Academically athletic Aggies
Utah State University has received publicity recently in the national press for achievements such as the USU Wright Flyer, the cloning of a mule and having a Rhodes Scholar.
While all of these achievements are laudable, one campus department receives headlines every week in newspapers like the New York Times, Los Angeles Times and USA Today.
The department getting USU so much publicity is the athletics department, and with the university’s name appearing on newspapers around the country every day, Athletics Director Rance Pugmire says it means one thing: Exposure.
“If you look at just this week alone now, [men’s basketball] being in the Top 25, we’ll be in the game results in every newspaper across the country,” Pugmire said. “That is inches you cannot buy.”
As Aggie teams become successful on the court as well as in the classroom, the word gets out, creating more name recognition for the school.
“When you’re trying to promote a university, you can’t afford to buy advertising like that,” Pugmire said.
During the past year, publicity for the Athletics department has been overwhelmingly positive. In September, USA Today recognized the university for having the No. 10 graduation rate among Division-I athletics programs in the country. The reinstatement of the women’s basketball program has also received extensive coverage around the country, as has the success of men’s basketball.
“Athletics can benefit a university in many ways and certainly more so for having success,” said Vice President for Student Services Juan Franco. “I think it really helps school spirit but it also projects the name of the school out there.”
Franco said the job of recruiting students becomes much easier when name recognition increases.
“Like anything else, students consider what’s out there and consider the institutions they’re most familiar with,” Franco said.
Over the years, studies have been conducted about the correlation of athletic success at colleges and the impact it has on the school as a whole.
“When Washington State went to the Rose Bowl, their bookstore sales jumped $100,000 in one month and their early enrollment skyrocketed,” Pugmire said. “When Northwestern went to the Rose Bowl, their early enrollment jumped 43 percent.
“They didn’t cure cancer or anything like that, they just went to the Rose Bowl.”
A similar phenomenon was experienced at the University of Connecticut when their basketball team won the national championship, said history professor and Aggie supporter Ross Peterson.
“The applications to the school and the donations and gifts to the school just increased dramatically,” Peterson said. “That might not be the right reason you would give or be interested in the school, but it is.”
Pugmire said Utah State has experienced the spike in interest for the school. In 2001, when the men’s basketball team defeated Ohio State in the NCAA Tournament, the Athletics Web site received more views in a week than it had the previous year. Pugmire said the university’s Web site received a large increase in views as well.
The free publicity USU receives because of athletics is good, Pugmire said, but the fact the publicity is positive makes it even better.
The academic success of athletes helps the image of USU athletics, said assistant athletic director of Student Athlete Services Brian Evans.
“[Academic success] is very important on the national scene,” Evans said. “This is something that is public throughout the nation and that every institution in the country provides.”
Evans said USU is graduating 81 percent of student-athletes and the athletes have a cumulative GPA of 3.02.
“In this day and age of athletics, that is quite a remarkable achievement,” Evans said.
Credit for the academic success, Evans said, should go to the Office of Student Athlete Services and the coaches.
“We bird-dog the student-athletes and emphasize that the degree is the most important thing they are going to leave here with,” Evans said. “It’s not that they made the NCAA tournament. It’s not that they won a lot of games. It’s not that they were conference champions because five years down the road that will be just a memory.”
Evans said a degree will be able to hang on an athlete’s wall for many years and have value the rest of their lives.
Pugmire said that USU coaches recruit quality individuals to the school and that helps.
“I really credit our coaches on doing a good job in the very limited time they have to kind of explore the character of an individual,” he said. “They do a good job of trying to stay away from those kids who may stray aside.”
Pugmire said there will be some instances where there are problems with an individual athlete, but he is willing to bet any other club or organization on campus would have those problems as well.
The academic success of athletes, Pugmire said, “helps a ton because in lean years when you’re not winning on the field you can fall back on that.”
He said most of the athletes that come through USU are not going to make money playing sports, rather they will earn a living using their degree.
Because of the importance of earning a degree, Evans said, much emphasis is placed on academics starting when the athlete is
recruited.
“Every recruit that is brought on campus, we meet with,” he said. “We review our office, our services, what we do, the extent to how we do it and we talk up academics and of course, the coaches do, too.”
Without the coaches believing in academics and graduation, the high GPA and graduation rates wouldn’t be as impressive as they are, Evans said.
“We don’t necessarily view ourselves as a pipeline to the pros,” Peterson said. “Our coaches are really dedicated to the concept of getting the students a degree while they’re here, I think that’s very positive.
“It makes the investment a lot more worth it.”
Making a better campus
“Universities and colleges are amazing,” he said. “On the one hand you’re giving students scholarships to run, scholarships to play an instrument, scholarships to be in plays, to develop their voices.
“You really try to help to provide
opportunities.”
Peterson said he sees athletics, along with other programs on campus, as providing a lot of students an opportunity to go to school that they might not have obtained.
“There are a lot of people of different backgrounds and ethnicities that come from the different parts of the globe and athletics brings them together,” Peterson said. “It’s a place where you identify with the university.”
Athletics isn’t one of the purposes of the school, Peterson said, but it has become a very important function.
“What’s evolved is a university has assumed an entertainment factor that has become part of the whole university experience,” he said. “The university is really kind of a microcosm of what the real world is going to be like.”
Peterson said support and excitement for athletics increases dramatically with winning, but said he is surprised support hasn’t increased as Cache Valley has grown.
“The thing that has amazed me is that as the size of the campus has grown and the size of the community around here has grown, that you haven’t had the same kind of growth in attendance, in donation, those type of things,” he said. “Part of it is, I think, that people are really busy.”
Even though there has been success over the past five years with the basketball team, Peterson said, similar success has not been seen in football.
“People really like to identify with winners,” he said. “If you had a three- or four-year run in football, where you won seven or eight games a year, you wouldn’t have to worry about butts in the seat.”
With the success of the men’s basketball team, fans are filling the Spectrum to see the Aggies play – regardless of who the Aggies play.
“Our fans, finally I believe, have bought into the fact that ‘let’s go watch Utah State play and not worry about who Utah State is playing,'” Pugmire said.
Two weeks ago, the Aggies played in front of the highest-attended basketball game since 1983 against Long Beach State and sold out Saturday night’s game against UC Santa Barbara.
“The bottom line is we’re winning a bunch of games, that’s what brings people on,” Pugmire said.
Not everyone is jumping on the Aggie bandwagon, however.
Pugmire and Head Basketball Coach Stew Morrill sent an e-mail to every USU student last week thanking them for their support of men’s basketball. Pugmire said he received some negative feedback from the e-mail.
“I got a few fired back saying they wanted nothing to do with us,” he said.
For the most part, however, students are on board with athletics and the exciting future ahead, Pugmire said.
Last month, students made a commitment to the Athletics program by renewing the Stadium/Spectrum Bond, allowing millions of dollars to be used for the renovation of Romney Stadium.
“It’s crucial, the students helped build it and I’m so proud of them for giving us the ability to upgrade it and kind of put it back together,” Pugmire said. “Not every student gets a dollar back for every dollar they put in, but the ones that do certainly get their money out of it.”
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