ESU sports: Spend less, win more
By C.J. Moore
Originally published 02:31 p.m., August 18, 2008
Updated 09:45 a.m., August 21, 2008
Kent Weiser is cheap. Just ask, he’ll tell you.
Weiser, the Emporia State athletics director, is the guy who shops at Costco, doesn’t leave a crumb on his plate and says things like, “I’m going to get the biggest bang out of my buck!”
“I’m a cheap person at heart,” he says. “My parents grew up during the Great Depression, and I try to surround myself with people who are that way.”
Weiser leads the second poorest athletic department in the MIAA. If this were Major League Baseball, Emporia State would be the Kansas City Royals, and Central Missouri, which spends almost twice as much money as ESU every year, would be the Yankees.
Imagine if the Royals beat the Yankees to go to the World Series. That’s the equivalent of what the Hornets pulled off last year.
Emporia State finished 11th in the country in 2007-08 in the Director’s Cup, a points system that factors in 14 sports and rewards schools for postseason success. Emporia State was the top MIAA school; Central Missouri, the school that had the highest expenses and generated the most revenue, finished second.
So how did the needy Hornets do it?
Spending isn’t winning
“We’re not 11th in the country in spending.” — Kent Weiser
If spending doesn’t equate to winning at Emporia State, caring does. Before Weiser decided to become an administrator, he was a golf coach at the University of Kansas. Golf in Division I athletics isn’t considered a revenue-generating sport. Sports like golf are considered the “little guys” in college athletics, and Weiser never forgets his little-guy roots.
Last week Weiser made the rounds during the first full week of practice for all the fall sports. The guy was everywhere. It was almost as if the teams built their schedules around his.
“I have yet to be at a program where the athletics director and president come to our games until I came here,” ESU softball coach Kristi Bredbenner says. “There’s a lot of support. And whether or not it’s monetary, or support in general, just coming to the games and showing their support. I think there’s a lot of things that Emporia has to offer that some other schools don’t.”
Weiser is like the proud papa of ESU sports. He doesn’t favor one kid — or revenue-generating sport — over the other. He makes it to all their games.
“I was just one of those extra programs at KU. Those kids try as hard, spend as much time and they deserve the attention,” he says. “And you balance that with, ‘We can’t provide them with what some other people have, but let’s try to give them as much as we can.’”
Not surprisingly, the ESU little guys have been some of the school’s most successful programs. The softball team has played in two of the last three NCAA championship games. The baseball team is one of the top programs in the MIAA and went 50-10 last year, winning the conference title. Track and field had a national champion distance runner last season and the volleyball team is on the brink of becoming one of the premier programs in the country after finishing ranked 15th nationally last year.
“People win championships,” baseball coach Bob Fornelli says. “Money doesn’t win.”
And it’s a good thing, because most of these ESU programs are getting outspent by their competitors.
It’s not that the Hornets don’t spend. They spend plenty. During the 2006-07 school year, the baseball team had $142,796 in expenses, softball $59,770, track and field $159,326 and volleyball $83,364. By comparison, in the same year, Central Missouri’s baseball team spent $211,713, softball $107,565, track and field $170,612 and volleyball $87,584.
“I think it’s tremendous we’ve had such success on the field and in the classroom and don’t outspend people,” Weiser says. “I think that’s the goal isn’t it? It’s not a spending contest. If that’s the case, why would anybody play against Texas? Texas outspends everybody in the Big 12. They have more resources, they have more everything. Well, if it’s just a spending contest, then why do you play?”
Winning edge
“I don’t think we have a program that can stay within their allotted money. Well, they could. Staying in a budget is the easiest thing in world. Just don’t spend. Now, staying in budget and having a good program is where the trick is. They understand, the coaches and people in all the areas understand, there’s a starting point, and if I want to go do something extra, I’ve got to go out and raise some extra funds.” — Kent Weiser
In 1999 when Weiser arrived at Emporia State, immediately he identified a major problem: Everyone needed more money.
Emporia State has the second lowest enrollment (3,797 undergrads) of any school in the MIAA (Southwest Baptist has 1,079 undergrads), and the low enrollment means the athletics department’s student fee cut is smaller. Schools like Nebraska-Omaha and Central Missouri have more than twice the enrollment as ESU.
“If we had an extra 4,000 students spending $1,000, that’s $4 million — an extra $4 million in tuition,” Weiser says. “Our cut of that would be $230,000 each and every year. That’s just for 1,000 more students. Those guys have 5 or 6 thousand more than we do.”
Weiser’s solution to the department’s money woes was to fundraise. He started winning edge accounts, which is a savings account for each sport at Emporia State. Each sport is on its own to raise money and when a donor decides he wants to give money to a particular sport, all of that money goes to that sport’s winning edge account.
The money is held in individual accounts by the ESU foundation, which enables the department to avoid paying taxes on that extra money. When coaches do not have enough money in their program’s budget, they take money out of their winning edge account.
ESU raises more than $400,000 a year in winning edge accounts.
“We wouldn’t be the program that we are without the winning edge,” Fornelli says. The baseball team routinely raises over 50,000 per year for its winning edge account. “We’ve had a bunch of alumni, fans, and people throughout the community step up and help us do what we do.”
Softball coach Kristi Bredbenner played softball for Truman State from 1998 to 2001, and she says she’s seen a change in the money game since she played.
“If you don’t fundraise, you’re going to be in trouble because you have to have that extra amount of money for scholarships and extra travel and all that kind of stuff,” Bredbenner says. “We’re starting our season earlier and earlier and playing earlier and earlier and that just means the season is longer, there’s more travel, there’s more food cost, hotel cost, travel cost and we’ve got to offset that in some way and so the winning edge account gives us an opportunity to do that.”
Even with the winning edge accounts, ESU coaches know they can only fundraise so much. Most of the money in the budget goes toward scholarships, where the program’s mantra — spend, but spend wisely — comes into play.
“You have to be smarter,” soccer coach Jim Schneiderhahn says. “The only thing that money does in a lot of respects is it makes you have to be less smart. And what I mean by that is maybe I can go out and find a kid and throw a significant portion of scholarship her way and if she doesn’t pan out, big deal because I’ve got so many more left.
“When you don’t maybe have that, you need to call, put in hard work. Talk to this coach, talk to this reference. Go see them play, get them on campus and get a feel for them. You have to be a little bit more diligent with the kids you bring into your program. So you compete by basically working hard and smart.”
Working together
“I just think it’s more healthy for programs to work together, not to be territorial. I hate it in my previous places where softball would hate baseball. I don’t know if it’s natural, but I don’t think it’s very healthy. Around here, it’s let’s help each other. You guys have the same problems, same challenges.” — Kent Weiser
Bredbenner was hanging out in soccer coach Jim ’s office last Wednesday, discussing team management strategies.
The two programs are about as opposite as Michael Phelps and the guy who wears a T-shirt at the local pool. Bredbenner’s softball team was in the national championship game last season. Schneiderhahn’s soccer team didn’t win a game. But Schneiderhahn knows he’s in the right place to learn from the other ESU coaches and turn his program around, and it goes back to Weiser.
Schneiderhahn has the closest office to Weiser’s in the athletic department building, but while Weiser shows his devotion to all the ESU sports, he isn’t looking over anybody’s shoulder.
“We try and make this a good job,” Weiser says. “We want them to enjoy working here. I don’t follow the coaches around. I trust them to make good decisions. I let them run their programs.”
Schneiderhahn says that every coach at Emporia State has an open-door policy and coaches draw from one another on anything from team management to money management. Fornelli says that the coaching staffs at ESU form one big family, and there’s no jealousy between sports.
“Everybody’s pulling for each other. You go to those games and you see the other coaches at the other events. I think that’s big. There’s not a whole lot of selfishness going around right now. There’s nobody here saying they have everything they absolutely want. It’s the same goal and that’s hopefully to win championships in every sport, and hopefully some day that can be achieved.”
Of course we want more
“Budgets and facilities and scholarships, it’s keeping up with the Joneses. It’s always trying to do as good as the next person over. It’s college cold war, it’s how do you outdo the other guy. Do we have enough? Yeah, but every coach in America wants more.” — Jim Schneiderhahn
Bredbenner has taken the softball team to the national championship game the past two seasons. She’s had offers to leave Emporia State for Division I jobs, but she turns them all down. She’s not leaving until she wins a title, and even then, it better be the perfect job in the perfect location.
But here’s the worry: Emporia State doesn’t have the funds and doesn’t have scholarships to match competitors like Central Missouri. Bredbenner says most MIAA schools use their full 7.2 allotted scholarships. Last year, Bredbenner used 6.48. During the 2006-07 school year, the ESU softball team spent $51,433; Central Missouri spent $89,607.
“We’ve been very lucky that we sell our program based on its success versus based on the money that we can offer,” Bredbenner says. “My worry is that that’s going to eventually change.”
That’s why Bredbenner has learned to make her dollar go further. Her office is littered with unopened Adidas gear. Emporia State is one of the few Division II schools with an apparel contract and the Hornets get a discount on anything Adidas, a contract that runs through 2012. The softball team also has a similar deal with Wilson bats.
“Every coach here is in the same boat,” Fornelli says. “We’re busting our rear ends trying to do what’s right and trying to spend our money wisely that’s going to make it go the furthest. It’s amazing with that Director’s Cup thing that we did what we did with our budget.”
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August 21, 2008 at 3:48 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )