What’s wrong with Athletics at UIC?

[A friend of the program]

There isn’t a right or wrong answer here, but with the recent spike in Soccer and Baseball, I am curious what people think should be done within Athletics to make consistent winners in all sports. When I say winning I, mean for all sports to win their season and make some kind of appearance in a
post-season competition.

I think we need to work harder at recruiting coaches that are good and eager and then paying them competitively.

Please, if you respond, don’t rip on other peoples suggestions; these are, after all, just opinions.

[I'm In The Front Row]

I'm thinking of some of the dead weight that's in the Athletic Department itself. Granted, one of them is gone, and I don't want to mention his name because we've already done that. BUT, there are a couple more that could leave and we could get some folks that will help make it a better program overall.

[Greg]

Actually I think Jim Schimdt has done a good job overall. We know about soccer and baseball and womens softball has had some good teams in the past. Collins has done something no other coach has done for us in basketball and that is getting in the NCAA tournament. That being said there is room for improvement. With basketball being the most recognized sport for us that would be most important to improve. I believe that corporate sponsorships and alumni donations along with tickets purchased (in other words money) can do more to improve a program tham anything else. Look at Ohio States budget in The Wall Street Journal:


Inside College Sports' Biggest Money Machine
What do you get for $109 million a year? Jon Weinbach on Ohio State's record-breaking budget.
By JON WEINBACH
October 19, 2007; Page W1

At $109,382,222 for the current year, Ohio State's athletic budget is the largest in the nation and the biggest in the history of college sports. It allows the school to field 36 varsity teams in everything from baseball and soccer to riflery and synchronized swimming. The school spends about $110,000 on each of its 980 athletes, which is triple the amount the university spends per undergraduate on education.


VIEW FROM THE TOP


• BY THE NUMBERS: Athletic budgets of college football's top-10 schools. Interactive Chart
• SMALL SPENDERS: Q&A with the CFO of athletics at No. 2-ranked University of South Florida.The budget for this academic year allots $65,000 in private jet time, or roughly 11 hours, to men's basketball coach Thad Matta for recruiting trips over 200 miles -- and a further 15 hours of jet time for the coach's personal travel. A just-completed $19.5 million renovation of the football team's practice facility, funded with a large donation from Limited Brands Chief Executive Leslie Wexner, added a players-only entrance, a lounge that has six flat-panel TVs, three videogame systems and a juice bar. "There's always a race to get up there after practice," says Jake Ballard, a sophomore tight end for the football team that enters this weekend ranked No. 1 in the country.

The men's and women's ice-hockey teams train on a $75,000 hockey treadmill that features a lubricated, ice-like surface that tilts at sharp angles and goes as fast as 16 miles per hour. Men's hockey coach John Markell solicited a donor to buy the equipment, which he says has become a key part of players' workouts. It's a machine most college teams -- and even many National Hockey League clubs -- haven't purchased. "We don't have the space or resources for that," says a spokesman for the Anaheim Ducks, last season's Stanley Cup champions.

Here in Columbus, the OSU athletic department is a gold-plated island in a region getting roiled by harsh economic forces. The lavish program is the most vivid example of how college sports have turned into a humongous business and created a parallel universe of high-living in the world of academia. OSU's athletic budget, which has grown 46% in five years, has expanded despite a prolonged downturn in the Ohio economy and several rounds of public-funding cuts to higher education. The state's median household income fell 9.3% between 2000 and 2005, one of the worst declines for any state during that span.

Foreclosures and Poverty


Buckeyes head coach Jim Tressel with Tyler Whaley
Ohio has the nation's highest rates for foreclosures and delinquent mortgages, and during the second quarter of 2007, 22.9% of Ohio homeowners with subprime loans were over 90 days late -- almost twice the national average, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association in Washington, D.C. The state is home to two of the five poorest cities in America -- Cleveland and Cincinnati, both of which had more than 25% of residents living below the poverty line in 2006, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Ohio has been ravaged by the struggling U.S. auto industry and the forces of globalization. From 2000 to 2006, the state lost about 200,000 manufacturing jobs and added just 40,000 new positions to offset the decline. Companies such as Mr. Coffee, Rubbermaid and Hoover closed plants and shifted production abroad.

From 2002 to 2005, the Ohio Legislature decreased annual support for the state's universities. In response, OSU instituted its highest annual tuition increases in nearly 40 years, boosting rates nearly 60% from 2002 to 2006.

Ohio State was one of just 19 schools to turn a profit on athletics in 2006, according to data collected by the NCAA. OSU says its athletic department is self-sufficient -- it uses sports revenues to pay for its teams and operations. It doesn't draw from the same budget that's used to fund academic departments. How much the athletic department spends is determined by how much it brings in, not by how much the university decides to give it. A 2005 economic-impact study, commissioned by OSU, estimated that the school's sports program pumps over $100 million a year into the local economy, with more than a third coming from Buckeyes fans' spending on hotels, food, parking and shopping.


At right, Ohio State cheerleading
In a sports-mad country, why Columbus? The alma mater of track star Jesse Owens, golfer Jack Nicklaus and basketball Hall of Famer John Havlicek, Ohio State has a long history of passionately supporting its athletes. OSU's teams are the premier sports attraction in Columbus, Ohio's state capital and biggest city, and the school has the largest enrollment in the country, with more than 52,000 students. TV broadcasts of OSU games routinely attract 60% of all local viewers, and in Columbus, the OSU football coach's Sunday-morning chat show gets better ratings than "Meet the Press."

Supporting the program is seen as a civic virtue. Over the past five years, giving to the Buckeye Club has increased an average of 12%. The booster club's membership of nearly 3,700 is up 32% from 2003. In addition to Mr. Wexner, a 1959 OSU graduate, prominent donors include Robert Schottenstein, CEO of M/I Homes Inc., one of the country's largest home builders.

The enormous financial rewards for successful programs have fueled an arms race among schools to build larger, more lavish venues that can ring up millions from luxury suites and sponsors. Over the past five years, schools in the NCAA's top six sports conferences raised more than $3.9 billion for new sports facilities, according to the Chronicle of Higher Education.

At Oklahoma State, oil and hedge-fund mogul T. Boone Pickens gave $30 million to renovate the football stadium, and put his name on it. He has also committed $165 million more to build an "athletics village" on campus. Nike founder Phil Knight recently donated $100 million to Oregon's athletic department, which plans to use the money as a safety net to cover potential operating losses. The department still plans to ask for public funds to build a $200 million basketball arena.

Other big spenders include the University of Texas-Austin, which has the nation's second largest sports budget at $107.6 million, although it fields 16 fewer teams than Ohio State. Last year, the Longhorns' athletic department paid $152,585 for nutritional supplements like Gatorade and PowerBars.

Preserving 'Opportunities'

The football and men's basketball programs at OSU are the only sports there that turn a profit -- and their revenues support teams other universities have eliminated for lack of funding. "We never want to get into the business of taking opportunities away from students," says Gene Smith, OSU's athletic director.


Ohio State's synchronized swimming team
Ohio State's varsity synchronized swimming team competes in a two-year-old, $20 million facility, nicknamed the "Taj Mahal," that features seven bodies of water and two whirlpools for athletes to relax in during competitions. A multimillion-dollar renovation of the school's "Scarlet" golf course, completed last year and overseen by Mr. Nicklaus, added a short-game practice area and enlarged the course to over 7,400 yards.

OSU's pistol team maintains a supply of about 30 firearms for the team's 11 members, and all shooters receive an array of free Nike gear, including polo shirts, a jacket and shoes. "We're a good-looking team," says James Sweeney, OSU's pistol coach since 1999. This year, for the first time ever, OSU's rifle and pistol teams received scholarship money to recruit top competitors.

At other schools, there is a more Darwinian approach to smaller sports. Last year, Rutgers cited budget shortfalls for its decision to cancel six sports, including swimming, men's tennis and fencing. But the athletic department still gave assistant football coaches a sizable raise, completed a $12.5 million renovation of football's training complex, and is in the midst of a stadium renovation that will add nearly 10,000 seats.

At Ohio State, "nonrevenue" sports such as men's lacrosse and women's track don't have to worry about earning their funding. Excluding football and basketball, OSU's other 34 teams generate about $1.5 million in revenue. Last year, for example, expenses for the women's hockey team totaled a little over $1.2 million while the sport brought in just $1,642, all of it from arena concessions. Many sports, including rifle, pistol, and women's fencing, don't contribute any revenue at all. "I'm sure my scholarship is possible because of the football team," says Lindsay Quintiliani, a sophomore goalie on the field hockey team.


Hockey-team winger John Dingle trains on a specialized treadmill
Last season, Ohio State's football program generated about $57 million in revenue. The sum included a $4.75 million payment from the NCAA for advancing to the national championship game and $31.65 million in ticket sales from home games at Ohio State's 105,000-seat stadium. Team expenses, which include nearly $2 million for meals and travel, as well as debt payments to cover stadium renovations, subtracted about $21 million. Still, football supplied nearly $36 million in profit to the athletic department's coffers. The University of Florida, which beat OSU for the national championship in January, made about $34 million on football last year.)

OSU's men's basketball team, which moved into a new, 19,500-seat arena in 1998, advanced to last year's national championship game and turned a record $9 million profit.

A significant chunk of the athletic department's budget is spent in ways that benefit the school's general fund. This year, the athletic department will spend $12 million on scholarships or "Grant-in-Aid" to pay for athletes' tuitions. A few years ago, the department contributed $5 million to help fund renovations to the campus's main library. OSU's sports program is also among the few that pays for all maintenance, security and operating costs at its facilities. (The utilities bill at the football stadium last year: $731,309.) In addition, the athletic department transfers about $1.7 million to the school's academic-support center to pay for tutors and "life skills" workshops for athletes. "I think we're paying somebody $25 an hour to tutor physics," says Mr. Smith.

Last year, the issue of swelling athletic-department budgets was taken up in Washington by the House Ways and Means Committee and the Senate Finance Committee. In a strongly worded letter to NCAA President Myles Brand, former Ways and Means Committee Chairman Bill Thomas criticized "highly paid coaches with no academic duties," and wrote that Division I football and men's basketball "more closely resemble professional sports than amateur sports."

Judy Bunting oversees OSU's 46 cheerleaders and four student mascots. Her team gets about $169,000 from the athletic department, and supplements it with interest income from a special endowment established by a donor a few years go. "We probably have more scholarship money than most," says Ms. Bunting. In contrast to the spirit squads at Notre Dame and UCLA, OSU's cheerleaders get seats on the football's team's chartered jets. "That's a big plus," she says. "We used to drive vans and fly commercial

[Gone but not forgotten]

Quick answer! Jim Schmidt. Lose the loser and the program grows. Who do you think choses the coaches. As long as they keep this second rate athletic director, the programs will remain second rate.

;D

[What]

That's kind of harsh.

Jim does a good job with picking coaches. Mike Dee, John Trask, Sarah and Tom from Softball, Shannon Tulley, Hans Neufeld, etc. It has to be something other than picking coaches.

At a certain point you can only do so much to motivate someone (especially since most people have to motivate themselves) and they become unproductive.

I'm hoping you're not a supervisor or manager Mr. Gone, because if you're have a bad year it will reflect on you. BUT, of course, in your little mind it's never your fault but the fault of those that are working against you...

[EzE]

Building a strong fan base, recruiting, etc. It is a question of what came first...chicken or the egg? A strong program or winning tradition?

Soccer, baseball and the other sports we do well in don't get the attention that other sports (namely men's bball and football) receive. Without a football (or hockey...sorry had to slip that in here) program...we have to rely on the next sport that has significant media attention...that is men's basketball. All you need is that one season where they make a run in a tourney. Make the sweet sixteen and be actively recruiting the following year and then get some names, and continue to build off of that success.

[I'm In The Front Row]

I agree that a football team would be great. However we have to start with about 12-15 million for the first year. Then we have to have a practice facility and field. Then a stadium to play in. We can go on and on...but I think the question was related to our current state.

Here are some other ideas that I have besides some people not working hard enough in Athletic Department.

Our conference: Does the Horizon League have a high enough profile for us? There have been gripes over the years about jumping conferences. BUT, without a football program we have little opportunity to jump to a major conference. We could try the route that DePaul has made, but we need to win basketball on a more consistent basis.

TV and Radio: We seem to be heading in the right direction here. We have better coverage recently than we've had with the Horizon League Network. (The online streaming thing) The Lakeshore Public Television broadcasts are not bad. We have gone a little backward in radio. From ESPN to WIND, but we still have the games broadcast.

Newspapers/Print media: As I look in the paper today I see a section called "Around the Big East". Now the Tribune thinks that all Chicagoans want to know about the Big East (F*** the Big East!!)because DePaul is in the conference. We are also inundated with Big Ten all the time that it becomes overwhelming. With two teams from Chicago in the Horizon League (UIC and Loyola) we need a little more exposure with our own weekly round-ups. Not just a little blurb in the filler sections of the Tribune and Sun Times. Our SID staff should be more involved in this. It amazing how few press releases from UIC actually make it to the newspapers. We should all be involved in this and send emails to the appropriate Sports Editors to mention that we would like to see more coverage of this. The Tribune Sports Editor is Dan McGrath at [e-mail]. The Sun-Times has an online feedback page at: www.suntimes.com/aboutus/feedback/index.html
The more people read about UIC the more local talent will want to come to the school.

Corporate sponsorship: We still to have the same sponsors year after year. Granted they help, but that makes things status quo and we don't seem to grow in that area. UPS, Great West Reality, etc., are all great but how about more? I know some just buy seats, but it would be nice for them to donate more corporate sponsorship. I see seats on the main floor that are always empty that have corporate names on them. How about making them be more of a sponsor than a season ticket holder?

Student fans: I don't appreciate the attitude of fair-weather fans. The fan section should be packed. We have 15,000 undergrad students, approximately 3000-5000 live within the campus area. How come we only have about 20-50 students each game. ALSO, I find it odd that other sports don't come to games to support each other. I see coaches from the teams, but rarely the athletes. Wouldn't it be cool to see the entire girl’s softball team at a basketball game some time? Then, when spring rolls around have the entire basketball team come to a softball game. It's not a hard thing to do. I think that some of our coaches think they work in a vacuum.

I think that's just about everything. If anyone else has ideas, I'm more than willing to listen.

[EzE]

We could get cardboard cutouts of students to fill empty seats. ;D

Examples of non flagship schools having successful programs are from teams that had a tradition of winning...ie - UCLA, UNLV.

Question for you guys...IF it was ever possible, what impact do you think beer sales would have for the program in terms of attendance and revenues?

[I'm In The Front Row]

Isn't there some rule that they can't sell beer at the games.

I'm not sure it would help that much with attendance. I might help with revenue if UIC gets a good cut of the proceeds.

[FuryJP]

We do have a good number of Cross Country runners who are with us in the student section. The fact is...a good number of athletes DO go to Basketball games and OTHER sports at UIC, but they DO NOT sit or cheer with the student section. It's very pathetic. Even the women's team sits very far from the student section at men's games. Maybe because we don't have that type of turnout at their games.

If athletes would PROMOTE THEMSELVES more at other events, they'd see a difference.

[Season Tix Holder]

I think Schmidt has and is doing a good job overall. How soon we forget that UIC won the Horizon All-Sports Trophy last year when men's basketball had a down year.

My problem with Jim is that he has tolerated incompetent support staff members for to many years.

Even though Dane was terminated a few months ago, David Rosengard remains on staff.

He is a do nothing and I am sure Jim could find better.

I have also been wondering when Dane will be replaced.

Any word?

[Jason M]

i believe that UIC gives away free tix to inner city schools/programs. While not do the same for suburban schools.

as long as there are empty seats in a stadium (thus no variable costs) why not give them away to HS basketball players in the area.

1) you fill up the stadium and create the illusion of demand
2) you increase food, parking and beverage sales which i can only assume that UIC gets a cut of
3) you create an awareness and potential interest in UIC basketball from local hs kids who may be a good fit for the program in the future. you dont violate recruiting rules since you give them to the hs basketball coach/athletic dept, etc for them to distribute as freebies to their players/students as they see fit.
4) you make an impact in the chicago land community. does UIC offer any kind of basketball camp? do they have any charity nights or participate in events similar to White Sox charities.
5) you market your successes like heck. Any billboards up about UIC Soccer being an Elite 8 team? Any banners on the street lights on campus? (again similar to White Sox/Bulls championships) Are the UIC soccer players going out to youth leagues (or inviting them in) to meet the players , maybe sign autographs? anything similar done with uic mens basketball

honest to god, its either pure lazyness or lack of funds/creative ideas that keep this program from really taking off.

[I'm In The Front Row]

Those free tickets are bought by the corporate sponsors and then given out to groups that request them. If we want to have other groups, those groups should contact the ticket office to inquire about those tickets. I also understand that if you get a large group they will bring the bus to you and then take you back home.

[Jason M]

so the flames ticket office/marketing dept should sit on their hands and wait for groups to approach them about free tickets that they may or may not know about???

[FuryJP]

As far as I know, the for most part the groups are contacted by UIC. A mailing goes out to a lot of groups and schools around Chicago, and its up to that school/group to contact UIC back and request the tickets.