I was lucky enough to be invited to attend a meeting in the Sebo Center with the key players in the BGSU department of intercollegiate athletics on 9/15. The meeting was something the department does regularly with other departments on campus, but this time they included community members of varying backgrounds, from city officials, to former Falcon Club leadership, to local hospitality management, to yours truly. It was a great “behind-the-scenes” look at how the department evaluates itself, sets goals, and operates below the surface. I’ve spoken with Greg Christopher and he’s given me the green light to share some of the highlights from the meeting with the visitors to ay-ziggy-zoomba.com! (this will probably be a pretty long post… just warning you now…)

The first half of the meeting was a look at each of the areas in which the department evaluates itself, and then the second half went more in-depth into the key area of external funding. I’ll talk a little bit about each area, the metrics used to evaluate (if any) and any key points of interest I thought would be of interest to you all.

The athletic department evaluates its performance in each of the following areas:

• Academics
• Athletics
• Fiscal
• Equity/Minority Opportunities
• Image
• Facilities
• Leadership

Academics:

Metrics in this area include comparing student-athlete GPA to the general student body, number of student-athletes with a 3.0 or better, number of student-athletes with a 2.5 or lower and student-athlete graduation rate. All numbers are higher for student-athletes than the general population and all have shown continual improvement year-over-year.

Athletics:

This was one of the more interesting metrics, in my opinion. The department looks at the relative finish of all teams within the MAC/CCHA… the goal is to have at least 9 of our 18 sports finish in the top half of their league. In the past 4 fiscal years starting with fiscal ’06, we’ve had 5, 6, 6, and 8 teams finish in the top half of their league. Top performers in the league in fiscal ’09?? Miami with 10, EMU with 12 and Kent with 13 of their programs finishing in the top half of their leagues. Buffalo had 4, 3, 4, and 5 over the same 4 year period listed above.

Fiscal:

Goals include meeting the budget established by the university and increase external funding areas (generally by 10% annually). In “round numbers” the annual budget for the department is $16MM… $9MM of that is “static” and comes from student fees (static only in the fact that the department has to take what it gets… this number fluctuates with enrollment). The balance needs to be generated from the external funding areas: ticket sales, corporate partners, merchandising, concessions, auxiliary events, capital projects/major gifts, and Falcon Club.

• Ticket Sales — The thrust here is to cut overhead costs by driving online ticketing. The biggest news here was that we’re moving online ticketing to Ticketmaster. This will allow more accurate tracking of purchases and also allow us to take advantage of Ticketmaster’s huge advertising/marketing department. I don’t know about you, but I get an email monthly from Ticketmaster telling me what events are happening in my area that month.

  The department wants to average 150+ group ticket sales per event for all the “revenue” sports.

  They’d also like to have 90% season ticket renewal rate for all revenue sports.

• Corporate Partners — Points of interest here include possible branding of the tailgate park area, and the desire to develop a “Statewide marketing presence” to rival that of Ohio State.
• Merchandising — There were some real interesting points here.
  

  OK, Probably NOT with the Rocket....

  
  There is a “Vintage” apparel line that’s being integrated into the current apparel options to capitalize on the 100th anniversary. The “Swooping Falcon” is being resurrected on some items!

  There will be a “team store” in the Stroh Center. This will be a “branch” of the University Book Store and will carry sports and game-day related apparel.

  ALL teams will be wearing Adidas. Men’s Basketball had been the last holdout on Nike, but no longer.

• Concessions — V. Gladieux contract continues. Look for new concession promotions.
• Capital Projects/Major Gifts — Campaigns underway for Stroh Center (Locker room endowment, brick campaign…), Soccer locker rooms, baseball dugouts, and plans for a scholarship endowment campaign. Also continual enhancement to the Doyt, including graphics and improvements to the suites and stadium club.
• Falcon Club — Goals include increasing Falcon Club membership to 2000 (10% increase), increase the Champions Circle membership to 18 (the Champions Circle is giving at the level of one year of tuition).
  
  Discussion about the Doyt Perry Classic golf outing in Florida was interesting, Jane Myers made it sound like it was a wonderful event that has started to turn into a bit of a “reunion” setting. They want to raise awareness and attendance to that event!

  Burke Badenhop has issued a challenge in which he’ll match the Falcon Club dues for new graduates, the challenge will be in retaining these young alumni year-after-year.

  Falcon Club plans to try and capitalize on the 50th anniversary of the 1959 national champion football team by generating five new members from the team.

Equity/Minority Opportunities:

Not a whole lot of interest on my part here, sorry. Goals include staying compliant. There was also discussion that while the student athlete population is well diversified, the staff of the athletic department lacked diversity.

Image:

Much discussion was given to the new website and the sports information department embracing the “new media” as much as possible. Video is being phased into the new website. Social media are being utilized (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc…).

All home games will be VIDEO streamed on the web soon utilizing the B2 network. Pricing will be $7/event with discussion underway for “season passes” and eventually an “all sports” pass as well.

Marketing discussed the continued branding of “Roll Along,” Continued improvement of the game day atmosphere, and maintaining a consistent look for all collateral material. 2009-10 marks the final year of the current look, so look for new styles of marketing materials coming soon!

Something else that I thought was pretty clever from marketing was the use of the Student Promotion Management Team (SPMT). These are a group of students who help the department, and they’re also being “placed” in student sections as cheer/chant leaders. Pretty cool idea!

Along those lines, the students are being established as the “BG Warriors.” This is going to be a true, consistent presence at home events. Also look for a “How do you Roll Along” series of YouTube videos soon, encouraging student participation and providing fresh content for the website.

Facilities:

Stroh Center scheduled to be ready in May of 2011! There has been a RFP (Request for Proposal) for potential management firm to manage the facility. This firm would be responsible for “booking” events (something the athletic department doesn’t have the resources nor knowledge to do). With M&W Hoops and Volleyball, there are roughly 50 events each year. That leaves a LOT of potential dates for other activities which means revenue! Initial studies have shown that there is a big need for a 5000 seat facility in NW Ohio with state-of-the-art amenities for events. This will be interesting to follow. Also of interest, in the RFP, an option to manage the Ice Arena was also included. Once the final proposals come in, it will be interesting to see if the interested firms would act on that option. Initial feedback from them was very positive!

Ice Arena $4MM renovations are on track, and the $140K renovations to the Stellar Field are underway.

Leadership:

This was really interesting. I had no idea that the department team-taught a 1 credit hour leadership class for some of the student athletes. Each season, the coaches are asked to nominate promising sophomores who have the potential to be team captains in the future. These students can take the course from the “Falcon Leadership Academy” taught by Greg Christopher, Jana Blais, Mary Ellen Gillespie, and Mark Shook. This is definitely a program that sets BGSU apart from the rest of the schools in the MAC. The department is looking to nurture and build this program as time/funding allows. This readies the student-athletes for not only leadership on their teams at BGSU, but also in the business world after graduation!

The meeting ended with Greg recapping and also mentioning some things regarding the new MAC/ESPN contract. Scheduling will be in a state of flux… and we’re basically at the mercy of ESPN as far as kickoff times almost right up until kick/tip-off. In fact, there was some discussion just this week about the kickoff time for the Boise State game changing… but it is NOT changing.

There was a LOT more information in that meeting than I can share in just a blog post, but I hope this gives an overview. It was really fascinating and I appreciated being involved! Please, let me know if you have any questions below in the comments section!