Inside the Tigers' Den

A conversation with Mike Waddell: Part I

Towson's Director of Athletics Mike Waddell has had a busy summer as he prepares for his third season as the head of the athletic department. So when I bumped into him at the Colonial Athletic Association (CAA) Football Media Day at M&T Bank Stadium in downtown Baltimore on July 27, we had an opportunity to touch on subjects as wide-ranging as CAA expansion, the progress of Tiger Arena, the upcoming football season and how men's basketball is dealing with the being ineligible for the postseason due to low APR scores.

Regarding expansion, CAA presidents and athletic directors had kept talks private during the spring and summer as rumors and speculation swirled. With VCU leaving for the Atlantic 10 this season followed by next year's exodus of Old Dominion to Conference USA and Georgia State to the Sun Belt, one might understand why there might be concern for fans of one of the top mid-major conferences in the nation. Waddell and his conference colleagues went to work on a plan to find new members for tfootball and the league overall.

Old Dominion and Georgia State will remain in the CAA for this season, though they will not be eligible to compete for the league postseason in any sport.

"The league came together at Hilton Head and in Washington D.C.," said Waddell. "We spent 13 of 30 days in June on CAA 'stuff'. At this juncture in our development in Towson, this is a sacrifice. The conference is important but mission critical is what we're doing at Towson. It was a grind of a month but in the end it accomplished a lot of good."

Finding schools to fit the CAA isn't a simple task. Some schools may be looking just to join the league for football, others may want to join for football and the overall conference while still more may not have football but are interested in the league primarily for basketball.

"We have a variety of contingencies that we put together," said Waddell. "We have a football conference, and then a conference for the basketball and our olympic sports and a host of associate members. Both leages are branded CAA yet are chartered differently, have different membership and different goals and objectives. We are getting ready for another wave of activity here in August, September and October. Nobody in our league is breaking rank and we're holding to the same ideal which is to try and make the best match. You do that behind the scenes."

The CAA has been based in Richmond since the '80s, but with VCU now gone, the closest schools to CAA headquarters are now William & Mary (about 50 miles) and George Mason (about 90 miles). The CAA Men's Basketball Tournament has been held at the Richmond Coliseum since 1990 but that location will likely move in the next few years.

"Do you leave Richmond?" said Waddell. "When? How? They've been a great partner to the CAA for [over 20 years]. At one point, we had two institutions in Richmond [VCU and Richmond] and now we have none. Do you weigh the neutral site against the opportunity to have a destination location? Do you look to re-brand the CAA? Do you look to strengthen where it's always been? There are a lot of things that have to be taken into consideration for the tournament site. Everybody would have liked to have kept the original Van Halen together. At some point you grow. We are looking forward, not looking back. What opportunities do we have now to re-brand the league, to grow where we have not been able to grow before and to make it a better league than it's ever been in the past? I believe we're definitely headed in that direction."

One of the possible new destinations for the CAA Basketball Tournament could be the 1st Mariner Bank Arena in Baltimore. Towson hosted the old East Coast Conference Men's Basketball Tournaments back in the late eighties and early nineties at the Towson Center. That was at a different time when the Towson Center was a little more vibrant (without a wooden floor and decent lighting), and the Tigers were able to take advantage, winning back-to-back tournaments in 1990 and 1991. The CAA would require a much larger arena than the 5,000 or less that the Towson Center holds or the 5,200+ the new Tiger Arena will hold. The current site a the Richmond Coliseum seats a little over 11,000, while the 1st Mariner Bank Arena can seat close to 14,000 for basketball.

"I think it's a great location," said Waddell. "The big difference now in terms of Baltimore being a player is that we've gotten a great group together including Tiger Club President Don Fry, [president and CEO] of the Greater Baltimore Committee, [CEO and president] Tom Noonan of Visit Baltimore and Terry Hasseltine [director] of the Maryland Office of Sports Marketing, [manager] Frank Remesch from 1st Mariner Arena, and [president] Lee Corrigan from Corrigan Sports. We have the right people in the room, and they've made a dynamic first impression on the league and committee to select the new tournament site. It's a great opportunity for Baltimore for the first time to put our best foot forward and to do so with the power people in the room that can make things happen. That wasn't there before from the Towson end or from the City end of the equation. There were meetings in the past with Baltimore but nothing that ever materialized anything more than just a free lunch. Our goal with the CAA now is that Baltimore means business. This is a great city and a great location to host a basketball tournament."

Part II: update on Tiger Arena and men's basketball - coming soon...

Print Friendly Version

Towson University Athletics

Scoreboard

Inside the Tigers' Den