Sports

Turning things around not an easy task

Cougar Pause

Tom Carpenter

Dave Maggard accepted the athletics directoris job at UH 15 months ago because he wanted a job that would challenge him.

With that goal in mind, Maggard resigned as a consultant for the Sacramento Sports Commission and made the leap back to the college campus.

But itis hard to hit the ground running when you land in quicksand.

After more than a year on the job, the fiscal quagmire Maggard inherited has the athletic director running in place, striving to find ways to eliminate the morass of debt in his department.

"This is about as big a challenge as we could undertake, in terms of the financial aspect of it," Maggard said.

Maggard inherited a department that hemorrhages money faster than the Iraqi army surrenders territory.

"I understand where the faculty are coming from when they say the subsidy is too large," Maggard said. "Especially based on our lack of success. We have to do more to pull our weight."

According to Maggard, the Cougars need to increase their fund-raising activities among the alumni first.

"Weive extended the challenge, so to speak. Weive asked for their help and we need their help if weire going to get this program back to prominence," Maggard said. "Weill see what happens as we go along; weive had a very good initial response." 

Former Cougar AD Chet Gladchuk renovated Corbin J. Robertson Stadium and brought football back to the main campus. He built new baseball and softball stadiums and redid the surfaces of the indoor and outdoor tracks.

The one thing Gladchuk failed to accomplish before he sailed off to Annapolis was to find a way to pay for everything.

"There was really never any plan about how those were going to be funded," Maggard said.

Cougar alumni havenit exactly been emptying their purses to help the sports program out of its fiscal jam. "Essentially we had no fund-raising program really in place," Maggard said. "Especially for annual giving. "The success in football and basketball hasnit been there, in addition to the fact that we havenit developed a base for attracting annual dollars for scholarships and the operation of the department."

While millions of dollars in contributions from alumni like John Moores and Paul OiQuinn helped stave off financial disaster and allowed new sports venues to be built, Maggard believes fiscal solvency lies in another direction.

"We need to get the football and basketball programs going again," Maggard said. "We simply have not had any significant success in football and basketball, the two sports programs in Division I-A that are going to be the big engine in terms of generating revenue." 

Maggard dismissed Dana Dimel in November in the waning moments of another disappointing football season. He looked to the programis past when he picked former Cougar Art Briles to be UHis 10th head coach and charged him with the responsibility of turning the woeful program around.

"My main reason for the change was I didnit see any hope for improvement in the football program," Maggard said. "There was no comfort level as to our moving upward. I didnit feel any urgency. Iim not so sure there was a real understanding about the importance of us moving this football program forward. We have to have urgency without being frenetic. 

"If weid have won those five games and it looked like we were on the right track it would have been different. Iim convinced we have the best guy for this job right now with Art Briles."

In the other major revenue sport, head basketball coach Ray McCallum gets another year to prove his worth, even though this year the Cougar basketball team backslid to a dismal 8-20 record.

"Weive got to do some things to improve in basketball," Maggard said. "This last year in basketball was a very big disappointment to all of us. Those are the kind of years we canit have."

Maggard said he talked with McCallum about the season and both men expressed their frustration with the season.

"He understands that this is a season no one is happy with," Maggard said. "I know just from the standpoint of what heis thinking about that weire going to move this program forward. Iim confident that weire not going to have another year like we did this year."

Maggard believes that while many alumni would like to see the Cougars in another conference, the Cougars need to successfully compete in Conference USA before they can begin to think about joining another conference.

"Weive got a lot of work to do on that," he said. "Weive got to have everybody on the same page and looking for higher expectations."

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