Interview of a High School Athletics Director

One of the most complicated and challenging responsibilities as the athletic director relates to the achievement of fiscal success and accountability in the department. The vision of the athletic department is to strive to develop to achieve a national level program by continuing to participate in sporting activities after each season competition, consequently earning recognition as the premier program in athletics in the region. In this light, the athletic department is committed to upholding integrity through the sporting organizational rules, the personal development of student athletes and through the maintenance of fiscal responsibility. In line with the commitment to maintaining fiscal responsibility within the department, three goals were identified. The initial goal is to develop an unbiased annual operating budget for inter-high school athletics. Eddie Comeaux (2015), informs this goal by advocating for the need to develop an operating budget that does not constrain the opportunities for female athletes. The second goal is to ensure that the athletic department is stable financially in the long-term. The third goal focuses on the need to establish a business operations administrative structure. This objective could be realized through putting in place personnel and procedures necessary for guiding the department’s financial excellence in future.  The department’s budget is primarily informed by prior reports and is developed annually. The need to use prior budget reports is vital for determining if the money being used to support the sporting programs makes sense (2014). The prior reports are also vital for directing the development of an unbiased annual operating budget, with the premise being to avoid spending so much money in one area since it is possible not to have the budget for some of the other opportunities that might arise. The need to use the previous budgetary reports is also a derivative of the idea that it is vital to acquire a better understanding of the potential challenges, consequently anticipating them and using suitable mitigation measures to contain the challenges.  The department relies heavily on ticket sales and fundraisers to maintain the athletic programs in the schools. For instance, several statewide and federal sports organizations offer grants to the school sport programs and projects. For instance, the Major League Baseball’s foundation provides money that could be used to fund baseball programs in various institutions (Manfred, 2018). The money obtained from the different sources, including parking fees during games, is used to fund different sports programs in the school. All the finds received by the school are processed using the cash receipts module in the institution’s system. The staff members in the accounting department are responsible for processing all the receipts, during which they classify them based on the source of the revenue by using the developed cash codes.  The expense categories included in the budget are inclusive of the salaries, benefits, and the bonuses for the coaching or departmental staff, scholarships, the maintenance, servicing of departmental debts, and utility payments. Other expenses include the severance payments to previous coach, team travel, uniforms, game-day and camping expenses, medical expenses, and insurance payments, among other expenses (Renshler, 2007). These are some of the standard different schools have to incur and most of them are follow provisions outlined by the NCAA. The expenses categories assist are the key determinants of the annual departmental budget, and they assist in the development of the budget that should be used, depending on the performance of different teams that might progress to higher competitive levels.

References

Comeaux, E. (2015). Introduction to intercollegiate athletics. Johns Hopkins University Press.  Lopiano, D. A. (2014). Athletic director's desk reference. Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics. Manfred, R. D. (2018). MLB in the Community 2017. Retrieved from http://www.mlbcommunity.org/downloads/2017_community.pdf Renshler, E. K. (2007). An Examination of NCAA Division I Operating Budgets: The Influence of Athletic Team Salience and Organizational Isomorphism (Masters). The Ohio State University.