to televise the games.  

It's articles like this that bring out all the bad points that THON has these days. It's become more of a competition than a charity event. Who cares how much money that Penn State Athletics donated to thon, it's more than they've donated in the past is it not. Could they donate more absolutly I saw tuition bills for four years, I know the kind of money they pull, should they have donated more absolutly. But they donated what they did, which is a great thing. But no one seems to remember that anymore, now suddenly thon is about being bigger and better then everyone else.
Last year I went to the HUB to give blood for the MSU-PSU blood bowl, and there were people from the blood driving trying to hand out papers getting people to give blood. Somebody from thon came up and yelled at them because THON had reserved the near bye table for "100 days to THON". They said "Get away from our space this is for thon, no one cares about some stupid blood drive."
It's things like that and all the complaints here that are really ruining THON. If thon doesn't want the money penn state bball raised then fine give it to one of the many other charities at Penn State who would gladly accept it.
Also, if you've ever been there you would know that the money isn't even the most important part of thon. If you've seen the look on the faces of the kids when they're there. The realization that people are working that hard for them, and all those people care about them, that is worth more than any dollar amount.
So be happy with what you get, the kids will be.

First off let me preface this by saying that I think that most of you are right in your assessments of this situation... I just want to clear up some things here to tidy up a bit.

1.) The person who thought up the idea for Target Ten was a student who has less of an association with THON as he does Nittany Nation (the student section at basketball games).  He lives two doors down from me and we talked about the schematics of this thing the entire time leading up to it.
He told me that they were really counting on selling tickets at the door for the OSU game which was on a school night (Tuesday) and happened to be an absolute downpour so any hopes of door sales were shot.  Apparently, he was expecting somewhere in the neighborhood of 4,000-5,000 tickets to be sold at the door (Penn State assured him that these things always started getting popular the day of the event).  Also, the Big Ten Network bought 1000 tickets to try to stimulate the thing and it just didn't lift off the ground.  On the upside (if you're not a skeptic) Penn State is leaning toward doing this again next year but told my friend that it was not guaranteed unless the 10000 was reached.

2.) There had to be more than 1500 students there... the attendance seemed to double at halftime and the entire lower section was filled by tip-off... I'd say at least 1000 people came during halftime (I'm in the band so I could definitely see an increase)

3.) Not all the students stormed the court because there were some up a few sections and some ushers were more successful in stopping them than others.

4.) I agree that there are some people and organizations that only see THON as a huge competition and that's sad but as I always say, down at the heart of it, 5.2 million dollars is 5.2 million dollars and all of the greed and pride is checked at the door during family hour at the actual event itself.

Just my take on things...

Thon raises millions of dollars for pediatric cancer every year, and you're going to blast Penn State because of this? Yeah, this promotion didn't work out. Why don't you blast all of the other universities across the country that don't raise a dime in the fight against pediatric cancer?

I'm sorry guys but to blast the athletic department and especially Loren is just plain childish.  The students are to blame.  They had the chance to raise $50,000 dollars for THON and simply passed on it.  The athletic department is a high cash flow organization but hardly the kind that can dole out $50,000 dollars.

Also, many other organizations and companies do fund raisers with THON and don't donate 100% of the money taken in  to THON, Coldstone Creamery for example.  The athletic department had to pay the BJC staff for 2 games, electric, other expenses for two games.

I worked with the AD for these games.  If you think that it was a huge scheme by the athletic department, than you're just being unduly cynical.  I'm sorry but this post is just irresponsible reporting.

And to Mike- They announced over the loudspeaker at the Ohio State game that they would still be giving the money from Michigan State to THON.

If only you knew the friction received from THON in trying to raise awareness for the event.  Some  committees even refused to pass along the e-mail fully explaining the two games to their members.

Even going further part of the promotion was supposed to be to garner national exposure for THON, being the game was nationally televised.  However, again the students passed on this opportunity.  We worked very hard for this.  I worked very hard for this.  To say I was disappointed in not only the failure of the event but the little money raised for THON in comparison to what could have been is an understatement, but then to come on here and see you people making up stories and drawing conclusions from incomplete evidence is just devastating.

Please, try to look at it from a different point of view.  We tried and failed, but please give us credit for trying.