Day 8

Today was a very successful day for the project, as I was able to get a lot accomplished. I started the Georgia State article, and got two full pages written, which took a lot of work as I had to try a few different things in laying out the story so that it made sense. I started working on the article after I had finished transcribing the last few quotes from the Doug Justice interview. While working on the article, I read an email I had received from Kennesaw State Sports Information Director Alvin Barba whom I have been working with to try and get an interview set up with someone over there. Mr. Barba informed me that they would not be able to do an interview, but that Associate Athletic Director Scott Whitlock would respond to my questions via email. I have received a few responses from him and am awaiting more. After I finish the GSU article which will hopefully be tomorrow, I will get started on the Kennesaw State article. A few people have told me they would like to see the transcript from my interview with Mr. Justice, so I have decided to publish a small portion of it here. I hope you all enjoy it. Many of his quotes will be used in my article as well, which is why the entire interview is not published.

Interview with Doug Justice, Associate Athletic Director, Georgia State University

How does a team affect financial contributions to a school? 
Our scholarship number is around $4 million dollars. Our athletic club is constantly trying to get people to contribute for large projects like the new weight room at the practice facility. We also want to offset cost of scholarships. We are now allowed to provide snacks to the athletes so now we need money for that. We’re going on a sling tour next week to try and raise funds. We find out things like, hope much os it to outfit a player, or how much do that players books cost. Housing is also something that we have to pay for which is pretty expensive living in downtown Atlanta.

How does college football affect a schools image? Is there a relation to admissions?
I think there an aspect of that. I think ams people might look us up on wikipedia to find out who we are and where we are. Some might check out our twitter handle which could give us some new followers and fans. I think that when some people read about our school they might see that we have lots of good academic programs in law in nursing and that we have an urban campus, which might appeal to some people. I was at Appalachian State when they beat Michigan in football, and they had a record in applications after that. The quality of applicants also increased a bit too. It was using athletics as an icebreaker of sorts to get people to come.

How much of departments revenue is based on football? 
A little less than 10% of revenue comes from football this year.

Does updating facilities help revenue/team performance?
I think theres two things. I think if you have better facilities you might be able to recruit better athletes. we like to say kids come for the education, but people want nice stuff. So if you have nice facilities than thats more intriguing to an athlete. I think it might be able to recruit better talent. I also think coaching has a hand in that because good coaches and good people keep the athletes around. People want to play for a good coach. I think that you can do trade-offs financially like taking a bus instead of a plane to games in order to help put aside money for facility upgrades. 

Do you think there are football mid majors? Are you one?
I would say power five and then the other five conferences. With football we’re just starting, so we’re in the non-power five. I think within the non-power five there are a few teams that are really really good, and then there are a few that are like us and just starting and trying to get to that point here were competitive. I would say the finacetials of a mid-major program are mid-tier. You know you have the Texas’ band teams like that who have a 60 million dollar budget, then you have everyone else. I hate tot use the term lower tier, because its all so heavily based on finacetials. The non power five are trying to do a lot with a little money. In the power five, you are trying to do a lot with a lot. There even disparity among the power five. You know from say Wake Forest to Alabama, theres a disparity of maybe 20 million dollars and thats a lot of money when you’re trying to compete. You look at us in our own conference, we’re better off than some teams in our own conferences, so there disparity even between our own conference.

Playing in the dome? Turner field?
Our contact with the dome is for two more years until the stadium gets built. We alas have the ability to play in the new stadium once it gets built. The Dome is too big, I think you could fit an airplane in it. Do we want to create our own space? Yeah, What will that look like? We don’t know because we’re landlocked downtown. So theres defiantly a desire to have something more intimate. However we have to get to a point where we’re somewhat successful, we cant just throw money out there. With the Braves moving up north, maybe we could end up using that space, but we also have to decide Do we want to spend money on that?