Many people, especially young people who like sports, ask me "what does a college athletic director do"?  They think it's cool that you "get to go to games all the time".  Believe me, that is a fun part of the job.  However, keep in mind that the A.D., and his or her staff, have responsibilities and are working at all those games they attend.  And, keep in mind, all of those games usually occur in the evenings, and the weekends, on top of the normal 40 hour work week.  So I thought I would share my most recent weekend as a DII A.D.

It started on Thursday, May 16 with breakfast with one of our GVSU Baseball Alumni Association board members.  After breakfast, I jumped in my Chevy Impala and drove 4 and ½ hours to Indianapolis for the NCAA DII Super Regionals Softball Championship.  Our GVSU team was playing a best-of-three series with the #1 ranked University of Indianapolis.  They played one game on Friday and two on Saturday.  On Thursday night there was a coaches meeting, which there is before every NCAA Tournament and the coaches and administrators all must attend as the NCAA site rep goes over all of the administrative details of the championship. 

Meanwhile, our Associate Athletic Director for Media Relations, Tim Nott, was in Springfield, MO with our GVSU baseball team as they were competing in their NCAA Regional Championship, which is a 6 team double elimination tournament.  One of the things I always tell our student-athletes is that you cannot point and click your way to success.  The point being to these kids who grew up in the technological age is that technology is only a tool to help you succeed, and that success comes through hard work, perseverance, integrity, etc.  Having said that, today's technological tools are really handy for athletic administrators when you have multiple teams playing at once!

Our softball team won their first game on Friday.  Our baseball team won their first and second games on Thursday and Friday, so they played for the winners bracket championship on Saturday at the same time the softball team was playing in their finals.  UIndy won the first softball game so we had to go to the "If" game, meaning the winner-take-all game.  Tim Nott and I were trading texts feverously because if our baseball team won, I would have to drive to Springfield, MO for their championship on Sunday. 

The Laker Softball team came through with a huge 3-2 over UIndy to win the Super Regionals!  Led by 8 outstanding seniors, this team won 2 of 3 from the #1 ranked team in the country, AT their field, and qualified for the NCAA DII Softball World Series in Salem, VA!  It was the best set of 3 softball games I've ever witnessed.  Two great teams evenly matched with tension and intensity throughout.  Every game went down to the last inning, or rather the last out.  But the Lakers prevailed thanks to a solo home run by All-American Katie Martin and a clutch RBI single by Briauna Taylor! Freshman pitcher Sara Andrasik, as well as senior Hannah Santora, provided great pitching during the weekend to send the Lakers to Salem.  Meanwhile, the GVSU Baseball team beat Bellarmine 18-1 to advance to Sunday's finals, so Associate A.D. Keri Becker hustled me to the Enterprise car rental at the Indy airport so I could rent a car to drive to Missouri while she drove my car home. 

I headed out for Springfield, MO at 6:06 pm, drove for 30 minutes and had to pull over to grab a Subway sandwich and purchase a new car phone charger as mine busted and my power was running out.  Now properly powered, I would spend the drive calling people for a variety of reasons.  I had to call my wife Terry, whose birthday was Thursday by the way (the day I left).  She instructed me to pull over and get some sleep if I became tired, as she always does, but I was still pretty pumped from the softball victory!  An hour later I grabbed a DQ chocolate malt in the middle of Illinois somewhere.  Numerous phone calls to my staff driving through the nation's heartland were made to talk about travel plans for the softball team to Salem, VA.  I also had to make sure Tim Nott had a room waiting for me when I arrived in Springfield.  No satellite radio in the rental meant I had to pick up WMOX and the Cardinals game.  Pretty cool driving by Busch Stadium while listening to the game.  Just past St. Louis it was time for a large coffee.  I realized my iPhone Mapquest app wasn't completely accurate and that I was only 200 miles from Springfield, not 300 as I thought.  So another call to Tim Nott to assure him I would roll in about 11:30pm (Central time, 12:30pm per my biological clock).  The Cards game ended so it was country western music the rest of the way, got checked in the hotel, and went to bed.

Got up for 8:00 am Mass at the local Catholic Church, ate a good breakfast at the hotel, and headed to the baseball game.  Had to drop the rental off at the Enterprise counter first, and then rode with Tim Nott to Meador Park.  Just like our softball team, if the Lakers won the first game, it would be over and we could head home.  If not, we would go the "If" game and it would be winner-take-all again.  Another real close, tense game in game one but Bellarmine came out ahead so we were going to game two.  Tim Nott was busy working the phone with the airlines personnel to coordinate the flight home as well as grabbing our players a sandwich for between the games.  It was very hot in Missouri and we also had to make sure they had plenty of water and gatorade. 

In yet another terrific performance by GVSU student-athletes, the Laker Baseball team prevailed in the second game to earn a trip to the NCAA DII Baseball World Series in Cary, NC!  Senior pitcher Anthony Campanella showed some great senior leadership by coming back on only two days rest with a gutty 8 innings to keep the Lakers in the game.  Jamie Potts, GVSU two-sport athlete who plays tight end for the Laker football team, delivered a clutch two out hit to drive in the go ahead runs, senior Chris Rudenga added another RBI, and GVSU's and the NCAA's all-time saves leader, Brad Zambron, came in to close out the 6-3 victory.

Following the game and celebration, the team showered up, grabbed Chipotle for the bus ride to the airport, and we quickly went through security to board our flight and get out of there before a gigantic storm rolled in (you probably heard about it watching the weather channel, we saw it and believe me, it was a big one!).  I'm typing this on the flight back.  On Monday, our staff will be busy making travel arrangements for both teams, fielding NCAA conference calls for both teams, and trying to re-group.  It is a big championship week for the Lakers!  Associate Athletic Director Walter Moore will be traveling with the Laker Men's and Women's Track teams to their national outdoor championships in Pueblo, CO, Keri Becker will be traveling with the Laker Softball team to Salem, VA, and Associate A.D.'s Doug Lipinski and Tim Nott will be going with the Laker Baseball team to Cary, NC.  As Athletic Director, I have to drive up to Gaylord, MI for GLIAC meetings Tuesday and Wednesday, fly out early Thursday morning for our softball team's first game in Salem, and then will be driving back and forth between Salem and Cary to support both our softball and baseball teams in the quest for a national championship.  Good thing ol' Dwight D. Eisenhower built this country's interstate system!!

Although this schedule can be exhausting, it is also inspiring to watch our student-athletes perform!  Some of the best times in the job are traveling with these kids.  They may not always be perfect, but they sure are great representatives of our school, their programs, and their families.  With both softball and baseball teams this past weekend, I had hotel personnel and bus drivers both tell me how much they enjoyed being around our kids.  They talked about how polite they were and how they always thanked them for their work on their behalf.  I get that a lot when traveling with our teams.  That starts with great leadership like Head Softball Coach Doug "Doc" Woods, and Head Baseball Coach Jamie Detillion.  Both of these teams won with class all weekend, and that matters a lot in my book!

So it will be off to Gaylord, Mich., Salem, Va., and Cary, N.C. this week to do it all over again! GO LAKERS!

Last Friday, I attended the funeral services for my college basketball coach, Bob Nichols, who died Saturday, March 30, after collapsing on his daily walk.  It made for a tough Easter weekend for this guy, who played and coached for "Nick", as he was often referred to.  College is a time when one should learn something about themselves to guide them into the future of the "real world".  I was extremely fortunate to have been guided during my college years by one of the best teachers I have ever had, who just happened to be a college basketball coach.

Coach Nichols remains the winningest coach in the history of the Mid-American Conference in terms of most wins ever by a head men's basketball coach.  I believe that is the most important measurement of coaches in that league versus win percentage, although Coach Nichols' win percentage is also in the top five in the history of that league.  The careers of head coaches in the MAC usually travel on two pathways.  They either win and get out by moving up to a school at one of the major DI conferences, or it is so difficult to maintain success in the MAC that they eventually get fired and thus the days of a coach in the MAC lasting their whole careers at one school are few and far between.  Coach Nichols lasted 22 years as the head coach at the University of Toledo.  There were some lean years at the end, but for 20 straight years his teams posted winning records and there were some memorable seasons and memorable players along the way.  Those are the stats, but there is much more to his legacy than that.

His teams were known to be well disciplined and well coached, and they were.  Most of the coaching fraternity, as well as the media, often thought of him as a defensive minded coach.  He certainly demanded good defense from his teams, and for the most part, all of his teams were very fundamentally sound man-to-man defensive teams.  As time went and his personnel changed, he did play more zone defense, but he was primarily a man-to-man defensive coach.  However, I always felt he never got enough credit for being a great offensive coach.  I thought he was an offensive genius.  Perhaps it was his ability to teach offense that separated him from most coaches.  His teams were always very good passing teams, which is a skill in small demand these days with the plethora of ball screens set on every possession.  We started the first practice every year working on the simple skill of passing, and had a passing drill in every practice we had.  He taught offensive concepts more than just offensive plays, and his best teams were really a lot of fun to watch because of their offensive prowess. 

Coach always stressed working toward being "good in all phases of the game".  I recall a sign he put up in our locker room.  "You can shoot too much, you can dribble too much, and you can pass too much, but you can never rebound too much".  We worked hard on blocking out and rebounding.  In recruiting, he was always looking for those guys that had a knack for going after rebounds no matter where the ball came off the rim.  He really understood the importance of having possession of the ball.  He was constantly telling his players, "do the little things well fellas", and "know your limitations", two concepts that are great lessons for daily life.

Although his teams were well schooled in all phases of the game, there was more to Coach Nichols' coaching than just understanding and teaching the game.  He REALLY understood athletics.  He loved all sports.  Most of all he wanted his players to be successful in life.  He was always relating our development as players or as a team to life situations.  I know he was very proud of his former players and the successes they had professionally and their contributions to society.  Again, in today's sports world, money has become the driving cause of decision making all too often, and the personal development of kids has been de-valued.  Coach Nichols was tough and demanding, but his primary motivation was that he cared about you enough to want you to become the best you could be, and he wanted our teams to be the best that they could be. 

So why was he so successful?  There were a lot of reasons, but I think it was primarily because he was an excellent teacher.  Again, big money has caused us to lose sight of the fact that the best coaches are the ones who are the best teachers.  Coach Nichols could flat-out teach!  Good teaching requires patience.  If his players listened to him and gave great effort to accomplishing what he wanted, they became good college basketball players.  It may not happen in year one, or year two, but he would stick with players and get something out of them when most coaches would give up on them.  I'm thankful to have played for a coach like this.  He would work individually with players on different things before and after practice to make them better at one particular thing.  He could evaluate talent in recruiting with the best of them and understand the importance of having good talent, but it was his ability to develop players that made him better than most.  That's where the hard work comes in for coaches. 

Coaches preach a lot about wanting their players and teams to be tough.  Toughness is a word you hear from lots of coaches.  Nobody was any tougher than Nick.  He demonstrated toughness in the sense of sticking with his beliefs and principles, toughness in maintaining emotional control, and toughness in demonstrating patience.  These seem to be in short supply these days, as television has glorified coaches prancing up and down the sidelines and yelling at players and translating that into toughness.  Nick was not a man of many words.  But when he spoke it always had a purpose.  He could easily get your attention with that stare of his.  And he was tough enough to give some guys every chance to succeed on his teams when other coaches would never have.  Coach Nichols was fair in his decision making.  That takes toughness too.

As is the case with most great teachers, you appreciate the things he/she taught you long after you played for or were taught by them.  That was certainly the case with Coach Nichols.  Many players who struggled at times playing for him came to respect him much more later in life.  Once he retired, Coach Nichols took time to find out about his former players and stay in touch with them.  With the stress and pressure of coaching off of him, Coach was much more relaxed and all of us really enjoyed being around him.  He loved telling stories and we loved listening.  He hosted reunions of his former players in the summer at his daughter Jane's house.  While we all enjoyed telling the same stories time and time again with more and more embellishment every time, I think all of us enjoyed the most seeing how much pleasure these gatherings brought to Coach Nichols.

I mentioned earlier that he stay involved in our lives.  For those former players in the Toledo area, I know he would go watch their children play sports and he really enjoyed that.  Since I lived two and a half hours away and was busy raising a family and running a college athletic department, the times I could spend with Coach were few and far between.  Whenever our teams played in Ohio, I had the opportunity to meet Coach for dinner to visit and enjoyed these times immensely.  About three times a year I would receive a 5 x 7 manila envelope from Coach.  There would be a handwritten letter (I don't think Coach ever adapted to the computer age J) and it would often be a series of small note papers piled together that you had to put together like a puzzle.  In the envelope were always a stack of newspaper clippings.  All of them had things underlined or notes written in the margins.  Sometimes just one word was next to an article and you had to decipher what he meant.  Having played and coached for him, I always understood what he meant, but I always wondered if others could figure things out, decipher the "code" that he would use with all of his abbreviations.  I know he sent articles to lots of people.  It was his way of staying in touch and telling you he cared.  I know I always enjoyed getting that envelope and seeing what Coach had to say.

At the luncheon after his funeral, we had the opportunity to pay our respects by sharing a story or two about Coach Nichols.  Our trainer when I played, Mark Schriener, made a tremendous point when he shared his thoughts on Nick.  He talked about how all great leaders surround themselves with good people and the best talent they could, and cared about every person in the organization, whether he was the manager or the best player.  Coach Nichols had some great coaches on his staff and almost all of them were there at his funeral.  Jim McDonald, who I was also fortunate to have played for and to have as a role model, and who took me under his wing the year I was a graduate assistant coach, was Coach's top assistant during some of the best Toledo teams ever in the 70's and early 80's.  He went on to have a highly successful career as head coach at Kent State.  Bob Conroy, who is deceased, recruited a lot of the best players to have ever played for Nick.  Greg Kampe, who has gone on to a highly successful career at Oakland, was a graduate assistant and then full time coach for Nick, and changed his plans for the Final Four to be there.  Stan Joplin, who went on to be an assistant for Tom Izzo at Michigan State, and who later became the most successful head coach at Toledo since Coach Nichols and is now doing great work at the high school level, also played and coached as an assistant for Nick and it was great to see him there.  A lot of his former great players attended his funeral from his famous 1966-67 MAC champion team through his last years as head coach.  Guys like Steve Mix, Bob Miller, John Rudley and Calvin Lawshe from his early teams were there.  From the early 70's were UT greats Tom Kozelko, Mike Larsen, and Jim Kindle.  The late Jim Brown's wife and sons were there.  Jeff Seemann, who I had the good fortune to be mentored by when I was a freshman and he was a senior and my roommate on road trips, was there with his wife Nadine and his father, Dan Seemann, who helped mentor a lot of UT athletes.  My teammate and best man at my wedding Jay Lehman was there with his wife Jan and son Cory.  Jay lives and works in Toledo with Coach's daughter Jane.  He stayed the closest to Nick of all of us and I know how much Nick enjoyed watching Jay's sons play.  Lots of guys from the 80's were there.  Jay Gast, Tim Reiser, Jim Lange, Bob Borcherdt, Blake Burnham, and Mark German.  Brad Rieger, who I had the good fortune to room on the road trips with when I was a senior and he was a freshman, gave a wonderful tribute to Coach Nichols at the Mass on behalf of all of the players and did a great job of leading the program at the luncheon afterward.  I have probably missed some players who were there and I apologize for that.  I know the family appreciated all of them for being there.

Coach Nichols also had the respect of his peers and two of the greatest coaches ever in college basketball were at his funeral to pay their respects.  Darell Hedric, one of the many great coaches from Miami (O) University's famous "Cradle of Coaches" was there.  He and Nick "had a lot of great battles" as he put it through many years of coaching against one another in the MAC.  Don Donoher, the legendary coach from the University of Dayton, was also there with his wife.  Coach Donoher and Nick had a special relationship because Coach Donoher attended high school and had a great playing career at Toledo Central Catholic, where Coach Nichols began his coaching career.  I believe both of them are in Central Catholic's Hall of Fame and rightly so.  I know how much all of us former players really appreciated their presence.  All of these men conducted themselves and their programs with dignity and respect.  They won big, and they won the right way.  They were and are great role models and examples for the young men they coached.  It seems that is something that is in short supply today.

Coach wasn't perfect, none of us are.  He had his faults and shortcomings as we all do.  But he always knew his limitations and made the most of his God-given talents.  He will be missed.  I will miss him.  I am where I am today because he took a chance on me and gave me a scholarship.  Later he hired me as his assistant coach, which gave me my start 31 years ago in a career in college athletics, for which I will always be grateful.  Somewhere up there I know he's re-uniting and telling stories with old friends such as my father-in-law George Bush, Frank Gilhooley, Cal Christensen, Gene Hickey, and George Lindeman.  Rest in peace Coach.

One of the biggest problems that everyone in my profession is concerned about today is the trend of decreasing in-game attendance at athletic events.  Anybody paying attention to the empty seats at NBA games, college bowl games, lots of BCS level football and basketball games, and even the sacred NFL has seen a drop in in-game attendance, knows what I am talking about.  There are a lot of reasons for this.  It costs too much at most of these events is one very good one reason.  The proliferation of games on TV makes it easy for people to just say they will watch it at home on TV where they don't have to fight the crowds, don't have to wait 10 minutes and interrupt their viewing of the game to go to the bathroom or get something to eat or drink. And people have lots of entertainment choices today that they didn't have 20-30 years ago. 

But I want to focus on one reason in-game attendance is declining - our games are lasting way too long!  It is HARD, in every sense of the word, to sit on a bleacher seat through 4 hours of a college football game, and yes, many of the BCS level games are lasting close to 4 hours.  I remember when everyone started passing a lot in college football.  Me and my fellow administrators in the late 80's and early 90's were lamenting that games were lasting almost 3 hours, when prior to that, they would last about 2 hours to 2 hours 30 minutes.  Media timeouts have played a HUGE role in this, and let's face it - those spots are paying those coaches their million dollar salaries and funding the gigantic athletic budgets at the DI level.  Media timeouts are ok when you are at home watching on TV.  You can grab a snack or a drink, go the bathroom, or in most cases, check out the action in another game that's on another channel.  But to have to sit through them in person only makes for a longer day at the stadium. 

I don't mean to pick on football only here.  Basketball and baseball, you have the same problem.  I was driving home from the GLIAC Conference Track meet last Sunday and the Michigan State-Ohio State game was on the radio.  There was about 5 minutes to go, I have about a 15-18 minute ride home, and I remember thinking, if I hustle, I might get home for the finish.  Finish?  I got home for the last two and half minutes, and that lasted about another 10-15 minutes it seemed!  After every possession there is a timeout, and usually an officials' review in DI of some play because THEY HAVE TO GET THE PLAY RIGHT!  The other night it was approaching 9:00pm and an old guy like me was about to go to bed.  The Indiana-Minnesota game was finishing up and I went upstairs thinking, I'll catch the end of this game then watch Everybody Loves Raymond at 9:00 (see, I told you I was old).  The game ended at 9:17!!  It took FOREVER and one of the reasons was both coaches saved most of their timeouts and had to use them all.  Watch an NBA game some time if you think there are too many interruptions in the flow of a college game.  The NBA is a series of about 48 minutes of 3-4 minute periods before there is a stoppage of play (ok, self-disclosure, I rarely watch NBA basketball because of this so if that isn't the case, my apologies, but if I'm not dead on, I'm close!).  We aren't exempt from this in DII either.  The 5 minutes of our final regular season game last 28 minutes.  Two shot fouls galore, timeouts, and using every second of the break when a kid fouls out delays the action all the time.

Baseball, I shouldn't have to bring your sport up.  I love baseball.  I love the slower pace.  Unfortunately for baseball, I'm in the minority.  Most people don't like the slow pace and you turn them off further by allowing guys to step out of the box and adjust EVERYTHING after EVERY PITCH!  And you allow too many pitchers to take too long between pitches because of some stupid, non-important ritual they think they have to do.  Meanwhile, you are getting more empty seats and can't understand why.

I'm in NCAA Division II and yes, all of this has an effect on us and we need to shorten our games as well. Why does this matter and why should any of us care about it?  Every study about the millennial generation tells us they have a shorter attention span than previous generations.  Not as many students are attending games as they did before.  They are our future fans.  I would also suggest that the baby boomer generation is the greatest generation of sports fans ever.  That can be debated of course, but I think that's a lock.  Baby boomers are getting older.  I know I'm one of them.  They are all going to be on fixed incomes soon.  Not only will they not be able to afford the high prices of attending sporting events today (many already cannot), they won't have the energy to fight the crowds, spend all day on a college campus, and then travel home.  I know, many of my fellow baby boomers tell me this.  The fact that DII offers great college competition at an affordable price bodes well for our in-game attendance in the near future.  But we, along with everyone else at the college level, experience students leaving at halftime, getting their free t-shirt and going back to their rooms, and watching stuff on all of the media options they have today rather than watching in person and supporting their fellow students.  While we in college sports can't control everything in society, we can do something about some of these things.  Here are a few solutions. 

Football - You get one timeout per half.  Period.  Coaches, figure it out.  You all get your media timeouts whereby you can get your coaching in.  Other than that, you better save that last timeout to kick that game winning field goal.

Basketball - You get one timeout per half.  Period.  Coaches, figure it out.  Both you and football coaches are all getting paid more than the average Joe that follows your team, so you should be able to handle this.  Better save that last timeout to design the last second shot.  And yeah, teach your players they cannot call timeout every time there is a scramble for a loose ball or you may use your only timeout that way.

Baseball - If your batter leaves the batter's box during his at bat, it's an automatic strike called against him.  If your pitcher leaves the pitcher's mound between pitches to tweak something on his uniform/body, it's an automatic ball.  Umpires are there to make sure the batter has time to get the sign.  You don't need to leave the batter's box after every pitch to adjust both batting gloves and tug everything on your uniform.  If you are doing that, you need counseling.

In all of these sports, I'm ok with video replays to "get the call right" on certain plays (e.g. fair or foul in baseball, in or out in football, time situations in basketball, etc.).  To the rules committee members, MOST fans, including me, appreciate "getting it right".  That seems fair to most people.  But the plethora of timeouts for no reason other than to stop the clock, ice the kicker or free throw shooter, give your bullpen more time to warm up, IS LOSING FANS, particularly millennials and baby boomers.  Coaches, coach your teams on late game situations.  Let us watch them make decisions on their own on occasion.  They often make better decisions with NO TIMEOUT BEING CALLED AND YOU "LET THEM PLAY" than when you call a timeout anyway.  There are a lot of things we don't have control of with society and their interests, but we can control, to some degree, the length of our games.  It's time to get some courage and make some necessary, significant changes in our rules.  That's my challenge for the rules committees in every sport!

Hurricane Sandy is wreaking havoc on the eastern seaboard.  It is one of the worst natural disasters in modern times.  There are far more important things to be concerned with than sports at this time, especially for all those who are affected by Sandy.  When these devastating storms hit, I am reminded how weather plays a huge role in sports almost every day.  In today's world, we have tremendous tools at our disposal to help us track the weather.  But as they say, you can't fight Mother Nature.

As an athletic director, I am an avid follower of The Weather Channel (TWC).  That's right, I watch Wake Up With Al every morning!  All outdoor sports are certainly affected by inclement weather, but I worry about indoor sports as well.  Anytime you are traveling with college students that you are responsible for, you worry about their safety until they arrive home.  When you are in athletic administration and you have over 500 student-athletes on your watch, it's like you have 500 of your own kids that you worry about whenever they are out and you want the peace of mind knowing they returned home safely.  Most of the indoor sports are during the winter months, when the travel is most treacherous in the Midwest.

You also worry about the condition of your fields when a storm is coming.  One of the beauties of having artificial turf is that a good rain won't cancel a game or render a field a mudbowl.  I slept easier this year than ever when we put Fieldturf in our stadium.  I'm glad we did because we got rain on or leading up to every home game this year!  Plus, cancellations and/or delays are a headache to re-schedule or decide when to resume play.  The good news today is that we have the Telvent DTN system, which is what many golf courses use (including the Meadows), and is terrific in notifying you when any inclement weather approaches your area, lets you know exactly where lightning strikes are occurring, and lets you know when it is safe to resume play.  The most stressed I have ever been during a contest was a football game we played vs. West Texas A&M to open the season in 2010.  It was the opener of the year against two ranked teams and on national television.  We led by 10 late in the 4th quarter as a massive thunderstorm was approaching Lubbers Stadium.  They scored to cut it to 3 and you knew they would onside kick.  All I could think about was we had better recover that kick, because if they did and used up timeouts going for a tying field goal, there was a good chance I would have to suspend the game due to lightning.  And I knew we had zero chance of resuming play as the storm was going to last well past midnight.  Thankfully, we recovered the kick, ran the clock out, and we immediately announced to the fans to proceed immediately to their vehicles as threatening weather was fast approaching.  Five minutes after the end of the game we had a deluge (preceded by LOTS of lightning).  Can you imagine what it would have been like if the visitors, West Texas A&M, were marching toward the tying field goal and the host A.D. suspends the game with his team ahead?  Again, I was fortunate we recovered the onside kick and won the game without having to make that call.  But that is why weather can cause people like me to lose sleep.

Another change in sports over the last 30 years due to weather has been the building of indoor facilities for outdoor sports.  Not only do we have domed stadiums now, but many of us have indoor buildings with turf so our outdoor sports can train year round.  We are very fortunate at GVSU to have the Kelly Family Sports Center (named after former GVSU head football coach and now Notre Dame head coach Brian Kelly and his family).  Our league, the GLIAC, now has five schools that have built or are building indoor buildings like ours.  For GVSU, it not only allows our intercollegiate teams to have a place to train in winter/inclement weather, but we also host Movement Science academic classes in there, as well as intramural and club sport activities.  It has been a great facility for our entire campus and a lot of GVSU students!

The last reason people like me watch The Weather Channel closely is that bad weather can definitely affect your attendance.  And I don't mean just for the outdoor sports.  Over the years I've come to believe the weather affects indoor sports more than outdoor sports.  People understand that a football game may have cold weather, but they make it a day anyway with their tailgating and warm gear.  But I think people find it tougher today to go out in the cold, wintry weather to a basketball game and back than to a fall sports event.  Spring sports can be tough in our neck of the woods too, but you learn to just bundle up and grind through it. 

Nevertheless, weather has a huge impact on decision making in every way when it comes to sports.  Thankfully, TWC has a good app so I can stay on top of the weather conditions at all times! 

In a short period of time, the way we all receive and find news has changed dramatically.  Certainly, it has had an effect on all of us in college athletics.  We all have had to adapt to this changing world of media and GVSU Athletics is no different.

I was one of those baby boomer generation kids who couldn't wait for the paper to arrive every afternoon, delivered by one of my schoolmates (the paper delivery boy is another job going extinct).  My brothers and I would fight to see who got the sports page first.  I recall reading EVERY box score of EVERY baseball game played the day before.  We also couldn't wait to read the comics.  Gil Thorp was one of my favorites.  As I grew older, yes, I became one of the "old guys" who loved to hear the crinkle of my paper as I drank my coffee in the morning or came home from work to catch up on the news.  I always preferred reading about the news rather than listening about it or watching it.  I still read it.  I just read it electronically now, as I'm sure most do.

In February of 2012, I decided to take the plunge and enter the world of social media.  I sent out my first tweet on Twitter.  We all came to realize that there no longer is one major source of news any more like the hometown paper was for so many years.  I had a Twitter account for some time before actually sending tweets.  Now, Twitter is my primary source of news gathering.  In order for Laker Athletics to receive the publicity and attention we want for our student-athletes, we had to become our own news agency.  All of us, coaches and support staff, had to become regular tweeters and Facebook advocates.  In order to get our "stuff" in front of as many eyeballs as possible, we have to grow our social media outlets.  One way we are doing that is with the Social Media Road Trip you can follow at gvsulakers.com.  Everything we do is to drive people to our website where they can learn everything they want to know about GVSU Athletics, including more and more videos of the Lakers in action or interviews with coaches and student-athletes.  Like I said, we want to make our website the one major source of news for Laker fans and the neat thing is, our audience is unlimited and there are no geographical limitations to our reach!

You can follow me at @TimSelgo.  You can also friend me on Facebook.  By the way, on the date of that first tweet I had a grand total of 22 followers.  I now have 458.  Take the social media plunge, follow me and our official athletic department account @gvsulakers, and visit www.gvsulakers.com to follow the Lakers!

The summer officially ends for everyone in intercollegiate Athletics when the fall sports student-athletes report back to campus.  Our football team arrived Aug. 7 to begin preparations for the 2012 season with volleyball, soccer, cross country, tennis, and golf to follow.  This is the time of year in which all of us in the administration are getting prepared for the next 9 months of college athletics.  There are facilities to have ready, eligibility certification to take place, training rooms to prepare, tickets to sell, academic preparations for the first day of classes on Aug. 27. Not to mention the preparations for the football home opener on Sept. 8 vs. Notre Dame College as well as the home openers in women's soccer, volleyball, and tennis.

One of the most important meetings we have each year takes place on the Tuesday of the first week of classes.  We call it our Laker Pride and Tradition meeting.  This is the only time all year in which we meet with all 550-600 student-athletes from all 20 varsity sports teams.  We meet in the Kelly Family Sports Center and go over important items which we believe our student-athletes need to be aware of.  Our GVSU Student-Athlete Advisory Committee president will speak to her fellow student-athletes about SAAC.  And we always have two GVSU Laker Athletic alums (one male, one female) come back and speak to our student-athletes.  That is always the highlight of the meeting as our current student-athletes love hearing from our alums.  We'll show some videos as well to hopefully motivate them and get them excited for the 2012-13 season.

We have an athletic department meeting as well in mid-August.  We have three department wide meetings each year, in addition to a few other coaches meetings.  At these meetings, we cover a wide range of topics from NCAA rules to budgets to schedules.  We do not believe in having a lot of meetings, but the ones we have are critical.  It is in the August meetings with staff and student-athletes that we review our three Fundamentals for Success in GVSU Athletics.  They are:

- Create the best learning environment possible for our student-athletes.

- Challenge our teams to competitive greatness.

- Commit the energy necessary for success.

It is always exciting to have a new season to look forward to.  It is one of the beauties of our jobs in intercollegiate athletics.  Each and every year we have a new group of freshmen student-athletes, new seasons ahead, and in our case this year, a "new" Lubbers Stadium.  We will re-dedicate Lubbers Stadium at halftime of the Sept. 8 home opener vs. Notre Dame College with a special ceremony honoring Arend "Don" Lubbers, the man the stadium is named after.  I can't wait - let's get this show on the road!

The 2011-12 year is in the books and it was another great year for GVSU Athletics!  For the 14^th straight year, GVSU captured the Presidents' Trophy, our conference's all-sports trophy.  This was especially significant because this was also the best year competitively in the history of the Great Lakes Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (GLIAC)!  More GLIAC teams made it to the final four in various sports than ever before.  Throughout the fall, winter, and spring seasons, the GLIAC continually placed teams in the NCAA national championship semi-finals or finals, with several teams finishing in the top four in the final results in the NCAA Swimming and Diving, Cross Country, Indoor and Outdoor Track and Field Championships.  Congratulations to all of our fellow competitors in the GLIAC!

For the 11th straight year, GVSU finished in the top two of the Learfield Sports Directors Cup standings.  After an eight year run of winning the Directors Cup, the Lakers finished second to Grand Canyon University (Glendale, AZ).  GCU had a terrific year, as did we, and as I told our coaches, sometimes you do the best you can and the other guy is just better, so we give all the credit and offer our congratulations to the 'Lopes on a great year!

Some highlights for the year must include our NCAA national championships in Indoor and Outdoor Track and Field of course.  Great job by Jerry Baltes, his staff, and student-athletes of repeating as back to back national champs in both!  Numerous individuals won individual national championships for the Lakers in Track and Field - they are filling up our trophy case!  Our women's soccer team fell just short of a three-peat as they lost a heartbreaker in the national championship game last fall.  One of the best moments of the year occurred in the NCAA DII Swimming and Diving Championships as Aaron Beebe became the first national champion in the history of the school in Swimming and Diving in the 200IM and the 200 butterfly!  Aaron entered this year's meet having been runner-up six times in his career and his dedication and determination throughout the year was evident.  It was tremendous to see he was rewarded with two national championships to cap off a stellar career.  As I told him at the banquet, we will win have more national champions at GVSU as the years go by, but he will always be the first!  Aaron was also named our Amway Grand Male Scholar Athlete of the Year and will join our Amway Grand Female Scholar Athlete of the Year, Lauren Buresh. She won multiple national championships in the shot put throughout her career. They will be honored at our annual Irwin Dinner on Friday, October 19.

While we are proud of our competitive success, I must also indicate how proud I am of our student-athletes for their success in the classroom.  Back in the first week of school at our annual Laker Pride and Tradition meeting, I challenged our student-athletes.  Over 55% of our student-athletes consistently achieve a 3.0 GPA or better, and I challenged them to see if we could get that above 60% - and they did!  During this past winter semester, 61.4% of the Laker student-athletes achieved a 3.0 GPA or better.  Congratulations to our student-athletes for their effort and performance in the classroom!  Our student-athletes have always graduated at a significantly higher rate than the student body as our primary mission is the same as GVSU's, "Educate our students to shape their lives, professions, and societies".  I am thankful we have outstanding leaders on our coaching staff who understand and live this each and every day in their recruiting and teaching of our student-athletes.

2011-12 is in the books and we are preparing hard for 2012-13.  Have a great summer and join us on September 8 for the re-dedication of Lubbers Stadium for the home opener against Notre Dame College at 7:00 p.m.  We will have a special ceremony at halftime honoring President Emeritus Don Lubbers who did so much in building GVSU into the great school that it is today!

You can follow me on Twitter @TimSelgo to catch the latest happenings in the world of GV Athletics - GO LAKERS!

Yes, you would be surprised how often I get asked that question.  The fact of the matter is that the spring sports season is usually the busiest time of the year for an athletic administrator of a program that has all of the spring sports, like we do.  We have more sports competing in the spring than at any other time of the year.

These sports are in-season during the springtime:

Baseball, Softball, Men's Outdoor Track and Field, Women's Outdoor Track and Field, Men's Tennis, Women's Tennis, Men's Golf, Women's Golf, Women's Lacrosse.

Plus, our fall sports teams are in their out-of-season times of practice and limited competition (yes, volleyball and soccer have spring seasons just like football has spring football).  Well over half of our student-athlete population of about 600 is doing something in April and May and thus, it keeps athletic administrators very busy.

An example would be the weekend coming up of April 12-15.  Starting with Thursday's Men's Tennis match with Ferris, we have 12 home events, plus the spring football game at Houseman Field at 6:00 p.m. on Saturday, Apr. 14.  You can check out every team's schedule at www.gvsulakers.com.  You can also follow me on Twitter @TimSelgo to get some of my insights on each of our teams and our events.  I would be remiss not to mention that Saturday, April 14 also happens to be my birthday.  Since we have six events that day, I'm probably not going to be celebrating my birthday much that day.  At my age, that's ok!  J

It is our goal of course for our spring sports teams to advance in post season competition as far as possible.  If we are successful with that, our staff will be busy seven days a week through the month of May.  The month of June brings us to our annual coaches two day retreat, departmental meetings, the Irwin Club Golf Outing, the GVSU Football Alumni Golf Outing, the NACDA convention, and year end budget work that keeps us busy through the end of June.  We all hope to get some "R&R" in the month of July to recharge for when the fall sports teams come back in August.  So there's my answer to the question.  The best part of the answer is how much fun we have supporting our spring sports teams on to reaching their full potential!   

My college coach would often talk about the difference between being good and being great. He would hold his index finger just above his thumb and tell us that often times it is only that much that separates the good players from the great players, and the good teams from the great teams.  He would then remind us that it is the little things you do day in and day out that make the difference.  He would always tell us that it is doing the little things well that make you really successful.  It's the little things that add up to big things.  So what does that mean for us in athletics?

Different plays made by GVSU student-athletes over the years stand out in my mind that demonstrate this.  In 2002 Curt Anes threw the winning touchdown pass to David Kircus to allow us to win our first national championship.  What most people didn't know was that Curt changed the play at the line of scrimmage.  He put David in the slot and I was told that was the FIRST TIME all year we ever ran that play with Kircus in the slot.  A little extra film study allowed Anes to recognize what he needed to do.  Also on that play, Mario Locricchio, our other wide receiver on that side of the field, blocked the DB so well that he drove him back enough for Kircus to sneak inside the pylon.  Mario never received much mention for it, but he did a little thing to help his team win a national championship.

In 2010, our women's soccer team won their second straight national championship.   We outscored our 5 opponents in the NCAA Tournament 19-0!  That is a lot of goals scored and as is often the case in sports, the goal scorers received a lot of attention.  One player on that team that wasn't one of our leading goal scorers was Kristen Eible.  Although not a leading scorer, Kristen was a senior leader on that team and did a lot of little things that propelled that team to dominate the NCAA Tournament that year.  She held a weekly study table (even though she didn't need it as she was an outstanding student) for the freshmen on the team to keep them engaged in their academics and to develop a relationship with them.  She was a positive, vocal leader but she wasn't afraid to challenge her teammates when they needed it either.  That isn't easy for some leaders, especially those that are 20-21 year old college student-athletes, but it's a must for a championship team.  She did all of the little things well off the field; proper nutrition, rest, hydration, etc.  Those are all things our coaches harp on and she did them well relentlessly and it paid off in a big way for her and her team!

In a world of SportsCenter highlights and short snippets on Twitter accounts, we rarely get to see the little things that take place to lead one to success.  But it is important to know that every highlight we see is the result of a lot of little things that occurred to make it happen.  We will keep working at the little things necessary for success!

Every year the athletic department's senior administrative staff conducts a retreat at which we set our goals for the upcoming year, similar to how many organizations set their annual goals.  Like many others, we have some goals that remain on our annual list every year because they are priorities for us every year.  For instance, our first goal every year is to:

"Support the mission of the institution through its offering of academic support and advisement which supports/endorses the total development of the student-athlete, offers a positive learning environment, and fosters lifelong learning of its students."

Certainly, the education of our student-athletes is primary to our mission and we want that reflected annually in our goals.  We also have an annual competitive goal.  Intercollegiate competition does involve competition!  Our school's teams compete against other schools' teams to see who gets the most points, runs/swims the fastest, etc.  Therefore, our annual competitive goal is:

"Win the Presidents' Cup.  Advance in national competition to the fullest of each team's potential."

The Presidents' Cup is our conference's all sports trophy.  Many people ask me since we have won eight Directors' Cups (the national all sports trophy) in a row, why don't we have "Win the Directors' Cup" as one of our goals.  Here is my answer.

We have complete control over winning the Presidents' Cup; we do not have complete control over winning the Directors' Cup.  The Presidents' Cup is determined by taking the standings of every GLIAC sport at the end of the year and assigning points for each school's place finish in every sport.  So if you win the conference in football, you would get 14 points because there are 14 schools in the conference competing in football.  Second place would get 13, third place gets 12, etc.  The Presidents' Cup is an entirely objective calculation based each team's finish.

The Directors' Cup however, has some subjectivity to it as you must be selected to participate in NCAA post season competition.  We do not control that.   Certainly we have some control by how successful our performance is during the regular season.  But sometimes you end up on the proverbial "bubble", the term often used when March Madness rolls around for those teams that could get in but might not.  This past football season is a good example of why we set our goals the way we do.  Our team started out 1-3, and then won their last seven games in a row.  Clearly, by the end of the year, we were playing as well as anyone in the GLIAC and possibly DII.  However, our "body of work" included those three losses earlier in the season.  We had control over that, but we didn't have control over the selection process.  Over 30 years ago my college basketball coach used to tell us, regarding close games, "if you leave it up to an official's call late in the game, those guys are human and you never know if the call is going to go your way or not".  The same holds true with selection into the NCAA post season.  We can control how we do once selected for the championship, but until then, it's not completely in our control and therefore, our goal reads the way it does.

Having said that, I am very proud of our football team this year despite not making the NCAA DII playoffs.  Those three losses were all tough losses.  Two of them came down to the last seconds of the game on the road.  One of them was a game we almost won despite having six turnovers.  Nevertheless, after three difficult weeks our team could have folded their tents and gone through the motions for the rest of the year.  But they didn't do that.  They showed great character in sticking together, getting better and better every week, and rattled off seven straight wins.  We must pay tribute to our seniors for their efforts and leadership in finishing out the season the way we did.  And I think it was evident we have a lot to look forward to with the 2011 team being one of our youngest teams in a long time and the talent returning that has now benefitted from this season and the adversity they faced.  There is plenty of motivation to come back in 2012 hungrier than ever and I know many of you are like me in that you are very excited about the future for Laker Football.

That is why we set our goals the way we do.  You can only control what you can control and we can't worry or spend energy on what we cannot control.  That approach has served our athletic programs well over the years and I am confident it will serve us well into the future.  GO LAKERS!