College Sports Information Directors of America

Related Content
• 2020 Special Awards Announcements and Features
• #CoSIDA2020 Virtual Convention Home
• Past Lifetime Achievement Award Recipients

---

See CoSIDA's statement on the cancelation of #CoSIDA2020 in Las Vegas.

Joe Hernandez – Ball State University, Associate Athletics Director for Sports and Alumni Relations

Lifetime Achievement Award

by Tyson Mathews – Ball State University, Assistant Director of Athletic Communications

For Joe Hernandez, it has really always been about relationships.
 
Sure, he enjoyed promoting the successes of Ball State’s teams, notable achievements like a men’s basketball Sweet 16 run in 1990 and a football national ranking as high as No. 12 during an undefeated regular season in 2008.
 
And yes, he thrived in leading the Cardinals’ communication department into the digital age. And in preparing future sports information directors. And in serving as president of the College Sports Information Directors of America (CoSIDA) during the 2005-06 academic year.
 
His noteworthy career is well-outlined in this piece from 2014 when he was presented with CoSIDA’s 25-Year Award.
 
But Hernandez – now a recipient of one of the organization’s 2020 Lifetime Achievement Award – learned early in his career from legendary Ball State SID Earl Yestingsmeier that college athletics at its core is a people business. He never lost sight of that, and he strove to preserve that perspective despite an ever-changing landscape in the profession.
 
(The CoSIDA Lifetime Achievement Award is presented to members who have served at least 25 years in the profession (as of July 2020) and who are retiring or leaving the profession; Hernandez is now pursuing another administration challenge – high school athletic directorship.)
 
 
“No question from a technology standpoint is where it advanced the most,” Hernandez said. “The biggest problem was it took you away from the people part of the business. That’s what I always tried to maintain, integrating that technology and not losing track of those relationships.”
 
And in nearly 40 years at Ball State, from student and graduate assistant to sports information director and associate athletic director, some of his greatest satisfaction came from maintaining contacts with former student-athletes, coaches, colleagues and media members.
 
They would call often, visit his office when they returned to campus and seek him out at games. Many had long since moved on, but Hernandez was always there. At least until November 2019 when he finally accepted a new challenge as the athletic director at Lafayette Jefferson High School, one of the largest high schools in Indiana.
 
Still, he receives half a dozen calls each week from former student-athletes and nearly just as many from current Ball State staff members seeking help or advice. It is difficult, if not impossible, to replace the kind of institutional knowledge he owns. Yes, Hernandez was an athletic communications director, but to so many he was and remains so much more.
 
“Joe was a big part of my Ball State experience,” Cardinals women’s basketball legend Jenny (Eckert) Zorger said. “Joe kind of was Ball State to me.”
 
And so it was for decades worth of Ball State student-athletes. Things change constantly within an athletic department. That is simply the nature of it. Student-athletes come and go, coaches and administrators move on. But Hernandez was a constant. Through five presidents, seven athletic directors, countless coaching changes and thousands of student-athletes, he was there actively promoting his alma mater at both the professional and personal levels.
 
“Joe made us feel like we were still part of the university,” Paris McCurdy said. “Typically when an athlete leaves the university, nine times out of 10 that’s really it. Joe was always adamant about making sure he stayed in touch with us and trying to get us back to campus. When you heard from Joe, that was something special. It made you feel special.”
 
Eckert was the 1990 Mid-American Conference Player of the Year and is quick to praise Hernandez for his role in promoting her accomplishments. She has been gone from Ball State for 30 years now. McCurdy, the heart of the Sweet 16 team, likely the most iconic in Ball State history, was gone for 25 years before returning to work at the university. It was largely Hernandez who kept them connected to their alma mater.
 
But it was never just about the high-profile teams or athletes. Hernandez worked with virtually every Ball State team throughout his career, as many as a dozen at a time in the early days. And he did his best to promote all of them. That kind of attitude stuck out to Matt McCollester, now the assistant athletic director for communications at Richmond, who spent six years at Ball State working for Hernandez.
 
“Make sure you build relationships up and down the totem pole,” McCollester said he learned, “from your football coach to your golf coach to your student workers. Make sure everyone has a good experience with you and with your office. That’s what I’ve wanted to make my office like.”
 
Professionally, the only thing that has rivaled Hernandez’s dedication to Ball State is his devotion to CoSIDA. He served a nine-year term on the organization’s board of directors, including a year as president in 2006, driven by the same desire to build relationships with others in the profession. The CoSIDA convention was important to him, a chance to put names with faces and to share ideas. He served on various committees and had a special passion for the annual community service project.
 
Hernandez was a forward-thinking president, encouraging the organization to move under the umbrella of the National Association of Collegiate Directors of Athletics (NACDA) along with most of the other areas in college athletics. Sports marketers, development officials and others already had a seat at that table. Sports information directors did not. Hernandez brought a group from NACDA to present at the 2006 CoSIDA convention in Nashville. It was not particularly well received at the time. But three years later the groups formed a partnership, and by 2013 CoSIDA was holding its convention in conjunction with NACDA.
 
“We talked a lot about (sports information directors) having a voice in the room,” Hernandez said. “The only way we were going to do that was to become a part of NACDA, which we eventually did. It’s probably the best thing we’ve done.”
 
Hernandez served as vice president to then-Vanderbilt SID Tammy Boclair in 2005 before taking the reins the next year, and both have remained active CoSIDA past presidents despite no longer working directly in the sports information field. Boclair recalls Hernandez’s time in leadership as thoughtful, not overbearing.
 
“He would listen and take it all in and then make a comment if needed,” Boclair said. “Joe talked when he felt like another perspective needed to be discussed or to reaffirm a point, not just to talk and be heard.”
 
Hernandez was that way within his own department, too. He was a mentor, always available to offer advice and never afraid to call things as he saw them. He also trusted his employees and gave them the freedom to work unencumbered and to try new things.
 
“I felt very well prepared to lead an office because of the work Joe had done in my time at Ball State, and I am forever grateful for all he taught me,” said McCollester, who nominated Hernandez for the Lifetime Achievement Award. “And he definitely cultivated my love and desire to be included in CoSIDA because of his passion for it and his vision of what the organization is and can be.”
 
Hernandez saw plenty of advancement in the industry during his time at Ball State. In his early days, he delivered game tapes by hand to Indianapolis television stations more than an hour away so they could show highlights on the evening news. By the time his SID career wound down, Ball State was streaming press conferences live to the world. He worked under Yestingsmeier when Ball State was a test subject for computerized statistics, and he later led the Cardinals into a new age of websites and digital media guides.
 
Through it all, he remained true to his alma mater, spurning other opportunities along the way largely because of the relationships he built.
 
“The joke in our family was, ‘Joe went off to college and never came home,’” Hernandez said. “Family is the ultimate relationship and without my wife Karrie, my daughter Ali, my family, my CoSIDA family, my Ball State family and now my Lafayette Jeff family, this life would not be as rewarding.”