OREM — Mike Jacobsen has been the athletic director at Utah Valley State for the past 22 years. His job dictates that he is the man at the helm of Utah Valley's transition from the junior college ranks to playing in Division I. Earlier this week, Jacobsen took some time to sit down and answer questions for the Deseret Morning News.
DMN: What are some of the challenges you face in scheduling games with other schools?
JACOBSEN: Everybody told us that scheduling was going to be the hardest thing (about Division I), but it's not. The thing where it's starting to get a little tougher is with my men's basketball team — they've been so successful that people don't want to play us, because if they play us, they're going to play us because they want to win. If they're going to pay us money to play us, they for sure want to win. People want a patsy when they're playing us.
I think one thing we've got to be really careful of is that it's easy for us to get caught up in playing big-name schools. At the same time, we've got to play enough schools where we know that we have a good chance of winning, too, because you've got to give the kids confidence. You've got to let them believe in themselves. You can play all the big names you want, but if you're getting your can kicked, it's not doing you any good. And so we've got to have a balance between the teams that have good name recognition and on the other hand the teams that going in you know you have at least a 50/50 chance to win it.
DMN: The Utah Valley State student body president got elected on a platform aimed at bringing football to UVSC. Does what the student body president wants have an effect on what really happens?
JACOBSEN: I've worked with 22 different student body presidents over the years, and all but three or four of them have been very, very supportive of athletics. Many of them have helped us to improve our financial base by the raising of student fees. Basically, what we've put together is a five-year conference affiliation plan where we're going to increase student fees each year over the next five years, and that will make us more attractive for a conference.
If starting football is what we need to do to be more attractive to a conference, we're going to use this money to do that. If starting any other sport is what we need to do to get into a conference, then we're going to do that. Like I've said, we've put together a conference affiliation fee that is going to help us find a conference that is a good match for us and good for them as well.
DMN: Do you know how much those increased student fees are going to raise for your programs?
JACOBSEN: Over a five-year period of time, it's going to raise about $1.5 million.
DMN: In your athletic department, there doesn't seem to be a lot of diversity. Not counting secretaries, 11 of the 14 people working in the UVSC athletic department are white males, with only one minority and two women. Can you address that lack of diversity?
JACOBSEN: When we hire, we just hire the best people we can find and go from there. We have no agenda as we hire. Like I said, we just want to hire the best people we can that can come here and get the job done. Beyond that, we don't have anything that keeps us from hiring anybody that is right for the job.
DMN: Aside from the student fees increase that we've already discussed, what would you tab as your biggest accomplishment over the last three months in terms of building the athletic department?
JACOBSEN: The thing that kind of makes me chuckle as I look at the last three months is that on any given night, I can see I've got a team playing at Oregon State, I've got a team playing at Washington, I've got a team playing at New Mexico, I've got a team playing at Arizona State, I've got a team playing at UNLV — all on the same night or the same weekend. Whereas a few years ago, we were playing at Colorado Northwestern, Southern Idaho, the College of Eastern Utah, we were playing at Snow College. It is still amazing to me that we're playing the level of competition that we're playing today.
The week that was
SOFTBALL: UVSC (9-24) won two of five games over the weekend at the Wolf Pack Invitational in Reno. Both Wolverine wins came against St. Mary's and were by scores of 11-10 and 9-5; Utah Valley lost its other three games by a combined 28-3.
BASEBALL: The Wolverines (9-21) split four games with Southern Utah, beating the T-Birds 13-7 on Thursday and 6-2 on Friday before dropping both ends of a Saturday doubleheader to SUU.
TRACK AND FIELD: Competed Friday at the BYU Cougar Invitational. Tawny Judkins, Kari Snow, Mariama Salifu and Tiera Zaugg combined to run the women's 4 X 100 relay in 46.84 seconds, breaking the five-year-old school record by more than a second. Salifu (100 meters) and Bekah Meier-Poppinga (5,000 meters) snagged first-place finishes.
MEN'S RUGBY: Lost Saturday to visiting Utah 70-7.
On tap
SOFTBALL: three road doubleheaders: at Eastern Oregon, 11 a.m. Saturday; at Albertson College, 11 a.m. Sunday; at Southern Utah, 2 p.m. Tuesday.
BASEBALL: vs. Utah, 7 p.m. tonight and 1 p.m. Saturday; at Utah, 3 p.m. Friday; vs. BYU, 7 p.m. Tuesday.
MEN'S GOLF: at the Wyoming Cowboy Classic in Scottsdale, Monday and Tuesday.
TRACK AND FIELD: at Weber State, all day Saturday.
WOMEN'S GOLF: Idle.