An athletic director for the 21st century

Move over, Mr. Beckett. Though I think you've done a fine job up to this point, there are a few issues that you have not dealt with effectively. For this reason, you're being replaced by a man who has the vision, if not the qualifications, to do what's best for athletics at this university. In short, Mr. Beckett, you're being replaced by me.

COURTESY SPORTS PUBLICITY Though current Athletic Director Tom Beckett has the qualifications, he doesn't have the vision others do.

Or shall I say you've been relocated to a position within the department that best suits our needs at this point. You'll be working on a project of extreme importance—assisting Mr. Carm Cozza in rambling endlessly about the old days, when Yale could compete on a national level in ../sports besides squash and fencing. And while you're doing that, I'll be sitting in your cushy office taking over your former duties, as well as taking care of those problems you sidestepped or ignored while you were there.

As athletic director, my first priority will be to get our men's basketball team to the NCAA tournament. Impossible, you say? Not anymore. After convincing Chris Dudley, TD '87, that his days in the NBA are numbered, I will remind him that his alma mater could use a good coach—preferably a defensive-minded one with long, floppy arms. And just like those of the University of Houston's last year, our coaching problems will be solved.

But wait, you say, didn't Clyde Drexler have a losing record and fail even to come close to making the NCAAs? Yes, but all Yale has to do to make the tournament is defeat teams like Penn and Princeton, whereas Houston faced an uphill struggle for its bid against the likes of Cincinnati, North Carolina-Charlotte, and Alabama-Birmingham. And with Dudley at the helm, we can attract star recruits that would otherwise have become "Back-Door Men."

Once Yale makes the tournament, our overall ../sports program will be greatly bolstered. Take the example of tiny Samford University in Birmingham, Ala. Though I have lived in Birmingham my entire life, the only thing I ever knew about the school before this year was that guys and girls there couldn't be in the same room together if the door was closed. But after the Samford Bulldogs won their conference and made it to the NCAA tournament this year, I started hearing about them from everyone I talked to back home. The attendance numbers for almost all of their teams jumped considerably. Even though they got crushed in the first round by St. John's, there is still considerable Bulldog fever in the city, and many athletes that wouldn't have considered attending Samford a year ago are now thinking otherwise. I think Yale could stand a little Bulldog fever. And I'm pretty sure we could handle losing in the first round. We might even make it interesting for a while, as Penn did against Florida this year.

Once men's basketball is taken care of, the next major change I'm going to make is to increase funding to club ../sports. Title IX may keep Yale from fielding a varsity wrestling team, but that doesn't mean we can't treat our club program better than we do. As it now stands, almost every varsity team is allocated more money than the entire club ../sports budget. I figure if we dip into a discretionary fund here and there, and maybe even take a miniscule chunk out of our mammoth endowment, we can give these club athletes the respect they deserve and make sure monetary problems never limit their potential again.

Take the predicament of this year's men's rugby team, which recently made the painful decision not to attend the national tournament in Ohio this spring. Though the team's many injuries were a factor in its decision, the main reason was that the team lacked the necessary funds to travel. That's ridiculous. When I take over, I will make sure that money is never an overriding factor in a decision for a Yale-sponsored athletic team.

Being an athletic director won't be easy. I'll have lots of difficult decisions to make, like who to hire and fire, and where I'm going to have the new football stadium built. I'm also going to have to figure out what to do with all the Ivy and national championship trophies we'll win. Maybe I'll just take one of those empty floors of Payne Whitney and turn it into a giant trophy case. Or maybe I'll put a few of them in my nice, new office.

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