'This city should demand that we have a Division I athletic program': UWGB chancellor talks about NCAA probation, future

GREEN BAY – The University of Wisconsin-Green Bay’s athletic department was placed on NCAA probation for the 2022-23 season after not reaching sports-sponsorship requirements for the 2021-22 academic year.

UWGB Chancellor Michael Alexander informed faculty and staff of the probation earlier this month after the school previously cut its men's and women's tennis programs and defunded scholarships for the Nordic ski team.

UWGB made the moves with the ski team in April 2019 when former chancellor Gary Miller and former athletic director Charles Guthrie were still at the school.

The school dropped the tennis teams one year later because of the early fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic and budget issues.

The NCAA sent a letter to UWGB in November 2022 to inform the school it had not satisfied the NCAA Division I sports-sponsorship requirements set forth by NCAA bylaws, specifically that it only satisfied the minimum contest requirements for 12 teams.

To be at the Division I level for an FSC or non-football school, an institution must sponsor at least 14 sports. It can be seven men’s and women’s sports or six men’s sports and eight women’s sports.

If UWGB doesn’t meet the requirements during the next eight years, the school could be placed in restricted membership and not be allowed to compete in NCAA championship competition for any sport. It also could be expelled from the NCAA.

It does have the ability to file a waiver with the NCAA in case of an emergency during that time, which other schools have done in the past.

UWGB was aware of the issues before being notified by the NCAA and has returned to the required thresholds, including hiring a full-time Nordic ski coach for the men’s and women’s teams. It also reinstituted tuition waivers for both.

UWGB will continue to recruit and expand the Nordic ski rosters to make certain there is no chance of falling under the sports sponsorship requirements.

Alexander, who replaced Miller in May 2020 and wasn’t in the role when the issues took place, spoke to the Green Bay Press-Gazette about the situation and UWGB’s future.

Q: How did the mistake happen?

Alexander: I can’t speak for who was here before me. The reason why I think our messaging has been complicated is I’m not going to say anything to implicate. People make decisions at the time. They make them the best they can. The person who follows deals with the ramifications.

The NCAA made a retroactive punishment here. That punishment really amounted to nothing, other than we can’t fall below it again until 2030-31. There was no penalty that we had.

It’s no secret that we have been under financial pressure for a long, long time as an institution. We are actually in a healthier spot, certainly the last couple years.

There are additional things now that will make things more complicated again. Part of the reason this came out was it was my way of telling the faculty and staff that we are about to hit some hard times, we could, given what is going on in the state beyond UW-Green Bay.

We are committed to athletics. I am not hearing the constant sniping that goes back and forth at any university around how much money is going to athletics. I am done hearing it. We’ve made a decision, and we have made it strongly. The irony of this whole conversation is that we’ve actually funded from the university’s perspective more than we’ve ever given to athletics.

You recently said, "Probation is a scary word, but in this case, it just means don’t mess up again." Messing up again would cause serious problems. How do you go about making sure it doesn’t happen?

To put this in perspective, our golf coach was the Nordic ski coach. We have a full-time Nordic ski coach now. We are well above the number of students you need to have to make sure we are doing the number of requisite meets, and we are actually starting to do well in them.

We are not just putting a sport there to have a placeholder for 14 sports. That had been happening for however long we have been a Division I program. Our soccer alumni used to go ski for the Nordic ski team so they could keep that as one of their sports.

This has been stuff that has been going on here forever that we have cleaned up. The issue of the waivers, we are not going to put a sport in jeopardy to have no waivers where they can’t compete. Those are easy decisions we have made that doesn’t just put us barely over the minimum, it puts us solidly over the minimum and above some of what our competitors are doing given the budget crunches in higher ed across the country.

UWGB said the problem had been fixed before the formal notification by the NCAA was given. Was it something UWGB was aware of before you arrived, or was it only when you got here that it was learned a mistake was made?

I think there was concern (before I arrived), but the thought at the time was this is not going to put us on probation. No one willfully caused us to go below that threshold. I think everyone has to remember that at the time this all was occurring, the pandemic also hit.

The first thing on my mind was how to make sure the university stayed open. That was what we were trying to do at that moment.

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UWGB was on probation last year, but it just came out recently after you informed faculty and staff. Why did the school wait so long to inform people rather than earlier in the process?

There was really nothing to inform. From my vantage point, maybe in hindsight it would have made sense for the athletic department to put out a press release when it occurred. But, again, there was also transition that was occurring there.

But in hindsight, I think it’s a fair criticism that we did not. It wasn’t a result of trying to hide it. It was really a result of we didn’t think there was an issue. We had it fixed when we got the letter. All of us looked at each other and went, "OK, that’s fine. We are already above the threshold. What are we going to report?"

How will you keep funding at current levels when everything is going up in cost?

There are two ways you do it.

One, we have to start operating like a Division I university as a community. We have gotten better at that, which is that part of being a Division I institution is that you raise significant dollars to support the athletic program. That’s part of this, and we are on a path now that is really encouraging in that regard.

Secondly, you maintain a baseline of what it means to be a Division I athletic program and you keep pushing through private dollars to raise the excellence of that program. But the institutional commitment has to stay — I’m just picking a sport (as an example) — that we are not begging the community for soccer balls.

We have got to give our coaches and student-athletes the understanding that we are serious about them being able to compete.

The question is asked at times whether UWGB will stay at the Division I level. Are you confident this is a Division I school moving forward?

We should be there. We are the third-largest city in Wisconsin. This city should demand that we have a Division I athletic program. We are a Division I city. We have the Packers, for goodness sakes.

Do you have expectations UWGB can be a school with an enrollment of 15,000 students?

I do. I know that’s critical to helping us compete long term. That 15,000-enrollment number is critical to the economy of Green Bay moving forward. A strong UW-Green Bay, along with a strong NWTC and St. Norbert and this sort of cohort of higher ed we have available in northeastern Wisconsin, we have got to maintain that to be competitive as a region.

I think a Division I athletic program is a key piece to that. It should be one of the front doors to the university.

This article originally appeared on Green Bay Press-Gazette: UWGB Chancellor Michael Alexander speaks on athletics' NCAA probation