Bielema, Gies, associate athletic director share insights on world of college sports
· Yahoo Sports
Apr. 11—CHAMPAIGN — In 2009, when he was head football coach at Wisconsin, a student-athlete came to Bret Bielema and set a live pistol in front of him.
"I knew I didn't want to reach at it, because he was closer, and I didn't know if that gun was for me or someone else," Bielema said. "And I just instinctively took him to a place that had nothing to do with what he came in to talk about."
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The student admitted that he'd "fallen behind" in online betting, and people were looking for him because of his debts.
"He was thinking about knocking off a liquor store, a grocery store or something," Bielema said. "He was looking for money, and he came in to talk to me."
Ultimately, Bielema was able to defuse the situation and take the clip out of the gun.
"If I had panicked in that moment or if I had reverted to confrontation, that outcome could've been totally different," he said. "So I think there's a lot of times where, as leaders ... you just have to go off your gut instincts."
He added that the experience taught him that, "No matter what you're going through, the moment that person enters your office, all that's important is what they're going through."
That was just one of the pieces of advice that Bielema, head coach for Illinois football since late 2020, gave to students who attended the 11th annual Illinois Sports Business Conference on Friday at the I Hotel and Illinois Conference Center in Champaign.
Conference Co-President Sophia Libman, a UI sophomore, said the event is "one of the largest student-run sports business conferences in the Midwest."
The event's keynote panel featured Bielema, UI alumnus and donor Larry Gies, and Bobbi Busboom, executive senior associate director of athletics, development and administration.
Part of leadership, Gies told the audience, is "thriving in ambiguity." He used Bielema as an example.
"Every week, he's got to say, 'Here's what we're going to do,'" Gies said. "He's got to think about the language of the stories. What did we do wrong? What did we do right? Nobody's telling him what to do or how to do it."
When conference Co-Vice President of Speakers Sahil Mittal, a UI junior, asked about the biggest risks and opportunities posed by "the changing landscape of college athletics," Bielema replied, "Anytime you bring finances into a conversation, it just changes."
He now sees players fresh out of high school who are earning significantly more than their parents, and "there's this balance of making them understand what it means."
Bielema added some players have set up limited-liability corporations so their parents can come to every game, including those on the road.
"The value in that is unbelievable," he said.
At the end of the day, young people now aren't different from when he started coaching in 1992, Bielema said; however, "the things they're exposed to are different."
"The risk is making sure that everybody's following the same rulebook," Busboom said, in regards to changes in college athletics. "I think that's kind of what a lot of us are talking about internally, is, 'OK, we're good with these rules. But are our opponents following the same rules? Are they reading the same thing? Are they interpreting the same thing?'"
In reflecting on his experiences as a coach, Bielema said that he once recruited a transfer who tried to hand him the playbook from the last university he'd played for.
"I looked at him and I said, 'Take that book, put it in your locker, and I don't want to ever see it,'" Bielema said. "'And I don't want you to give it to anyone else in this building, because I don't want to know someone else's answers.'"
"Because if I taught him at that point — I mean, I'd just met him, his first five minutes of meeting face-to-face — if I taught him that to beat somebody, you've got to take their answers, that was going to set a guideline in his thinking that would never be erased," he said.
Gies, who first "fell in love" with the UI by attending a football game with his father, said athletics often serve as a university's "front door" — that is, the first impression that people get of a school.
"If we want to build an amazing university, we need to make sure that that front door is everything that we believe in," he said.
That was one of the reasons he chose to give $100 million to the UI Division of Intercollegiate Athletics. He also hopes the gift will inspire other donors.
Improvements to the recently renamed Gies Memorial Stadium will include a new scoreboard — the largest one in college athletics until someone tries to one-up the UI, Busboom said.
"That is all about the fan experience," she said. "And I think you've probably seen it over the past few years, those of you that are juniors and seniors especially — that gameday experience is important. It helps recruit students."
Busboom told The News-Gazette that the UI has seen a boost in enrollment due to the success of its athletic programs, and she expects this to continue.
"I think that just getting Illinois out as a national brand will always have that effect," she added. "Because it's already a good school; it's just telling other people about it."
Busboom also noted that the UI's fans and donors have "been here all along."
"Now it's just more, they can wear that shirt with pride," Busboom said. "And they can put the degree in the frame in their office and smile about it. ... We're not staying so Midwest humble about it."
Throughout the panel, all three speakers emphasized the importance of relationships.
"It's very rare that people win championships, very rare that people have consistent success on the field, on the court, whatever it might be," Gies said. "But as you see what they've built here at the University of Illinois with the two on my right and (athletic director) Josh Whitman and (men's basketball coach Brad Underwood) and everybody else, what they've built is something sustainable, and that's due to relationships."