McElroy: Danes looking to go national

As one of the most successful years in University at Albany athletic history winds down, the ASP recently sat down with Vice President for Athletic Administration and Director of Athletics Lee McElroy to discuss the year that was, the future of UAlbany and college sports, and the university's need for an upgrade in athletic facilities.

ASP: Is this the most successful year of your tenure?

Lee McElroy: Maybe the second best. This year we had a total of seven conference championships when you include the [football team's Northeast Conference championship]. This is pretty close, though. It's interesting because the teams that have traditionally been in a championship situation didn't get to that level. I think the important thing we're doing right now is we're continuing to get better across the board in our program, and our conference members are really working hard to gain parity. It really keeps our focus and our attention on making sure that we're doing all the right things to maintain that high level of excellence that we continue to do.

ASP: How important is it to maintain that across-the-board success?

LM: For us, that's our [goal]. For some people, it's one or two sports - usually men's basketball or maybe lacrosse or maybe football. If you look across the country in college athletics, the two sports that the American public is engaged with are football and men's basketball. When we recruit young people, we say to them at the outset: During your four years here, you will have a chance to win a championship. We say it to all athletes, not just the athletes in a particular sport, and we think that's why we've had so much success. We start at that point. That's our goal. That's our objective. That's our top priority -- winning championships, being good students, working hard, recruiting the right kids who are the right fit. This is for everybody in the program.

ASP: UAlbany hosted the America East men's basketball tournament. Looking back, was it a success?

LM: We know that it was the best attended men's basketball tournament in the history of the conference. We also know that we generated the most revenue in the history of the conference. Now, we haven't done the final work, so we don't know what the profit margin is going to be, but those two things alone really had us excited. But there were some ancillary things that I picked up, which is what I get paid to do.

One - when the (America East awards) banquet was here, and we had that room full of 400 people and we had business people there and leaders from the community, they got a chance to see what they've never seen before, and that is all the teams there recognized for their accomplishments throughout the year and what our program brings to the community outside of on the court, with the way the young people were dressed and the kind of agenda that we ran. Also, running concurrently was the [Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference] tournament [at the Times Union Center downtown]. Some people had predicted that [the America East] wouldn't do as well attendance-wise because the MAAC was more successful, has a longer tenure, and on and on. It didn't happen. We both had the largest numbers we've ever had. I thought those were two telling points about our program and where we are and where we've got to go in order to get better.

ASP: How important was it to have your team play on both days of the tournament?

LM: I think you raise a very good point and sometimes I forget to cover that, and that is had we lost the first day, would we have had that attendance? The answer is, probably not, although Binghamton and Vermont drew well and carried well and Stony Brook had a few people … The stars were aligned in our favor. Playing both days really helped.

ASP: Both the men's and women's track and field teams have experienced Division I success. How far away do you think the track program is away from being one of the nation's elite programs year in and year out?

LM: I would say two or three years. We did this almost 25 years ago when I was with [the University of] Houston when I was the associate AD down there. We went from being a very good Southwest Conference team to being a national team, and we did it with three athletes - Carl Lewis, Carol Lewis and Leroy Burrell, who is now the head track coach down there. All three were Olympians and competed in multiple events. So if you get one or two elite athletes, and Joe Greene is a good example, that can compete in two or three events and they're there for three, four or five years, then I think you're close to being at that elite stage. You need a minimum of three athletes on both sides, men and women, to get there. I think with the way coach Vives and his staff are working, there's a good possibility we'll get there.

ASP: We touched on some of the high points, but the athletic program was placed on probation for sending text messages to recruits with a software program. How do you think your staff has handled the violations and have the coaches involved learned their lesson?

LM: We had to live with this, I had to live with this, [Interim President George] Philip had to live with this for 16 months (before it was announced publicly). So when it was leaked to the media through a public report by the NCAA, we had already gone through it.

There are two things I think are critical about the major penalty.

One - every penalty that was imposed was self-imposed. I took away the scholarships. I took some people off the road. I gave the probation. The NCAA did not add one other sanction or penalty.

Secondly, we did not get one e-mail or letter from an alum or a parent saying, boy, you guys are dirty, you did a bad thing. What I did get was several others saying, what does that mean? How does text messaging become a major?

What people are used to when they see a major are, one, money, and two, a recurrent refusal to comply with rules, and three, people who have an issue with jumping from program to program and making poor decisions and violating conference and NCAA policies and rules. Bob Ford has been here for 40 years and never had a major. Jon Mueller has been here for 10 years and never had a major.