By Marc Tracy, New York Times When Nick Saban, Alabama’s football coach, decided to replace his offensive coordinator, Lane Kiffin, in the run-up to last season’s national championship game, he had an experienced former head coach ready to step in. Actually, he had several. Not including Saban, there were five former top-tier head coaches on the […]
Stop Treating Coaches Like Adjunct Professors
Part 1 of 3 All coaches are expected to recruit, mentor, develop and support student-athletes. These are all essential elements of collegiate coaching and also part of any institution’s core mission. Tenured professors do research, publish and advise students because adjuncts are not expected to perform these core institutional functions. Coaches, especially part-timers, are often […]
Part-time Job, Full-time Expectations
An on-going battle for most small college athletics programs involves part-time staffing. Most often it’s coaching positions but can extend to administrative staff as well. The challenge is balancing expectations for the job with the realities of paying a person less than a livable wage, which often requires him or her to supplement income with […]
Recruiting Accountability
In an earlier post we discussed quantifying the impact of athletics on enrollment management. One aspect of that process is establishing expectations and accountability for athletics recruiting. In this episode of Perspective on Athletics, we look at a simple, yet effective way to establish recruiting expectations that will quantify athletics’ activity as well as productivity. […]
What You Don’t Know Might Hurt You- Part Two
[Part 2 of 3: This three-part article addresses the current environment in collegiate athletics related to the student-athlete experience. Athletics directors and other campus administrators need to engage student-athletes in meaningful and systematic ways to promote communication, trust and accountability. The student-athlete experience must enhance overall educational goals at every institution. Find out how we […]
What You Don’t Know Might Hurt You- Part One
[Part 1 of 3: This three-part article addresses the current environment in collegiate athletics related to the student-athlete experience. Athletics directors and other campus administrators need to engage student-athletes in meaningful and systematic ways to promote communication, trust and accountability. The student-athlete experience must enhance overall educational goals at every institution. Find out how we […]
Compromised Virtue: Where do we go from here?
Athletics’ virtue has been obliterated by one scandal after another played out publicly in various media. If one thing can come from all of the recent media coverage of alleged coach “abuse” of student-athletes, it should be that we all need to pay more attention to what it happening within athletics programs… even if there […]
Independent Investigations- The true cost of not knowing.
An independent investigation of the University of Wisconsin, Green Bay men’s basketball program provided several inconclusive conclusions, but one that rings loudly for all athletics directors and coaches is: “3. The lack of a clear standard for conduct by coaches, and the sharply disputed facts, make it difficult to evaluate the charges that Coach Wardle […]