Denney says scholarship numbers are ‘no obstacle’

By Rob White
WORLD-HERALD STAFF WRITER

Just more than a week ago, Mike Denney was introduced on the campus of his new university as the man in charge of a paradox: a fledgling wrestling program expected to instantly contend for a Division II national title.

By now you know how this contradiction came to be. The University of Nebraska at Omaha cut its vaunted wrestling program. In response, Denney and 90 percent of his wrestlers fresh off a 2011 national title are picking up the pieces and moving to Maryville University in suburban St. Louis, a school new to the sport.

“We think we can be dang good,” Denney said.

But there is one ingredient to UNO’s past success that can’t be packed up and relabeled at Maryville, and it may ultimately be the key to Denney continuing UNO-like dominance there.

Scholarships.

At UNO, Denney had the ability to offer close to the Division II wrestling maximum of nine scholarships for at least the last seven years, according to UNO athletic department figures.

Those numbers show that UNO used 6.3 scholarship equivalencies or more for wrestling every year since 2004-05, and eight or more in four of the six seasons before this year, when the final number also is expected to come in at more than eight. (It’s standard procedure in Division II for the pool of scholarship money to be divided in varying amounts among a team’s members. For instance, UNO had 31 wrestlers on its roster in 2010-11.)

UNO won six of the past eight Division II national titles, finished no worse than third since 2002 and won its third straight title two months ago before the program was discontinued.

Athletic department numbers also indicate UNO was one of perhaps only two schools that approached the Division II limit of nine scholarships as of 2008-09.

Denney disagrees with some of UNO’s math when it comes to scholarships, citing the differences between in-state and out-of-state tuition and counting scholarship equivalencies rather than dollar figures.

UNO’s numbers are from research undertaken in 2008-09 looking at scholarship numbers for all its sports throughout the department — a routine activity for a university athletic department. In it, UNO contacted 44 wrestling programs — there are currently 48 total — and received funding information from 23 of them, including most of the sport’s powers. The average scholarship level among the responding schools was 4.3 per program.

It’s not clear what type of scholarship support Maryville will give its wrestling program.

Jeff Miller, Maryville’s vice president for enrollment and a key figure in making the program transfer happen, said the numbers are still fluid.
“Whether it’s four, five, nine or three, it’s kind of an unknown until we get closer to August,” Miller said.

Based on what some other private institutions have done, it wouldn’t be a surprise if Maryville came up with numbers that are in line with what UNO was used to.

Recently, start-up programs such as Newberry (S.C.) and Grand Canyon (Ariz.), both private schools, quickly became national contenders. In fact, four of the top seven teams at the national tournament in March are from private schools.

Why the success? An emerging private school model holds that sports programs are opportunities to attract tuition-paying students who help a school’s bottom line, even after scholarships somewhat mitigate the student-athlete’s tuition.

“Absolutely (true),” Newberry wrestling coach Jason Valek said. “We don’t receive the state aid that they could at UNO, but we’ve looked at it as generating revenue by the number of student-athletes we carry.

“If you have 50 wrestlers at $31,000 (for tuition), that’s (over) $1.5 million. You take out the scholarships and operating expenses and you’re talking about producing a half-million dollars for the institution.”

Even if Maryville doesn’t come through with maximum scholarship numbers, there is plenty of evidence to suggest that a Denney team can be highly competitive with a lighter scholarship load. For instance, three other top-five programs have said they offered 5.5 or fewer scholarships in 2008-09.

And Denney has a track record of winning with amounts similar to that. UNO typically competed with five wrestling scholarships before the recent upswing.
“We won a national championship with three scholarships, and we won when we had five,” Denney said. “What they’re trying to say is that if we hadn’t had more scholarships, we never would have been able to do it. Well, we did. So the heck with it.”

It’s not a given that schools with a high number of scholarships will win. Several programs in UNO’s study that reported offering seven scholarships or more are virtually invisible at the Division II level.

“Division II is such a more even playing field in terms of the quality of student-athletes,” said University of Nebraska at Kearney coach Marc Bauer, a former UNO wrestler who led his team to the 2008 national title and said he works with about 4.5 scholarships. “You can’t bring in many of those upper-tier (Division I) kids at this level. At this level, it’s about developing.”
Few do that as well as Denney.

He’s already scouring the St. Louis area, making contacts and recruiting athletes. He wants to maintain his already strong connections to the Kansas City area and the state of Kansas. [B]He wants to make a push into neighboring Illinois, which produced UNO national champion Mario Morgan (now one of his Maryville assistants).[/B]

“If we want to start another fire, we need some more logs,” Denney said.
And at least one opposing coach is confident Denney will whip whatever logs he gets into an inferno.

“I don’t think they’ll be No. 1 to start the season like they have been (at UNO), but I’m sure that they’ll finish in the top 10 and in three years they’ll be right back near the top,” Valek said. “If I wasn’t coaching Newberry, I wish they would win it next year.”

Probably the only positive piece about UNO wrestling that has been written by the newspaper formerly known as the Omaha World-Herald since this whole thing started.

hmm, so having athletes at the school can generate a half million in revenue. Trev couldn't figure that out on the Becka show..."well where do you stop...because you also have to look at what they cost to educate"
What a man.
Idioso.

Tough for UNK to compete head to head with UNO on an annual basis when UNO has twice as many wrestling scholarships as the Lopers. Shows how great Bauer is doing there.