Inside Athletics: Lynnette Johnson

OleMissSports.com's Inside Athletics is a biweekly blog by the Ole Miss athletics department's senior administrators and key personnel to offer fans added insight into the overall operation of the department.

The commitment to host NCAA championships is a priority for the university and the athletics department. Our student-athletes, coaches and administrators know the best opportunity to be successful in postseason play is to play at home. The men’s tennis team is our best example of that. We have hosted eight regional tournaments, and our team has advanced to seven sweet sixteens.

The NCAA has hosting parameters for each sport that can host on campus sites. Over the past 10 years, it has been my role to organize the NCAA bid process for all of our sports that could have the opportunity to host. The organization to manage these events starts early in the summer before the next athletics season starts.

We could not host at this level without the support from the City of Oxford. Each year the first item of business is to secure all the hotel rooms that are required to host each event for which we would like to bid. It is a requirement to let the NCAA know that rooms are secured and available for the teams that are placed in our regional. We will secure rooms for all regionals that we feel our programs will have a chance to be successful in and we can fulfill all of the NCAA championship parameters. Over the past several years, we have prepared to place bids for soccer, softball, men’s tennis and baseball. NCAA regionals are not guaranteed; your ability to host, first and foremost, is secured by the overall success of that athletics program. We have seen that in our very successful baseball and men’s tennis programs.

The next phase of hosting is preparing the NCAA bids based on the parameters. The NCAA asks that each school fill out the following items:

Facility evaluation: This form asks for all the details and requirements of the venue. It will ask for seating capacity, attendance numbers, media, TV capabilities, number of courts, field and court measurements, scoreboard functions, parking, locker rooms and meeting rooms, to just name a few of the questions.

Key contact information: This form requires all the tournament management information to include phone numbers, e-mail addresses and mailing addresses on all vital services for the tournament, such as food and apparel concessions, video, media, sports medicine, facility management and tournament directors’ information.

Financial bid: This form is the detailed revenue and expense of running each regional that is bid. Each tournament has a required minimum bid. The form submitted will have the amount of ticket revenue that we feel will be sold for each regional, plus our details of the expense of hosting that event on our campus. The expenses include: security, field preparation, clean-up, marketing, live streaming, banquet, media food, telephone lines, etc.

Auxiliary items: Each bid will ask for a stadium map, directions, possible lighting survey for TV capabilities, seating map for visiting teams, etc.

Once all the required items are submitted to the NCAA, we wait. Each NCAA championship has their team announcement, and usually at that time, we find out if we are chosen to host. It is an exciting time around Oxford and campus when we get the opportunity to host an NCAA regional championship. We take a lot of pride in hosting this type of event and look forward to our many opportunities again next year.

Lynnette Johnson
Senior Associate Athletics Director/ Senior Women's Administrator

Past Article

	05/25/2008	Inside Athletics: David Wells
	05/11/2008	Inside Athletics: John Hartwell
	04/24/2008	Inside Athletics: Sans Russell
	04/11/2008	Inside Athletics: George Smith
	03/24/2008	Inside Athletics: J. Stern
	03/10/2008	Inside Athletics: Langston Rogers
	02/24/2008	Inside Athletics: Joey Brent
	02/01/2008	Inside Athletics: Shannon Singletary
	01/17/2008	Inside Athletics: Derek Horne
	12/20/2007	Inside Athletics: Lynnette Johnson
	12/05/2007	Inside Athletics: Karen Schiferl
	11/24/2007	Inside Athletics: Blake Barnes
	11/06/2007	Inside Athletics: David Wells
	10/17/2007	Inside Athletics: John Hartwell
	10/05/2007	Inside Athletics: Sans Russell
	09/24/2007	Inside Athletics: Walker Jones
	09/05/2007	Inside Athletics: George Smith
	09/05/2007	OleMissSports.com Launches Athletics Blog

The University of Mississippi Athletics

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