Alden marks 10 years as Missouri’s athletic director
By MIKE DeARMOND
The Kansas City Star
COLUMBIA | Healthily tanned and without a noticeable strand of gray hair on his head, Mike Alden chatted earnestly with then-University of Missouri-Columbia Chancellor Richard Wallace and mascot Truman the Tiger.
It was July 16, 1998.
Ten years after that first day of his tenure as the 15th man to serve as Mizzou’s athletic director, Alden’s hair is sprinkled with the salt of age and hard experience.
“I can’t believe it’s been 10 years,” said Alden, whose official anniversary in the director’s chair comes Wednesday. “We’ve been through so much.”
There was the tragedy of linebacker Aaron O’Neal dying after a voluntary summer workout with teammates in 2005.
“That was the low point,” Alden said, his voice wavering. “The absolute low point. For Aaron’s family, the football program, the entire university.”
But …
“I like where we are now.”
Where Alden is now is an office at the $75 million Mizzou Arena, under contract through 2012 at a guaranteed minimum salary of $525,000.
He guarantees that Missouri will sell at least 38,000 season tickets for a 2008 football season in which coach Gary Pinkel’s Tigers are a consensus preseason No. 6 in the nation’s football magazines. Ticket sales could top 40,000 for the first time in school history.
Last school year, 16 of Missouri’s 20 athletic teams qualified for postseason action. Seven Tigers teams ranked in the national top 25 according to the NCAA’s Academic Progress Rate. Missouri’s APR led the Big 12 Conference.
In June, Alden was honored as the athletic director of the year for the Football Subdivision Central Region.
And revenue streams — boosted to nearly full bank by MU’s 12-2 football team last season — are now heading for what could be an all-time high.
“It’s tracking at that,” said Alden. “We think that’s possible.”
Missouri’s coming athletic budget, Alden said, would top $50 million for the first time ever. “That’s about fifth-sixth-seventh,” Alden estimated of Big 12 budgets, behind big spenders Texas, Oklahoma, Nebraska and Texas A&M.
The day before Alden hired on 10 years ago, Missouri’s $13.8 million budget was no better than eighth in the Big 12.
The price of gasoline and other soaring transportation costs have Alden and every other American bracing for the next hike.
“We’ve budgeted 20 percent more (for transportation costs) for next year,” Alden said. “And we don’t know if that is the correct number, whether it should be higher or lower.”
Fuel costs aren’t the only thing that continue to sprout gray hairs out of Alden’s head.
While vindicated in his choice of Pinkel as football coach, Alden’s detractors complain that the hiring of Mike Anderson as men’s basketball coach — a move designed to clean up the mess over the ouster of Quin Snyder — has teetered between disappointment and disaster.
Missouri has gone from NCAA probation and the Ricky Clemons Era to last season’s 16-16 finish, the Athena Night Club affair and the recent transfer of starting guard Keon Lawrence to Seton Hall.
Missouri has not made the NCAA Tournament since the 2002-03 season.
Is this a make-a-tournament season for Anderson, or would another season of failure merely make the next one a win-or-else year on the hot seat?
“In this business, we all sit on seats that feel warm,” Alden said. “Look at me.
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To reach Mike DeArmond, Missouri reporter for The Star, call 816-234-4353 or send e-mail to mdearmond@kcstar.com
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