SOUTHEAST BOOSTER CLUB A BIG BACKER

Southeast Missouri State University's booster club has been a big backer of the institution's move to Division I athletics.

Carl Ben Bidewell of Poplar Bluff is an ardent booster and president of the school's Board of Regents. He was a member of the board when the decision was made to step up to Division I of the NCAA.

Bidewell said that in 1988 his only real concern about such a move was whether the boosters could raise the kind of money needed to run a Division I athletic program. But Bidewell said his concern proved to be unfounded. The boosters club, he said, has done a good job of raising money. "They have exceeded my expectations and I think they have done a tremendous job," he said.

Richard McDuffie, athletics director at Southeast, has nothing but praise for the booster club, whose membership and financial support of athletics continue to grow.

McDuffie said that in addition to booster club donations, boosters generate a large share of the ticket sales.

The number of boosters has also climbed in the last three years from 820 to more than 1,000.

Cape Girardeau attorney and City Councilman Al Spradling III heads up the booster club. He believes the Division I move has sparked strong interest among the boosters.

"I think it has been positive," he said. "I think the boosters have become more active as a result of the move and become more attentive to the athletics at the university, and we have also increased our size because of that."

The average booster, Spradling said, probably contributes at least $500 a year to Southeast in donations and tickets purchased.

Booster club donations have continued to climb, even as ticket prices have increased.

Spradling said outside funding is vitally important to the university's operations. "We don't have to depend so much on state revenues for our athletic budget. We are controlled by our own destiny in a lot of respects and how much we raise from our boosters."

Marvin Rosengarten, who heads up athletic fund-raising efforts at Southeast, said the number of boosters really started climbing while the university was still competing at the Division II level. Membership, he said, increased by about 600 during a 10-year span growing from about 200 in 1979 to around 800 in 1989.

Rosengarten said part of that membership increase can be traced to the university's basketball success prior to entering Division I play.

Average attendance has declined slightly in football from 1990 the last year of Division II play to now. But basketball attendance has increased slightly since the university's last year of Division II play, 1990-91, university records show.

In 1990, average attendance for Southeast's football games at Houck Stadium was 6,806. Last fall it was 6,640. Basketball attendance climbed from an average of 5,370 in 1990-91 to 5,391 last season.

But since 1986, average attendance in both football and basketball has increased. In 1986, average attendance at football games was 5,820. In 1986-87, basketball games were still played at Houck Field House and the average attendance was 2,363.

Southeast started playing in the more spacious Show Me Center the next season and average attendance jumped to 4,920, and has gone up every year since then.

Ron Hines, sports information director at Southeast, said that as of the Murray State basketball game on Jan. 16, Southeast had played 96 collegiate contests at the Show Me Center, with combined attendance totaling more than 500,000. He said that's an average of more than 5,200 people per game since the facility opened.

In its first year of Division I basketball, Southeast led the Ohio Valley Conference in attendance. "No one comes close to us (in the OVC) in selling season tickets in basketball," McDuffie said.

University officials concede it takes a little time to develop top-notch sports teams in making the move from Division II to Division I, particularly in the high-profile sports of football and basketball.

"I think we have to be a little more patient and remember in our early years our focus is to be competitive in our conference and within our region," McDuffie said.

"This is our second year and we are established in volleyball and we are established in tennis. But we're still working our way into basketball and football because those are the toughest ones to make the transition, particularly football."

Football, he said, becomes a numbers game, having a large number of Division I-quality football players at the various positions.

"We are just not there yet," said McDuffie. But he added that Division I schools can recruit better student athletes.

Southeast's president, Kala Stroup, agreed. "It enables you to recruit a stronger athlete, both in athletics and also academically," she said.

McDuffie said that in Division I there's a greater emphasis and even requirement to recruit athletes who can compete in the classroom as well as on the court or field.

In recruiting athletes, Southeast is hindered by NCAA regulations prohibiting schools that move up to Division I from getting an automatic bid to the men's basketball championship tournament for eight years.

In its case, Southeast managed to get the penalty reduced to five years. After this season, Southeast will have to go through three more basketball seasons before it can compete in the conference post-season tournament and seek the automatic bid to the NCAA tournament.

McDuffie said Southeast's basketball team could still get an at-large bid to the tournament in the next few years, but it's very unlikely.

Just being able to compete in the post-season conference tournament is important financially. That's because the OVC's share of television money paid by CBS, which has the broadcast rights to the tournament games is divided among the OVC schools that play in the post-season conference tournament, McDuffie said.

The money going to OVC schools currently totals about $500,000 annually, McDuffie said.

"If we could compete in the OVC tournament, we could get about $70,000 each year whether we make it to the tournament or not," he said.

The presidents of the OVC schools have called on the NCAA to eliminate the eight-year rule for colleges and universities that join existing Division I conferences. In the last two years the OVC has accepted two former Division II schools into the conference Southeast and the University of Tennessee-Martin.

The current NCAA bylaw prohibits Southeast from earning the OVC's automatic bid until 1997; Tennessee-Martin won't be eligible until 1999.

Even with the recruiting handicap in basketball, Southeast officials believe the university has fielded competitive teams in its first year and a half of Division I play.

"I think, in my mind, we did a lot better than we could have ever hoped to do in our first year," said Hines.

In its first year of Division I men and women's athletics, Southeast tied for first in volleyball in the OVC, finished third in four sports, and came in fourth in five sports.