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PAST NEWS REPORTS RELATED
TO THIS ISSUE
By Nick Claussen
Athens NEWS Associate Editor
Thursday, March 30th, 2000
Ohio
University's Department of Intercollegiate Athletics has made a lot of changes
over the past few years, but even bigger changes may be coming.
That was part of the message presented by OU Athletics Director Tom Boeh at
Monday's Athens Rotary Club meeting.
During the last few years, OU has built a
new baseball stadium, a new strength and conditioning center, a new academic
services center and a new artificial turf field for the new women's lacrosse
team. In addition, OU has remodeled much of the athletics department offices and
made other improvements to the department's facilities. The lacrosse team, Boeh
said, was added as part of the department's work towards gender equity, which is
also another big change in athletics departments across the country.
Boeh told Rotary members that the capital projects were all paid for with
private funds, and they were undertake to get the athletics department up to the
level of other universities across the country. It's important for OU to stay a
NCAA Division 1-A program, Boeh said, and the university needs to have top-notch
facilities to do so.
Bigger changes are coming, though, for both OU facilities and for teams the
university's sports teams compete with, Boeh said.
On campus, the most noticeable changes will be improvements made at the football
stadium, installation of the new track around the artificial turf field and
construction of a softball stadium that will be similar to the new baseball
stadium.
At Peden Stadium, the football playing field will be lowered and more seats will
be added below where the seats are now. Also seating may be added at the north
end of the field, Boeh said.
A few years in the future, the university is also considering adding a second
deck to the student side of the stadium to add more seating. Currently, Peden
Stadium has one of the smallest seating capacities of any NCAA Division 1-A
program in the country, Boeh said. The success of the team and increased
marketing efforts over the last few years have increased the number of people
attending the games, so that more seating is needed, Boeh said.
Boeh said he believes that the Ohio football team can consistently be one of the
top 40 teams in the country, and that it should make its way into the top 25
every once in a while. He acknowledged disappointment that the men's basketball
team did not win more games this year, but added that he expects head coach
Larry Hunter to be successful here for many years to come.
He said the women's basketball team is making great improvements, and the
athletics department is working so that every Bobcat sport is consistently
contending for Mid-American Conference (MAC) championships.
'We have the best school, we have the best supporters, and we have the best
basketball building,' Boeh said. 'We want to win, but we're going to win with
integrity, and we're going to win the right way.'
OU won the MAC sportsmanship trophy last year and the student-athletes perform
well in the classroom, Boeh said. The Bobcats have produced many All-MAC
Academic Team and All-American Academic Team members. Student-athletes at OU
also are performing at an equal level with their classmates and above the
average academic level for student-athletes across the country, he added.
Having OU sports programs performing well on the field and in the classroom and
having top-notch facilities are crucial because of the potential for big changes
in the NCAA, Boeh said.
'They're thinking about pushing some schools out of 1-A because the money is
getting too good,' Boeh said. The NCAA is getting more and more money from its
television contracts, and the big conferences are getting increasingly reluctant
to share that money with the smaller conferences, he said.
In the next five or 10 years, he added, the big conferences could try to push
the smaller conferences and schools out of Division 1-A. If that happens, OU
needs to be in a solid position so that it will be one of the schools chosen to
remain in Division 1-A, Boeh said.
In the more immediate future, Boeh said there will probably be more changes made
in the MAC. The conference currently has 13 teams and will most likely add
another university to get up to 14. Boeh said he has heard that Illinois State
University, the University of Tulsa and the University of Massachusetts have all
been discussed as candidates to join the conference, but he's not in on the
discussions and has no idea what will happen.
'I'll find out when I read it in the paper with all of you,' Boeh said. OU
operates on a much smaller budget than most of the bigger schools in Division
1-A, yet the teams can compete with the best in the country, Boeh said. He
expects many changes to be made in athletics in the next few years, but he said
he's confident the student-athletes who come to OU will continue to be
successful on the field, in the classroom and in life.
By Nick Claussen
Athens NEWS Associate Editor
Monday, February 11th, 2002
In the near future when
Ohio Bobcat fans stand up and cheer, they may be cheering for a female
synchronized ice-skating team.
If that sounds a little different, it's all part of the changing face of college
athletics.
At OU, Athletics Director Thomas Boeh
said, the university is continually adapting to Title IX requirements, meeting
budget constraints, and trying to excel in the classroom and on the playing
field.
Title IX requirements, and why synchronized ice skating could become a reality
at OU, are an issue for colleges across the country. Title IX refers to the
gender equity rules that college athletic departments are required to meet.
Over the years, the requirement has led to university athletic departments,
including OU's, cutting back funding on some men's sports and eliminating some
men's sports altogether, while also increasing funding to women's sports and
establishing new varsity women's teams.
On Friday, Boeh said that the university is currently meeting the strict
definitions of the Title IX requirements, but the athletics department always
has to evaluate the situation and make adjustments.
"We still have a ways to go," Boeh said, adding that the university
has made great strides adding sports and increasing funding to women's programs
in recent years.
The university enrollment has shifted to a ratio of nearly 55 percent female to
45 percent male, Boeh said. The athletics department basically has to achieve
the same ratio with its funding and available athletic opportunities, so the
department is looking to add another women' sport.
Boeh said a committee is looking at the issue of adding another sport, and will
make a recommendation to him this spring so he can make a final recommendation
to OU President Robert Glidden this summer.
When looking at possible sports, the committee is examining costs, the number of
students from the state of Ohio who would be interested in playing the sport,
the facilities and the number of potential opponents in the region.
The five women's sports the committee is considering, Boeh said, are water polo,
rugby, equestrian, rowing and synchronized skating. Each sport has its own
advantages and disadvantages, Boeh said.
The university already has club equestrian and rowing teams, which is a plus for
those two sports. Miami University already has a synchronized skating team, so
the knowledge that there is already at least one local opponent for that
emerging sport is in its favor, Boeh said.
Though the university does not plan to make any cuts in men's sports in order to
meet Title IX requirements, OU does limit the number of walk-on athletes in many
of the sports so that it doesn't have too many men playing varsity sports
compared to the number of women.
WITH THE BUDGET situation tight on campus, Boeh expects the budget to be very
slim for the athletics department as well.
In fiscal year 2000, the university spent $10 million on the athletics
department. That compares to the national NCAA Division I-A average of more than
$21 million and the Mid-American Conference (MAC) average of $10 million. OU
spent the eighth-highest amount in fiscal year 2001 in the 13-team conference,
Boeh said.
The university also spends much less per student athlete than most colleges in
the MAC and across the country, Boeh said. In fiscal year 2000, OU spent $15,926
per student, while the average in the MAC was $18,845 per student, and the
average across the country was $37,495, Boeh said. Those funding levels put the
university at the rank of 11th in per-student funding in the 13-team MAC and
110th in per-student funding of the 115 NCAA Division I-A colleges across the
country.
That doesn't mean that the student athletes are being shortchanged, Boeh said,
but rather means the athletics department is already operating very efficiently.
In addition, he said, the average for Division 1-A colleges is to have 74
non-coaching professionals working in an athletics department. OU has 29
non-coaching professionals, he said.
He also pointed out that while many area residents think the university receives
a large portion of the university's total budget, the department actually only
receives 2.4 percent of OU's annual expenditures. That level is much lower than
the MAC and NCAA Division I-A averages, he added.
Boeh said he is now waiting to see how much university officials require all
departments to cut from their budgets before he decides where his department can
save more money. He said the athletics department will be able to live with the
cuts, but said his employees are already doing several jobs at once and he does
not foresee having to make any significant cuts.
He also touted the high grade point average, graduation rate and earning power
after graduation of OU student athletes.
Boeh added that while there has been a lot of publicity recently about new NCAA
requirements that schools must meet to retain their Division 1-A status, he is
not worried about the new requirements.
OU is currently meeting all of the requirements and does not expect any
problems, he said.
In other news, Boeh said that Peden Stadium's turf will be renovated this year
due to problems when the new field was put in last fall. Construction work has
not begun on the field but he expects that questions over how and who will fix
up the field will be resolved soon so that the turf can be improved to the level
of quality that was expected for last season.
Also on the football field, the Bobcats will welcome big-name opponents such as
Pittsburgh, Virginia Tech, Northwestern, Minnesota and Connecticut to Peden
Stadium in the next few years, Boeh said.
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DROPPED
TEAMS
2006
Women's Lacrosse Team
Swimming
and Diving
and
Track
and Field
|
