College Sports Information Directors of America

To: All CoSIDA Members
From: Nick Joos, 2008-09 CoSIDA President, Baylor University
RE: Update on CoSIDA-NACDA Partnership, 12/17/08

The best of holiday wishes and a Happy New Year to each of you.

Several months ago NACDA extended CoSIDA an invitation to participate in a unique “hybrid partnership” that would enable CoSIDA to run its own management association and convention as it has and wants to, but move its convention to the NACDA site. This move would allow CoSIDA members to become part of the most influential gathering of decision makers in intercollegiate athletics and enhance our visibility within the intercollegiate management community. An additional key component of this proposal was the fact that it was a “let’s try it arrangement for a few years” rather than a long-term commitment.

This purposed partnership would afford all CoSIDA members tremendous professional development opportunities while at the same time enhancing the CoSIDA brand within the intercollegiate athletics community. The professional development opportunities that could come from tying NACDA’s groups with CoSIDA are endless and would offer benefits to the membership of all NACDA-affiliated organizations. Furthermore, the potential exposure that our Academic All-America Hall of Fame ceremonies could receive from a national stage such as NACDA would only strengthen our standing within the intercollegiate athletics world.

After considering all of the membership feedback it received over the past month as well as many internal and external discussions, the Board voted 11-8 on Dec. 11 to begin forming this “hybrid partnership” with some benefits to start in the very near future and our convention to be held with NACDA starting in 2013. Our conventions through 2012 will be held at the Marriott properties with which we have made commitments and signed contracts—San Antonio (2009), San Francisco (2010), Marco Island (2011) and St. Louis (2012).

Please know that there were multiple conference calls among the Board, including one with the NACDA leadership team, before this decision was acted upon. In addition, a very thorough “pro-con” analysis was undertaken in which each BOD member participated and provided thoughts, and the BOD solicited membership feedback prior to the mandatory Dec. 15th hard-deadline decision date that had been established by NACDA based on their convention planning and business issues. Approximately 150 members took time to provide feedback on cosida.com and others contacted the board individually.

During the call in which a motion was made to solicit membership feedback, another motion was made and approved unanimously that the Board conduct the vote and make the final decision before the Dec. 15th deadline, which is permitted in the constitution (Article 7, Section 2; allows the Board to make decisions in the organization’s best interest when it is not meeting). Two weeks later on another conference call, a motion was made that the Board reconsider its previous decision that the final vote on this proposal be a BOD vote and instead be a full membership vote as long as it was conducted and finalized in time to meet the established and agreed upon Dec. 15th deadline date. That motion never received a second from another BOD member and the results of the previous unanimous vote on this matter held.

Throughout this process there were many interesting and thought-provoking discussions. In the end, the majority of the Board believed that CoSIDA needed to pro-actively start dealing with issues facing our profession by actively engaging the leadership of the other management groups in college athletics 365 days a year in addition to convention time. The majority felt that we as the full leadership body must show some real resolve and conviction with regard to dealing with issues and our standing within the intercollegiate community. Many felt that we had to show that CoSIDA is not just about a convention, which is the way many perceive us. The majority of the Board felt that it was indeed time to put “profession first” above other interests.

Even though the convention aspect of this proposal does not start until June of 2013 in Orlando, as noted above, we will begin to immediately reap the benefits of our new partnership. John Humenik will represent our organization at the 2009 NACDA mid-year meeting that is composed of the Presidents and/or Executive Directors of all of the other NACDA-affiliated organizations. CoSIDA has never been at this leadership table and would not have been afforded this opportunity if it declined this proposal. Within the next few months, CoSIDA will have a column in each NACDA magazine that is distributed to over 9,000 intercollegiate administrators. We will also have the opportunity to use NACDA’s 13,000 daily blast email system to get out the word on appropriate CoSIDA based news and matters, not just to our membership but to all of the other management groups in the university and athletics communities.

Our visibility in the collegiate community and our access to other leadership groups has already immensely grown due to this decision. Many in our leadership group believe this is just the first step in a synergy-based partnership that will reap tremendous benefits to our membership and organization in multiple ways over the coming years even before the convention component of this proposal begins in 2013.

I want to thank Joan Cronan, Director of Women’s Athletics at the University of Tennessee and current NACDA President, as well as NACDA Executive Director Michael Cleary and NACDA Sr. Associate Executive Director Bob Vecchione, both of whom began their careers in college athletics as information and media relations directors, for their sincere efforts in doing all that they could via this proposal to help our profession advance its standing. They truly believe that this partnership will benefit us in multiple ways but will also benefit the other NACDA affiliates and intercollegiate athletics as a whole as now- for the first time in history- all key management groups have been partnered to some degree to better serve and educate each other.

I also want to thank my fellow Board members for the extra time and diligent effort that each put forward to evaluate this proposal. I also want to offer special thanks to the 150 members of the organization who took time to provide their thoughts to the Board on this proposal.

I fully believe that our future leaders and membership will look back on this decision as one that significantly advanced our profession, allowed our members to grow professionally and played a very important role in improving our status within the intercollegiate community. I ask that we all give this unique partnership a chance to develop and succeed.

Again, best wishes for a wonderful holiday season.