CINCINNATI – Ty Neal was introduced Wednesday as the new baseball coach at the University of Cincinnati. Neal has some work to finish off as the pitching coach for Indiana as the Hoosiers begin play in the College World Series on Saturday before his new gig with the Bearcats becomes his sole focus.
UC’s baseball team hasn’t been to the NCAA tournament since 1974. It hasn’t won a conference title since 1995 when it won the Great Midwest. Brian Cleary led the program for the past 17 seasons, nine of which the Bearcats finished .500 or better, including a trip to the Big East championship game in 2008 when the team went 39-20.
Ty Neal wants to do for the UC baseball program what he helped Tracy Smith do for the IU program. The Hoosiers are playing in the CWS for the first time ever and are the first Big Ten team to reach Omaha since Barry Larkin was playing for Michigan in 1984. They won the Big Ten regular season championship outright for the first time in 81 years.
Neal’s hiring is bigger than the baseball program. It is a symbol of what athletic director Whit Babcock wants for the entire athletic program.
“You have to treat every sport as if it is the most important one on campus,” said Babcock. “People certainly follow football and basketball, and those certainly generate the revenue, but what we’re looking to do is elevate all of our programs across the board. That excites me.”
UC will be a part of the American Athletic Conference beginning July 1. It is a re-branding of the former Big East conference. Conference re-alignment in college sports has seemingly settled down. The American will be UC’s home for the foreseeable future.
While the initial reaction to the Atlantic Coast Conference choosing to invite Louisville into its ranks after adding Pittsburgh and Syracuse (and Notre Dame as a full member in all sports except football) was that UC was left out in the cold, Babcock is taking a different approach. His mindset is that it doesn’t matter what league UC is in because those other schools won’t define UC athletics.
“Our goal is to be the preeminent program in this league,” said Babcock. “If this league is here for a long time, great, and we want to be a leader in it. That’s not going to be easy. But if we can be the preeminent program in this league, great, and if things go crazy again then we’ll be positioned. Right now we just have to go after what’s in front of us.”
Football drives college sports. That’s not a secret, and it’s not a ground-breaking revelation. It’s also no secret that the AAC is going to be behind other conferences in terms of generating revenue through football television contracts.
Yet Babcock only has to look 100 miles southwest down I-71 to see what can happen when an approach based on building a well-rounded athletic program is put into play. Louisville didn’t get invited to the ACC because of its history in men’s basketball. It didn’t get invited to the conference because its football program has won a pair of BCS games, including a Sugar Bowl victory against Florida last season.
Louisville got invited to the ACC because it brings the entire package when it comes to college athletics.
According to the U.S. Department of Education’s Equality in Athletics database, Louisville was among the top 15 schools in the country in terms of its sports department budget in 2011-12 with an operating budget of $84.5 million. The Cardinals made money, more than $3 million, during that time.
UC’s budget in that same time was less than $40 million. It’s not a matter of growing the budget to the size that Louisville has. It’s a matter of showing the same kind of overall support to each team.
Neal will be a first-time head coach. He has the reputation as an outstanding recruiter and a coach who can develop talent. Between 2008-10 IU had 16 players selected in the Major League Baseball draft who weren’t drafted out of high school. Neal had a big part in recruiting those players to Bloomington and helping them become better players.
Neal said the UC job is the first head coaching position he’s seriously considered. He was an assistant under Cleary for one season, in 2004.
“Marge Schott Stadium sells itself,” said Neal. “The ability to have an indoor facility is huge for a Midwest program. When I was here in ‘04 we practiced in the (Armory) fieldhouse. Practice in the fieldhouse versus walking a recruit in that bubble and having a full 100 yards to do what you need to do is great.”
Neal said he became picky about his potential opportunities the last few years. Maybe five years ago he would have jumped at any chance to become a head coach but this is was the first time he chose to accept interview. He’ll be taking over a UC team that went 24-32 this past season. The roster included 23 players who were in their freshmen or sophomore seasons. Infielder Ian Happ was named a freshman All-American this season.
“There are good players here, there is no doubt,” said Neal. “I know enough about their freshman class and some of the recruits they have coming in that it was a no-brainer.”
Neal wants to eventually lead UC to Omaha. That’s his focus. In Babcock’s grand scheme, that shouldn’t shock anyone.
