TheBakersfieldCalifornian.com

It was just over a year ago — Jan. 8, 2011 — that Jeff Konya took over as the CSU Bakersfield athletic director.

The university is still searching for an all-conference home for its sports, but many have landed as affiliate members in different conferences.

Money issues remain as the difficult state budget situation continues. And a lot of coaches and other personnel have come and gone from the athletic department, either leaving on their own accord or via firings by Konya.

In a question-and-answer session with The Californian, Konya discussed the state of athletics at CSUB shortly after his one-year anniversary.

With 10 being the most excited you’ve ever been and zero being most disappointed, where would you rank your whole experience here after 12 months?

Boy, I think we’ve had some 10s and I think we’ve had some non-10s. Overall, we’re probably plugging away at about a 7.  There have been some hiccups in things that have been a little disappointing, but we’ve certainly had some incredible results athletically and some good academic performances.

What are you most pleased about tyour first 12 months?

I think the NCAA Tournament game for men’s soccer. And it wasn’t because men’s soccer made the tournament. Bakersfield coming out and supporting that team in a truly revolutionary way transcended our department. It really spoke to what we could achieve if we could connect some of the dots.

(Plus) hearing the good comments from the NCAA site rep and us being in the top 25 percent in terms of revenue for that game, and attendance for the first round of the NCAA Division I men’s playoffs, suggests that when they’re evaluating Bakersfield in the future as a possible site host they know we have the wherewithal to be able to pull it off.

When you arrived here, the goal was to secure a conference home for CSUB. But now it’s like everyone is basically in their own league. Did you think that would happen?

(Chuckles). I think a lot of it is out of our control. There’s some things nationally that have to happen at other conferences that play football that haven’t happened 100 percent yet. There are still rumors and innuendoes of certain mergers and alliances and institutions leaving one conference for another that’s still out there. As long as that consideration is still present, then I think situations as they pertain to CSUB and some of our opportunities are going to get delayed, quite frankly.

I have been encouraged that the Western Athletic Conference heard overtures from us in a formal way and made a site visit. They know what we have to offer and have seen some of our facilities. We started to work out some relationships as affiliates with some of the regional conferences. That’s been exciting.

What about the state budget situation? It was bad when you got here.

It’s probably worse now. It’s a challenge. I keep telling individuals at some point it’s going to cut bone. There’s only so much fat you can do. We’ve tried to accommodate the state situation the best we could for some personnel decisions.

Previously they (CSUB) made some decisions on funding of some sports (wrestling, women’s tennis, men’s and women’s golf must raise their own funds). We had to look a little bit differently for them to exist.

We’re trying to be creative in approaching the budget. But at some point, if it continues in this way, state funding will force us to make more drastic steps.

Are you looking to cut any sports?

I’m not looking to cut anybody. You don’t want to be the athletic director who imposes a sports sponsorship cut. I’m a former student athlete and I recognize how special that is and how life changing that can be.

We certainly want to provide education opportunities to the most students athletes we possibly can because we want to build the future leaders of our society, and 67 percent of our graduates from the athletic department stay in Bakersfield and Kern County. So our graduates are directly impacting the future of Bakersfield and helping to shape society.

If we limit those opportunities, that’s not good for anybody. At the same token, if we continually going up against budget cut after budget cut, at some point you’re going to hit bone. And everything is going to be on the table at that point, unfortunately.

There have been many personnel changes in athletics since your arrival. Some coaches left for other jobs, others were dismissed. Looking back, were those decisions budget-based, performance-based or a combination?

Well, some of the decisions made personnel-wise were performance based, there’s no quesiton about that. Some were based in terms of fit. And by fit I mean the requisite effort in attitude (and whether)  I felt those individuals could buy into the new vision and embrace it and be able to provide our student athletes with the opportunities and experiences that I hoped they would achieve at CSUB.

But certainly as I came here, one of the first meetings had to do with the budget situation and (the best way to use) the resources I thought were here.

We had to re-look at our positions and that’s where combining programs under a director made sense (such as swimming, track and golf). I think there was a confluence of factors that led to some of those personnel decisions. 

But I didn’t come into the position with a set number of cuts we had to have, or having an ‘X’ number of heads roll or that we have to made a statement by doing ‘Y.’ That’s not it. Most of it was doing independent analysis of the particular programs, observing and then talking to the leadership of the campus about what was in the best interest of the department moving forward.

But in terms of some of the personnel moves and some of the individuals who have come in not only in coaching but the staff: I did have an eye on trying to get individuals who had Division I experience. 

You mentioned ‘hiccups.’ There have been positive things, like men’s soccer in the playoffs and baseball’s success last season. What are the hiccups?

I’m disappointed in the basketball attendance. If I had a nickel for every individual who said, ‘Now that you’re back at the Icardo Center, I’ll be at every game,’ we wouldn’t have a funding problem, even with the state budget cuts.

The truth be told, our attendance totals have really flatlined moving back to the Icardo Center. We’re about the same as we were at Rabobank.

The concerning elements sitting in my chair is: in consideration of doing that move, the downtown facility did offer some advantages from a revenue standpoint in terms of the ability to carry the game live (on TV), and do some video elements and have the games streamed over the Internet where you can charge to show it.

Those are revenue streams that aren’t present in the Icardo Center due to the infastructure here. So we’re leaving some money on the table. And we don’t have any suite revenue because of the antiquated facility in the Icardo Center.

The reason you give up those revenue streams is because as we looked at it, we needed to hit about 35 percent more attendance to break even. Anything over 35 percent would be profit for us in making the move.

As we’ve flatlined with a much improved product and with some marquee games. That’s been a little frustrating.

Will you stay on campus for the forseeable future or looking to go back to Rabobank? What about next year?

I’m not sure. I think we have to look at information and analyze the financial structure. I think we’re in such a budget conscious and revenue conscious environment we have to make bottom line financial decisions at the end of the day. ... We need to use the model that we think will be the most financially beneficial. Everything’s on the table at this point.

The NCAA is studying the idea of cash stipends for athletes. Wouldn’t something like that be devastating to financially strapped smaller institutions such as CSUB?

Oh yeah, it would be very difficult to absorb. I was at Indianapolis and I was talking to an administrator from a BCS (Bowl Championship Series) Conference school. 

They just have no idea of what a 1-AA or a 1-AAA budget is per se and the impact that a $2,000 (per-student) stipend would have.

I don’t want to argue the philosphy of if student athletes should receive it or not. Just in terms of the plain budgetary aspect of it, they scoffed at $220,000 being added to their budget because of it. It was almost like, ‘It’s only $220,000.’ 

When you add that already to our increasing tuition and fees and our state allocations being cut, it’s another variable that could be very, very difficult to bear.

And then if you don’t bear that cost, if it is implemented, then you’re putting yourself at a competitive disadvantage because the rest of the market place will be offering those opportunities. ...

It would be a difference-maker on how we’d choose to fund our sports and operate our sports.

But we’re not alone. There are more have-nots than haves if you want to use the term, especially in these economic times.

You talk about flatlined attendance at basketball games. Any ideas how you can pick it up? You’re averaging less than 1,600 a game from a community of more than 500,000 people. You’d like to double or triple that.

Absolutely. (Pause) I think a couple of points. This is more on the athletic department than on the community:

We have to be good partners. We need to get the information out appropriately. We’ve tried to do some good advertising for some of our games. And we’ve tried to increase our presence on the Internet. And we’ve tried to utilize a radio show to get our message out. We’ve advertised in your paper to promote several of our games.

So far, the marketing has been inconsistent, depending on the product.

It’s worked with women’s soccer and UCLA. It’s worked with men’s soccer with the NCAA game. It worked last year in baseball with the Ohio State series. It worked last year in men’s basketball with the Fresno State game and the UNLV game this year.

We’re been able to pull off effective marketing campaigns. But our challenge is really different from USC or UCLA. We just can’t promote every game the way it needs to be promoted to grab the attention of the public.

So at some point we have to give the public the knowledge so they can go out on their own and find that information easily as opposed to it being forced on them, per se.

That’s a subtle difference we have to get to as a community where the information is not always going in one direction, depending on the opponent or the gravity of the game.

There has to be a give-and-take between our department and the community so that we can increase our fan base, not just in men’s basketball or women’s basketball but across a lot of our sports.

What are your short-term goals for 2012?

in terms of conferences, I want to keep putting our teams in the best possible conference they can be. Whether that’s a primary conference affiliation or as affiliate members, and even if they have current status in a league, to try and get them into the best league possible so we can achieve our goal, and that is national championships.

We’re going to keep pressing the envelope on the conference issue. I think we’re going to keep our aggressive re-branding of our marketing campaign with the New Gold Standard. I think you’re going to see an upgrade in the wide variety of increased imagry, such as highway billboards and some other collateral pieces that are going to add to the components already in place. 

I think we have the opportunity in a number of our sports to be nationally relevant.

When we have the opportunity to do something special, we have to take advantage of that opportunity. 

Looking forward, what will people see differently if we have this discussion 12 months from now?

In terms of conferences, I want to keep putting our teams in the best possible conference they can be. Whether that’s a primary conference affiliation or as affiliate members. And even if they have current status in a league to try and get them into the best league possible so we can achieve our goal, and that is national championships.

So we’re going to keep pressing the enveolope on the conference issue. I think we’re going to keep our aggressive re-branding our marketing campaign with the New Gold Standard. I think you’re going to see an upgrade in the wide variety of increased imagry, highway billboards and some other collateral pieces that are going to add to the components already in place. 

I think we have the opportunity in a number of our sports to be nationally relevant.

When we have the opportunity to do something special, we have to take advantage of that opportunity. 

We’ve had some opportunities in our department to do stuff very, very special already in a year-and-a-half of being a true Division I. I think we’ve left some opportunities on the table.

Some examples?

Well, i think with men’s soccer we had a tremendous year. But when you get a home game in the first round: Unfortunately we didn’t win that game. You work so hard and you get ranked so high to get that advantage of a home field. 

I thought that result was something that if we played the game 10 times, I’m not sure the better team won that day.

And in terms of other sports, we haven’t been able to polish off relevant games for one reason or another.

In men’s basketball we had WAC-leading New Mexico State on the ropes and kind of let them off the hook a little bit for one reason or another. 

Those are the kind of opportuities that are rare, where we have a leading, recognizable name in town and we failed to capitalize on the opportunity we had before us.

That’s not disrespectful to our teams but if we ask the teams and the coaches that question, they will say those were the performances where we had the opportuity to do something truly noteworthy. Those are the opportunities that we have to polish off especially when we have the advantage.

Soccer attendance was up 10 to 20 percent this season. What to you attribute to that?

Twenty percent up in revenue, and that’s before we packed them in at the NCAA (tournament) game.

Soccer is becoming very intrenched in our community, and there is a true and definitive interest in growing youth soccer.

When you’re talking about the best around — CSU Bakersfield men’s and women’s soccer is the best brand around. That is evidenced by what we’ve been able to do on the men’s side, and what the women were able to do in the UCLA exhibition.

We can really grow in men’s soccer to be nationally relevant year in and year out. I really believe in the program we can build in that particular sport.

Are you content with your first year?

I think content’s a good word. Our best performances last year were by coaches who were here. Coaches that I didn’t hand-pick but have been able to provide the community with a nationally relevant Division I program.

As you move forward and you enhance yourself as a Division I program, not just on the playing field but the image of the program: How do improve that image? Things like no pep band. They seem like little pieces but they play such a huge part of being a Division I program compared to Division II.

Sure. I think we have to add to the infastructure to the game environment. That’s going to be a focus heading into next year.

But in terms of the branding. I’m pleased with our branding and our marketing.

What do you mean by branding?

The department on the Internet. CSUB apparel. The Adidas contract. Our corporate sports sponsorship program. The avenues we are taking to get our athletic brand out to the community and the national marketplace. I’m very happy with those results. Our new web site is playing a factor in that.

We have an Internet relavance score that we monitor daily that suggests we’re almost a Pac-12 school, which is remarkable in terms of our presence on the Internet.

Our stories are being picked up by AP. Those stories, with the buzzwords, help figure out how relevant you are in cyberspace.

Are you happy with the direction the program is going?

I’m very ecstatic. I really thing we have just barely touched our true potential as a Division I institution. We’ve already talked about the negative stuff, but the positive of this commnity is we resonate with the community and we have a brand that’s recognizable and we’re a source of pride.

As we get our stories out I think people enjoy hearing about them and they relish our community service and what we bring nationally. 

I think that for some reason I have this picture of the community, at least some members of the community, are the first time approaching the kiddy pool, and they put one foot in, They have their one foot in, and they’re not sure if they want to jump all in and put the other foot into the kiddy pool.

So this is the year we have to convince everybody that’s it’s OK, it’s OK to put the other foot into the pool with CSUB athletics. And you have to trust me and what we’re building here that you will proud of what we’re doing and we need your support.

I hear comments and get e-mails several times a year saying CSUB should return to Division II, that it’s better being a big fish in the little pond. How would you respond to that?

Everyone is entitled to their own personal opinion, I think it’s narrow-minded. I’m of the opinion the school waited too long to move to Division I. 

I think things would be a lot different if Bakersfield moved when Northridge, UC Davis, Cal Poly, Riverside — when those schools made the transition.

Division I is what we’re all in this for in terms of maximizing national exposure, for the region and the community. I truly believe we can build something truly special here. 

There is something to the success that happened at Division II, but there is something much larger at play when you have success at Division I. I think we started to illustrate that with some of the exposure we had in baseball or men’s basketball and our men’s soccer. Just touching the surface here in Year 2.

I would respond in that way. We have a very unique opportunity and there are many institutions that would die to have this opportunity in Division I out there that don’t have that opportunity.

And quite honestly, if we tried to do the move at this particular point in time, the rules are much different. It takes a lot more resources and funding on the front end that it might not even be feasible for most institutions that had the wherewithal  to compete at Division I.