Have you ever looked across the hall at the guy in the identical 8’ by 8’ cubical and wondered what he actually did for a living? You have enough contact with him to know that there doesn’t seem to be a great deal of effort put in on a daily basis and there certainly doesn’t seem to be huge stacks of paper being generated out of his office. I often wondered about a guy in my office that never seemed to be doing a whole lot of work. Yet, every time we had a staff meeting, everything he did was “big” and “hot.” I’d sit there every week and just hope that he would leave and the gods of office politics would smile down on me and make me the heir to this job of “What internet site can I check out next?” Well, you know the story. The guy retired and the job became mine. To my surprise, the job was a little different than I had envisioned and I now have a lot more to do than count down the days until retirement.This is not an oddity. Normally when you take over a job that you thought would be a cakewalk, it is anything but. In that regard, I have had my eye on a job at the University of Dayton for some time. I have often dreamed about being a Sports Information Director. Can you picture this job? All you do all day is talk sports. After getting one of the best seats in the house for whatever game you wanted to watch that day, you put out a little blurb about how your team did and you get to go home and flip on Sports Center.

About the only job that I would find more interesting would be the guy that does the hiring at the local Hooters. Well, my whole life came crashing down to earth a short time ago. I got a chance to talk with Doug Hauschild, the SID at UD and realized that the grass may be greener on the other side, but it takes a hell of a lot of work to get it to look that way.

Doug is a guy that absolutely, positively loves his job. I asked him just how many hours he put in every week.

“In terms of hours, between now and the end of basketball season, I’ll be working seven days a week,” he said. “I’ll go in and work Sunday mornings after a football game sending information to the Pioneer Football League. I put together information to nominate players for player of the week nationally. If we have events at night, I will work the normal business day and then stay until the event is wrapped up. As far as how much time we spend just putting together information for the media, I would hate to guess because I’d be depressed. The one thing about this job that drives a lot of good people out is the hours. I easily work 60 hours a week.”Yet in the same breath, he stated, “I love it. I really do. It is something different every day. I love being on a college campus. I love working with the kids.”

If there is one common thing that I have found with all of the people that I talk to at UD is that they love their jobs. It takes way too much of their time, but they are addicted. The satisfaction level far outweighs the time invested. When Doug Hauschild first stepped foot on campus, staying there for the rest of his life was hardly on his mind. Sometimes we work for years to get just the right job. In other cases, it just seems to fall from the sky.

“I came to UD in 1976 and began working in the Sports Information Office in 1978,” says Hauschild. “I followed the women’s basketball team because of a friend that was on the team and started keeping stats and moved into the job of student assistant. I coached women’s fast-pitch for three years when I was still in school. I didn’t come here saying that I wanted to be in sports. I was majoring in journalism and it just worked out very well. I graduated in 1981 and worked as the Assistant SID for two years and was then named SID when I was 26 in 1983.”As with most jobs, the true struggle is not the job itself, but just where it fits in with the rest of your life. Most of us are not as lucky as Doug when it comes to job assignment but the desire to punch the clock and get home is a lot more likely. At the same time, he is not afraid to admit what really is most important in his life.

“The good thing about computers is that I can do some of it [the job] from home. It used to be that I would have to do it all at work. At least now I can see my kids before they have to go to bed because I can do some work there.” When the NCAA comes to town, things get even more hectic. “The NCAA basically makes it a 24/7 job having to be available at any time. A lot of my counterparts typically stay in the media hotel, but I have always resisted that just so I can get my kids off to school in the morning.”

Spending time with his own kids and also the students on campus ranks at the top of Doug’s rewards. Again, this seems to be a continuing theme. When you talk to coaches or administrators at UD you find that they are all teachers, PhD., or not.

“When they [students] start working with us, they don’t even know how much they don’t know. By the time they leave, they are more of their own person. Not just the athletes, but also the kids that work with me. I view a good part of my job as that of being a teacher. We have had a good deal of luck with kids going on professionally in athletics. Some are in journalism, while some have been in event management. Teaching the kids is one of the most enjoyable parts of the job. Being part of the educational process of the kids is the most important part of my job. If you can affect someone’s life in a positive way, that is going to carry on.”The job of the Sports Information Director has changed a great deal over the years. In the past, the job was one of supplying statistics to the media. Because of the business that it is, sports have become far more important to the University than just the box score in the morning paper.

“Athletics is the front porch for the University,” he says. “It is a way that a lot of people connect to the University. It is, by no means, what the University is about. The University is about education, but athletics hold people’s emotions either good or bad.”The job has become as much of a Public Relations position as it is statistics generation. As a result, Doug’s official title is Director of Media Relations/Sports Information. The department has a long list of job responsibilities, but the main duties are as follows:

– Responsible for any external communication: media guides, web site, and press releases
– Media Relations: Research (ex. Jon Gruden spotlight on CBS–had to give them information about his career and game information)
– Recruiting: Not involved in recruiting, per se, but anything that exposes the recruit to the University that is in the public domain comes from their office.
– Department historians: They compile and turn information over to the University Archives. Whenever UD has a reunion weekend or anniversary they pull together historical sports information for the occasion.

Like most jobs, Doug has had his ups and downs. Unlike the majority of us, those experiences are often in the spotlight of television and the rest of the media.

When asked what were his most memorable positive experiences, he thought a while before responding,

“The best day was the Ithaca football game because I was in school with so many of those guys,” he reflects. “Knowing how hard they had worked made it the biggest thrill. The most satisfying would be getting in the NCAA tournament last year. My first year we got in and it just seemed like it was something that would happen all of the time. One moment would be the 1984 DePaul game. I remember Mick [Head Coach Don Donoher] saying after the game that there were so many improbables that happened, but the most was Chapman giving up the ball. Mick said that for him to give up the shot was just remarkable. His basketball instincts took over.”

The ups can be exhilarating but the downs can be devastating. “The day that Chris Daniels died was the most difficult day of my stay here. I am proud of the way that we handled it. My biggest regret came when I had to go on TV at 9 AM. I was so focused, I was numb. I was concerned as to how the kids were handling it, how the coaches and family were handling it. My regret was the failure to offer our condolences to the Daniels family right then and there. We spent the next couple of days trying to get the kids through it.”

I didn’t ask, but it is easy to see the admiration that Hauschild has for Don Donoher. We talked about the differences in the way that Jim O’Brien and Don Donoher handled their firings. O’Brien handled it in a professional way, but he was certain that the University had made a huge mistake. Donoher also felt it was a mistake, but he showed the class that he has continued to show throughout the years.”The day that they fired Donoher was tough, but he made it so easy,” he says. “He was amazing. He answered everybody’s questions. When he was done, he turned to me and asked, ‘That was OK, wasn’t it.’ Mick had so much class. He said, ‘The University is bigger than anybody.’ He was so first class about it.”

Even someone this much in love with a job has got to think about the future. Not many people stay in the same job for 17 years. Were there ever thoughts about leaving? No matter how much you love a good cheeseburger, it still can be enjoyable having a steak at the Pine Club now and again.

“I might stay here forever. Being around the University keeps you young. I enjoy the educational process. I could see myself staying here for a long time. Hopefully there are other people here that see things the same way. As long as there are challenges here for me, I’ll stay. A year hasn’t gone by that I don’t feel that I could have done a better job. I don’t see any reason to move on. There is plenty of work to do here.”

Doug Hauschild lives in a world that the rest of us can only dream about. He gets to talk sports all day and get paid to do it. He has gone through a great deal of changes in his time at the University of Dayton and continues to thrive. He has seen us struggle and he has seen us succeed. He has seen his job grow from publishing stats to the point of being a good will ambassador for the University. UD has made it a point to surround their students and athletes with the Doug Hauschilds of the world and you have to be happy that those decisions are easy ones to make.