Illinois administrator pitches frenzied pace

"A Day in the Life..." is a recurring series in The NCAA News that celebrates the many people who strive for the betterment of intercollegiate athletics and examines the variety of ways those people do their jobs on a daily basis.

CHAMPAIGN, Illinois -- Spending the day before the start of the Big Ten Conference baseball tournament with Howard Milton was like being at Disneyland without the rides. Milton, assistant director of athletics at the University of Illinois, Champaign, is responsible for event management at the institution and thus responsible for piecing together just about every detail of the tournament.

As many athletics administrators who are accustomed to performing a variety of functions can attest, there's nothing like hosting a postseason event to ratchet up the daily agenda.

Milton is at his office before 7 a.m. on May 24. The first tournament game -- between No. 4 seed University of Michigan and No. 5 seed Ohio State University -- is less than 30 hours away. Because the site of the Big Ten tournament depended upon regular-season outcomes, Milton has been sure the games would be played at Illinois Field only for a little more than 36 hours, and there is still plenty to do.

First on the agenda is checking on the food for the 6 p.m. cookout that will welcome the six participating teams to Illinois with pork chops, ribs, baked beans, cole slaw and dessert. Milton grabs his planner and keys and heads to the baseball field. Just outside the hospitality gate, two cars are parked in front of a huge smoker and food trailer. Milton rouses baseball fan and local barbecue legend Gary Hembrough from a light sleep in the front seat of his SUV. Hembrough, who played football for Illinois in the 1950s and worked under three baseball coaches at Illinois before becoming the coach at Champaign Centennial High School, is the head of Coach's Cooking Team. He began cooking after his retirement in 1995, and he's been a fixture at Illinois events for several years.

Hembrough arrived at Illinois Field at about 1 a.m. to begin the slow-cooking process. Tucked inside the smoker are 300 pork chops, dry-rubbed and slowly rotating through the heat. About half a dozen pork butt roasts share some rack space with the chops, ready to be pulled and mixed with the baked beans. Milton vows to come back later for a taste test, then he and Hembrough walk through the set-up for the evening's cookout, spacing out locations for the serving line, drink station and tables and chairs.

Milton's cell phone rings for the first of scores of times that day. On the line is one of the head coaches asking about practice arrangements for later in the day. Milton answers the questions, and spies two tables that will work perfectly for serving tables lying outside the serving tent.

"I'm going to kill two birds with one stone," he says, racing to bring the tables under the tent, answering the cell phone again on the way. After the two tables are arranged to both Milton and Hembrough's liking, Milton goes to check on the condition of the baseball field. On his way, he picks up any piece of trash he sees on the ground.

"It's all these sub-events, like the cookout and the coaches' meeting tonight, that's what's so fun," Milton said. "I'm about 12 hours ahead of schedule (with Hembrough), but it's nice to have talked."

Walking through the field, Milton points out the temporary bleachers and scaffolding being assembled on either side of the press box for television crews. College Sports Television has committed to televising the championship game, and accommodating TV crews adds another item to Milton's checklist.

"We had to customize our facility for this event to be more effective for television," he said, pointing out where concessionaires will sell their wares, where the first-aid, staff and student-athlete tents will be located. Milton even arranged for a tent to cover the port-a-johns to keep them from public view.

Then it's back to his office, where magnetic strips from the gymnastics championship adorn his filing cabinets, and photos of family and Illinois student-athletes hang on the walls. After graduating from the University of Kansas, Milton started his career as an intern for the Western Athletic Conference, and then moved to the academic side as an assistant dean for student affairs at Missouri Western State College, where he specialized in diversity. One day, he was flipping through The NCAA News and saw an advertisement for the events manager position at Illinois.

"When I interviewed, my boss then, Kelly Landry, she said, 'I just want you to know, you've got to be prepared to one minute be in a suit and tie and the next minute be mopping the floor in front of 16,000 people. Can you do that?' Of course I said, 'yes,' " Milton said. It's been five years since he accepted the job, and he still loves coming to work every day.

"We have got the best people at the University of Illinois," he said. "I love that I get to work in this capacity with so many different arms of this community."

His co-workers and boss, Associate Athletics Director Dana Brenner, make Illinois feel like home to the small-town Kansan.

"(Brenner) makes me feel like my work counts," he said. "They've allowed me to be invested in a lot of different things, and my future is in their best interests."

What really keeps him going, he said, are the student-athletes.

"Sometimes we can lose sight of what it's all about, but it is such a wonderful feeling to do this for the student-athletes, especially in the Olympic sports," he said.

He and his wife Barclay have two young children, Conner, 3, and Claire, nine months. Barclay is a nurse at Christie Clinic. Unfortunately, he won't be seeing much of them this week, but he is looking forward to spending some family time together on an upcoming vacation to his in-laws' farm in Kansas.

But that vacation is far from Milton's mind as he prepares to meet with a student-athlete who will serve as his intern while he completes his degree in sport management. Morris Virgil is a free safety on the university's football team. Virgil and his advisor, Ryan Gower, meet with Milton to discuss the parameters of the internship and what Virgil hopes to achieve by working in athletics.

The meeting is interrupted briefly by a facilities worker who is stenciling the field grass with the Big Ten tournament logo -- he wants to know when practices will begin so he can get his work done before the field is needed.

Milton tells him to go ahead -- practices don't begin until that afternoon -- and then turns his attention back to Virgil and Gower. The trio discusses the format of the internship, and Gower indicates flexibility in hours. Milton is relieved -- this week definitely will call for more than 40 hours, but he already knows that summer is a slower time and that he may be challenged to keep Virgil busy every day during the later weeks. Gower and Milton decide to communicate again in a week or so about Virgil's goals, and Virgil is put to work immediately by gathering soda and snacks for the evening's cookout...

...Then it's back to the baseball field for Milton, where he begins to empty the press box of chairs, food, drinks, and other items stored there so that risers can be installed. Virgil arrives to help, and Milton meets briefly with the concession director about placement for different vendors.

After the concessions are arranged, Milton walks the parking lots and stadium with Scott Kemper of Kemper Industries, deciding on the placement and number of portable toilets for the public. Then he learns to operate an electric lift that will take people to the roof of the press box, taps an electrician to fix an outlet near the clubhouse and orders another tent for the field.

Back in the administration building, Milton stops by the mailroom and has Virgil cart boxes containing the regular-season and tournament trophies and regular-season hats and shirts up to his office, where he counts and organizes the inventory.

Then it's off to the university print shop to pick up credentials and parking passes for staff, media and the participants. On his way out of the administration building, graduate assistant Andrew Koch hands Milton some directions to an alternate practice facility for proofreading.

Walking into the print shop, Milton takes a call from Brenner, who is looking for a table of specific dimensions -- four feet by 18 inches. A call to the university's facilities department comes up empty, so Milton asks a co-worker to start calling local home improvement stores. After retrieving the printed materials, Milton notices a picture on a wall from the printing facility's recent open house, noticing a table that might fit the bill. The print shop staff searches, but the only table they find is too long. Thankfully, one has been located at a nearby Lowe's store.

Back in Milton's office, he and Koch begin attaching lanyards to the credentials, and Milton asks me to pitch in. I oblige.

We put together credentials with invitations to the "sub-events" and Nike golf shirts for staff members -- Virgil already has sorted them by size and assists with labeling each pile for each person.

Another call from Milton's boss, and it's back to the baseball field to arrange the placement of the just-arrived Big Ten tournament banners. Milton is just in time to meet the arriving Purdue Boilermakers, handing head coach Doug Schreiber a participation guide and invitation to the cookout.

It's after 1 p.m., and Milton has missed his daily pick-up basketball game, so we stop by Ubben Basketball Facility, the new home for the men's and women's basketball practices, to look in on the game. Coaches, athletics staff and former student-athletes run up and down the court, razzing Milton for missing the daily appointment. With no time for chit-chat, it's back to the office to prepare packets for that evening's coaches' meeting. We coordinate plastic folders with each institution's colors, stuffing each packet with credentials, schedules, plastic cards with contact information, parking passes and tournament media guides. They will be distributed at the coaches' meeting, set for 8 p.m.

Then it's time to meet with Brenner and Big Ten Communications Director Scott Chipman to go over the agenda for the evening's meeting. They hash out issues such as a meeting place for the committee that will hear any official protests of calls and the distribution of participant gifts.

By then it's after 3 p.m., and Milton hasn't stopped to eat yet. It's time to head back over to the field for the "taste-test" from the Coach's Cooking Team. Hembrough hands out a few ribs and pork chops on a stick so tender they nearly melt in your mouth. Milton takes a moment to eat, praising Hembrough's skills with the smoker and complimenting the set-up of tables and chairs inside the field. He brings a welcome packet to Michigan head coach Rich Maloney on the field where the Wolverines are taking batting practice.

As the clock inches nearer to the 4 p.m. press conference, Milton heads back to the office with a third banner to hang over the landing in the administration building, visible to anyone who comes in the front door, as most of the media will within minutes. Then he checks on the set-up in the media room, where assistant sports information director Derek Neal is running the show.

He watches as Neal introduces each of the six participating head coaches to the media, then heads back upstairs to do some more prep work for the coaches meeting and get together welcome materials for the remaining coaches.

As the clock nears 5 p.m., Milton knows he's got hours to go before he'll leave for the day, but he also knows it's a labor of love.

"This job teaches me lifelong lessons that I can apply to everything," he said. "It's how you ask people, how you be considerate and courteous, and how you have a well-thought-out plan that counts."

In Milton's case, as with most other athletics administrators, it's the well-thought-out part that matters most when there aren't enough minutes in the day. Without it, there would not be the cry of "play ball" just hours later.