The U.S. Department of Homeland Security is providing the Center for Spectator Security Management at the University of Southern Mississippi with nearly $3.5 million to train members of the National Association of Collegiate Directors of Athletics on sport security management.

Center Director Lou Marciani, who has been an athletics director at the Divisions I, II and III level, said the goal is to develop a new discipline of spectator sport security, so spectators will be safer when they attend NCAA events. Before the three-year project is complete in 2010, Marciani and his peers hope to reach more than 1,000 institutions with the training program.

The initiative will begin in January 2008 with a focus group composed of two schools from each of the three NCAA divisions. Marciani plans to invite an athletics facility administrator from a campus, the campus police chief, Emergency Medical Services for the campus community, fire/HAZMAT personnel and local jurisdiction emergency management directors to the focus group.

"We need to find out what their needs are and then look at modular designing and curriculum designing," Marciani said. "We will then have a pilot study down the road to test it."

The next step is to begin workshops in March 2009. Marciani hopes to conduct about 80 sessions that reach all NCAA conferences.

Marciani said the first objective for institutions is to identify and rank hazards and vulnerabilities to determine risk.

"Schools have to prioritize critical tasks that need to be carried out once they know what their vulnerabilities are," he said. "That prevents reoccurrence and reduces loss or serious injury. It also will mitigate property damage."

Whether the emergency is weather-related, a crowd-management issue, a hazardous waste spill or a foreign or domestic terrorist attack, Marciani stressed that an action plan be in place rather than make decisions on the fly.

"Hopefully, all schools will have action plans for security management and disaster incident response," he said. "Some schools have done this already, but there is enough feedback to know that not all have done this for athletics or the entire campus."

Marciani said about 48 million spectators attend NCAA football games annually. "That's a lot of folks," he said. "You're asking athletics administrators to be on a campus and do other things. So you can see where there is a problem. They all have other things to do. That why we want to bring in five people for the focus group. We can train them together and it will make it easier for them to communicate better if something happens."

The Center for Spectator Security Management (www.sporteventsecurity.com) began in 2005 and has grown in notoriety. After the shootings at Virginia Tech in April, for example, Marciani said the center received many calls from institutions seeking advice should a similar event occur on their campus.

Marciani has become one of the leading advocates of crisis/security management for intercollegiate sports.

"It is something that needs to be studied and reviewed," said Marciani, who has also served as the chair of the School of Human Performance and Recreation at Southern Mississippi. "Athletics administrators must consider security and crisis management more than ever. This is a new matter to think about because it not something many were trained to think about in the past."