Coach Flip Naumburg's Journal

Monday, May 30, 2005

NO, REALLY, I’M FINE

I saw the revealed Deep Throat (Watergate style), Mark Whatshisname yesterday on TV.

He looked okay for 91. So do I (look okay for 91).

It was interesting to me (Deep Throat revealed) because I spent that Summer of '73 at my living version of Animal House watching the Watergate hearings on TV every afternoon. It was an event we relished and we called it, "The Sammy the Man Show" in honor of Sam Irvin, the old Senator from North Carolina, who had been the moderator/host for those bizarre proceedings that took place on Capitol Hill 32 summers ago. Senator Irvin handled handled every moment of it in a most courtly and cultivated manner.

In the end the Real Deep Throat finally "Got it up" (nerve) and came out of the garage at 91. What a man! Gee, I wonder why "we" did that at this time. I wonder if anyone in his family helped him?????..

INTERVIEW WITH A RAM’PIRE – CHAPTER II

SEQUENTIAL INDEMNITY – or timing is everything –

Q – So why didn't you have the eligibility roster done for the Conference Championships, and what did you do next?

GO SOUTHEAST YOUNG MAN

A - We actually did take an eligibility roster to Greeley for our conference finals, but unfortunately it had not been run back through the registrar's office. No one was asked for these forms at the RMLC or any of the other conference championships it would seem, and by that I mean none of the teams were asked to turn them in, at least that is how I understand it. I did not know that we did not have the "newly stamped" roster, but at the same time I did not specifically ask for it the day we went or whatever. It wasn't on my to-do list. We never had to turn it in, so the whole thing fell through a crack until Friday of the next week.

I, unfortunately, had already made a leap of faith based on the administration realities revealed over the last two years and how we were slowly adjusting and getting better, and doing fewer things "wrong" than ever. I had already decided that nothing bad was going to happen. We had covered all the bases, or so I believed.

THAT’S JUST THE WAY IT IS

It is not my intention to throw anyone under a moving bus. I take full responsibility for what happened to us because I am the Head Lacrosse Coach. I do need to put events in order despite the obvious overall lack of good synchronization throughout this ordeal, and it has been an ordeal.

PAPER RAM or PAPER JAM?

The way our paper process works is that all official business that our team conducts must go through the university as long as we represent the university. This has nothing to do with amount of financial allocation, the size of a Club, or anything like that. The administration makes the rules, and we at CSU lacrosse, like all the other Clubs, try to follow them. The ever-growing lists of things to do and forms to fill out make the importance of good team administration necessary as well as obvious.

Ultimately it has always been about the kids/students in Club sports, and here at CSU the way they look at it is that it is in fact a Student Organization, and not really an Athletic Program.

We have a system of administration where everything that first comes to me from say the MDIA then goes to or through our "Home Office" via one of our officers. We communicate constantly on things done and to be done in several arenas of action and activity.

There were numerous emails sent to all teams in the MDIA (175) from the national governing body regarding the subject of eligibility and what to do and when to get it done. We (officers and I) go over all of this kind of stuff, but they (officers) ultimately take care of the nuts and bolts of it for our Club by feeding information and tasks to the CSU administration or its computers. I live on constant reassurance that things are getting done on the inside of "the building". I was assured that we had the eligibility roster (The second one of the season to be turned in) ready to go to Greeley for the RMLC. After that I never gave it another thought (my bad).

HOP SCOTCH

We are on a semester university schedule, so theoretically there should be less for us to worry about with a roster check later in the season. A trimester or quarter system might end during the season, so without the second check you could have a situation where a player takes twelve hours of credit, but then the quarter ends after the roster check. He could easily take less than 12 the next quarter and no one would be the wiser without that late season check up. We got it, no problem, at least that's what I thought. They (MDIA) did the same thing last year, at least they attempted to, and we had no problem.

The eligibility issue terrified me annually or even constantly, until only recently. Every year prior to the last two, it has been totally my responsibility to walk any and all papers in to the Club Sports offices. For the last two years that process has taken on a whole new look.

LEAP OF FAITH – Look out belowwwwww!

I hadn't worried about any of this kind of thing lately because everything had gone like clockwork in terms of us getting our "Must do's" taken care of. We were perfect by no means, but we were not doing badly for the most part. We had used the same "teamwork" to get all of our administrative duties done all year, and the red tape machine thing I tend to "hate" so well was going okay. I have been adjusting to the new administration (2 years) and how differently it works. Before that I had done most or all of watching over eligibility, travel, and really all phases of operation, and in a most constant and direct way. Those were the "Bill Hill" years, and he and I usually talked daily.

It works a little differently now, and I am actually more remote from the CSU administrators than ever. ONE person can't do everything for this Club anyway. It is far too large. It is a Program in almost but certainly not quite every way.

INSIDE AND OUTSIDE

I am always trying to orchestrate and delegate more and more for and to many, and hopefully I do this for mostly good reasons, and it comes from a larger philosophical intention inside of me. The more WE do the more we get done. I want more involvement from more places just like I want athletes to be students.

The student Officers work directly with the cogs within the university to help keep the necessary wheels turning and meshed with one another. This is a big part of the "new" process in place. I still make decisions about all the travel, for example, but I no longer reserve it with my credit card or whatever. Now it goes through the school for pre-payment, etc. Someone other than me takes care of surfing the CSU channels. I make the game schedules, but the Officers again do the actual submitting for fields and things like that.

This past year we were lucky enough to have our Team President actually working in the Rec Sports Department. This helped facilitate things even more. Truthfully I liked the way things had been working because we had good officers and generally good leadership.

We do not have an Athletic Director or a Sports Information Director to do things for our team as much as I would love it to be so. We do not have an academic advisor or twelve to keep us "straight". We have a trainer sometimes, but there is no longer a Training Program like there used to be at CSU, so this season we had to teach our allocated "trainer" to actually tape an ankle, and that wasn't a real confidence builder for me.

We do what we can to masquerade as a big time program, but whatever deeper substance we have or hold can only come from the people who care and are a part of the Program and nowhere else.

FRIDAY FUNDAY

I got a call from our Team President on THAT Friday morning telling me of our eligibility problem. It was before 10:00. He had just run it (roster) through so we would have a squeaky clean and fresh one with a Registrar's stamp to take with us to Minnesota on Monday.

A NOT-SO-FUNNY THING HAPPENED ON THE WAY TO BLAINE - WE SELF REPORTED A PROBLEM - I guess no one will ever do that again -

Well, you see, these two thin red lines had apparently appeared on the roster sheet made by the hand of a registrar that very morning. He (Pres.) gave me only the opening details that were known at the time. I was somewhat stunned, but my immediate thoughts were to get more of the story first, and to self report next. I told him to call the Eligibility guy for the national organization. As it turns out we should have gone through the Conference Officials first, but I was not really aware of or recalled that as THE process to use in the heat of that moment. We were getting very close in time to THE tournament, so my instinct was to hopefully get this all figured out as soon as possible with a little "help from above". Our national organization would somehow help us to figure this out, thought I.

Little did I know that the wheels of misfortune had just then begun to turn, and I had no idea yet of how fast we were going to get from zero to 60, and then, almost before you could say "Dead Man's Curve" we had pretty much landed in the ugly ditch.

NEXT QUESTION

Q- What was the first response and or action taken by the MDIA National Governing Body?

I'll tell me next time.

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