Posted by spartan99 on 3/10/2008, 11:12 am, in reply to "Washington Square magazine"
12.155.18.2
"Nothing is impossible. A conversation with athletics director Tom Bowen:"
There were doubters
of course ...
The usual lineup of skeptics who said Tom Bowen couldn't do what he aspired to do at San José State University. Bowen set out in 2004 to fix SJSU's athletics program—in the arena and in the classroom—and to re-create a winning tradition across the board.
The disbelievers smirked, pointing out that SJSU had merely hired a new athletics director in Bowen, not a miracle worker. San José isn't Lourdes, after all, but Bowen has achieved something bordering on miraculous in having resuscitated Spartan sports.
"Bowl victory" was a forgotten phrase on the SJSU campus until Bowen hired Dick Tomey as football coach, and Tomey made it happen. SJSU was a graveyard for men's basketball coaches, and hoops wins, until Bowen hired George Nessman, who has the Spartans positioned for success. Bowen hired 10 coaches and 80 new faces altogether in the athletics department. This fresh approach has healed most of the wounds Bowen inherited from the previous administration, and has the skeptics swallowing their words. Bowen sat down with SJSU Washington Square and detailed where the SJSU athletics program has come from and where it's going.
SJSU Washington Square When you took over as SJSU's athletics director on Dec. 20, 2004, what were your immediate goals?
Tom Bowen I wrote a platform for the first 100 days. We've fulfilled them all. We follow three principles of leadership. No. 1: It's not about me, it's my team. No. 2: You can't teach talent, so you make changes accordingly. No. 3: Nothing is impossible ... impossible is temporary.
WSQ Pretty high standards, especially No. 3, wouldn't you say?
TB We've created a culture of champions, whose byproduct is winning. With a culture of pretenders, the byproduct is losing. So we focus as a team on the day-to-day principles of how do we become better at everything we do. We're, finally, at the third-year mark, ready to launch this athletics program.
WSQ Launch it where?
TB If I can get the best possible coaches and the best possible staff to build it the right way, with integrity, character and not cutting corners, there's no reason why San José State University shouldn't be the dominant school in the Western Athletic Conference.
WSQ Every school shoots for the top, so how do you make it happen?
TB I look at the WAC and I can't see why we aren't the most dominant school because we live in the 10th-largest city in the United States. I admire what they've done at the University of Louisville, which is an exact mirror of what we are, an urban metropolitan campus with many day students. They've upgraded facilities, upgraded coaching, methodically kept building a vision.
WSQ But, specifically, how do you become the WAC's defining sports program?
TB With football in 2008, we're going to ramp it right through the window. With our gymnastics, volleyball, baseball and softball programs ... we've made fundamental changes, created a new paradigm in the way collegiate athletics is presented and represented in the university.
WSQ We've started to see that in the athletic arena, but what about scholastically, where football ineligibilities once were a major issue?
TB We've put a huge emphasis on academics. I've had more academic success in our student-athlete population in the last three years than we've had in two decades. The football team's grade-point average is the highest it's ever been, almost 3.0 (B average). And everything we built is not going to reverse itself ... it's built on fundamental principles of how we operate.
WSQ What are some of those fundamentals?
TB It's a policy in my department that you must recruit in Northern California. That means contacting all the (high school and community college) coaches in your sport in the Bay Area. Dick Tomey has 98 of the 101 kids on his roster from California. We lead the country in in-state guys playing Division I-A football. We're setting a precedent. This is the place to come play, a destination for talent. We've created a real blanket of credibility.
WSQ What does San José State offer prospective athletes that other local universities don't offer?
TB Besides having some of the best engineering and business schools, a top fine arts department and journalism school as well, the price to come to school here is the best Bay Area value you can receive, around $4,000 a semester.
WSQ It was $37.50 a semester when I attended SJSU in the early 1960s. How do you attract "commuter school" alumni like myself to games?
TB When I got here, we had 317 season tickets in football. Now we have close to 5,000. We've broken the record for NCAA attendance turnaround twice, and we've been taken off the NCAA attendance radar screen. It's all about putting a positive product on the field. And the whole day-of-game experience has changed. It's happening.
WSQ Is it too difficult, though, to make SJSU sports a hot ticket?
TB I don't think so. There are 94,000 SJSU alumni in the San José region. There are 23,000 undergraduates on campus. It's all about creating a buzz, and we're starting to show significant improvement.
WSQ The partnership of yourself, Tomey and SJSU president Don Kassing has been vital in putting a new face on Spartan sports. With Kassing leaving in June, is the athletics program in jeopardy?
TB I'm positive that (the California State University chancellor) will continue to look for leadership that models what Don Kassing started. I've got to believe that that will happen when he or she is hired in May.
WSQ : Tomey has a home in Hawai'i. He was quoted as saying that one day he'll return there. Are you worried that he's getting antsy to leave for the islands?
TB Dick Tomey is my football coach. He's under contract to coach here through 2010. I have no reason to believe he would take a job at the University of Hawai'i.
WSQ What's the biggest joy you've gotten as SJSU athletics director?
TB We've finally gotten this patient out of ICU, we're not on the critical care list anymore, and we're about to get discharged from the hospital.
WSQ Just how hard was it rehabilitating that patient?
TB There were days when I put my head down on this desk and I said, "I don't know how I'm going to get through this day." I got a brick in the head every day for the first six months of this job. See this brick on my desk? Don Kassing gave it to me.
WSQ No more bricks to the head?
TB We're just scratching the surface. It's exciting. We're on our way. We're going to make the university proud.
—Dave Newhouse, '64
--Previous Message--
: Anyone read the Bowen interview in the latest
: Washington Square? I'll try to find it
: online.
:
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