9/8/2010 - NJSIAA Moving In Right Direction
There are no Rolls Royces or Bentleys to be found when you pull into the parking lot of the New Jersey State Interscholastic Athletic Association headquarters in Robbinsville.
There isn’t a butler waiting to greet you with a fresh towel or with a request for your jacket.
Executive Director Steve Timko is not decked out in the latest Armani suit and there are no gold handles on the doors or original DaVinci paintings on the walls, either.
No, sir. The opulence that is supposed to be the NJSIAA and its drunken-sailor spending ways were not evident to me as Timko greeted me with a smile before we sat down for a wide-ranging interview about the state of the organization a couple of weeks ago.
We will run a series of interviews from that talk on the Sports Beat throughout the fall.
The NJSIAA has come under some severe fire over the last year or so for it ticket-pricing policy for the state tournament. Assemblyman John Burzichelli (D-Gloucester) has led the charge and is on a personal vendetta to destroy the organization.
His words, not mine.
“I’m now vested in this issue,” Burzichelli told The Star-Ledger recently. “It’s my job to figure out where the oversight for high school athletics ends up.”
Says who? Who appointed Burzichelli to lead this one-man crusade? The people of South Jersey elected him to represent their interests, not to decide how much it will cost to attend a state basketball game.
And if that is the biggest concern Gloucester County has, than the people there should reconsider who represents them.
The NJSIAA is one of the oldest state athletic associations in the country and offers more championships (32) than any other in the nation and has been lauded for the way it has run its organization over the years.
Yes, there have been some serious problems with the NJSIAA over the years and after The Record of Hackensack did an outstanding expose on those issues, I believe the state has made a concerted effort to clean up its practices under the guidance of Timko who was named executive director in 2006, replacing Boyd Sands.
I was never a fan of the way Sands ran the NJSIAA and his almost complete disregard for the media except for a chosen few was irritating. But under Timko, the NJSIAA has been more transparent and media-friendly than any other director in my 20-plus years covering sports in the Garden State.
So when I sat down with Timko the first subject was Burzichelli’s one-man quest to take down the NJSIAA.
Timko said that the NJSIAA has done everything it has been asked to do and has cut its budget from $5.6 million to $5.2 million and has handed in all the paperwork requested under the state investigation requested by Burzichelli.
The state has also set up a program that if a family can't afford to attend a state tournament game, they will be let in for FREE. Yes, free. They would have to notify the school which would let the state know and it would all be kept confidential.
Still this has not satisfied the Assemblyman, and quite frankly, that is disturbing.
“I’m scared. I’m really worried,” said Timko. “I don’t know how this will end.”
The NJSIAA is already under the supervision of the Commissioner of Education so to extend that umbrella, which Burzichelli seems to want, seems like a duplication of services and more money from the taxpayers.
The NJSIAA’s budget comes from membership dues and the proceeds from state tournament games. Mainly hoops, wrestling, and track carry the load when it comes to revenue. The 433 member schools pay $2,150 per year which comes to just 14 percent of the budget. The rest of the money comes for the state tournament.
According to Timko, most schools pay more than that for its conference dues. And the state hasn’t raised its $80 state tournament entrance fee in years. But still, Burzichelli wants more.
The NJSIAA has a request into the Department of Education to raise its ticket prices for tourney games at outside venues like the new Meadowlands Stadium and Rutgers University.
But Burzichelli is dead-set against it. He feels the state shouldn’t use those venues because of costs and that watching a football game in an 80,000-seat stadium takes away from the game when only 5,000 fans show up.
I don’t know if Mr. Burzichelli ever played any sports, but I know I would have loved to have had a chance to play at the old Giants Stadium back in the day.
Burzichelli also has a big issue with the salaries drawn by the staff at the NJSIAA. Timko makes $136,000, a big drop from what Sands was making. The NJSIAA is made up of six directors and nine support staff and none of them are going to buy an island in the Caribbean off what they are making.
Now I know there are many of you who despise the NJSIAA and are behind Burzichelli and that is your choice. But do you really want more government interference, especially in high school sports?
The men and women of the NJSIAA are career educators and coaches and are the right people to oversee high school athletics in the state. Yes, they are not perfect, but I’m sure if the majority of the 433 member schools wanted things to change they would voice their opinion and change the way things are run in Robbinsville.
That hasn’t happened. Sure, many schools are upset about realignment and the whole public versus non-public issue, but no one is ready to disband the NJSIAA because of it.
It shouldn’t be up to one politician, who has now made this a personal vendetta, to decide who oversees high school sports. Timko and his staff are trying their best to cut costs and Burzichelli won’t give them an inch.
Did the state take too long to respond to Burzichelli’s legislation about ticket pricing three years ago? Yes. Should the NJSIAA be disbanded because of it? No.
Burzichelli should let Timko and his staff continue to make progress in cutting costs. I shudder of the idea of a bureaucrat who has no background in athletic administration running high school sports in one most talented states in the nation.
If you think it is a good idea for the state government to run things I suggest you take a trip to the local Motor Vehicles Commission and see how smooth things are running there since the government cut back on services.
And don’t you believe for a second that in a budget crunch, high school sports would be chopped in a heartbeat if the legislature had to find someplace to cut spending.
I know I may sound like a mouthpiece for the NJSIAA, but after touring the building and talking with Timko, I firmly believe they are trying to move in the right direction. Now let’s give them some time to do so.
That’s it for now, see you on the sidelines.
|
