‘I’m going to fight for them’
White still hopes winter athletes get extra year because of the pandemic
UCF athletics director Danny White was pleased with the NCAA’s decision to extend an extra year of eligibility for spring sports athletes, who saw their respective seasons cut short by the coronavirus pandemic.
“I applaud the NCAA,” White said of the measure announced Monday. “We should be about the student-athletes first and we say that and in times like this, we have to back that up.
“If that means financially, it’s harder, and logistically, it’s harder, so be it. Those kids work way too hard to come for a high level Division I experience. It’s nobody’s fault that it got taken away. We have to make good on that.”
While the ruling was a win of sorts, it doesn’t go far enough in White’s eyes after the NCAA denied the same extra eligibility for winter sports participants.
“I’m going to continue to advocate for that, especially for the seniors,” White said Tuesday. “You can make a case that those athletes got the vast majority of their season, which is true, but those seniors shouldn’t have to end their careers that way and lose the postseason right at the end. I hope that conversation isn’t over.”
White said it’s his understanding there is an NCAA appeals process on the winter sports portion of the measure.
“Our winter sports athletes are probably still trying to figure out what they want to do, but if they do want to come back, I’m going to fight for them,” he said. “I don’t know how successful I’ll be or not, but our staff feels the same way, they should have the opportunity to end their career the right way.”
White and his staff have determined
what it would cost if every senior spring athlete chooses to return for another season, but he doesn’t expect that to happen.
White spoke to the Orlando Sentinel on Tuesday about a variety of other topics. Here is an edited version of that discussion:
Orlando Sentinel: What sort of financial impact does the cancellation of spring sports have at UCF?
White: “We’re working on that. In terms of what we can save from our normal operational budget, our goal is to have an answer by the end of this week. Some easy things to point to are baseball ticket revenue that needs to be refunded. The NCAA distribution to us was about $1.3 [million] to $1.5 million short of what it would normally be. So we know where we have some holes. The savings part gets more complicated in a department the size of ours. Coaches aren’t recruiting, so we have to get through every single budget and add it all up. We have all the budget managers across the whole department charged this week with helping to identify … there are really two pieces of information 1) how much are we going to save and 2) how early in the timeline can we identify and know that. That knowledge will help us make decisions that will prepare us to go into the 2020-21 fiscal year, which is July 1 for us.”
OS: Do you know how much financial impact Monday’s NCAA’s decision will have?
White: “It’s going to be somewhere in the $300,000-$500,000 range, it just depends on how many of them elect to do it. The way that they did it was smart because it’s a one-time expense. As we look into next year, I think there are going to be a lot of scenarios where there are one-time challenges. We’ve just got to find a way and hopefully, there’s ways with federal and state support, one-time relief to help us get through the next 12 months or so.”
OS: What’s the status of fundraising?
White: “It’s been brought to a screeching halt. Our fundraisers, our ticket sellers … we’re doing a lot of reaching out right now and checking in with our folks and letting them know we’re thinking about them. But people are hurting out there. It’s not the right time to be asking for money. We’re not doing that right now. … Sponsors and donors alike are all dealing with the same unknowns that we are. But there is a whole lot of unknowns for everybody and we’re just hoping to get through this virus here and put this behind us.”
OS: What’s the status of projects like the Roth Athletic Center?
White: “We’re still evaluating projects that haven’t started yet. We’re certainly not springing toward making decisions on things until we get a better handle on what’s going to happen. Our capital projects are privately funded through major gifts that are restricted to those projects. So as long as donors have the financial ability to make their pledge payments, which we’re having conversations with them individually about what their outlook looks like considering the economic environment, and we’re looking forward. One project we have going forward, the Roth Athletic Center, that’s already been funded. As long as those construction crews can come to work, which they have been, we’re fully expecting that to be done by the middle of July, which is the target date.”
OS: What about McNamara Cove, which was set to debut this upcoming football season?
White: “We know we’re going to move forward with it, it’s already been through pledges, but the timing we deliver it — we planned on opening it the 2020 season, but I think we’ve probably missed that window, so maybe it’s more of 2021 maybe we can get it done at some point during the course of the year next year. A lot of it will depend on what happens.”
OS: How is your staff coping during this time?
White: “I’m sure everybody is feeling the same way. It feels open-ended and uncertain. It would be a lot easier if we know two weeks from now we would be returning to normal, but we don’t know when that’s going to be. It could be frustrating. We have a lot of people in our department that are pretty passionate about what they do. They’re all frustrated, but we must embrace our roles as leaders and realize that we have student-athletes and younger staff looking up to us, so we better provide leadership at a time when it’s really needed.”
OS: What are the challenges during this time for the athletes being away from campus?
White: “Most importantly, academically. I worry about some of our student-athletes that maybe don’t have the experience and relied on the in-person support from our academic staff. They do such a great job. Learning remotely is a different thing and I want to make sure we don’t stub our toe academically. We’ve worked really hard to have that be a differentiator for us and most importantly, it sets up each of those kids for success and leaving her with a degree and some options.”
OS: Are you in favor of some sort of spring football camp if the virus is contained by then?
White: “I think we’re going to have to do that if we’re going to have a college football season. Just from a health and safety standpoint, we have to get them in for the younger players to learn techniques, blocking and tackling the right way where it’s safe. … You can’t just flip on the lights and a week later play football games. That’s not how it works. There’s development things that happen during spring ball and we’ll probably have to do and I’m sure we’ll have support from the NCAA to massage the rules for some sort of semblance of what was spring ball and leading into an elongated fall camp to be prepared for the season. That’s going to be really important.”
OS: What have you been doing when not working during selfisolation?
White: “These jobs are all-encompassing. I don’t really have hobbies and even if I did, there are so many things you can’t be doing right now to be responsible. It’s really important that we do that. I’m trying to grab my kids and wear some of their energy out.”