Episode 57: Dr. Jeri Beggs
John Twork 0:09
welcome to Redbird Buzz. I'm John Twork from University Marketing and Communications. Our guest today is Dr Jeri Beggs, Illinois State University's 13th Director of Athletics in the NCAA division one era, and the first woman to hold the position. She assumed her current position on March 5 after serving as Interim Director of Athletics for nearly two years. And during that time, Beggs helped grow the Weisbecker Scholarship Fund by 30% and increased name, image and likeness dollars by over 400% for Redbird student athletes. She also secured OSF Healthcare as the official healthcare provider of ISU athletics. And Under her leadership, student athletes thrived academically, with the Redbirds setting a departmental GPA record of 3.45 in the spring of 2024. Before Beggs was named Interim Director of Athletics, she was a professor of marketing at Illinois State from 2002 to 2023 and served as the department's NCAA Faculty Athletics Representative for 14 years. It's my pleasure to welcome Illinois State University Director of Athletics, Dr Jeri Beggs, to Redbird buzz. What's the word Redbird, Jeri, let's start from the beginning. Tell me a little bit about yourself and also what brought you to Illinois State, to the college of business back in 2002?
Jeri Beggs 1:29
you know, most people probably don't know. I was born and raised in Lawrenceville, Illinois, which is a huge basket was a huge basketball town at that time. My four years in high school, we had back to back state championships, perfect in boys basketball, perfect season 68 and 0, wow. And so I think that's where my love of basketball and athletics started. I played a few sports in high school, but nothing serious. I went to SIU Carbondale, which where I met my husband getting my master's degree, and which was interesting to come to Illinois State after being a Saluki we did not love, no, the Redbirds, no, but we don't love the Salukis. I know, I know. So I root for the Salukis only when they're not playing the Redbirds. It's always Redbirds first. So we lived in St Louis for a while. I got my PhD there. We lived in Bloomington, Indiana for three years. My daughter was born there. My husband got his PhD there, and then we both came out onto the market at the same time. It's pretty difficult for faculty members to get jobs at the same university at the same time, and ISU offered us jobs within 24 hours of each other. So we looked at each other and I said, I guess we're going to be Redbirds, and we've never been sorry. It's been a fantastic place to raise a family. We both had great careers here. So that was 2002 we joined. I got involved right away with athletics. In terms of athletics Council, you know, you check a box when you're a brand new faculty member, and you could do the library or whatever, and I checked, I chose athletics Council. And so that's how I first got involved with ISU athletics, other than the fact that we had season tickets and raised our kids at basketball games and things like that. Yeah,
John Twork 3:17
and then you got involved as the NCAA Faculty Athletics Representative role that you were in for 14 years. Why did you decide to take on that responsibility, and what all does that role entail?
Jeri Beggs 3:30
Yeah, so again, you know, joined the athletics Council, was on that for one year as just a member, and then they asked me to be the chair. And so I was the chair of that group for five years, and then it was just kind of a natural thing to roll into the faculty athletic rep position. For those that don't know, every NCAA institution has to assign one faculty member to be the bridge between athletics and the university. And at the time, Sheahon Zenger, Dr Sheahon Zenger, who, by the way, I have joked I either give him credit for the position I'm in now, or I blame him for the position that I'm in now. But he asked me to become the faculty athletic rep, and honestly, I didn't really know exactly what that role was, but I learned over the years, I kind of made it my own and really had a great some great opportunities and great experiences. So faculty athletic rep is in charge of a student monitoring, student athlete well being academic integrity and institutional control. And so I loved getting to know the student athletes. I right away started serving on some national committees, and I ended up serving on the committee on academics, which is a national I ended up since serving on the NCAA board of directors, which was fascinating. And then at the end of my time, I served on the transformation Committee, which was 21 hand picked people across the nation asked to basically re imagine what college athletics might look like. So great opportunities, wonderful experience. And I think. Is what led on debate that the President President to say she's got some credibility. She knows what's going on nationwide, and then asked me to become the interim so great experience as the faculty, athletic rep,
John Twork 5:12
the transformational committee, so was your vision as a committee close to what it's turned into?
Jeri Beggs 5:20
Well, a lot of the things you're seeing happen right now, we were certainly talking about. But no, I don't think anyone ever imagined what we find ourselves in. I don't think anybody ever imagined, you know, million dollar players. I did say to them at one point when we were talking about NIL and the changes, I said, whatever you imagine, multiply that by 100 because as a marketer myself, I said, those crazy marketers, they're going to think of all kinds of things to do with student athletes. Well, that's not really where it's ended up being as crazy. It's crazy what these collectives have been able to come up with, what donors are willing to give in order to buy a winning team. So I don't think we had any any idea that it would be so expensive, I guess is what I'd say.
John Twork 6:06
Yeah, and we'll get to the changes in college athletics in a little bit. But back to you personally. So in May of 2023, you were ending the near nearing the end of your academic career. I heard that you had your retirement papers either turned in or ready to turn in. They were turned into university, okay? And President Tarhule approached you and said, We need to fill this role, interim athletic director. Are you interested? And you said, Yes. Why did you say yes, yeah. So
Jeri Beggs 6:37
let me go back just a minute. When I turned in my retirement papers. I really wasn't planning on being done. I'm, you know, still in my 50s. I really didn't plan on being completely finished, but I had my 30 years in, yeah, and the way our retirement system works, you know, you can leave after 30 years and and get paid your retirement and then go do something else. And I was just looking for a new a new challenge. Never imagined the new challenge would be interim athletics director. Honestly, when the previous Athletics Director, when we found out that he was leaving, my name, never occurred to me in any form or fashion. I was just thinking of, who could it be? Who are we going to get? so when the President I was pulling into my garage, actually at eight o'clock on Thursday night, right after it been and he said he wanted to talk to me about who could potentially be the new AD. And then he said to me, some people have said, maybe you could do it. And it blew me away. It never in my wildest imagination. I mean, marketing professors don't usually become athletic directors. Sure, I saw it as an opportunity to serve. I love the Redbirds. I wanted good things for them. The President was looking for somebody external from the department, and I did worry. I remember saying to my husband, I have two questions, can I do the job and will I like the job? And the first one was really more of a concern for me, because I, at that point, thought it was a temporary job, and you can tolerate almost anything for a few months. I didn't want to harm the department in any way, and so within like a 24 hour period, I called so many people and said, Do you think I can do this? Please be honest with me. And they all said, yes. What I was worried about was that I'd never been inside of an athletic department. I'd never coached a team. I didn't play college sports, and sometimes I still worry a little bit about those things. But what I found out was what they really needed was, first of all, somebody to come in and care about the staff, and then somebody to do a better job of being a partner with campus and with the community. My marketing background has helped with that. I've been around for a long time. I think people trust me. I was a fundraiser in my 20s for SIU Carbondale, and so fundraising is a part of my DNA. And so a lot, lot of what I worried about, really, I don't think, ever came to fruition. We have 14 head coaches that their job is to know how to coach their sport. I don't have to understand soccer, which, by the way, I still don't understand very well. Two of us. Yeah. So, yeah. So when he you know, and again, the first time he asked, he said, two to three months. By the next day, he said, Oh, six to eight months. And then, of course, before I finally got the interim tag removed. I think it was 22 months, so I ended up doing it for a lot longer, but I also got more and more invested, right, more and more involved, more and more engaged with the staff. And I wanted to see some of those things through.
John Twork 9:34
Tell me about some of the challenges you faced. You knew it was going to be a challenge taking on the interim role. So what were some of those challenges that you had to sort of take head on?
Jeri Beggs 9:34
Yeah, so in the beginning, of course, you know, there'd been a brouhaha, scandal, chaos, whatever you want to call what happened that spring, and so I felt like I'd had to do a lot of I'm sorries. And you know, we're going to do better. Our donors and fans and supporters actually turned the page. Really quickly. Okay, let's move on. And I did everything I could to be everywhere I could be in order to get to greet and meet all of those, all of those people. I guess some of the challenges I wasn't completely prepared for is how legal everything is. You know, I spend lots of time with our General Counsel because there's just so many legal issues in athletics, so I was a little surprised by that. We have budget issues across campus, and athletics certainly is participating in that. So lots of budget decisions that had had to be made. But again, the parts that I really have enjoyed are getting out in the community, working with campus. Our student athletes are fantastic. Our coaches are fantastic, and so it's been good to get involved absolutely
John Twork 10:46
at the same time, what were some of the successes that you achieved during those 22 months with the interim title that you're proud of?
Jeri Beggs 10:53
you know, I think we're doing fantastic in the classroom, and sometimes that gets overshadowed by wins on the court, in the field, but we have broken record after record in terms of academics. I do worry what's happening in the world of college athletics. Academics is going to be downplayed. It's not going to be as big a deal. So I love that we are still continuing to do incredible things. Every semester, we'll have over 100 student athletes with perfect four point zeros. Our women's sports have always been good students, but our football team keeps having over three point zeros every semester --they broke a record. Recently, our men's basketball team has had five consecutive record breaking semesters under Coach Ryan Pedon so that makes me really happy. We've had some success on the you know, and the competition too-- our football team went to a play the playoffs and won a game men's and women's basketball just wrapped up really exciting post season play that I think has everybody really excited about where we're going next year. Gymnastics won its conference title. I mean, I know there are tons of other accolades I could be talking about in terms of our 19 sports. I'm also really, really proud of the community events that we've had since I've joined the faculty. Joined the faculty, joined the department, and not because I ran them, but my staff did the balling on Beaufort event, the Uptown Normal event, where we replaced hoop fest with this outdoors has been fantastic. Partnership with the with the community. I loved the Illinois Wesleyan exhibition game, where we had men's and women's basketball, and over 6000 people showed up for a, you know, an exhibition game. That was fantastic. The Horton game. We've done a lot of really fun things, I think that have been really, really good. The State Farm million meal pack last September, where over 4000 volunteers from campus State Farm, the community showed up and packed over a million meals. So those kind of community and campus things, IHSA events being hosted here. I'm really, really proud of those.
John Twork 12:57
So you went from thinking, Okay, I'll do this for a couple of months to 22 months, and then it came time to hire the permanent Director of Athletics. You put your hat in the ring. Why did you decide to do that? Yeah,
Jeri Beggs 13:09
you know, some people remember the fact that I said early on that I would not participate in search, and that was probably a little bit of not being naive to me, if you are an interim and they decide to go search, the message is, they think they can do better than you, you're not the right person for the job. And yet, what it turned out to be mostly, was it's, it's a large public institution, and they have rules and regulations, and they had to do a search. So I did have to ask myself, you know, how long do I want to do this? It is a very different lifestyle than a faculty lifestyle, where we're on, you know, 10 month contracts, and we have off months in the summer and breaks at Christmas this job, there's really no breaks even summer, where we talk about being downtime, it's a myth. There really is. There's just no downtime in college athletics. Luckily, I'm an empty nester. My husband can be left unattended decent amounts of time, and I just found out I had a lot of energy for it. I'm tired some days, but I have loved seeing the outcomes. I've loved seeing the success for the student athletes, getting to know them, getting to know the coaches. I debated, I really did, but I just feel like there was work left undone. And I think one of the things we obviously need to talk about is the changes in college athletics. I felt like they needed someone to take them through these next couple of years in college athletics, because they're going to be rough ones, yeah, and I worried if someone else came in that it would take them a while to acclimate, sure, and then I just really wanted to be the person that helps them through these next difficult days. Yeah, yeah,
John Twork 14:55
and we'll get to that in a little bit, but overseeing dozens of. Coaches, 17. You mentioned head coaches and then 400 student athletes. What does that mean to you? Personally?
Jeri Beggs 15:07
Yeah, if I think too much about it, I would lose sleep, that's for sure. But honestly, we have such incredible head coaches and we have really good support staff around them that I leave them to their own devices, right? They, you know, Brock's--Brock does not need my help with with football, Kristen and Ryan do not need my help with with basketball. So I leave them, I support them, but then I let them do their jobs. They do. They do a great job with the student athletes. Again. We are killing it in academics competition. They do good community service. I got an email the other day from a man who was in the hotel with the baseball team up in Valpo, wanting to let me know just what incredible young men they were and how friendly and personable and polite they were, and that's what I want. That's how that's what I want for Redbird athletics. I want us to be known for that. I see coaches sometimes on the sidelines that are just acting awful, in my opinion. I know that probably makes me sound like a little old woman, you know, who doesn't like them, stomping and cussing. But I don't want my coaches to be like that. I want us to be known for good behavior, character, integrity, sportsmanship, and my coaches do a great job with that. Yeah. Makes me proud of them.
John Twork 16:30
You're the first woman to be named the Director of Athletics at Illinois State. Linda Herman fulfilled the interim role several times, multiple times. Yeah. And when you consider Illinois state's rich history when it comes to women's athletics, trailblazing female administrators and coaches. What does it mean to you to become the first woman you're part of that history now to lead the department as AD?
Jeri Beggs 16:54
It makes me really, really proud, but it also is very surprising to me, because just what you said, we have an incredible history of Title Nine and strong women leadership. Linda Herman should have been the first female AD. There's no doubt about it. And I, I've said several times, you know, I kind of honor her with this, but, yeah, I'm very honored by it. But you'll, you will, if you, if you were paying attention, you're seeing more and more women become athletic directors across the country. I think when I first got the job, I looked and there were less than 50 females out of the 360 d1 institutions. I see women being hired every day into into athletic director positions, and so that that makes me feel good when I, again, when I took this position out of the 12 Missouri Valley Conference schools, I was the only female. Now there are four of us, so four out of 12. So we're making our way to the top. I think women have such a natural caring mentality for staff. They're calm, cool, collected, good communicators, and so I think you're going to see more and more of
John Twork 18:04
as college athletics faces its biggest challenges ever. It's time to put women in charge, right? Let's talk about the ever changing landscape of college athletics, surely presenting its challenges and maybe some opportunities along the way too, right? So name, image and likeness, modifications of the transfer portal, conference realignment, how is ISU remaining competitive and forward looking during this challenging time?
Jeri Beggs 18:29
Yeah, you know, I think if we could go back and redo some things, we would probably not have all of these change at exactly the same time, the transfer portal, immediate eligibility and NIL, the legal lawsuits, everything happened within a really short period of time, and so it's created kind of utter chaos in the in the field, ISU has always been a relatively well resourced institution compared to others in the Valley. We support all 19 sports at a high level. Some schools choose not to do it that way. They'll just, they'll be all in on men's basketball, and they don't support their other sports very, very well. I don't want us to have to do that, and yet, we are going to be faced with budget situations that we're going to have to make some decisions along the way. So a lot of people don't know, but there is a lawsuit out there called the house settlement. It was recently finalized that the judge is actually writing up the final word right now that's going to even have more implications, right? We've already dealt with transfer Portal, media, eligibility and nil. It's going to change us from scholarship limits to roster caps, and I l can be brought in house institutions can actually pay NIL out of their own dollars. So we're in for a big switch again. Now it's gonna it's gonna limit the big schools to $20.5 million they're calling it a salary cap. So all of that. It's just so difficult to figure out how that impacts kind of what we call ourselves, the mid majors--we have opted in. What that means exactly for us is yet to be seen. It'll be definitely a transition year for us as we try to figure out how we manage the landscape. The university is actually cutting budgets, not adding any money to the budget. And again, a part of that house settlement that a lot of people don't know is the NCAA is going to reduce our distribution by half a million dollars a year. Wow, yeah. So that's a lot of money for us. For a power 4, half a million dollars, not such a big deal. For us, It's a lot of money, and we're gonna pay it for 10 years, so $5 million essentially over 10 years. What's frustrating about that is that this is a back damages pay $2.8 billion settlement, back damages for all the TV money that the power four received and didn't share with its student athletes. So you probably know this, we didn't get any of that money right. Our student athletes are not going to get any of the back damages. And yet we are, because we're part of d1 we are on the hook for half a million dollars a year for 10 years. So and everyone, everyone else in the Missouri Valley, to some degree, we're the highest dollar amount. So just just so much going on, legal changes, budget issues, rule changes. There's just so much going on.
John Twork 21:30
Yeah, yeah. So are donors more important than ever before? Are corporate partnerships, community partnerships, more important than ever before? \
Jeri Beggs 21:38
Absolutely they are. And, you know, nil is an interesting one, because some of our older donors have been absolutely adamant. We are We will never contribute to NIL. We don't believe in it. We think it's ruining college basketball, and that's who it's impacting the most, is men's basketball, women's basketball, some football, some but definitely impacting men's basketball. What's interesting is some of them have kind of come around. For your listeners who know we had some really outstanding sophomores on our team this year, Johnny Kinzinger, Chase Walker, Shannon Dowell on the women's side, and so even those who said, I don't want anything to do with NIL, I'm never going to give you a dime when it came to thinking, you know, I want to hang on to Johnny, I want to hang on to Chase. I want to keep Shannon. So a few of those opened their open their wallets and said, Okay, I'll give you some money on the NIL side in order to hang on to these players. Think about this though, that same person might have given us a donation that would have gone into the foundation, sure, and would have allowed us to pay for nutrition or strength and conditioning or travel. So it's interesting. It's actually hurting our fundraising efforts on the on the foundation side, but you can't win without NIL. Yeah, and in the valley, we're probably in the bottom half of NIL, now we've made some huge strides. We're doing better and better again. Some of our donors are starting to come around to helping us out, but it's a big deal what your NIL bucket is in order to recruit student athletes and then hang on to student athletes once they get good.
John Twork 23:19
Yeah, yeah. Putting your marketing professor cap back on what kind of opportunities, even beyond the money does NIL produce for these student athletes, a chance to market themselves and have their own brand and and get paid for it?
Jeri Beggs 23:34
Yeah And you know what that's that's the sweet spot, in my opinion, and we do that, especially in a lot of our other sports, where a student athlete will say, you know, I love Smoothie King, and I go there all the time. And so I'm gonna go talk to the business owner and say, you know, could we work out a deal where I will post and promote your business in exchange for product? Some of them are just taking product. Others are getting small amounts of money. So it has, it has encouraged them to build their brand, build their social media influence, get lots of, you know, followers, lots of content. And to me, that's the best part of NIL what it's turned out to be in a lot, especially the bigger schools, is here's a check for a million dollars. And they almost always say you got to do some autographs and you got to do some community service. But it's really not about building the brand. It's not about working off that million dollars in hourly work. It's more of a in order to get you here, we know we're going to have to give you a huge amount of money. So we've had some student athletes be very entrepreneurial, go out and get their own deals, do great work. And then they also learn how to negotiate. They learn how to live up to a commitment. They we have Brendan White is our Director of NIL. He'll help them look at contracts. And they have to remember, they have to take taxes. So, you know, a lot of them, you know, they're learning life lessons. It's. Stuff. Yeah, I like it.
John Twork 25:01
Yeah, you mentioned the basketball seasons, both finishing up in both teams, the men and the women, making deep postseason runs. And now what follows basketball season now is transfer portal season, and it's kind of a scary time to be a mid major fan, but the Redbirds seem to be faring well this season, as you mentioned, some really good sophomores on both teams, but many of them are have announced that they're returning. So can you talk about why Illinois State seems to be kind of an anomaly this year?
Jeri Beggs 25:30
We really are. If you would have asked me a month ago, what are the odds that we hang on to chase Johnny, Jack Ty, you know, basically the entire team. What are the chances we do that? I wouldn't have bet anything, absolutely nothing, because some of the they're young and very talented, and I just thought they had opportunities that would be hard to turn down. I give Ryan and his staff, and then also the collective who worked really hard to get some new dollars in the door. And they they love the culture. They love this place. CBI is not the tournament you want to be playing in postseason. But Ryan came to me and said, you know, the way, the way the Missouri Valley tournament ended with a, you know, a really rough game against Belmont. He's like, I just don't want that to be the last feeling this these, this group has, yeah, I think they, they could really benefit. And it did exactly what we wanted them to do, which was get everybody excited about next year. We won that tournament. Student Athletes started committing to coming back. I think it's contagious when they leave, it's contagious when they stay. And so they all got excited. Chase was first, and then you saw the dominoes on the women's side. That one went a little longer, because the way the WNIT played, it took longer to play that out. We were hoping to hang on again to all of our star players. You cannot blame a student athlete, though, for seeking better financial situation. And so Shannon, we put together a really good package, I thought, but Shannon decided to enter the transfer portal. And again, you cannot blame a student athlete for wanting to do that right, not only the money, but also just test your abilities to find out what you can do at another level. So yeah, but no, I I'm thrilled with what we've been able to hang on the student athletes that we've been able to hang on to in the culture that we've built.
John Twork 27:26
It kind of gives you a glimmer of hope that there is something more, perhaps, than money, that the culture and the you know, it's what every coach preaches, right? They want to create this atmosphere for their student athletes to grow and to have friendship and
Jeri Beggs 27:41
well, and I think again, you know, to turn down more money, which I'm sure they all could have gotten, you have to have something that they they want to be a part of, right? So not only can we win, but also I like these people, and I'm comfortable here, and I'm getting a good education. And, you know, the list goes on and on, so I couldn't be happier with men's and women's basketball and the culture they've built, and I'm really excited about next year.
John Twork 28:05
Yeah, I think the community is too and that having student athletes stay for, you know, three years, and fans being able to identify who their favorite players are, that's you talk about marketing. That is about the best kind of marketing. Well,
Jeri Beggs 28:20
we were talking about Johnny, you know, literally, he kind of owns this town. You've got little kids painting blood on their faces and walking around with that, that T shirt and sweatshirt that has him with blood on his face. I mean, they all want to be, want to be Johnny, yeah, absolutely, it's exciting. And then, you know, on the Shannon side too, you know, she had so many little girls so excited. So mid majors have always been about hanging on to their you know, freshmen through seniors. That's one of the reasons they've done well, I think, in the in the tournaments, is they end up with older teams. We're not going to see that nearly as much in the future with the transfer portal. People jump schools all the time, but I love that we've hung on to this, this group.
John Twork 29:03
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Let's talk a little bit about facilities, also a really important thing, more expensive than ever before in college athletics, also right? But during your time, you were able to get naming rights for the OSF healthcare athletics Training Center. Can you talk a little bit about that facility and how that's benefited student athletes as over the past few years? Well, I
Jeri Beggs 29:27
think when we, when they built it, they, they were thinking, you know, football is really going to benefit. It's got a football field painted on its soccer is painted on to it. I think they were thinking right away about some, some of those sports, what I've been amazed at is how Every team wants time in there. Golf wants time in there because they can actually chip and see the full trajectory. You're not just hitting into a screen. All the teams like to get in there and run and do like drills and sprints and stuff, because it's 110 yards and so they, you know. It's great for that. I think every sport practically has benefited from that space. We essentially let our sports have it for basically a year. We didn't have bathrooms right away, and so until we could have bathrooms, we couldn't rent it out. And I think they got a little spoiled, because they literally had it, you know, 24 hours a day at their disposal last year, we said, Okay, we've got the bathroom. We need to start renting this place out. We promised the community we would do that. And also we need the rental income. And so now it's everybody's kind of jockeying for position, like, When can I get into especially in the winter months, it's cold here, right? Yeah. Coach Spack has said in the first year in there. He forgot how nice it was to have an indoor practice facility, because you get, you are so much farther along in your training. And some of his older players said he'll, he'll never let him go in there. He uses the facility. He does. He definitely, you know, when it's raining or when it's lightning or when it's, you know, 10 degrees, you don't really get a good practice. And so he has been a big user. But all our sports, they really have benefited from it.
John Twork 31:07
My sons call it the Reggie's Kids Club dome, because their favorite part of going to football games is running around on that field that looks like the real field before football games. Everyone loves it.
Jeri Beggs 31:17
Every little kid that comes in there says, Can I run down to that end, and I go, Well, it's, it's farther than you think it is. For for the listeners who haven't been in, you need to make take an opportunity when you get it to go inside. It is obviously a gigantic looking building from the outside, but I think it actually looks bigger from the inside 110 yards. It's super tall. It's, it's a great facility. It's been an interesting facility for us because we'd never had anything like it on campus. So one of the things that's interesting to me about it is, if it snows or ices, we have to turn the temperature up to 80 degrees indoors, because you cannot allow anything to land and stick. Oh, so think about it's literally a balloon, yeah, think Macy's Day Parade balloon. Those guide wires you see on the outside are holding it down. Ah, so it is it. And if you go in, you feel, sometimes people actually feel their ears, sure, the pressure of their ears popping so nothing can land on it, because it would bring it down. So 80 degrees, the student athletes don't like that, which is funny, we usually keep it like 65 and they like that temperature. But when you have to crank it up to 80 to keep the ice off of it, they're sweating.
John Twork 32:27
It's ready for the August season opener. Right sweating in there any other facilities projects, whether that's maintenance or new facilities, being planned in the near, long term future.
Jeri Beggs 32:39
Another one that's relatively new as the Paul DeJong hitting facility for baseball. That one has opened up in the last three years, four years, something like that. It is all finished. And obviously that's a wonderful facility. Paul has been back to see it, which is wonderful, and it's got the name on it. The other one that's coming up is where the Jim and Carol Mounier golf hitting Bay, which is going to be out at the golf course in the Jim and Carol Mounier training facility out there. I think it's called the golf Performance Center, and it's essentially what, maybe what you see at an X golf or something like that. It's, it has, it's a, it's a trailer looking shape, and then it has large garage doors that open up. And then student athletes can stay in the warm and sure warm building and actually hit hit golf balls. It has simulators and and force plates and all kinds of things attached. So we're hoping to have that done over the summer. So that will be our newest facility. We have 13 facilities that we're in charge of here at athletics. I think that will be the 14th, and some of them are very old, like Horton. So as you might imagine, we're constantly trying to maintain those facilities. CEFCU is going to have to have a new roof in the next couple of years. When it was built in 1989 I think they gave it 25 years for the roof. We're past 25 years, and we have a maintenance program that monitors it, but you don't want to have to replace it in an emergency situation, and you want to plan and because we're going to have to be out of this space for months, wow. And so we're working on, what does that look like? How do we When do when do we do it? And yeah, and all of that. So it there's a lot of facility issues on a day to day basis.
John Twork 34:23
The new basketball floor looks great. That's another
Jeri Beggs 34:25
Yes, love that. And that was all donor funded the court. And the basketball goals themselves were all donor funded, which we appreciate that so much. Doug Collins name and, you know, signature, he loves it. Yeah. It looks so great on television, with so much lighter and brighter. A funny behind the scenes story is it's almost like when you get a new car and you don't want to ding the new car you park. So facilities are literally like, nobody on the court. And the marketing people are like, we sold a promotion that allows kids to come out on the court. What about their shoes? And can they wipe them Off, because when you have this beautiful new court , you don't want anybody --I have myself got down on my hands and knees out there. I got a scuff here. We got to fix this so it wasn't cheap, and we want to take care of it. Yeah, the beautiful thing too, besides just the show of it, it's much easier to put down and take up. Oh, and we, because of the way our facility operates, we need that floor to go in and out on a fairly regular basis. And so it's cut the time for that more than half. And the other one was starting to literally, the top was coming away from the bottom, and they were having to do all kinds of repairs on it. So much, much better. Yeah, much,
John Twork 35:38
much better. The only significant stain so far as just Johnny's blood, Johnny's
Jeri Beggs 35:42
blood probably had to get out there. Yeah, no, it's it's great. We're loving it.
John Twork 35:48
Academic success is a hallmark of Redbird athletics. It has been for a long time, and you mentioned the recent success. Can you talk about the support systems that are in place for Redbird academic success, and then after that, also, I'd like to talk a little bit about mental health, and that's, you know, something that's really important too, and perhaps plays into that, right? Yeah,
Jeri Beggs 36:10
so lots of different ways that I think they get support for academic success. One, starting with the coach and the culture that they establish that academics come first, right? Years ago, when I was the faculty athletic rep, occasionally, we would have, you know, like, you can't be a nurse, you can't be an athletic trainer, because the schedules just don't align. Well, we've made adjustments so that we have nurses now as student athletes, we have teachers again. They may have to spend a little extra time in order to get their their in class experience, but we have student athletes pursuing pursuing all majors. So I love that, and the and the coaches sell that and live by it, but they we also have an academic study center, the Karin Bone Study Center, that does a great job. And student athletes have all kinds of resources there. The NCAA holds them to a certain standard too, which I'm glad they've stuck with that, you know, makes us all focus on on that Sure. I also would say they have really good advisors. We have to monitor progress towards degree called PTD. We have to, we have to monitor APR, Academic Progress rate. So again, those are all NCAA standards that we have to meet, or they're ineligible, or we could have a postseason ban or lots of other penalties. So there's lots of external but, but I think it starts with the coach, and then we have good support services around them. We also mental health. We also have our own mental health provider. She is housed in Dr Lindsay Maxon. She's housed in the Student Counseling Center so that she has access to the computer system and etc. But she is dedicated to athletics, and then we also do a lot of things around that. So OSF provides a mental health care provider that comes once a week, and she has an office here in CEFCU. So we have a couple of people we refer student athletes to. They want to see somebody that looks like them. They can seek out a different person. So we have lots of ways that we support them in mental health. And you're right, it has become a big issue over the past 10 years, and the NCAA mandates that you provide resources.
John Twork 38:26
Yeah, that's fabulous. You signed a contract through 2029 What do you hope to accomplish over the next four years of that contract? Yeah,
Jeri Beggs 38:36
you know, I haven't really thought about four years. I've thought more about just the next couple of years, because, again, this year will be a huge transition year as we settle into this new idea of roster caps versus scholarship limits. Some of our program, some of our teams, are going to have to dial back the number of student athletes that they have. You hope to do that in a natural way, not, not basically cutting, cutting a student athlete. So we're gonna have to deal with that, figuring out ways to get our NIL dollars up in order to be competitive. You hope that you spend that money, but in return, you also sell more tickets and get more sponsorships and get more donors. So you hope it actually turns around and pays off in the long run when you win, right? So we've got to work our way through that. Coming up with half a million dollars out of the budget is going to take some some effort. So there's a lot of those kinds of things I never would have, you know, started a strategic plan as an interim. So that's one of the things that's on my list is to get started working on a strategic plan. It won't be the full blown effort that the university just went through, but we need to know what are our pillars, what are our strategic initiatives for the next three or four years? So again, I'm not really thinking 2029 and we're thinking like, what do I need to accomplish in the next couple of years? Yeah.
John Twork 39:59
Yeah, you know, fresh off the men's basketball tournament that saw four number one seeds making it to the championship. And there's so much talk of the power 4-- Is there anything that gives you hope, optimism about being a mid major school, and what opportunities there might be for a mid major school in this changing, turbulent time in college athletics?
Jeri Beggs 40:03
Well, I think it's going to be harder, yeah, and I hope that what we saw is not a trend, that we that this won't be the case every single year. I hope that occasionally, there's still a Cinderella that we can talk about, you know, Florida, Atlantic or what? I hope there's Illinois State? Yes, absolutely, absolutely. You hope there's a story like that, but I do think that the cards are stacked against us, and they're stacking up. It's going to get harder and harder. Used to be you could hang on to a good player because it wasn't very attractive to transfer and sit out a year. Well, now we have players transferring every year. Some of these kids are going to play for three or four schools, which is kind of crazy to me. Where do you go for homecoming if you've, if you've been to three schools whoever paid you the most well and I guess. And then also we have a, we have an alum who actually is, has been so generous to us. He was a quarterback on our football team, and he brings a group of guys back every year. He flies them here. He buys the tickets. When we went out to UC Davis, he, you know, met them all out there, and we were standing around talking, and we're like, this won't exist in the future, because they played football together for years. You're not going to have teams who play together for four years, and so that bond that they create is definitely, it's definitely going to change. I think it's just going to get harder and harder, because our good players, a lot of times, you know, if you look at the Missouri Valley Conference, they're going to move up. And again, I don't blame them for leaving. It's just the way it is now. But it is going to be harder for them to compete? Yeah, it's gonna be harder for us to compete. Yeah,
John Twork 42:05
last question, as we wrap up the interview and you are fresh into your title with the interim pulled out. But have you thought about your legacy at all, and what mark do you hope that you leave on Redbird athletics during this challenging time in college athletics. Yeah,
Jeri Beggs 42:23
I'm not a big legacy person. I don't really have a, you know, some athletic directors come in and they create an acronym and a program. I don't see myself doing that. What I, I guess, two things that I would like to have said about me when it's all over. One is that I cared regardless of what decisions I had to make or outcomes. I cared about Redbird athletics, I cared about the student athletes, I cared about the staff. And two, that I left it better than I found it. I'm really proud of where we're at. I'm proud of the progress we're making on the budget side. We're generating revenue, we're cutting costs, we're still competing, we're doing well academically. I'm proud of what we've accomplished so far, but we've got some headwinds ahead of us, so I hope when I walk away, I'm gonna leave it in good hands, and I hope that I left it better than when I got here.
John Twork 43:19
Jerry, thank you so much for your time. It's been an absolute pleasure and best of luck as you continue on in this role. Thank you very much.
That was Illinois State University Director of Athletics, Dr Jerry Beggs, you can stay up to date with Redbird athletics by visiting Go redbirds.com thanks for joining us, and be sure to tune in next time for more stories from beyond the quad you
Transcribed by https://otter.ai