HAWK TALK

May 2015

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23 e other thing it does, when our student-athletes leave here, one of our slogans is "Today's Hawkeyes Are Tomorrow's Leaders." ey leave here ready from a leadership standpoint. ey're ready from a time management perspective. ey know how to win and they know how to give back to their community. So extremely proud of what they do. HTM: Conference movement the last few years, the national picture, the success of the Big Ten and it's the first year with 14 teams. What are your thoughts, and moving forward, how the Big Ten is moving along with 14 teams? GARY BARTA: Short term, I'd say it's been successful. Long- term, when we look back aer about 10 years, which is really if you think about it, when we added Penn State, it took several years to know — we knew intuitively right away it was a good match, but as time went by it really became a great fit. And I think we're going to find the same thing; adding Maryland, adding Rutgers, and not so long ago, adding Nebraska, it's been good so far. I think eventually it's going to be great. One of the things that I really like, selfishly, is when we added Maryland and Rutgers, we went to an East-West setup in football. And now our fans get a chance — you know, there was that period where we didn't play Wisconsin every year. It had been several years since we played Illinois. And now under this new setup we're going to play Minnesota, Nebraska, Illinois, Wisconsin, Northwestern on an annual basis. I think that's good for us; it's good for our fans. It also did something that was important, and it brought us into a corridor where 60 million people live. And that was an important part of making sure we didn't just sit still, that if we didn't grow, if we didn't expand, we would be le behind by some of the other conferences, but we also wanted it to be a good fit. And those institutions that we added are good fit academically as well as athletically. HTM: Going back to student-athlete welfare, you mentioned recently in a meeting that you think the next big issue on the national level will be the time commitment student-athletes are asked to give to athletics. Can you elaborate on that a little bit? GARY BARTA: In context, the first thing we tackled under the new governance of NCAA was the cost of attendance and the food, the ability to have new rules related to food. ose are both tremendous things, things we felt like we needed to do right away. "We're on pace to a record year on many fronts…competitively and academically. Like any of our athletic competitions, now we need to finish strong. Again, congrats to all our teams." Iowa currently ranks eighth among its 14 Big Ten Conference peers. Penn State is the highest-ranked Big Ten program with 859 points. Penn State ranks second nationally behind Stanford (1,101.6 points). The 2014-15 season marks the sixth time in the 14-year history of the Learfield Cup that the UI has accumulated more than 400 points. Iowa's all-time high in points scored occurred in 2010-11 when it accumulated 482. The Hawkeyes' highest finish came in 2004-15 when it finished 39th with 467.75 points. Iowa scored 261.50 points a year ago to finish 78th overall. The Learfield Sports Directors' Cup is a program that honors institutions maintaining broad-based intercollegiate athletics programs. Introduced in 1993-94 for Division I programs by the National Association of College Directors of Athletics and USA Today, it was expanded in 1995-96 to include NCAA Division II, III, and the NAIA. Each NCAA Division I institution is awarded points for performances in NCAA championship competition by up to 20 teams, 10 men's and 10 women's. The overall champion is the institution that records the highest number of points. The final standings for the 2014-15 Learfield Cup will be released in late June after the conclusion of the 2015 College World Series.

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