ACCENT on Sports: Foley Fields Questions During Student Forum
Wednesday, April 8, 2015 | Chris Harry
GAINESVILLE, Fla. -- ACCENT Speakers Bureau is the largest student-run organization of its kind on any college campus in the nation. In its 44 years, the agency of the University of Florida student government has repeatedly put prominent, controversial and innovative guests before the UF student body.
Like Academy Award nominee James Franco, for example.
Or former President Jimmy Carter.
And that was just in the last two months alone. 
Or as Jeremy Foley (left) put it Tuesday night, “Which makes this like coming on stage after the Rolling Stones.”
Framed like that, OK, maybe so.
But the estimated 200 in attendance on the Champions Club level of Ben Hill Griffin Stadium still got an hour of question-and-answer time with Foley, their Gators athletic director, in an open-dialogue forum the audience seemed to appreciate.
Foley, in his 24th year as AD, brought a trio of his top administrators -- Chip Howard (executive associate AD for internal affairs), Mike Hill (executive associate AD for external affairs) and Travis Leyndyke (director of ticket operations) -- to the event, but the bulk of the questions were directed at the guy charged with overseeing the University Athletic Association's $103 million annual operating budget; the guy with the 24 national championships on his watch.
Before the audience-participation portion, Foley relived a time in his life that no doubt resonated with the students. After he graduated from Hobart College, he sent resumes to every professional sports franchise in America -- he had no doubt that was the track he wanted to pursue -- and amid page after page of rejection letters there was one response from an executive with the Cleveland Browns that included some sage advice.
Get a master's degree.
“It only took one person,” Foley said.
That one person changed Foley's life. A masters in sports administration from Ohio University turned into an internship in the UF ticket office, which turned into a full-time post, which turned into something else, and so on, and so on, all the way to March 1992 when Foley, then UF's senior associate AD, replaced retiring Bill Arnsparger.
Tuesday night, though, he was relaxed in a pair of Nikes and kicked back on a small stage, microphone in hand, and ready to take on all comers.
“Obviously, these people are really passionate about Gator sports,” said ACCENT chairman Corey Flayman. “Sometimes they take things that are said at face value -- and sometimes not always. So I think this was a cool opportunity to get that direct interaction they normally could not.”
Among the topics:
>>> Rumors of basketball coach Billy Donovan going to the NBA: “My gut tells me he's going to be here, but I don't control what comes from that side. Nobody is working harder. The last month has been like Vietnam down there in our basketball facility, trying to get this fixed and making decisions. He is in there all time. There is not one thing that has happened to make me think he has a foot out the door. ... I know he loves Gainesville, loves the University of Florida. We pay him a lot of money. We just gave him a new contract. At the end of the day, if an offer comes out of the blue, I can't control that. All I can control is what we do here. ... I'm confident, but I'm not arrogant about it. I recognize I can't control that. ... He's as good as there is. I'd bet on him to turn this around. Hopefully, he's a Gator for a long time, but you never know. But he's given not one indication other than he's trying to fix the Gators right now.”
>>> An update on the O'Connell Center renovations that were delayed until March 2016: “We are full-speed ahead on that project. ... At the end of the day, we had too-aggressive of a time schedule, trying to get it done in a nine-month period. It couldn't work. We changed contractors, which cost us more time. So we decided to take a step back. A year from now, we will be started. That's a commitment to you and Billy Donovan and Amanda Butler and Rhonda Faehn and Mary Wise and the university community. It'll be a totally new facility when you walk in. ... It's going to be first class. It's $60 million-plus.” The latest artist renderings are expected to be available in the next month or so, Howard said, with some wiring and foundation abatement phases having already having, actually putting the project six weeks ahead of schedule.
>>> The urgency to build an indoor football facility -- after years of apparent reluctancy -- upon the arrival of new Coach Jim McElwain: “The O'Connell Center was always our backup. We didn't miss a lot of practice, but every now and then when there was bad weather we could go in the O'Connell Center. Well, that [option] wasn't going to be there this year. ... You just can't plan a practice facility on Dec. 4, when we hired Coach Mac, and start it Jan. 2. It doesn't work like that. You have to advertise for an architect; advertise for a contractor. So in reality, something that wasn't needed became needed now, but the plans for that were developing momentum throughout the fall. ... It was all designed and ready to go.” Foley debunked the notion the UAA is not in tune with the value of facilities by pointing to the $25 million renovation of the academic advisor center. “Less than 1 percent of the athletes here will play professional sports. Our job is to get them degrees.” The new and expanded Office of Student Life, which already has broken ground, will be a recruiting beacon, he said.
>>> Doing away with the student-ticket lottery: Hill explained the lottery was out-dated and the allocation was modernized to better service students. “Last year, we sold out our student seats for each game, but some were sold on a single-game basis. While the demand was still really strong, they weren't enough to justify a lottery system when anyone who signed up during the process got their tickets. We just felt it was best to clean that up. Based on the fact we sold out every game last year, we'll still be in a capacity scenario [this year] so the lottery wasn't necessary anymore.”
