2008 Woodie Awards
Powers is essential
Ben Nielsen
Issue date: 5/11/07 Section: Sports
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I am going to Tarantino this column (and yes, I stole that from Dane Cook) and start with the end: We need more Skyler Powers.
Southwest Baptist University athletics lacks the kind of people its mission statement would suggest it is trying to obtain.
This is not to say all athletes are bad people or something. This is not so. I have met many athletes who are fine scholars and people. I have also met several other athletes who are very talented, highly competitive and have a drive to win. The only problem is that we seem to lack a high number of athletes with all of these qualities.
It would seem to me recruiting these types of athletes would be something essential and, if anything else, a requirement at SBU.
Consider this, for the 2005-2006 school year, SBU spent $34,943 on recruiting. There were exactly two schools who spent within $15,000 of that total: Pittsburg State ($31,280) and Missouri Western ($48,458). Every other MIAA school spent at least $63,000 on recruiting for an average of $88,478 per MIAA school minus SBU.
To help show how much of a difference this is imagine that every athletic department in the MIAA has only 300 athletes (this is not too far fetched considering six of the 10 MIAA schools have fewer than 300 athletes). Let's say that due to graduation, transfers and individuals who are cut or quit, each university has to go out and find 100 new athletes a year. SBU would be giving a coach about $350 per athlete he needed to go out and recruit while the nine other schools would be giving their coaches $885 per athlete.
What this means is that SBU coaches have a significant disadvantage on how far they can go to find players, evaluate them and recruit them. It would seem difficult for coaches to recruit character athletes who are talented enough to compete in the MIAA when their radius to go find players is so limited.
It would seem to me that for a school who bases itself on the people who attend it, we would spend more money on people than on peripheral things like buildings and things of that nature.
Southwest Baptist University athletics lacks the kind of people its mission statement would suggest it is trying to obtain.
This is not to say all athletes are bad people or something. This is not so. I have met many athletes who are fine scholars and people. I have also met several other athletes who are very talented, highly competitive and have a drive to win. The only problem is that we seem to lack a high number of athletes with all of these qualities.
It would seem to me recruiting these types of athletes would be something essential and, if anything else, a requirement at SBU.
Consider this, for the 2005-2006 school year, SBU spent $34,943 on recruiting. There were exactly two schools who spent within $15,000 of that total: Pittsburg State ($31,280) and Missouri Western ($48,458). Every other MIAA school spent at least $63,000 on recruiting for an average of $88,478 per MIAA school minus SBU.
To help show how much of a difference this is imagine that every athletic department in the MIAA has only 300 athletes (this is not too far fetched considering six of the 10 MIAA schools have fewer than 300 athletes). Let's say that due to graduation, transfers and individuals who are cut or quit, each university has to go out and find 100 new athletes a year. SBU would be giving a coach about $350 per athlete he needed to go out and recruit while the nine other schools would be giving their coaches $885 per athlete.
What this means is that SBU coaches have a significant disadvantage on how far they can go to find players, evaluate them and recruit them. It would seem difficult for coaches to recruit character athletes who are talented enough to compete in the MIAA when their radius to go find players is so limited.
It would seem to me that for a school who bases itself on the people who attend it, we would spend more money on people than on peripheral things like buildings and things of that nature.
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