He Was A Good Cowman

He was a good cowman.
One sentence statement that was on the bulletin for Sam Baugh’s funeral.

Before 1990 and the return of football to the Hardin-Simmons campus, there were three names always mentioned with Cowboy football. Clyde “Bulldog” Turner who played at HSU and later had a Hall of Fame career with the Chicago Bears. Ed Sprinkle who also played at HSU and for the Chicago Bears, and was known as ‘the meanest man in professional football”. The third was Sam Baugh who passed away last week at the age of 94. Baugh played his collegiate football at Texas Christian University and was the head football coach at HSU from 1954-1959. After he retired from pro football and a phenomenal career with the Washington Redskins, he brought national attention to HSU when he became the head coach.

About 10 of his former players from HSU attended his funeral on Monday in the community of Rotan. Several of them mentioned how he always said that the HSU job was the best job he ever had. Baugh ran his practices as if he was back home in Rotan at his ranch tending to his cattle. Most days he was on the practice field in blue jeans, western shirt and a well-worn Cowboy hat, which was similar to his attire that he would wear on game day. Baugh coached the Cowboys when they were a member of the Border Conference and in 1958 he led the Cowboys in a brutal non-conference schedule for a small Division I school. The Cowboys played Baylor, Ole Miss, Arkansas and defending national champion LSU all on the road and all for guarantees, which probably helped keep the athletic department in budget for the year. One year during practices a group of high school coaches from the area came to watch Baugh and the Cowboys work out. One of the coaches was current Cowboy football coach Jimmie Keeling.

Many of the speakers at the funeral talked about Baugh and his colorful language. Which he would use at any time and any place. Whether it was the ranch, church, golf course, banquet, Baugh was going to talk like the rancher he was. He was always the same, regardless of the circumstance. I remember a local television reporter asking Sam if he could watch his language during an interview. Sam smiled and said if he had to watch what he was going to say, then there would be no need to interview him. The interview went on with the reporter having to edit the conversation before it went on air.

Sam also had a great sense of humor. When he left HSU to take the job as the first head coach of the New York Titans in the American Football League, the team struggled. They were not very competitive and Baugh quit after two seasons of what everyone would agree was bad football. Toward the end of the second year, a reporter asked Coach Baugh if he was concerned with how the fans might act at the games because of the performance of the team. With perfect timing, Coach Baugh said he was okay with dealing with the fans. After all there were probably more players and coaches on the Titans staff, than there would be fans at the game.

While there might have been a limited number of Titans fans that day in New York, there will always been a huge number of Sam Baugh fans. And the fact that he had numerous fans that never saw him play, speaks to what kind of person he was away from the football field.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year

As we mark off the final days of 2008, there is plenty to look forward to for the upcoming year. One thing that the women’s basketball can look forward to this year is their trip to the Bahamas which will begin on Wednesday. The Cowgirls will play two games on this trip, which they spent the last several years raising money for. This will be the first time the Cowgirls have made a trip like this and I know it will provide them plenty of good memories.

In 2009, we will continue work on several projects on the Grape Street Athletic Complex. The work has started on a new parking lot, which we anticipate will have over 150 parking spaces and an area for buses to park. This will help allow us to have ample parking for our athletic events and will improve the overall look of the facility. If everything goes according to plan, we should have the parking lot completed by late February, which will certainly help us during softball season. We are also working on irrigating and adding sod to the infield of the track, which we hope to have done by early January. Across the street from the track we will be building the area for the hammer throw which should be completed sometime in the spring. When we have finished all of these projects we will be the only school in the American Southwest Conference who will be able to host a conference meet with all events at one facility.

The Spring will also bring the chance for the coaches of our fall sports to hit the road as they being the recruiting process. All of our fall teams had strong seasons which should help them as they visit with potential student-athletes. I know that our football program is encouraged by the improvement that was evident this year. Now that several of our coaches have been on campus for awhile, I know that they will work hard to bring in the type of student-athletes that will continue to help us improve.

And while it was a tough way to finish the football season, we do have to tip our hats to our league rivals, Mary Hardin-Baylor. The Crusaders certainly helped the reputation of the American Southwest Conference as they had no problems with two of their playoff opponents after their close win against the Cowboys. And yes, the matchup of the Crusaders and the Cowboys in 2009 is something I am already looking forward to.

When You Think About It, Its Not That Bad

There has been a significant talk around the Hardin-Simmons community about our recent pairings in the NCAA Division III football playoffs. We have a history of playing Mary Hardin-Baylor in the first or second round of the playoffs because of what the NCAA refers to as geographic proximity. While some could argue it is an unfair way to start the playoffs- having to play a conference opponent right out of the gate- I think it is something that we have to realize is the reality of intercollegiate athletics at the Division III level.

And I think we all have to keep things in perspective about what should bother us and what we should be able to deal with. I hope that you understand that the competitive desire for me to see our athletic programs do well has not waned over the years. I share the goals and dreams that our coaching staff have in regards to not only excelling at the conference level, but performing well on the national stage. I just think that sometimes we all need help in refocusing our vision on what is truly important.

And I bring this up after my recent trip to California for the women’s soccer playoff game at Redlands University. As my flight began its descent into the Santa Anna airport, you could see the smoke rising from the earth from the recent fires. After landing and picking up my rental vehicle, I drove thru smoke and high winds on Highway 91, a road that would be later closed because of bad conditions.

When I got to Redlands, I heard several stories about families who had felt the impact of the day’s events. A college soccer coach from the area and father of five lost his home on Saturday morning. A retirement center burned down with no casualties, but everything in the center was destroyed. How do you start over at retirement age with no home, no belongings and no step by step list on how to begin your life again?

On Sunday, when I left the hotel to drive to the airport, I once again had to deal with the fires and their devastation. Several roads and interstates were closed, which meant I had to take an alternate (and longer) route to the airport. The trip was surreal as for five minutes you would see a beautiful southern California morning and then five minutes later, you would be driving thru white smoke and you could observe where the ground was charred. I heard on the radio that because of the poor breathing conditions caused by the fire, they had cancelled the Pasadena marathon. When I eventually arrived at the airport my clothes smelled as though I had been outside all morning in the smoke. Fortunately my flight was not delayed and I was able to make my way back to the everyday normalcy that so many times I take for granted.

Is it appropriate for us to be disappointed that our football team is playing a familiar opponent, which might make this feel like it is not a playoff game? Sure. However anything stronger than disappointment should be reserved for those issues that truly deserve it.

Cowboy Up,

JN

Streaking

Bill Clinton was still President of the United States. Sarah Palin was the Mayor of Wasilla, Alaska. The cost of a gallon of gas was $1.26. HSU Senior Morgan Loyd was 14 years old. The year was 2000 and it was the last time a Cowgirl soccer team lost a regular season conference game.

On Saturday, October 4, the Cowgirls tied the University of Texas-Dallas, 0-0, which means they have extended their streak to 100 games without a loss in conference play during the regular season. From my perspective, there are numerous things that make the streak so impressive. The first is that for each opponent the Cowgirls have been “the game” that our conference opponents have highlighted on their schedule. Each opponent has brought their best game out for the Cowgirls and yet they have prevailed. There are numerous things that go into winning and losing a game-and for the last eight years, HSU has done everything that has to happen to not lose a game in conference play. Congratulations to all current and former members of the women’s soccer program for their role in this remarkable streak.

High praise is also in order for men’s soccer coach Dan Heger, who on Friday became the all-time leader in coaching wins for our men’s soccer program. Heger, who had an outstanding career at HSU as a goalkeeper when we were Division One, is in his sixth year as head coach of the Cowboys. Dan has been able to provide a unique insight for our coaching staff as he coached at the high school and college level before coming to Hardin-Simmons. I know that our other coaches enjoy hearing his perspective on motivating a team and I think they also appreciate hearing his humorous stories about growing up in Philadelphia.

The Hall of Fame Banquet is Friday night and if there is someone you think deserves to be nominated, please forward their information to me. An athlete shall have completed his/her playing career at least ten years prior to becoming eligible for nomination. Coaches shall have finished their coaching career at HSU for five years prior to becoming eligible for nomination. The committee has a difficult task as they choose four individuals to go into the Hall of Fame each year. Each year we shuffle the committee members so that there is not an agenda that one member might bring to the discussion every year. We are fortunate to have so many candidates to choose from each spring when the committee meets to discuss the next class of inductees.

Times They Are A Changing

Compared to the destruction that Hurricane Ike caused across the nation, the challenges that we faced as a school because of Ike were relatively small. Two soccer matches were canceled, our men’s golf team had a tournament postponed and we moved our football game time on Saturday. The reason for the change in game times was not because we thought that playing in the afternoon instead of the evening would cut down on our chances of playing in the rain. Instead we agreed with Linfield to move the game time because of concerns over lightning delays. If we had a lightning delay we would rather have the window of having all afternoon and evening to complete the game. Two years ago we attempted to play a night game at Louisiana College that had numerous delays because of lightning. After experiencing that situation, in which the game was not counted because we were not able to complete it, I would prefer not to revisit that scenario.

And before our game started on Saturday, I experienced something new at Shelton Stadium. For fifteen years the pregame agenda at Shelton has always included two hours of listening to the fight schools from various colleges around the nation. While it does get occasionally repetitive hearing the University of Iowa fight song, one can never tire of hearing the Notre Dame fight song. Yet on Saturday after one hour of fight songs, what did I hear over the PA, while the Cowboy football team was warming up? Rap music. I certainly will not pretend that I recognize what groups or individuals we were listening to, but it was unmistakably rap music. Much to my surprise this change in pregame tradition did not cause Abilene Hall to collapse or the swimming pool to turn blood red as if the plagues of Egypt had been visited upon our campus. I made a mental note to check with Coach Keeling about this recent change to our pregame agenda.

“The kids promised me that there would be no bad words on the warm up cd, so I agreed to let them make this change to our schedule” Keeling responded when I asked him about it on Monday. “They said that they wanted something different and I warned them that if there was any inappropriate language, we would go back to the fight song cd immediately”. I asked Coach if warm –up music was ever an issue when he first coached at Dublin, Texas, and he responded that the times have changed.

The times have indeed changed. Is it really that big a deal if the majority of our fans at our home games don’t know that Mos Def is a rapper and not a virus that could attack your house plants? While I cannot start to comprehend all of the musical trends that are currently available, there are numerous things about today’s youth that I don’t understand. And playing rap music before the home opener could very well be one of those things. We ask our kids to make a lot of sacrifices to compete at a Division III school, so perhaps listening to music that we don’t understand is a tradeoff we can make. Besides, I have a hunch, and it is only a hunch, that if we had not won the game on Saturday, that would have been the last time we would have made a change to our pre-game agenda.

Hitting The Road

Right about the same time Republican delegates will be leaving St. Paul and the Republican convention on Friday, the Hardin-Simmons University football team will be arriving in St. Paul. The Cowboys are flying into St. Paul for their game with Wisconsin La-Crosse on Saturday night. HSU has played several members of the Wisconsin Intercollegiate Athletic Conference over the years and perhaps we should be given a temporary membership into the WIAC. Like all of our athletic teams, our football program has to raise the money for any trip in which airline travel is required. We appreciate the support of many of our alumni, friends and football parents who help make the trip to Wisconsin possible. In 1999 after playing Wisconsin-Whitewater, the team flew out of Chicago’s O’Hare airport. As they waited in the terminal, Muhammad Ali made his way through the crowd and stopped to visit with members of our football team. The boxer who once proclaimed himself so mean “that he even makes medicine sick” signed every autograph and posed for numerous pictures with members of the team. It provided a great moment for our players and one that I am jealous that I missed. When we played Menlo in 2001 in California, the late Bill Walsh, who at the time lived near the campus, came and watched the game from the sidelines.

It is memories such as this that help make this trip such a unique event for our student-athletes. It’s funny, but when our football players from the era of the 1940’s to the 1960’s come back to campus, they hardly ever talk about the football games they played. Instead they spend most of the time talking about the way they went to the football games. At the time, the Cowboys, a member of the Border Conference, played schools in Arizona, New Mexico and California and travelled to all games by train. The stories they tell from the trips have aged well over the years. It is obvious that the camaraderie that was built from the travel have helped the friendships grow as the decades fly by. I hope that the students who have travelled in the Division III era of HSU athletics will also have some stories that can be told at future class reunions.

We did however lose one member of our travelling party recently when Glen Casselberry passed away after an extended battle with cancer. Glen travelled to numerous football games and was the official videographer of our football program. He also travelled to many Cowgirl basketball games just so he could help the officials see things from a different perspective. He was a devoted friend who loved his family, his faith and Hardin-Simmons. He left all of us with some examples of his loyalty to all three.

Cowboy Up.

Rain, Rain Go Away - For Now

Earlier in the year I discussed in one of my blogs about our timetable for the completion of our new track facility. Now as we are days away from the start of the school year, we are disappointed that we have not reached the goal of having the track completed. There are various reasons for the delays, but the bottom line is that we will not have the track finished until late October. I know that Coach Smith and his athletes are frustrated; however, we will do the best we can with what resources are available to us. And we know that once this project is completed, it will play a major role in transforming the athletic facilities at Grape Street. While I am annoyed by the delays, I am still amazed at what we have been able to do at Grape Street over the last six years. What was once home to red ants and tumbleweeds has become a great facility with an even greater future.

One of the reasons for the delay for the track facility is the rain, which this week has also caused numerous logistical headaches for our football and soccer programs. Trying to balance a practice schedule, while worrying about the upkeep of our fields, is not a dilemma that any coach relishes. At this time of year all of our coaches have bookmarked the weather.com website so they can check the hourly forecast for rain and potential lightning. Fortunately we have not had to delay any practices because of lightning this week. Our cross country teams have been able to avoid much of the bad weather, which is the least Mother Nature could do for them since they are practicing at six a.m. Longtime Abilene residents will remember that we could always count on the rain to hit during the West Texas Fair and Rodeo in September. Now as we have had rain for the third time in the last four years during New Student Orientation, we might have a new traditional forecast for rain each year.

The rain also caused issues for the new students who were moving into the dorms today. I saw many parents and students struggling with numerous boxes and suitcases as they attempted to move in during one of our many showers today. The rain will add to the many memories that this week will bring for both parents and students. And I am sure that in the case of our male students, today will likely be the cleanest that their dorm room will be for the rest of the semester.

Welcome To HSU

He can tell you stories about Shaquille O’Neal. He can tell you about coaching basketball in the Philippines. He can tell you numerous yarns about the “Preacher Man”, Dale Brown. Coaching basketball for over thirty years all across the world gives you a chance to have as many stories as last month’s issue of Readers Digest.

But it is not the stories or the Division I background that led us to choose Craig Carse as our next men’s basketball coach. What makes us believe that he is the right person for HSU is his desire to work with the Division III student-athlete. In both the telephone interview and the on-campus interview, Craig demonstrated that he wants the chance to recruit for Hardin-Simmons and continue to build this program where it can stay competitive in the American Southwest Conference. Did we question him on could he adjust to Division III after being at the Division II level the last 13 years? Only about 75 times. Did we ask him would he be willing to work with a relatively young staff in a league that is just eleven years old? Sure we did. Did we ask him if he would be willing to drive a van to all parts of Texas? Yes. That is just standard operating procedure for life in the American Southwest Conference, where the road trips have none of the glamour that the Southeastern Conference provides. And we stressed to Craig that to be successful at Hardin-Simmons, you need to work well with everyone. Not just the athletic department, but the entire campus community. He understands that this is a special place, where all of us need to support each program and all of us are recruiters.

I hope you get the chance to meet Coach Carse at our reception/ press conference on Monday, August 11 at 3:00 p.m. in the Multi-Purpose Room of the Johnson Building. I think you will sense the energy and excitement that he has for HSU and to coach at the collegiate level. It is our sincere hope that this will be a place for him to create many more stories for his collection.

Looking For A New Coach

As you have likely heard by now, Hardin-Simmons is in the market for a new men’s basketball coach. Dylan Howard, who has been on our campus since the spring of 2001, is leaving to take a coaching position at Mississippi Valley State, a Division I program that competed in the NCAA Tournament last year. When Dylan interviewed with us seven years ago, he told us then that his long-term goal was to coach at the Division I level. We congratulate him on reaching this goal and we thank him for all that he has done for our basketball program, our university and the local community. We wish Dylan, Nicole and Danielle the best of luck as they make the move to Mississippi.

We now begin the process of finding his successor and I thought that I would share with you how we look at potential candidates when we have an opening in the athletic department. Once we decide on a candidate that we are interested in, we bring that individual to campus for a full day of meetings. The candidate will meet with several of our vice-presidents to discuss the administrative aspects of working at HSU. We also try to schedule meetings for the candidate with Enrollment Services so they can learn about our admissions process, we schedule a meeting with Dr. Chris McNair, our Faculty Athletic Representative and we have the candidate meet with several members of our coaching staff and the athletic training department. In this case we will also attempt to have the candidate meet with members of the men’s basketball team as we solicit their input. Finally the candidate and I will spend a great deal of time discussing the strengths of Hardin-Simmons, the areas we need to improve on, and what our long term goals are for the athletic department. We strive to make sure the candidate knows exactly what our situation is here at HSU. It is an exhaustive ordeal for both the candidate and our department, but it is a process I am a big believer in. As I have said to every coach we have brought on campus, the last thing we want to do is bring an individual and his/her family to Abilene and then they find out something about the job that they were not aware of. We preach the doctrine of no surprises on both sides of the interview process and I think it has helped our new coaches with the transition to Hardin-Simmons. After all of this, there is a great deal of thought and prayer on my behalf on which candidate to invite to come to HSU.

There are only 48 days before the first day of school, so we will have our work cut out for us to find our next men’s basketball coach. As they say every April in the leadup to the NFL Draft, “we are on the clock” as we begin the process of evaluating candidates. We look forward to the challenge of not only finding the right person for our basketball program, but also finding the right person for our campus.

Cowboy Up,
John Neese

Welcome Aboard

It was 1995 and my first year at Hardin-Simmons University. As we were reviewing the role of Sports Information in the Athletic Department, someone mentioned that we might look at having an athletic web site. At this time, I did not own a home computer and I was unsure if devoting time to something called the internet was worth the effort. We put a student worker, Drew Altom, in charge of updating the athletic web site once a week, which is about how many times I would check my e-mail. On my lunch hour, I would jog around Shelton Stadium listening to Tom Petty on my no-skip cd player.

It is now 2008 and I can get e-mail on my telephone, I now listen to Tom Petty on an I-Pod, and if our website were only updated once a week, instead of running around Shelton Stadium, I would be worried about my boss running me out of town. There are numerous days when our athletic web site receives hundreds if not thousands of hits as people want to read about the latest news on our student-athletes. It consistently amazes me how many people from all over the world will follow our athletic program through the website. I believe that our website helps us with the two R’s of campus life, recruiting and retention. The website helps tremendously with recruiting potential students as the website many times will provide the first impression of our campus. And it helps with the retention of our current student-athletes as they appreciate the recognition that the website provides. On the positive side, we have had people compare our website to a Division One athletic website. On the negative side, we have had people ask why our website does not have the features that a professional sports team website does. I answer that question with the response that a professional sports team will likely spend the equivalent of our entire athletic department budget on their website.

And now we mark a new chapter in our website history as we have joined with Presto Sports to help us with our internet content. Chad Grubbs, our Sports Information Director, has worked with this company to provide us with a new look and some features that were not available in the past. We will continue to offer many of the services that you have come to expect from the website, and as in the past we will make every effort to update the website as quickly as possible. We look forward to hearing your comments on the new website, as we value your opinion. And if you are in the market for a no-skip cd player, I can cut you a great deal.

Cowboy Up,

JN

For the HSU Athletic's Web site Please Click Here.
For the HSU Web site Please Click Here.

70.3 Miles

On Friday night, one of my former college roommates and fraternity brothers, Mike McMaude, will be one of three individuals who will receive the Young Alumni Award from Hardin-Simmons. Mike has been a highly successful businessman since he left HSU as he has developed numerous home health care corporations around the country.

Since Mike now lives in Colorado, we do not have the chance to do as much together as we used to. So it was a great experience last weekend when he and I participated in a triathlon in San Diego. While we were there he mentioned that when he receives his award on Friday night, he was going to give a brief speech on life lessons learned at Hardin-Simmons. He then challenged me to come up with life lessons learned during the triathlon from Saturday. Since I am never one to back down from the challenge of a former pledge, I agreed to provide the following life lessons.

1) Things are never as bad as they seem-The swim portion of the event was certainly the hardest of the three events. At one point as I was dog paddling my way thru the harbor I thought that it would take me ninety minutes to make it back to the shore. I truly believed I would be the last of the 2,000 participants who would get out of the ocean. Once I refocused I was able to concentrate on my swimming and actually finished in 47 minutes.

2) Age is only what you make it- As I was riding my bike up the first of three major hills, I noticed a man who was 66 years old who was competing in the triathlon. The bib on the back of his jersey identified him as Rodger.
“Rodger you are my hero” I shouted to him as we gasped our way up the hill. He laughed and asked if I would tell his wife that.

3) Never underestimate the power of encouragement On your racing bib, the organizers of the race put your first name on it along with your number. It was amazing when anybody would shout out my name-how I seemed to gain some energy and run just a little bit faster. None of us probably realize how far just a few words of encouragement will go with a friend or co-worker.

4) Be thankful for your friends I doubt if 20 years ago I thought I would be doing marathons and triathlons with my college roommates. However over the years, Mike McMaude and Jeff Ballenger have remained two of my best friends. The friends you make in college can last long beyond your time on campus.

5) Be thankful for the men and women in uniform A significant part of the bike ride went thru Camp Pendleton, one of the first Marine bases on the West Coast. As you ride thru the camp, you become aware of the many sacrifices our military makes on a daily basis. Many of the Marines helped out as volunteers for the all day event and as always their help was appreciated.

6) In and Out Cheeseburgers Rule Best. Burger. Ever. Especially after the completion of a triathlon.

Remembering A Legend

On Saturday, Fred Jacoby, the first commissioner of the American Southwest Conference, passed away after suffering from cancer. Jacoby was the commissioner of the Southwest Conference in the 1980’s and had a distinguished career in college athletics and was known as a true advocate for the student-athlete.

Jacoby will receive many well deserved tributes as we reflect on his career. There is likely no athletic director in our conference who did not count Fred as a friend and who valued his expertise. He enjoyed passing on his considerable knowledge of NCAA legislation to anyone who needed his guidance. Before his health began to cause him problems, he loved to attend conference athletic events as he was a regular at the conference softball tournament. When he first took over the conference, he made a point to visit as many of the schools in the league as possible. Not bad work for somebody who had taken over as commissioner in his seventies when many thought he had retired.

And while Fred deserves all of the accolades from the professional world, it was the dignity that he showed in the last two years of his personal life that will always stay with me. Fred never complained about his illness and the pain he had to endure as he went thru chemotherapy. I talked to him once after a grueling session of chemo and he refused to talk about his pain. Instead he told me the story about how he as he and his wife sat in the waiting room for his session. In the hospital waiting room with him were the parents of a nine year old boy, who was awaiting treatment for brain cancer. Fred was quick to the point.“How can I dare complain about my circumstances after seeing a nine year old boy suffer with this disease?” I think it took me a full minute to respond.

Fred’s family and friends would talk about the pain that Fred endured and that was the only way many of us knew about Fred’s suffering. I am sure that he would have scolded anyone for letting details out about his health; he did not want your sympathy, Fred only wanted you to be the same person you had been with him before the cancer attacked. In the last week of his life the doctors asked him if he wanted any medication to ease the pain. Fred responded that if the medicine was for research purposes and could possibly help somebody in the future, he would take it, otherwise, he politely told the doctors that he would prefer to do without.

There are many of us in the professional world who admired Fred and the way he was able to resolve issues and find a common ground when there appeared to be none. We will always admire him for a life well-lived; we can also only hope we will have the courage he displayed when our time comes.

Track Comes Back

It’s finally here. After years of discussion, planning and research, Hardin-Simmons made the step today to officially reenter the world of collegiate track and field. At an afternoon press conference, the school announced we would bring back track and field after a forty year absence and that cross country would be a varsity sport for men and women in the Fall, 2008 semester. We are the twelfth school in the American Southwest Conference to sponsor Cross Country and we will become the seventh school in the ASC to sponsor track. This will give HSU 16 varsity sports, the most that the school has sponsored in the modern era of athletics.

While I know that we will experience growing pains as all first year programs do, I am still excited about the potential of adding the four sports to our athletic department. I think this will allow us to recruit more student-athletes and help provide us with another opportunity to bring recognition to the school on a national level. Track is immensely popular at the high school level in Texas, and I am optimistic about the number of quality student-athletes we can recruit. Years ago there was a saying among high school coaches, which went something like “My sport is your sports punishment.” Track was simply something you did either in the off-season or for missing an early morning practice. In this day and age of specialized training for high school athletes, I don’t know if the saying is still applicable, but I do know there are a large number of student-athletes looking for a place to compete at the Division III level.

We were impressed with the large number of applicants we received for this position. We are fortunate to have the ability to bring Rodney Smith to our campus. We have complete faith in his ability to be the coach of all four teams and help us navigate our way as we purchase new equipment, build the track facility and recruit student-athletes. Coach Smith has experience at the high school and college level and has numerous contacts throughout the state. We are impressed with his track knowledge and his commitment to take care of our athletes. Everyone I visited with about Coach Smith mentioned that he has a reputation for running a quality program. We anticipate that he will quickly fit in with our department and campus community.

For now we hope to have the track completed by early June which will help the overall look of our athletic facilities at Grape Street. Little did I realize when we started work on the softball field and fieldhouse in 2002, how much would happen in just six years. I can only hope that the return of track to our university will match the success that football and softball has enjoyed since both sports were brought to our campus.

Cowboy Up,

John Neese

Remembering Brentdrick

The images on my television screen were from the NFC Championship Game between the New York Giants and the Green Bay Packers. The images gave me a brief break from the pictures I had seen over the weekend. I would watch a couple of plays and then the numbness would return, a numbness that was equal if not greater than the Wisconsin cold I saw on the television. Less than twenty four hours beforehand I had received word that Brentdrick Walker, a member of our football team, had died in a motorcycle accident.

The images that my mind would constantly go back to: the video of a motorcycle on the side of the road shown on a local news channel, the picture of Brentdrick’s jersey hanging in his locker, a locker room filled with young people asking questions that no one has the answer for. Then my mind would accelerate to visions that I had not seen: Brentdrick spending time coaching a youth basketball team on his last day on earth and the horrified shock that his family had to have felt when they received the news. These images were difficult for me to comprehend; I began to realize that my mind was on overload and that I was not ready for all of the mental images that this event would cause.

The rest of the week was busy preparing for the campus memorial service on Thursday and the funeral on Saturday. There is no handbook on how to prepare and handle a situation as tragic a young person dying in his prime. All of us are concerned with not only finding the right thing to say, but also trying to avoid saying the wrong thing.

The funeral was a wonderful tribute to Brentdrick. There were several songs that the congregation sang that gave me goose bumps and raised my spirits. There were numerous individuals who gave examples of how Brentdrick strived to be a role model, how his parents were so proud of him for wanting to go to college. It was obvious that Brentdrick touched so many people in such a short time. After the funeral, the congregation was led outside for a final goodbye to Brentdrick. His father was given a dove, and then a poem was read to celebrate Brentdrick’s life. At the conclusion of the reading of the poem, Brentdrick’s father released the dove. The bird flew to the south and was quickly outlined against the blue sky that was filled with sunshine. It was one image that helped me make it through that day, and the days to follow.

NCAA Convention Recap

The 2008 NCAA Convention for Division III will be remembered for many reasons for our division. For the first time, the talk about subdivision and NCAA Division IV went from hotel lobby talk to being a part of the conversation on the convention floor. There has been much speculation about the future of Division III and the college landscape as we know it will likely change in the next three to five years.

One major factor behind the potential change is that the television contract the NCAA has signed with CBS to cover the Division One Basketball Tournament will expire in 2013. The NCAA would like to negotiate the new contract within the next 16 to 24 months. If there is a new division or subdivision for Division III, that would be an issue to include in the contract negotiations. Currently, Division III receives just over 3% from the multi-billion dollar contract that CBS pays the NCAA for the broadcast rights. This money is used to help pay for championship travel for teams when they advance in the NCAA post-season.

There are many institutions at the Division III level who are happy with the division as it is and do not want to see a split. I believe there are a significant number of institutions which would like to see the return of redshirting, the return of more non-traditional playing dates and more skill instruction for our student-athletes. Then there are schools which would like to see even more restrictions placed on the role of athletics on a college campus. Finding a mandate between these three groups will be a daunting task that will likely leave many in the membership unhappy with the final decision.

As of now, the timetable calls for the NCAA to send out a survey to Division III schools to find out their opinions on the future of our division. There will be discussion between university presidents, athletic directors and conference commissioners about the positives and negatives of a potential split. After a year of discussion, the vote could be put before the membership at the 2009 convention in Washington, D.C. It is only appropriate that one of the polarizing issues for the NCAA could be decided in a city that lives and breathes politics.

The Chinese have a saying “May you live in interesting times” That is exactly what our membership will be doing for the next 12 months.

Cowboy Up.

John Neese