Columbia Athletics Are in Need of Reform

I'd like to thank everyone who called or e-mailed me with genuine congratulations after the Spectator reported on April 1 that I was named the Head Basketball Coach at Dartmouth. I appreciate the support, but if you weren't aware, it was an April Fool's Day prank.

Fooled 'ya.

Instead, Dartmouth Athletic Director Josie Harper made it painfully obvious that I'd have to seek other post-graduate plans by telling The Dartmouth: "We are not interested in issuing learner's permits."

Putting aside the tactless comments from Harper--who has a record at Dartmouth so abysmal, with numerous losses and a botched firing of Dave Faucher, that one wonders if she's not working on a learner's permit herself--Columbians have been anxiously looking towards the search for a new athletic director as John Reeves prepares for retirement.

By all accounts, it appears that Columbia is looking for someone who can fundraise. Additionally, a new athletic director will also benefit from a budget windfall, which President Bollinger has promised for athletics. If I were athletic director at Columbia, here is what I would do:

1. Increase Coaches' Salaries

Columbia's head coaches' salaries are the lowest in proportion to living expenses in the Ivy League. Assistant coaches' salaries are the absolute lowest in the conference. If we want to be the best, we have to pay for the best. Columbia was only able to hire top coaches like Bob Shoop and Joe Jones because Bollinger was willing to spend. The Lions now need to catch up in other sports.

Columbia may have a lot going for it, but it's not the most tempting school to work at if you're going to receive a three-quarter part-time salary while living in the most expensive city in the nation.

Additionally, almost every team at Columbia is understaffed. For instance while Princeton field hockey has two full-time assistants, and a "volunteer" assistant, Columbia only has one three-quarter part-time assistant and a second part-time assistant who is often a full-time grad student or employed elsewhere and paid just $1000 for a full season.

We cannot keep up in recruiting with other schools if they have larger staffs of people making the extra phone calls and picking up kids at the airport. As long as our coaches are working overtime with less time, under a greater daily strain, we're just asking for failure.

2. Get a Piece of Manhattanville

I cannot stress this point enough. If athletics does not directly benefit in a substantial way from expansion, we might as well cut half of our sports. While every other school in the conference had their baseball, softball, lacrosse, and other teams practice in an adequate field house during a frigid winter, Columbians were working out in the tiny and outdated Blue Gym. It's remarkable that we even manage to compete with other schools.

Additionally, once science labs and other groups move up to Manhattanville, athletics needs to secure some space in the vacated buildings for offices (for the newly hired assistants) and some classrooms for team meetings. If I was athletic director, I would also make sure that athletics was not screwed out of space for the planned building over the existing tennis courts next to Pupin.

3. Raise the Roof

Some people claim that Columbia needs to build a new basketball gym--perhaps at Morningside Park--to adequately support our rising Division I basketball program. I disagree.

The location of Levien Gym is absolutely perfect for basketball to continue building on its student body support. Instead, we should renovate Levien.

Let's raise the roof, literally.

There is space to expand upward. We can install new seats, create an entrance next to Uris and Pupin, build luxury suites or sky boxes, repaint the walls, and make other pressing physical improvements. There's existing space to turn Levien into a top-notch basketball facility.

4. Improve Workout Facilities for Non-athletes

Simply stated, there should be more than eight treadmills to service a campus of thousands. We're going to need money and creativity to expand on the gym we have.

If offices like crew and swimming can move into the new science tower or into Havemeyer, then we would have more space for what athletes like to call "civilians." If Columbia teams can move practices out of the Blue Gym and into Manhattanville, then we could potentially extend a platform to fill in the gap from the locker rooms to the track. I'm open to other creative but ideas, but the plan here is that one benefit in facilities (Manhattanville) would lead to another.

5. Money, Money, Money

None of what I'm talking about is cheap. Bollinger may have promised an increase in athletic resources, but he's not George Steinbrenner. He doesn't want athletics to do so well that it becomes an animal he can't control--like it was at Michigan. Instead he wants athletics to do just well enough so that alumni and students won't complain that we lose too often.

But my appetite for winning as athletic director would be greater than winning just enough. And to complement Bollinger's modest boost, we need to go to our alumni, to sponsors, and to other benefactors and fundraise tirelessly.

We need to ask our alumni how much they really want to win. If we want to compete, if we want to hoist that Ivy League title trophy and raise banners, we need some real support. We cannot continue to lag behind Princeton and Penn in facilities and recruiting. Now is the time to step up and take Columbia to a new era where our losing tradition becomes part of ancient history.

6. Accountability

If I was athletic director, there would be no player mutinies. From day one, I would keep in constant communication with every athlete and coach who wanders through Dodge.

What I find most remarkable about the complaints I hear from competitors about long-time losing coaches is a belief that the athletes are receiving poor instruction. No one claims the coaches are abusive. In fact, often times their character is commended. It simply boils down to an educational and effectiveness level. At an Ivy League school, student-athletes are smart enough to know when they are not well-taught.

I also find it remarkable that many long-time coaches at Columbia have grown frustrated with the obstacles here and have essentially given up on trying to compete at the highest level, thus allowing themselves to languish in recruiting.

That's not acceptable here.

If anyone wants to coach at Columbia, they need to be a first-class teacher, they need to make no excuses, and they should constantly have a fire driving them to success. If I'm athletic director, I'll provide coaches with the infrastructure to win, but I can't control what happens in practice and on the field. Everyone will be accountable for his job, including me.

These are the "Big Six" plans that I have to improve Columbia athletics, but I have a plethora of other realistic ideas as well. Some were written up in a column last year, and other newer ideas include a remaking of Columbia's athletic marketing plan, increasing support for club sports teams, and making gold an official school color. And unlike Dartmouth basketball, this is a position for which I would not be operating on a learner's permit.