WRAL Sports Fan

North Carolina

Success of athletic programs preserving UNC's image

By Aaron Schoonmaker

Jul 15, 2011

Chapel Hill, N.C. — How a program is perceived on both regional and national levels can have a tremendous impact on everything from sponsorship deals, booster funding, recruiting and fans – not to mention the livelihood of coaches and administrators.

University of North Carolina Athletic Director Dick Baddour knows this. When questions surrounding the football program began to swirl, Baddour says his goal was to preserve the image of the school and all of its athletic programs.

“The success of so many of our programs highlight (our) brand and bring it into focus,” {{a href="audio-a"}}Baddour said Friday morning on Mark and Mike, The Insiders on 620 the Buzz.{{/a}} “We were concerned about the perception of the University of North Carolina and we wanted to handle the investigation in absolutely the right way. We felt that was the first thing we could do if we had any slippage in terms of views of the University of North Carolina; if the response (was), ‘well, that’s really a difficult situation, difficult set of circumstances, but the university’s handling it the right way.’ We have got tremendous response in the way that we have handled it.”

Entering the next academic year, UNC is going well beyond the headlining troubles and is filled with both excitement and expectations.

“I can name six, seven, eight programs that will be competing for national championships,” Baddour said. “In September, we will dedicate the most outstanding facility that we’ve ever built at the University of North Carolina.”

That building, of course, is the multi-million dollar expansion in the east end zone of Kenan Stadium. The soon-to-be dedicated Laudermilk Center for Student Excellence will add about 3,000 premium club seats and give the stadium a fully enclosed feel. The center will be the go-to for over 800 student-athletes daily providing the strength and conditioning facilities, offices, Leadership Academy and more.

Beyond that, the baseball program has boosted the perception of the institution regionally and nationally. Having reached the College World Series five of the last six years and undergone a recent $25 million renovation to the stadium that sits in the heart of the campus, the program serves as a model for others at the school.

“We’re blessed with some outstanding facilities, at the same time we do have some needs,” Baddour said. “You look at facilities as an investment for your future and you don’t want to do something just because you are in an arms race. You want to do it because it will have an impact on your program and baseball is a perfect example of that.”

That said, Baddour is aware that further repairs to the school’s image are in order.

“(Our goal was) the University of North Carolina department of athletics would be better as a result of this,” Baddour said. “We would put things in place to reduce the possibility that this would ever happen again. We used as our model what happened here in the 60's with our basketball program and now the basketball program is viewed as absolutely a program of complete integrity.

“We are well on our way of putting many of those projects in place. A thorough review of the academic support program, enhancement of the compliance program and a number of things associated with football as a way we educate in regards with agents. Those things have been in place, they have been talked about in detail and we’re not finished with it.”

Not lost on Baddour is that the institution is one of all motives. There are students, professors, student-athletes and administrators, and not everyone’s focus is the same – hence what is expected of them is not always the same.

“There are so many complicated issues dealing with student athletes,” Baddour said. “You have this notion that you want your student-athletes to be treated like anybody else on campus, but you have this whole other set of expectations that come with being a student-athlete at the University of North Carolina.”

If Baddour is able to ride the rough waves recently brought about by the football program in the same manner as the school did with the basketball program five decades ago, the perception of the school that boasts so many national titles might also be one of resiliency.