(03-05-2013 09:50 PM)ECUPirated Wrote: (03-05-2013 10:28 AM)HuskieJohn Wrote: Rumor has it...any word on your side?
It wouldn't be any surprise for us.
Everything I've seen, says Jeff Compher is coming to ECU. What's your thoughts on how he did as the AD at NIU?
First just the facts...
Bio
http://www.niuhuskies.com/genrel/compher_jeff00.html
Graduation of the student athletes was his #1 priority. We had something like 12 semesters in a row where athletics had an average 3.0 or better.
He signed NIU up to a media rights deal with IMG/ISP that gives us a reliable income stream which also gets us 1 game on CSN-Chicago (outside of our conference TV deal with ESPN) and all of our FB games are on Chicago's largest sports radio station.
We are building a 9.5 mil indoor practice field to open this fall. The fundraising process will have taken 18 months to raise it all.
http://131.156.107.87/view/index.shtml
http://www.niuchessickpracticecenter.com/explore.html
We have build a new soccer turf field and outdoor track. This was paid for with bonds.
Now personal feelings...
He is very nice and open to suggestions. I have emailed him several times and each time he sent a reply within an hour or two during a normal working time and some times even a late night reply.
He deeply cares about the student athletes and coaches and treats everyone of them as family. He also does not take lightly to any off the field distractions. He is big on community service. You can be sure that you will be running a clean program that you will be proud of for its off the field achievements.
He is not good at marketing...the 2011 season was our best since 1983 and still for the 2012 season we had less than 3,700 season ticket holders. Lack of money is part of it but there are just simple social media things that could have been done to bring people in that were just ignored. He hired a marketing guy last year and we are starting to see some results from that.
He is not good at fundraising...yes we did raise 9.5mil in 18 month however we have an Assistant AD where this is his only job. When AD Compher took the position in 2008 NIU had about a 2mil debt from our previous ADs capital project (Yordon Center). He was unable or did not try to get this paid off thru donors and just rolled this into long term bonds so that the indoor project (his baby) could be started.
He is not good at scheduling...take a look at our future and old schedules up to 2009. He had nothing to do with the WF and first Idaho series. Lack of money is likely the cause for our bad OOC schedule but still its been very disappointing for us.
http://www.fbschedules.com/ncaa/mid-amer...uskies.php
He is a good guy but I am ready for some new blood at NIU.