San Jose State University Athletics Director Chuck Bell's State of the Department Speech

San Jose, Calif.-----Thank you all for coming. I appreciate this opportunity. The purpose of this and our hope for you is that you can gain a little insight into what has happened the last few months that you can gain an appreciation for where we are at this moment. And see what our vision is. That was our intent for tonight. We'll finish it with questions with everyone in our department who is an expert in their area and we want to stay and answer your questions, listen to your comments and recommendations for as long as you'd like to stay.

Coming to San Jose 22 months ago, we knew we had four significant challenges. We had a deficit an annual deficit of $1.2 million annually. Men's basketball had just finished a 3-23 season, one game forfeited I'm told because of an ineligible player, so it was officially a 2-24 season. Women's basketball was about the same. And, the fourth challenge was the image and the identity of the entire athletic program. I can tell you from afar there were rumors that San Jose State might lose its football program because of the deficits and the losing that took place.

We knew we had two strengths the WAC, the 16-team WAC, and football had won four of its last six games in Dave's (Baldwin) first year.

We had to solve, we know we had to solve, the regional image problem and the identity crisis and that's driven by basketball and football. It's driven by the fact that the Faculty Senate was uncomfortable with continued budget failures. The corporate image was suffering and sales and the value of our product was at an all-time low. The national image and identity crisis probably was the most significant thing other than the budget that we had to solve.

This is Dionne Warwick's song, Do You Know the Way to San Jose,' that was so popular across the nation. Let me tell you those of us in the nation, President Caret from the East as well, the answer is NO' if you listen to the context of the song, This year when we traveled to LSU, I spoke to a group of boosters there. Some of you were on that trip and they wanted to know if San Jose was near San Antonio or San Marcos. They didn't even have us in the right state. I have to be honest with you. That's not uncommon.

Louisiana Tech was just accepted into the WAC. We're passing out those newspapers really well done. Terry Bradshaw speaks in there. Karl Malone speaks. (San Jose State University executive assistant) Dan Buerger sent me the newspaper. He said Read this. It will get you excited about the WAC.' And, so I did. I'd like for you to turn when you look at that later on turn to the next to last page and you'll see the map that is on the screen. They don't know the way to San Jose and they're in the league. They have San Jose on this map after a great piece of journalism they have near Los Angeles.

Our challenge was to change the local, regional and national image, build a national identity and how do we do that. We must balance the budget. We must attract winning personnel. We must achieve athletic success. And, we need to start a bowl. This is a bit we displayed at the NCAA Bowl Certification Committee. Chuck (Shelton) was there; President Caret and others when we made the presentation to the NCAA for, at that time, the Silicon Valley Bowl. This was put together by Host (Communications).

Building block number one we'll go through a number of these building blocks that are crucially important was to begin the Silicon Valley Football Classic. A national image and identity could help us and that was a dream of ours. Produce a logo that would be used nationally and would let people all across the United States that don't live in the Bay Area, that don't live in California learn where Silicon Valley is, learn that San Jose is the capital of Silicon Valley and identify with landmarks they already know that are known nationally and internationally like the San Francisco Bay, Pebble Beach and the Golden Gate Bridge, the Napa Valley and where Silicon Valley is. The logo has already been used. We call it the map logo across the United States and that's the intent of it.

The colors you see on the original logo the banner that was used at the press conference at that time. The colors with the black background because that sells in the sports goods. The basic colors are grapes, gold and silver that outline what our area is all about.

The Silicon Valley Bowl would drive many other things. It would drive a Jumbotron. It would drive the scoreboard we need so badly. I'll expand upon that in a second. It would drive stadium improvements that are badly needed. It would provide a revenue source for San Jose State University as the NCAA rules will allow. It would increase our prominence in the WAC and I told you at the time of the press conference there were some people who thought we shouldn't be in the WAC some of our own members. And this brought us to the top where we're a focus where people talked at the athletic directors meetings and the presidents meetings to President Caret and myself about the Silicon Valley Bowl. Not a meeting goes by where they aren't wonderfully interested in what we're doing in that area. It will bring at least $3.0-million to the city of San Jose. We can do things for our other sports like the basketball tournament we are starting for men and women that will be held on the same weekend as the bowl on Friday and Saturday night.

The second major building block centered on Host (Communications). We outsourced our marketing to a company with a national reputation. They created a radio network, the largest radio network that San Jose State's ever had. All of the San Jose State men's basketball games were broadcast and that was a huge image problem. Let me tell you hiring a basketball coach would be nearly impossible if your basketball games were not broadcast and they hadn't been on a regular basis. It would be terribly difficult to recruit players or coaches without a network. Host put that together. They assisted, as I said earlier, in the acquisition of the Silicon Valley Football Classic and created the Junior Spartans Club with over 200 members. They tripled our corporate sales, brought confidence to the corporate image side I spoke to earlier, doubled the sales of the luxury seats in the stadium. They put together the largest football network we've had in San Jose State history. All of our men's basketball games are broadcast on the radio and on the internet. That national, regional and corporate image to be associated with Host and their other corporate properties was huge. They have the NCAA's complete marketing package. They run the Final Four in the NCAA and other properties like Florida State, Tennessee, Notre Dame and Kentucky are put side-by-side with San Jose State. And a big part of that is Host needs to be part of the solution to the budget crisis. This was led from our relationship with Jim Host, the CEO and founder of Host USA,. It merged a couple of times with other companies. He's still the CEO and put on our campus Gregg Fort, Javier Ortiz, Josh Francois and Bill Penrod who have done an outstanding job getting us started in that area.

The third major building block was the reorganization of the business office. Our regional image, our image on campus needed fixing in that area. We didn't have the respect. We didn't have the trust we so badly needed. We redefined how we operate. We made some tough decisions. We established relationships on campus and obtained the confidence of our senior administration. Unfortunately, we had lost that. There has been accessibility in the budget area and in our business operations and a credibility and candor with the Spartan Foundation and an openness with our staff opening our budgets for everyone to see with our entire booster organization, the Spartan Foundation board and tonight's an example.

We redesigned the ticket office on a temporary basis with Host. Michelle LaHerran has done a super job in the interim, but we're in the process with our business office organization and with our experience of leadership in that area, of hiring and bringing in the Paciolan System and hiring an experienced ticket person who would oversee Michelle and help her in those operations. That's difficult because we have three separate entities with the stadium, The Event Center, all having control of the ticket operations, but that's something where the rubber meets the road, tickets and parking. We're working hard to make sure the customers are served as they need to be. We've created an in-house travel department the same one the NCAA uses, WorldTek, and we have them until we can get a campus-wide RFP in that area. We're utilizing them not only to save us huge amounts of money, but have Spartan Travel in our building so you can purchase tickets and we can actually make money. Reorganizing the business office was essential to our being able to balance the budget our first year and on a continuing basis. Glenn Fleming is running Spartan Travel, by the way, and works for WorldTek. That is out sourced in the same way that the marketing was.

The fourth major building block, obviously, that we accomplished was balancing the budget in the year ending June 30, 1999. Believe me, that was hard work on the part of our entire department coaches, staff, a lot of sacrifice helping the administration. That was crucial. At the same time, we were able to accomplish that, the majority of our head coaches are full-time and we're one of the few institutions in the CSU system that is fully compliant with Title IX. We took a hard look and evaluated all of our activities and are still doing that. Some of the activities that don't make money we found ways to make them more profitable or eliminate those activities. We took a hard look at our staff and the way we operate in every area as much as any of you would do in your businesses in Silicon Valley. And as I said in the year July 1998 ending June 30, 1999, we balanced that budget that had a $1.2-million deficit. It will be a tough act to repeat because that's a top priority for this year and every year, because going into this year with the new WAC, we lost around $500,000 in income, in television and bowl losses with the reorganization of the WAC. All of you are painfully familiar with the near $100,000 loss because of the Homecoming transistors, transformers, thank you.

All of our business office is reevaluating everyone's duties. We looking at, in the supervision how we, because this is a concern of our coaches how fast our athletes are returning to the field of competition, how we handle rehabilitation. I'll touch on some of those things in a second when an athlete is injured. We're looking at and are creating a risk management team that is a strong recommendation around the country.

Our fifth major building block to put in place and made a top priority is the CHAMPS program. It's an acronym for Challenging Athletic Minds for Personal Success. It's a national program that was started by the NCAA and Division I-A athletic directors. It's extensive. I've hired a full-time person in that area because it's the good news of what's going on in our campus. About five general areas academic commitment, personal development, career development, a service commitment and an athletics commitment to excellence. Why do we need the CHAMPS/Life Skills program? I can spend the entire evening on that. It tells the sunshine' story. Bergie (Ron Bergman of the San Jose Mercury News sports department) would be the first to tell you newspapers aren't interested in telling sunshine stories most of the time because they don't sell newspapers. I had a reporter in Utah tell me that one time. We don't do sunshine' stories. It doesn't sell. We need a CHAMPS/Life Skills program to tell families the good things we're doing with student-athletes and to help our recruiting. 99 percent of our kids are dedicated, disciplined, and hard working. We have people in here with one to maybe four children in their families. I can tell you from my years of experience, and knowing many of you, that nobody goes through a life of raising children without having problems. We all have problems. It's how you deal with them that counts. Our family is almost 400 kids. We're going to have problems. It's how we're dealing with them and we're dealing with them fairly and firmly.

A friend of mine gave me this (item) a couple of weeks ago and I thought it was rather timely. Can you imagine working for a group like this which does exist by the way? We have some handouts for you at the end and this is one of them. 29 have been accused of spousal abuse, 7 for fraud, 19 for writing bad checks, 117 have been bankrupt, 3 for assault, 71 can't get a credit card because of bad credit, 14 on drug-related charges, 8 for shoplifting. This is not Stanford's athletic program or Florida State's. Somebody knows the answer because I heard people. It's the 535 members of your United States Congress in 1998. We're going to have problems in a family of 400 or more. It's how you deal with them.

Our sixth major building block, and, this is important, I'm going to speak to the new people, and I'm not leaving out the good people who are here note that. The key to turning around this athletic department and the key to turning around any company is hiring outstanding people and having outstanding people in your organization. Vince Lombardi, one of the most successful and greatest coaches of all time and an idol of mine as I was growing up, said about the coaching profession, Winning is a habit. Unfortunately, so is losing.' We must have people who know how to win, who are used to winning and who expect to win. I'm going to run through some of those new folks. And, as I said, I'm not leaving out some of those people who are here so you'll get to know them.

As executive director of the (Silicon Valley) Bowl, just to name a few, Chuck Shelton has been Coach of the Year' a couple of times. He's a published author. He was a conference Coach of the Year' four times at three different schools. He's a winner.

John Twining, the person who is reorganizing the entire business operations area, was Business Manager of the Year' in all of college athletics in 1995. He's had 22 years of wonderful experience. His background is 10 bowls. He's used to winning. 9 NCAA and NIT basketball tournaments. Hosting the NCAA national championship the Final Four. John's a winner.

We've got, maybe, the best weight coach in the country. He's an All-American himself, been in involved in two bowl games and 10 NCAA post-season events. Kim's (Sword) a winner.

Obviously, Phil Johnson's a winner. Having been on a national championship team and guiding us to the 19th best turnaround in the NCAA last year. He began our turnaround. Phil's a winner.

Janice Richard has done nothing but win her whole life. Won 20 games or more each of her six seasons as a head coach. She's been in post season play five our of six years and Coach of the Year' four out of six times, was Player of the Year' twice. Janice has a tough, tough job. She's a winner.

Steve Barnes has already done marvelous things. To my chagrin, we're already getting inquiries and calls as to why he can have our defense the best in the nation at this point. Big win in Hawaii to play in the championship game where UCLA ended up third. First WAC road game win in three years at Rice. A big win here against SMU. Another outstanding recruiting class again this year a national reputation as a recruiter and defense. Iowa (State's) recruiting class which Steve Barnes did was fifth in the nation.

John Glass has 22 years of experience. I'm fortunate to have spent a number of years with John in three different locations. He's been a huge part of our success. He's been a part of eight bowls and three NCAA basketball tournaments and the Final Four in New York. He's been around nothing but winning. He's started the Halls of Fame and auctions at almost every institution he's been at. He obviously re-ignited the one here. But, we get a bonus with John and that's Libby (his wife). She has her own career, but nobody's any more involved or popular than Libby Glass. They're both winners.
Desiree Reed may be one of the newer ones you don't know. She's extremely valuable to this department and to the university already. She was an athlete herself. Obviously as you can see, an outstanding student, had her own sports talk show, practiced law at one of the nation's largest firms. Our compliance program under Desiree, and Charlie's (Whitcomb) work is one of the models in the WAC. Obviously in her years at UCLA, they won so many conference and national championships in her time, she knows what winning is all about. When she was getting her law degree, she was at Arizona when they won a national championship. Did you know Phil (Johnson) when he was there? She also put together this Power Point presentation and I appreciate that.

Pablo Morales, I don't have to tell you folks about Pablo Morales. He's an Olympian. He's in every Hall of Fame, almost as many as John Ralston. And, last week, he was very proud. You thought he had won another gold medal when he stopped by my office and told me he beat Fresno. That's a big turnaround.

Michael (Rehm) whom you've all gotten to know is a bright new star in our department. He was part of Montana's national championship in football. As you can see from these statistics, his fundraising abilities are outstanding. Michael won the prestigious Virginia Carter scholarship for a newcomer in development. Michael's a winner.
Nancy Lewis was on our national championship team and is now our director of golf and a member of the LPGA. The academic work of her team gets done. Her ability to win people over already is phenomenal. She's one of our most popular coaches throughout the community and is turning both programs around.

I have to tell you Gloria's (Bell) involvement has been my greatest asset. She is a master teacher and has been for 28 years. You couldn't pry her out of the Cupertino schools. She loves it here and she's been asked to write their curriculum next year. With all of that she involves herself freely and she always has at the Blazer level. There she is spending her own money. Having this presentation tonight was her thoughtful idea. She's been a huge part of our success for over 30 years.

Craig Choate was Coach of the Year' and those accomplishments are rare, too rare. Joslynn was the WAC Co-Player of the Year.' Those are some highlights and I want to especially mention Gary Olimpia name, which has come up with nearly $700,000 and has one more year to endow our tennis scholarships. There are some special accomplishments there by some people who were here when we got here.

As I pointed out, there have been some real special times here in the last 22 months. One of them was the recent victory over SMU and I will never forget the win over Fresno. Two years in a row, we have had an outstanding volleyball program. Last year (we) went to the NCAA's and this year had an even better year. And, of course, two years in a row, beating Stanford (in football).

As I've said, the women's golf team posted a 3.42 GPA (grade-point average) and rank sixth in the nation. Gymnastics has made vast improvement and one our most successful sports is women's soccer.

Our seventh major building block I've already alluded to was the Go Spartans' auction. That was huge.

The eighth major building block was the beginning of the Hall of Fame.
The ninth major building block was the College Cup the NCAA's. Carolyn Lewis directed that and did a magnificent job. The College Cup set records in attendance and ticket revenue. The Go Spartans' auction raised $175,000 due to the hard work of many of you in here. And, the Hall of Fame was one of the most memorable nights for people in this room and that I've had in athletics. All three of those events, people came away feeling good about the San Jose State Spartans, came away with a feeling of pride. As we go from one event to another, we sometimes forget how good we felt that night and how all of those events hugely change and begin to change our image and our identity crisis. Those were big in our community and on national television.

Where do we go from here? What new building blocks do we need to improve our revenue in our Olympic sports and what capital projects do we need to embark upon? We're going to do all we can to make Dave Baldwin and his team successful and have a chance at a bowl. It's our most visible sport regionally and nationally. Some of the things we have already put in place and will put in place, and you may or may not, know these ingredients are hugely important to football, but they are. And, that's summer school. In addition to providing summer school to as many as 60 football players who can keep them in school, help them make progress towards graduation, and, at the same time, have them under our control. Kim Sword in the weight room, which the rules allow and the discipline and work that takes place before they come to fall camp and, this year, for the first time we will allow Dave to have 125 in spring camp and 125 in fall camp. That will give him every chance to develop a team. We're going to hire a new defensive coordinator. As you know, we must have hired a pretty good one, because in three days the Buffalo Bills hired him away for over $200,000. We're increasing the salaries to attract and keep key assistants. We're going to help recruit with new facilities like the ones I am about to show you.

You can see this again afterwards when you come up. It's in the lower right in the easel. Pictured here is a location of a MegaVision here at the end of the stadium, a rehab center that is right besides the Simpkins (Stadium) Center complex we are sitting in. There'll be changes in this building. The Spartan Hall of Fame will be located on this side of the building. Stadium improvements, which I've touched upon and will elaborate on in just a second and Event Center changes, that will help our basketball teams, both men and women, in recruiting.

This was pictured and was part of our NCAA presentation. On the easel down here and I would like you to see this afterwards, it shows what the east side (of Spartan Stadium) would look like with two levels of skyboxes that will help generate sales and help pay for expansion of the east side. Primarily, that will be paid for by stadium naming rights. There will be two rows of skyboxes 50,000 seats as required by the NCAA. There's a lot of work to be done. There needs to be a lot of work done with the city. There needs to be a lot of work done with the neighborhood. We need to address parking, so there are a lot of issues, but it's an important part of our goal. An important part of that also is improvement of the field itself. If you look at the calendar for the coming year with the College Cup back again, us having five home football games, with the Earthquakes in the stadium and then follow that up with a nationally televised bowl game, that field needs help. That's in the works. At the end of that stadium, if any of you took the trip to Oregon with us, this board looks familiar. It's more than a video board and a state-of-the-art speaker system. It symbolizes growth. I know that. And, I know that symbolizes something for you. This is a three or four-story complex. This is not just a scoreboard. It's huge, but it's an entertainment center. It will be hooked to the Internet. It will be state-of-the-art vision and it will equipped so it can be changed to high definition TV when that is required in the Bay Area. I believe that is 2006. It's the first step in proof to the NCAA that we are making stadium renovations and improvements. It's a $1.3-million project that's being carried on by Host and working together with many facets of the university. And, obviously, it's huge to football recruiting.

On the screen and on this side of the room, you see a number of drawings. I guess we're most excited about a 14,000 square foot building, a 10,000- square foot weight room compared to the 2,800 square foot weight room which we have now. That is a huge boost to all 16 sports. It can allow for maximum development for athletes once they are here. Most importantly, it's a key in recruiting athletes. It's user-friendly to our other 15 sports unlike the weight room here because it would include two locker rooms. And all our other teams that don't have locker rooms here will be able to have lockers there and work out and shower and change. They'll feel like they are a part of that building. It will also house a rehab center, a nutrition office and an area where rehabilitation takes place with a new expert in that area a PT (physical therapist).

The building we are in, the Simpkins Stadium Complex, we'll redo that weight room and for gatherings like this, it will be an auditorium and will be able to make better use of audio-visual, better seating so we can hold staff meetings as well. We can divide the room much like Las Vegas' new auditorium into three separate sections with curtains so we can have breakouts for team meetings. And, we'll be able to use it as an academic center. Our academic center now has reached its capacity where we are turning away students and that, obviously, is not good.

This is a $2.0-million project and I can tell you we have in place the lead gift of $500,000 by none other than Phyllis Simpkins. Phyllis will you please stand up. Phyllis and I have been working with another individual. He told us after meetings three or four days in a row and I just told President (Bob) Caret, he will match, present us with a challenge, of a $300,000 to $500,000 gift, and of course, we're only talking about the $500,000 one if we get a match to that. So, by matching that, we will have $1.5 million of it. That was promised to us and Gloria is giving that information to Phyllis.

The Event Center is a real need and we have been working on that since the day we got here and President Caret and his staff have worked hard. In The Event Center, it's key to basketball success that we have men's and women's coaches' offices and that's what that artist drawing shows you. In that office complex, that (the rendering) shows you coming off the San Carlos walkway would be a highlighted area for student-athletes to come into the offices, recruits and student-athletes who are already on campus. Also in this complex, we would gut and completely remodel the locker rooms and those are pictured here. We'll have a video room and a team meeting room and training room and doctor's office. Those again are keys to recruiting and I know this photo shows an artist sketch of helmets, but sometimes architects don't know what sports we're drawing for. We will not have helmets in The Event Center. Actually, this artist's drawing was plagiarized from Florida State's new locker room, so we will have as good as the national (football) champion. This is a $1.5-million contract, and again, campus personnel including Janet Redding's office, the President's office have been working hard to secure this. We have an initial gift on this project that was given some months ago and I would like to thank and introduce to you Chuck Davidson for the initial gift. He's a special guy. In that locker room, we will have all the amenities that recruits are used to seeing televisions and music and that sort of things.

Another important part of the building blocks is the Spartan Hall of Fame. The Spartan Hall of Fame (building) will be the home for the Spartan Hall of Fame and will be the world headquarters for the Order of Sparta. As I said a minute ago, it would be located on this side of the building between the Simpkins Center and the locker room building. It will be the state-of-the-art, interactive and history memorabilia facility. This can draw in a segment of our population, our alums and others who aren't directly involved in the day-to-day competition. The general concept of the building will match this one. John Glass and others are working hard at securing that lead gift and we have hope.
It all starts with President Caret and he involves his entire staff. We're a team, and believe me, I can tell you from experiences at other schools and at other campuses, he is very special. He's well connected in the community. He uses those connections and introduces us to people throughout Silicon Valley. He gives presentations and he's a force in this city, in the valley and I am pleased he could make it tonight. Bob, thank you. Let's give Bob a hand.

We appreciate your support, all of you who came. I want to make sure we thank just as wholeheartedly the people who actually make things happen and make Bob (Caret) look good (provost) Linda Bain, (vice president for administration) Don Kassing, (executive assistant) Dan Buerger, and (vice president of development) Janet Redding. She and her staff we are going to count on heavily in the future. Let me back up to Don, we're working closely with the dotted line in our org(anizational) chart which you will be given a copy of when you leave with John Twining and the reorganization of the business office operations and that same relationship is existing and is being fostered between Janet Redding and her development office and John Glass. (Vice-president for student affairs) Monica Rascoe, our Spartan Foundation president Gayle Kludt. I've introduced Chuck Davidson. I want to thank at this time the (Steve) Schott family who have donated a $150,000 endowment to the women's golf team.

We're going to have the fight song. Now when we're finished, I will ask my staff to come forward and we'll be up in this and we want to answer all of your questions. We'll have the Host people, Chuck Shelton if you want to sign up for a bowl committee or have any questions about the bowl, the Spartan Foundation people, major gift folks, compliance, eligibility and faculty rep (Dr. Charles Whitcomb). Charlie will be here. Travel, Glenn and World Tek. By the way, we have a package in place for the Nebraska trip and we'll be getting that detail to you very soon. Questions about our business office and tickets can be directed to John Twining.