Ask The AD - October edition
11/03/2014 | 12:00:00 | General
CARBONDALE, Ill. - This is the latest installment of our monthly feature called, "Ask the AD." If you have questions for Saluki Director of Athletics Mario Moccia, feel free to submit them by e-mail.
E-Mail a question to Mario Moccia
As the AD, what is your role in scheduling? Do you only approve/disapprove a potential athletic schedule, or do you actually get involved in the work of putting that schedule together?
It depends on the sport, but in general, I provide the philosophical guidelines for scheduling, and the coaches are responsible for the actual leg-work of finding opponents.
For our Olympic sports, we regionalize our non-conference schedule, which means bus trips to schools in a six-hour radius. Some of our Olympic sports, such as softball, baseball or golf, are able to fund-raise or adjust their budget for warm weather trips with prior approval.
In the sport of football, my philosophy has evolved to the point where we need to play a BCS opponent every year from a budgetary standpoint. We try to stay within a six-hour radius, which allows us to take a bus instead of flying. We then try and play a home-and-home with a nearby school, such as EIU or SEMO, and then ideally would like to buy an FCS team. Unfortunately, the price tag for buying an FCS team is around $100,000 these days, and that's a bit out of our price range, so we will either look for another home-and-home series or purchase a Division II school.
In the sport of men's basketball, the Missouri Valley Conference has placed limits on how many 250+ or 300+ RPI teams we are allowed to play in one season. We still attempt to regionalize the schedule from a travel standpoint to allow our fans the opportunity to travel to the games (Edwardsville, Nashville, Cape Girardeau, St. Louis all three hours or less). We also schedule based on how we think our team will be for the upcoming year. With RPI and SOS (strength of schedule) being such a significant statistic in making the NCAA tournament, when we feel that we can handle a tougher non-conference schedule, we will build our tournament resume so we would receive consideration for an at large berth, if needed.
In recent football games, I have noticed what I think is the noise of music being played by a DJ for the student section/band/cheerleaders? The level is very bothersome to us on the other side (I was in section 9) and is irritating while trying to watch the game. Is this a necessary thing for them to do rather than trying to watch a football game?
You are correct, we now have a DJ on the field entertaining the students. This is something they requested, and we actually saw it in person when we played Purdue. We replicated their set up and our students have given us very positive feedback. The DJ nor the band plays during game-action and stops playing when the quarterback breaks the huddle. Based on the input we received from focus groups last summer, we have tried to incorporate various ideas to maximize attendance. After the season we will thoroughly review everything with our marketing group and see what worked and what didn't. Your thoughts are important to us, are duly noted and thanks for attending the game.
Having watched the last three Saluki games on ESPN3, the instant replay system being employed at this level appears flawed at best. Whether it's equipment failure, poor camera angles or just plain taking too long -- is this the norm for what we can expect going forward?
I share many of your frustrations. This is the first year of replay in the MVFC and the kinks definitely need to be worked out. Some schools have purchased the replay equipment for the year, some have rented it, and in our case we just have it for our two televised games (Indiana State and UNI on Nov 15). Instant replay is only as good as the camera angles and the crew operating the system. A Big 5 conference game or an NFL game will have many high-definition state-of-the-art cameras and experienced camera operators, so the MVFC is going to be inferior in that respect. In addition, the MVFC referees have less experience dealing with the replay process. I do believe the people actually looking at the replays know what they are doing, but I'd like to see the replay time cleaned up and things explained more clearly. For instance, at NDSU a touchdown was awarded that our fans watching at home clearly thought was a mistake (as my text messages immediately after the play can attest) but unfortunately for the Salukis, the NDSU equipment was down at the time and no replay could be shown. I do believe next year all MVFC teams will be mandated to have instant replay for all games, and with more experience, improvement should come.
