Whitney: Ready to shake things up, Augustana rolls dice on Division I

Rob Oliver had recently been named Augustana College president in November of 2006, when he met with assembled media at Morrison Commons to discuss the school’s athletic future.

The exodus of area universities to NCAA Division I had decimated the North Central Conference, forcing Oliver to form a committee to determine how to stay viable on the regional sports landscape.

His decision was to stay Division II and join the Northern Sun Intercollegiate Conference, a responsible approach that weighed considerable fiscal challenges and spawned one of the more successful athletic eras in the school’s history, only partly because some of the top competition had left.

Augustana University approves plans to pursue Division I

“He’s a great poker player,” men’s basketball coach Tom Billeter said that day of Oliver, who didn’t reveal his announcement until the final hours. “He never, ever showed his cards.”

Which brings us to Thursday night, when current Augustana president Stephanie Herseth Sandlin – who took over from Oliver in the summer of 2017 – shook up the college scene with a slightly more aggressive poker metaphor.

She’s going all in. And all options are on the table.

After months of speculation, Augustana has chosen to hurtle forward with its “Vision 2030” strategy, an ambitious set of goals laid out by Herseth and unanimously approved by the board of trustees.

The most notable objective is securing an invitation to a Division I conference, presumably the Summit League, by December of 2020, which would start the clock ticking on a grueling four-year transition process.

Finding the funding for such a move coordinates with other objectives: growing total enrollment to 3,000, establishing a professional school, making “dramatic improvements” to the campus and IT infrastructure and substantially increasing the university’s endowment.

Herseth Sandlin and board chairman Tom Davis held an informal gathering Friday at Morrison Commons that was closed to the media before hunkering down to face reporters at the president’s residence on the corner of 37th and Grange.

Augie’s president, a former U.S. Congresswoman who doesn’t actually live in that dwelling, was asked the obvious question: What has changed from 12 years ago, when caution ruled the day?

The school’s undergraduate enrollment of 1,749 is roughly the same as it was in 2006 – which is to say smaller than all three Sioux Falls public high schools and well below private Division I institutions such as Creighton (4,255) and Drake (3,098).

The endowment, a source of consternation at around $46 million 12 years ago, improved dramatically under Oliver and is almost double that number today, but clearly the financial demands of a Division I reclassification will require monumental fundraising.

Herseth Sandlin knows that well but points to the upward momentum of the Lutheran liberal arts school, stressing a strategic plan she inherited from Oliver that stretches beyond the Division I move. She also stresses that part of the 2006 plan was to revisit the school’s path in another 10 years, which means they are overdue.

Before playing her cards, though, she needed to consider the excitable Summit speculation as just one piece of a broader discussion.

“Even before I took the reins, there were some who wanted to get attention on just that one issue,” she said. “My response was, ‘I’m new. I need to build context. I don’t think it’s appropriate to address that issue in isolation.’ Clearly a lot has changed in the last 12 years, and the city of Sioux Falls has changed as well. That made it a different decision today than it was back then.”

It’s tempting to assume that Sanford CEO Kelby Krabbenhoft, who was in favor of making the leap in 2006 and has helped boost the school’s campus facilities, will team with Denny Sanford to magically produce enough money to give Augie’s transition the kick-start it needs.

The fact that the Summit League is moving its headquarters to the Sanford Sports Complex – part of an ongoing link between the health system and the league – only adds to the perception that corporate strings are being pulled on this transition.

Herseth Sandlin freely admits that Sanford Health is a “strategic partner” but adds that people are getting too far ahead on the corporate sponsorship issue.

“I’m managing that relationship, and we’ve certainly had conversations to gauge their level of interest,” she said. “But there are no guarantees and no done deals and there is nothing in writing. We have more work to do on our end before any of that happens.”

It’s no secret that Krabbenhoft sees basketball as a way for Augie to make an early impact while giving Sioux Falls the Division I team he feels it deserves. He’s got an easy convert in Billeter, who guided the Vikings to a Division II national title in 2016 and has major-college experience as an assistant at programs such as Arizona, St. John’s and Texas A&M.

For schools that will play FCS football or lower, basketball is the driver of these moves, with the lure of quick recruiting success and a bounty of NCAA tournament and TV revenue.

There are plenty of examples of small private colleges forging NCAA basketball success in metro areas, a tantalizing prospect that the most die-hard Division I proponents would love to explore.

“Sioux Falls is the key,” Billeter told me after practice Friday. “A lot of this decision is based on having such a sports-minded town that loves and supports athletics. I don’t know how to put a value on that, but it’s definitely here and continuing to grow.”

It’s not totally clear where Augie’s basketball teams will play, with the future of the Sioux Falls Arena in doubt and questions about whether calling the Premier Center home would jeopardize the Summit tourney, which is not supposed to be on a member school’s home court.

Don’t rule out the Sanford Pentagon, despite its modest capacity of 3,250.

The problem lies with other sports, including football, where any outreach to the FCS non-scholarship Pioneer League would eliminate grants-in-aid but increase travel expenses.

As SDSU and USD discovered during their respective transitions, the challenge is bolstering programs across the spectrum, which means expanding coaching staffs, recruiting and travel budgets while addressing facilities.

It’s not about changing your signs from College to University and finding a willing sponsor. It’s about determining whether your educational and business model can produce the sort of sustainability that makes you a valuable and trusted conference member.

The key for SDSU and USD was finding like-minded institutions that mirrored their strengths, which is why the Summit League has gone from a far-flung collection of misfits to an Upper Midwest caucus that looks much like the old NCC.

Augustana was always a bit of an outlier in that conference due to its smaller enrollment and non-public status, and it’s never been totally comfortable in the top-heavy Northern Sun.

Unlike 12 years ago, however, when leadership was forced to react to forces beyond their control, this latest re-imagining can best be described as institutional soul-searching. They’re not under the gun. They’re simply looking around and saying, What are we missing out on? And what will it cost us to get there?

“We would rather be in a duel than play Russian roulette,” said Colin Irvine, Augie’s senior vice president for academic affairs. “This gives us a chance to do this on our terms, rather than saying, ‘We hope things work out for us and we’re not on the receiving end of bad news.’”

Of course, the possibility of bad news still exists, as does the creeping sensation that something is larger than what you can achieve. For Herseth Sandlin, who got the go-ahead from her board and slid her chips across the table, this is what leadership is about.

For all the talk of other initiatives, it’s the Division I transition that will determine her legacy. She appears willing to make that bet.

Argus Leader Media columnist Stu Whitney can be reached at swhitney@argusleader.com. Follow him on Twitter @stuwhitney