The University of Mississippi Athletics
STAFF BLOG: Brent On Technology Upgrades at O-U Stadium
3/11/2009 | Athletics
The Ole Miss athletics department's senior staff and leadership publish biweekly blogs on OleMissSports.com to offer fans added insight into the overall operation of the department. Joey Brent is in his 20th year at Ole Miss and serves as Assistant Athletics Director for Information Technology.
March 11, 2009
Being responsible for the technology of the athletics department can be a fun and rewarding challenge. We have just about completed our renovations to Oxford University Stadium/Swayze Field, and one of the things that we have been able to do for our faculty/staff and students is to provide a wireless network for them in conjunction with the University's IT Department. Now these folks can access the internet while at baseball games. We hope to have it available one day for the general public. As we expand and change out network equipment in our other venues, I hope to be able to provide this service in those also.
Another cool thing we are doing at the baseball stadium is eliminating keys. Not only are we going to use swipe cards for access, like we do in so many of our buildings, but we are going to use bio-metrics on some locations. Baseball players no longer have to keep up with keycards. As long as they have their fingerprints, they can get into the "player sensitive" areas, such as the locker room and the hitting and pitching areas. We will bring some of our other buildings on line with bio-metrics as we move into the future, specifically in those "player sensitive" areas of the different facilities. All of our student-athletes will enjoy this, without that worry of a lost card or key. Also, we can administer our security easier. Unlike borrowing or stealing someone else's card, it is pretty hard to say it wasn't your hand used to access a building.
Our coaches and staff also have a major tool in their possession, Blackberrys. Through Cellular South, the official cellular provider of Ole Miss Athletics, Ole Miss coaches and key staff members are "wired" with 24/7/365 access to their emails and the internet. In this world of instant access, we can respond to most any situation that should arise. Our coaches can access their recruiting information while on the road. Gone are the days of carrying around pages of notes as they go recruiting. They can pull up the latest information about somebody just before they visit them. They can dial a prospect's number straight from our database and then log that call for compliance purposes. Using handheld technology, we can email, text, track scores, even update information back at the office.
February 24, 2008
A lot of changes have come down the pipe in my 20 years with Ole Miss Athletics. When I arrived at Ole Miss in November 1988, we had one computer in the Athletic Training Room, and the Media Relations department had two Radio Shack portable computers (the kind you had to put a diskette in to start it up). Now, there are more than 300 computers in the athletics department that require my time and attention.
Technology has become a very large part of many athletics department budgets. Our FedEx Student-Athlete Academic Support Center houses approximately 150 computers, several of which include assistive technology such as Dragon Naturally Speaking software and Kurzweil technologies. There is also a state of the art classroom that athletics share with the university that is complete with internet, DVD and VHS decks, dual projectors, advanced sound system and a wall talker. This facility provides wired and wireless networking for the student-athletes to work on their campus assignments.
All of the athletics facilities are wired and wireless for the media to be able to transmit their stories and photographs. The athletics department recently remodeled the underside of Tad Smith Coliseum to have a more modern press room. There are gameday ticket offices at both baseball and football where fans can purchase future tickets, and hand-held scanners are used to read barcoded tickets at our major venues. The new Athletics Administration Building is wireless throughout the building and contains a TV studio for Ole Miss Sports Productions.
Athletics also has a large amount of Blackberry cellphones that allow our coaches to stay in touch with recruits while on the road. These coaches use CyberSports recruiting software which allows them the ability to record contacts, look up information and log phone calls to meet compliance guidelines. The coaching staff can also do mass mailings or personalized emails from their desktop computers using this same software. In today's mobile environment, we can send out a mass text message to the student-athletes informing them of time changes of meetings or any other pertinent information that needs to be delivered immediately.
All of our new facilities, or any remodeling projects, include a comprehensive plan for technology. Copper wire, fiber, coax, triax, audio, video, computers, wireless access points, phones, fax machines, copiers/printers and building access control always require my involvement in planning meetings.