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.

While it was embarrassing and nobody wants it on their watch, it was a great learning experience. What we've been able to do is tighten our compliance and education program.

All of the people involved were sanctioned strongly. Yes, the coaches learned their lesson and the other coaches that were not involved have learned that this is something that can't be tolerated. It has not hurt us with recruiting. Yes, it was a huge negative media story and a negative story for the university, but it had no lasting implications other than the probation.

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We were not trying to get ahead of Stony Brook or get ahead of another opponent. We were trying to make sure we were doing things the right way when using technology.

ASP: Were you intentionally harsh with the self-imposed sanctions?

LM: The truth is that those sanctions were arrived at based on two things. One is case precedent. Our people and our lawyers looked at every major penalty that has handed been down by the NCAA … Then, you look at the people who were involved, and whether or not they have a lot of secondary violations and whether or not they have a track record of trying to work outside the rules. Neither one of those two programs had that.

Now we're faced with how do you send a message to the people involved … as well as the rest of your coaches? Yes, we came down very hard to make sure they know we don't tolerate breaking the rules. For a long time we went back and forth with the NCAA on whether it was secondary or major before they declared it was on the major side by a very small margin because of the number of times that we submitted (text messages) on the computer. Now, even though it was inadvertent and even though it was not deliberate, the fact that it was a major meant we had to send a message, and clearly the message we wanted to send was that we will not tolerate anyone breaking rules in our program.

ASP: Do you agree with the NCAA? Do you think it was a major violation?

LM: I disagree on that, it wasn't a major. This is a whole new area of the whole issue where we recruit via software because young people are making decisions based on Facebook, MySpace, and now Twitter. The whole thing where you're sending out a letter and making a lot of phone calls, in today's world with 17-to-19-year-old people doesn't work anymore. It's extinct. We were trying to get ahead of the curve. Unfortunately, we missed a key part of it, which was to not allow the software to generate a text message, which is prohibited. When we found that out, we turned ourselves in. Other than the fact that we got the major, which I was very disappointed in, we followed our protocol: Self-discovery, self-reporting, education, monitoring, making sure you hire the right people.

ASP: What are the goals of the Albany athletic program for the next five years?

LM: One of them is to increase our national exposure. The way you increase national exposure is you go to the NCAAs. The girls from the volleyball team brought me this big sweatshirt back from Stanford (where they competed in the NCAA tournament). Every team that makes the NCAAs is on the bracket. For example, the field hockey team lost to Maryland, the eventual national champion, but they're listed on the bracket with Wake Forest and Maryland and all of these top programs.

Secondly, we want to improve our facilities. One of the reasons I keep our master plan there in front of me for all to see (McElroy has a map set up in the corner of his office depicting UAlbany's plans for improvement in its athletic facilities) is so I continue to reinforce that it's really the big gap that we have in our program right now. We need better facilities. We need better offices. Our lacrosse facility needs to be completed, it's about 75 percent completed.

The third thing is to make sure we are reaching the audiences that we need to. The alumni who competed here for a long period of time in Division III and Division II, we want them to engage and connect to what we're doing.

I think the next five to ten years are very important for those three things: taking the next step nationally, improving our facilities, and bringing our alumni back into the fold so that they can help us invest in what we do, because obviously we're not going to get a lot from the state. We understand that. So we need to generate more revenue, and you do that by winning, getting more partners, and getting your alumni invested in the program.

ASP: With the current economic situation, does connecting with the alumni take on a greater role?

LM: Yes, very much so. Oh my gosh, yes. When you look at programs that have been in Division I much longer then we have, and I'll use the University of Florida as an example, when they decide to do an alumni event, they will sell it out in a week. One, they have great information systems, two, they have great tradition, and three, they have been successful. Now we don't have the tradition yet. We're young at this, we only have a ten-year Division I program, but we have a lot of support, and as you saw at the America East tournament, we have the ability to put on good events. What we know in our business and research supports this, when you are successful and you get people to attend your events, they're going to invest in your program.

ASP: Is the original master plan for the multi-purpose stadium still feasible?

LM: That's an excellent question, and I was at an event at lunch today and someone asked me the same thing: Do you still have the same vision for the multi-purpose stadium? I will say I have a vision, but that vision has to be based on resources. The original number (for the new stadium) was $60 million. That's not a number I came up with, that's a number that the architects came up with. I study facility planning constantly and know we can come up with something on a smaller scale. Originally, we were allocated $35 million on the (NYS) assembly side, which is a lot less than sixty, which was then taken off the board by the (NYS) senate. If we were to get, say, $30 million, then we could build facilities and offices and surfaces in our program that could be not on a scale that we thought, but on a pretty good scale … In the Northeast Conference, our facility is probably the worst in that conference, football-wise. Whatever the number is that we can get from the capital project, we know that we're going to have to raise more private dollars.

ASP: How much of a hindrance is it to the growth of the program if you can't get a new stadium built?

LM:What it's going to do is delay some of the progress, and I'll tell you why. We have better facilities now than we even have. We don't even have an official NCAA track and we've got one of the best teams in the conference if not the country. So when we do get an official track and we do get new offices and on and on, it's going to take us there quicker. If we don't, it doesn't allow for us to move forward as a program with the same progress. This is why you're seeing the up-and-downs, except for track and field … Our biggest ticket on the facilities side will be the multi-purpose complex. We're not talking about a big number for bathrooms and additional seating for lacrosse. We're not talking about a big number for baseball. We're not talking about a big number for track. We have a new (SUNY) Chancellor (Nancy Zimpher) that we are all very excited about, who understands athletics and we think she will be of assistance to us. We will get there, but the sooner we can get the facilities, the sooner we can continue up the ladder.

ASP: Does [volleyball coach MJ] Engstrom have a new deal in place?

LM: Yes, she did sign a new contract about two months ago. I was just telling [Assistant Athletic Director for Media Relations Brian DePasquale] that we needed to change that on the Web site. We were getting calls from parents wanting to know why it still said "interim" before her name on there.

ASP: As the program continues to grow, is there a point where UAlbany would be interested in moving to a higher mid-major conference?

LM: I think conference affiliation is based on two things. You're starting to see some very interesting things because of the economy. Right now, Hofstra and Northeastern are taking soccer and volleyball to North Carolina to play. That is costly and it's bad on student-athletes and it's not good for academics. I think in the next three years, you are going to see some reshuffling of the conferences.

When we got into the America East, Hofstra and Delaware and Northeastern and Drexel jumped into the [Colonial Athletic Association] because they thought they were getting a better deal. I bet if you asked their presidents and athletic directors today, I don't think they think it's a better deal because of the economy and because they aren't having any success. Delaware used to win the America East every year in basketball. They have not had a winning season since they joined (the CAA). Hofstra was winning the America East when Jay Wright was coaching there, and they haven't had any success in the CAA.

I think you're going to see a realignment based on economics and regionalism. As the pot continues to grow at the higher level for the BCS schools because of television and because of the internet, you're going to start to see a shrinkage of those schools, what I call the top 60 or BCS schools, and more conferences working closely together in a regional concept because of the economy.

From what I'm hearing, we're going to be in a stagnant economic state for some time. So I think a lot of conferences will be open, and with that, you will start to see the people who have a good track record of success be attracted to those. When we came in, people thought Stony Brook would be better because their budget is 40 percent more than ours. They thought Binghamton would be OK because they have better facilities. Well, when you look at the numbers, we have more than triple the championships based on the two of them combined. I think we're right there. I think the conference is going to play out in a different manner and a different realignment, and I think there will be regional pockets, where you're going to have less travel, kids are going to miss less class, and you're going to be more competitive.