Dear Bears Family,

After a long and successful fall, it was great to spend some extra time with family around the holidays. I hope everyone had a similar opportunity to share the holidays with friends and loved ones. 

This fall featured two teams who went to the NCAA Tournament and won Missouri Valley Championships, Men's and Women's Soccer.  It also featured an 8-win football season, only replicated a few times in program history.  As we shift our focus to the winter sports and the start of our spring seasons, it is always energizing to be back on campus with our student-athletes.  I want to take a moment to look toward the future and the rapidly-evolving landscape of college athletics.

Whether or not you have heard of the "House vs. NCAA" settlement, you will likely hear about it as we move through 2025. While the settlement will not be finalized until April, (fingers crossed), the settlement will dramatically transform college athletics. Perhaps the most impactful aspect of the settlement is that it would allow athletic departments to share up to an estimated $20-22 million of annual revenues directly with student-athletes, starting in the 2025-26 academic year. The settlement also includes the elimination of scholarship limits and will cap rosters at various levels across our 19 programs.  

How will this impact Missouri State? 

Since arriving in Springfield, I have talked endlessly about our need to generate more revenue. This is more important than ever with this settlement, and we will need to be innovative and aggressive as we call for a greater buy-in from our entire community to support the Bears.  

Missouri State will participate in the House settlement. To what extent is yet to be determined. Much of that will be determined if we can get off to a good start in football season tickets for the 2025 season. The more we can self-generate, the more we will be able to invest in talent acquisition and retention. That will be the backbone of college athletics moving forward. 

The past few years has been filled with one massive change after another in college sports, which can be challenging to follow and, in some ways, frustrating to see. But I do want Missouri State to embrace the change and be willing to look at things differently. I promise you, we can and will be competitive.

While things become more settled this spring, we will need to make new investments to achieve competitiveness and re-evaluate other items that don't impact the ability to win championships. We want to win at a high level and be successful. Candidly, moving forward, our desire to win will be determined by our willingness to invest.

As I have said numerous times, the best three ways to support our program are: buying season tickets; donating to the Bears Fund; and attending games.  We have to create attendance momentum in 2025-26. 
 
I love to help build things and that is exactly what we have in front of us.  It is going to take each and every one of YOU to assist US so WE all succeed.  We must push hard, stretch our financial ability and make time for The Missouri State University!  

Over the next few months, our team will be studying and implementing many changes for next academic year.  We have already rolled out a new football pricing model for our move to FBS this fall (season ticket holders will see improvements to Plaster to justify increases in addition to additional home games and FBS level competition). We will re-invent the Bears Fund, create a legacy program aimed at long-term sustainability, evaluate our ticketing system moving us into a more digitally focused future, create new sponsorship inventory and get high level investments from those who have led this community for decades.  We will also update our fans on improvements to venues, including Plaster Stadium, for our entrance into C-USA as we get further into spring.

Please share this message with others and follow us on social media. The age of digital communication is here, join us!  

My goal is to have regular posts on our website to keep open communication going.  In the meantime, I look forward to the culmination of our winter seasons and the start of spring sports. I hope to see you at our events. Please don't hesitate to stop me and say hi, ask questions or share concerns.  See you on campus, Go Bears!


Patrick Ransdell
Director of Athletics