OU Athletics unveils ‘renaissance’ plan
By Corey Ryan
July 3, 2008
Ohio University Athletics Director Jim Schaus wants the Bobcats to be the premier athletics department in the Mid-American Conference, and he has started to lay the tracks.
Schaus announced Wednesday in the Convocation Center a five-year strategic plan for Ohio athletics termed “Bobcat Renaissance.”
“These initiates are going to be kind of key hallmarks as part of our key strategic planning that we’re going to have in our department,” Schaus said.
The seven components to “Bobcat Renaissance” are: administrative restructuring, strategic planning, long-term financial stability, building relationships, sport program development, supporting the student-athlete mission, and providing value to university and community.
Schaus said he wants to identify priorities in building a department that can be the premier athletics department in the Mid-American Conference, increasing support through the faces of the program, the student athletes, while working to become more self-supporting and efficient financially.
But to make money, he said, the department plans to spend money.
The highlight of the release may be the confirmation of building a new indoor practice facility, which Schaus said would be used for football and other field sports. There is no timetable or set dollar amount, Schaus said, but it would be ideal for a facility to be in place within the five-year vision.
“(The indoor practice facility) is extremely important for us to move forward,” Schaus said. “There is only one other program in the conference without an indoor facility, plans to build a facility or access to an indoor facility.”
Other facility projects include renovations in the Convo, the Aquatic Center and at Ohio’s softball field. Potential projects may also include a new academic center in the Convo, a two-court practice facility in the Convo, and renovation of the football locker room.
One Of Those universities making plans to build an indoor practice facility is Eastern Michigan. In March, EMU proposed a facility plan to their Board of Regents that included an indoor practice facility, academic center and administrative offices, according to EMU’s Web site. The estimated cost is $25 million.
So where will this money come from?
The university has been fundraising quietly, Schaus said. Most of the talk regarding the indoor practice facility has involved its scope, to will be determined by fundraising, he said.
Fundraising seems to be the key financial aspect in Schaus’s vision. The Bobcat Representative Program and the Bobcat Care Program are the two components of building relationships with the community and all Bobcat supporters. The Bobcat Representative Program is a statewide/regional volunteer-based program to extend those relationships.
The idea is to extend the athletics of the university out to those potential supporters, like the 30,000 OU alumni in the Cleveland area, and bring them back to the university, Schaus said. The Bobcat Care Program entails bettering the customer service to provide the total fan experience.
Both the Bobcats Care Program and the Bobcat Representative Program are expected to increase the Bobcat Club membership, which is for donors. Schaus announced the Bobcat Club will now fundraise solely for scholarships, as opposed to any type of expenditure as it has in the past.
But with all the new programs and facility plans, how will the athletics department dig out of its budget deficit?
Self-supporting sounds good, but according to a May 15 article in the Chronicle for Higher Education, a more reasonable goal is to become, as Schaus said, more self-supporting.
This past year, the NCAA released, for the first time, a reckoning of money earned through ticket sales and private donations for athletics separate from institutional funds, according to the article. About 5 percent of all Division I programs between 2004 and 2006 saw net profit, the report showed.
Those numbers do not take into account other fiscal values of athletics, like exposure for the university and community relations.
One way athletics can gain exposure is by televised games, specifically in men’s basketball and football. In order to help those two programs to become as successful as possible, a scheduling philosophy must be adopted. For football, the goal will be to schedule three annual competitive non-conference games with programs that will come to Athens, Schaus said. The first example is the signing of a six-year agreement with Marshall, beginning in 2010. A four-year men’s basketball series has also been signed with Marshall, beginning in 2008.
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