TOREROS BULLISH ABOUT SPORTS : Iannacone Studies Future

No detail is too small to ignore, no duty too unimportant to take seriously, no word too innocent for Tom Iannacone to weigh.

So when Iannacone says things are on the upswing at the University of San Diego, it’s not idle happy-talk.

Iannacone leaves little to chance.

For a recent interview to discuss the state of athletics at the USD, where Iannacone is in his fourth year as athletic director, he prepared a handwritten outline of several pages from which to work.

Since Iannacone became athletic director in September, 1988, one can chart progress throughout the department: more sports, more scholarships, more personnel, improved offices, hiring of a full-time fund raiser and strong academic performance.

The optimism, however, is more mild than wild.

Some of the university’s biggest athletic needs are off the chart. No. 1 with a bullet is a new gymnasium. More immediate and pressing is the football situation, with recent NCAA legislation mandating schools that compete on the Division I level must play all sports at that level.

That means USD, which has played football on the nonscholarship Division III level, must upgrade its program and schedule for next fall.

Iannacone has spent much of the fall and winter meeting with other West Coast schools in a similar situation, trying to put together a new Division I-AA conference or alignment. He also has been politicking for formation of a new football sublevel within Division I--he calls it I-AAA--for like-minded schools that resist more than a limited amount of football funding.

The issue made Iannacone an uncharacteristically public figure at the NCAA meetings last month, and elicited some uncharacteristically strong language from him when the proposal was voted down.

Whatever level USD football eventually reaches, Iannacone--a former football coach at St. Francis (Pa.) College--clearly is committed to maintaining a program. He often refers to football as “important” and “another educational aspect” that helps make a school attractive.

“We had been looking at different options for four years,” Iannacone said. “The new NCAA legislation is pushing us along faster but we were on parallel courses. We had various plans. We knew, obviously, it was going to cost more money, and we planned to supplement the football budget even before the new legislation.”

USD competes in the West Coast Conference, which doesn’t have football. The only other WCC schools that play football--Santa Clara and St. Mary’s--are in Northern California. Iannacone has been in several meetings with schools such as Cal State Northridge, Southern Utah and Cal State Sacramento trying to devise a Division I setup similar to the Ivy League, which plays football at a competitive level but whose schools don’t give athletic scholarships.

“We’re committed to football, whether at I-AA or some future I-AAA,” Iannacone said. “It’s on solid ground, I see (the NCAA impetus) as an opportunity to make the program better. We just don’t have an answer yet, other than we’ll be playing I-AA football (in 1992).”

There’s no timetable for a new gym, only the admission that the current Sports Center, which seats about 2,500, is cramped and outdated by conference standards.

But new construction, Iannacone said, is not done through the school’s budget, but by fund-raising, so it’s a laborious, ongoing process. The school now is installing new lights on the football field, and that took several years to raise the money.

Iannacone called a new gym or multipurpose building “the one key from a facilities standpoint that would make it a total and complete university.

“The university recognizes the need--that’s not a secret. We simply have to determine when it’s feasible. We’re working behind the scenes, defining the philosophy, the need, the goals, the function. We’re a long way from committing. The only (timetable) I can say is when it’s feasible and the time is right.

Behind the scenes is where Iannacone is most comfortable, and he lists a string of improvements in his tenure that may not be readily visible but have had an agreeable effect on the program:

-USD now has a full-time athletic fund-raiser, Ky Snyder, and Iannacone said fund-raising is up 8% this school year despite the tight economy.

-Men’s basketball games this season are carried on KSDO, the school’s first agreement with an established radio station. “That’s one of the more significant things we’ve been able to do,” Iannacone said. “It gives exposure not only to basketball but to the university and other sports. I know our advertisers are happy with it. We’re happy with it.”

-In the same vein, and in keeping with a trend throughout the NCAA, Iannacone and Snyder have brought in corporate sponsorship, from Pepsi, American Airlines, Red Lion Inns and Coast Distributing Co.

-Iannacone also instituted a number of “cultivation events” (translate: fund-raisers) including dinner on the football field, a golf tournament and a giveaway of two Super Bowl tickets with travel accommodations. The tickets were courtesy of former NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle, a “friend” of the school.

-An academic support program and a mandatory night study program was instituted for freshmen and community college transfers. The school also started a mandatory drug education program. There’s a new “academic support area” for athletes in the Sports Center that includes several computers, a valuable classroom tool these days.

“From day one they view themselves as students first,” Iannacone said. “They still have to do the work but we try to give them all the help we can.”

Iannacone said more than half the school’s athletes had grade-point averages of 3.0 or better last spring. USD and Gonzaga have dominated the conference all-academic teams in recent years.

-Funding has increased “across the board” for the 12 sports that grant scholarships. Under Iannacone the athletic department has also added five full-time personnel and 4 1/2 part-time positions, from coaches to clerical staff, and has added a computer system. Recent hirings include assistant athletic directors Dan Yourg and Regina Sullivan, who do much of the daily administrative work and act as liaisons with the various teams.

Athletically, the USD program is solid if unspectacular, competitive in most WCC sports. The men’s basketball team hasn’t been to the NCAA tournament since 1987, but in his eighth season Coach Hank Egan has a 122-97 record and usually coaxes more victories than expected.

Since soccer became a WCC sport, the men’s team has risen to top-20 caliber and produced All-Americans and the WCC has become one of the premier soccer leagues in the nation, producing national champions in San Francisco and Santa Clara.

Both men’s and women’s tennis have been ranked nationally the last three years and had All-American selections. Women’s volleyball is coming off its first winning season.

Women’s soccer becomes a conference sport next fall, and USD will have a team, with athletic scholarships, that is expected to do well. Women’s softball is also being added to the program, bringing the program 16 teams, split evenly between men and women.

Iannacone declined to reveal the school’s athletic budget, but said USD ranks “near the top in basic funding” in the eight-team WCC, “near the middle in terms of scholarships and personnel.”

“Over the last 20 years, under (school president) Dr. (Author) Hughes, the growth of the university has been phenomenal,” Iannacone said. “In rapid growth there’s always going to be some gaps. We saw some of these gaps but we’re on solid ground.

“Every few years you renew what your commitment to athletics is, what your goals are, what you stand for. Our basic philosophy is if it’s worth doing, fund it. Athletics is an integral part of the educational process. Then you don’t have your philosophy compromised.”

But funding a Division I athletic program is not an easy process, especially at a small private school often in the shadow of San Diego State, which has nearly six times USD’s enrollment of 6,000.

So progress is measured in small steps. Patrons and donors are known as “support people” instead of boosters.

“Realistically everyone has to do fund-raising,” Iannacone said. “One of the reasons we’re in good shape is we stay within our philosophy. We still need all the help we can get. What we receive (from outside) is really very critical to our success.”

The key word there is success, something the athletic department has known at least modestly for several years.

Even if much of it is behind the scenes.