By David Carducci | staff writer
With one unconditional proclamation in his first meeting with his head coaches, Joel Nielsen paved the road for a new direction in Kent State athletics.
“Football is going to be a priority,” the Golden Flashes’ new athletic director insisted.
The message was clear and concise. If any coaches of other sports had needs or problems that required Nielsen’s attention, they would just have to wait a little while for help. For now, the department’s focus was firmly set on turning around a football program that has enjoyed just two winning seasons since 1972 and has failed for the last three years to comply with an NCAA mandate for Division I teams to average at least 15,000 in home attendance.
For Kent State’s coaches, this was a new message from the top, and according to some in the room, it was met with a stunned silence.
“I don’t know if some of them picked themselves off the floor, or if others were worried about their budgets,” Nielsen admitted almost a month and a half after that meeting in early May.
Since then, the new focus on football and a new “90Ksu” marketing campaign is inspiring a fresh enthusiasm in Nielsen’s staff and the entire Kent State campus.
“People are naturally apprehensive about change,” said KSU golf coach Herb Page, who was on the selection committee that helped to pick Nielsen to succeed the retiring Laing Kennedy. “What I like about Joel Nielsen is he has a lot of confidence and a lot of enthusiasm. He has come in here and hit the ground running with a lot of energy, and that makes everyone around him very excited. I think all of us understand that there is an NCAA mandate that we have to sell tickets. And as coaches we have to support him in every way we can.”
Since early May, those coaches who may have been concerned about their own needs have worn a path to Nielsen’s office in a show of support for Kent State football.
“There hasn’t been one, and I truly believe they are genuine in their thoughts, who doesn’t understand what a successful football program can do, not only for the institution, but also for their own programs,” said Nielsen. “I’ve been very up front with the coaches that we have to get football going. And since doing that, I’ve had coaches come in here and not even talk about their programs.”
They want to talk about football and how we are going to get football going,” Nielsen said. “(Baseball coach) Scott Stricklin is one. (Men’s basketball coach) Geno Ford is another. Coach Page has been in here wanting to talk about football. That’s the kind of buy-in and that’s the kind of understanding this staff has.”
Obviously, no coach has been more inspired by the new course of KSU athletics than football coach Doug Martin. In six seasons guiding the Flashes, Martin has compiled a record of just 24-46. While he has improved the talent on his roster with student-athletes who are both solid citizens and capable of performing in the classroom, Martin has yet to lead KSU to a winning season. One reason may be resources that rank at the bottom of the Mid-American Conference. He has been the nation’s lowest paid coach with the nation’s lowest paid staff operating on college football’s tiniest budget.
For six years, Martin’s football office didn’t even have a secretary — a simple problem Nielsen has already worked to solve as he tries to “eliminate all excuses.”
“(Nielsen) has definitely got our staff excited,” said Martin. “Just getting a secretary is a huge deal for us with recruiting. Now we’ll be able to send out literature we haven’t been able to do. He’s also improved our summer-school budget, and given our guys more money for room and board to stay here, which we haven’t had in the past.
“The new focus on football has already had an impact on our players,” Martin said. “They see what is going on, and they are excited about it. I think the most exciting thing for us is that (Nielsen) has a football background, so he understands.”
Nielsen played football at Minnesota State University, where he graduated in 1985 with a degree in business finance. Before returning to his alma mater to earn a master’s degree in sports administration in 1991, he had a short stint as a punter for the NFL’s Minnesota Vikings.
In his previous job as athletic director at South Dakota (2003-2010), Nielsen championed winning football programs. The Coyotes advanced in the NCAA Division II playoffs in 2006 — their third consecutive nine-win season.
Prior to taking his first job as an athletic director (Colorado College, 2001-2003), Nielsen learned how a losing tradition in football delays the enthusiasm athletics can bring to a university during eight years as associate athletic director at Wake Forest. The Demon Deacons were a combined 25-61 when Nielsen worked in Winston-Salem from 1993-2001.
“Football is the kickoff in the fall, and it really sets the tone in a lot of ways for the rest of the year,” said Nielsen. “I can say this because I’ve been at Wake Forest and seen that campus when football wasn’t going the way it is now. At Wake, athletics wouldn’t kick off until October when (basketball star) Tim Duncan started practicing.”
Kent State has been a similar story. Traditionally, fans get excited when the basketballs are rolled onto the floor at the M.A.C. Center.
“But when football gets going, you can start kicking it off when the kids report in August,” Nielsen said. “Then you have your first game. Then Homecoming. You have these successive dates in the fall that just energize. They can energize all of Northeast Ohio. They can energize the campus and the students. That’s why football is so important.”
Nielsen is out every day trying to spread the word about football at Kent State. He has brought in his right-hand man in Tom Kleinlein, a football-and-marketing-savvy executive associate athletic director hired away from Arizona State. Together, they have created a 20-member football committee to drive the “90Ksu” campaign, designed to draw 90,000 fans to Dix Stadium in 2010.
In his first 50 days on the job, Nielsen had already flown coast-to-coast, meeting with potential donors to sell his vision for Kent State athletics and football in particular. He visited Los Angeles, Phoenix and Memphis, hoping to raise money to help satisfy more of the football program’s needs, and he already had plans to fly to Kansas City, Baltimore, Seattle and other destinations in his second 50 days.
“We haven’t had a lot of time to plan all of this,” said Nielsen. “We’ve kind of been building the plane while we are trying to fly it up in the air, and we keep putting parts on it while we are up there gliding. But we are getting the engine put together now so we can really fire this thing up.”
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Contact David Carducci at dcarducci@recordpub.com