From empty stadiums to scheduling changes, Southern Miss AD discusses COVID-19’s impact
Like so many other operations limited by the COVID-19 pandemic, employees of the Southern Miss Athletic Department are rarely seen inside the halls of the Duff Athletic Center at the moment.
USM athletic director Jeremy McClain’s days are now filled with staring at a computer screen as he conducts video conference meetings from his home office.
“I’ve lost count as to how many I’ve had during the last week,” McClain told the Sun Herald last week in a phone interview. “You just adapt and figure out how to communicate. I’ve got regular Zoom meetings and we’ve used every other medium you can imagine to communicate. It’s not the quite the same, but we’ve made it work.”
Men’s basketball coach Jay Ladner resorted to using FaceTime on his iPhone to recruit the last few members of his Class of 2020, which was finished off by one of the more highly-regarded players to sign with USM in recent years — 6-8 junior college forward DeAndre Pinckney.
Pinckney and 6-foot-7 guard Justin Johnson, another junior college product, were the last two players to sign with USM, finishing off a class that Ladner believes will mark the start of a turnaround following a 9-22 record in his first season.
For Pinckney and Johnson, there was no traditional tour of the Hattiesburg campus.
“I’ve gotten good at Zoom and FaceTime — things I knew nothing about beforehand,” Ladner said. “One day I’d go to the front of campus, take my phone and video certain parts of the campus as I was walking. It wasn’t a canned Southern Miss virtual tour. The next day, I’d go to the apartments where they’d be living. I’d do it by myself and kind of be talking. I know other schools are doing the same thing, but I think they did appreciate my unprofessional tours of campus.”
Empty stadiums at Southern Miss?
Adjusting to a virtual way of approaching their jobs has been one of the lighter aspects for administrators and coaches at Southern Miss, but there’s been a serious tone to discussions about the future of the USM athletic department and the NCAA as a whole.
The top professional baseball league in South Korea has begun play in empty stadiums and NASCAR is set to resume its season on May 17 in Darlington, South Carolina — also without fans.
The 2020 USM baseball season ended after 16 games due to the COVID-19 pandemic and it’s unclear what the upcoming football season will look like.
McClain, who said last week that no student-athletes have tested positive for the new coronavirus, hopes the Golden Eagles won’t be playing games in empty stadiums in 2020.
“It is kind of tricky, but I think that will be done only as a last resort,” he said. “Whatever way we can play games is critical, but each program is different. Each conference is different. You need people in the seats because that revenue is a huge piece of the pie. The TV piece is not as big as it used to be from our standpoint. It’s important that fans come and enjoy the game and be a part of it. The last resort, in my mind, would be playing in empty stadiums.”
If some games are played in empty stadiums, that would be a big blow for a program like Southern Miss. While the SEC and other Power 5 conferences can rely on large TV contracts, USM receives approximately $400,000 a year in TV revenue under the current Conference USA deal. For the 2018-19 season, SEC schools received about $45 million each.
USM is set to start the 2020 football campaign with a Sept. 5 home game against South Alabama, but there’s some speculation on a national level that the season may be delayed or shortened. There’s even been reporting that the season could be moved up.
All plans are to move forward with that Sept. 5 opener, but McClain and the rest of Conference USA’s athletic directors and coaches are still waiting on official word on when athletes will again be allowed to report to campus.
“We’re all taking it a day and a week at a time,” McClain said. “I think soon we’ll be able to start making preparations when we have a clearer idea of when that might happen.”
Cutting costs at USM
In the meantime, McClain and USM officials are talking about ways to tighten the budget.
“There’s going to be a dip in revenue. It’s just the nature of the situation,” he said. “We’re anticipating things by playing out different scenarios. Will it be a 10 or 15 percent cut to the budget? Different scenarios could happen. We’re beginning to identify steps to save dollars.
“We’re talking about scheduling — how we’re going there, where we’re going. There may be trips that were originally planned that may not happen. As you get further down the scenarios, it gets harder to hit your numbers. There are more difficult decisions to be made.”
The Group of Five conferences, which includes C-USA, and the other Div. 1 conferences that don’t sponsor football sent a joint letter to NCAA commissioner Mark Emmert in April that is asking for a temporary reduction in the mandatory requirement to have at least 16 varsity sports. Also, the conferences asked that the NCAA waive minimum football attendance requirements.
As for whether USM will consider eliminating individual sports, McClain said that’s not a likely move at the moment.
“I think that’s at the bottom of our list,” he said. “Every place is a little different. For various reasons, that’s just not near the top of the list for us. I’m not going to ever say we won’t have the discussion, but it’s way down the list.”
The NCAA has granted the opportunity for seniors who played spring sports to return for the 2021 season, but it appears that less than half of those eligible to return will do so, according to McClain.
C-USA scheduling changes in works
Conference USA officials have been discussing ways to get creative with scheduling for the 2020-21 sports season to account for COVID-19, possibly building schedules for sports other than football that will focus on keeping games as regional as possible. The 14-team Conference USA has long struggled with travel costs with schools spread from UTEP in El Paso, Texas, to Old Dominion in Norfolk, Virginia.
McClain, a former AD at Troy, acknowledged reports that C-USA is looking at creating regional pod play for baseball, basketball and Olympic sports. This means Southern Miss could be competing more against schools like UAB, Louisiana Tech and Rice.
If there’s one positive that may come of the current crisis, McClain believes it may be more common-sense scheduling.
“(Conversations) have been centered around scheduling and our championships — just the structure,” he said. “It may not be just a one-year fix. There are changes that may stay with us for a while.”
McClain said there is also the possibility that the number of C-USA conference games could be cut, allowing programs to schedule more non-conference contests closer to home.
Changes to conference championships or tournaments could involve the cutting the number of teams involved in events like the C-USA baseball tournament.
“It’s all a cost-savings discussion,” McClain said. ”At the end of the day, I think we’ll come out of this better after having to go through this exercise.”
This story was originally published May 6, 2020 at 12:20 PM.
