2003-2004 North Dakota State University Cross Country/Track ...

NDSU has had 10 ATHLETIC DIRECTORS since 1940. That illustrious list includes C.C. Finegan, O.O.
Churchill, Glenn Hill, Les Luymus, Darrell Mudra, Dick Koppenhaver, Ron Erhardt, Ade Sponberg, Bob Entzion, and now
Gene Taylor.
Roll of NDSU
Sports Information Directors
Your Host at NDSU Director of
Athletics
In his 36th year in the profession,
GEORGE ELLIS handles the men’s sports
information position at North Dakota State
University.
The 58-year-old Ellis is in his 30th year as
the director of that
busy position at
North Dakota State.
He began his career
as an SID in 1968,
serving five years at
Morningside College
in Sioux City, Iowa,
and one year at the
University of
Northern Iowa,
before coming to
Fargo in the summer of 1974.
The sports information office at NDSU
has earned 133 national awards under the
direction of Ellis, including 55 “Best in the
Nation” awards during the past 29 years by the
College Sports Information Directors of
America (CoSIDA). In addition, Ellis won
seven national awards while at Morningside
and Northern Iowa.
Ellis is an active member of CoSIDA
where he serves on various committees and has
served one three-year term on the Board of
Directors as a College Division representative.
The Bison sports information director was
named to the CoSIDA Hall of Fame in the
summer of 1988 and was named the Warren
Berg Award Recipient in the summer of 1990
for outstanding service in the field of sports
information.
Ellis was the director of the North Central
Conference information bureau for 25 years
until ending that relationship after the 1997-98
year. He wrote and edited an award-winning
publication on the history of the NCC and was
inducted into the NCC Hall of Fame in May of
1998.
Named the baseball coach at NDSU in the
summer of 1979, he guided his five Bison teams
(1980-84) to a then school-record 62 wins and
a major step back up the road to respectability
before turning over the reins after the 1984
season. He served several years on the NCAA
regional baseball advisory committee while
NDSU’s head coach and retired in 1994 as an
umpire for American Legion, high school and
amateur baseball after 33 years.
A graduate of East High School in Sioux
City, Ellis graduated from Morningside in 1971
where he was a varsity wrestler and an NCC
Here is a list of all the sports
information directors to serve North
Dakota State University over the years:
Tom Goodale, 1962-65 (3 seasons)
John Beatty, 1965-67 (2 seasons)
Del Johnson, 1967-74 (7 seasons)
George Ellis, 1974-current (in his 30th
season)
Beatty Johnson
Bison Program Awards
If you get an opportunity to attend
North Dakota State University football
and basketball games, you will have a
chance to read the award-winning Bison
game program.
Both were judged the “Best in the
Nation” in 1989-90 by the College
Sports Information Directors of America
(CoSIDA) organization.
NDSU sports information director
George A. Ellis edits and publishes the
football program series that has been
“Best in the Nation” nine times since
1978 (1978-81-82-85-86-87-88-89-93).
The basketball program has earned
the top honor nine times since 1980
(1980-82-85-86-87-88-89-90-2003).
placewinner in 1965. Ellis was inducted into
the Morningside Athletic Hall of Fame in the
fall of 1994. He was also a news and sports
reporter for the Sioux City Journal and the
sports editor for the Alliance (NE) Daily
Times-Herald.
Ellis and his wife, Linda, who types playby-play
accounts of Bison football games, have
a son, Joshua, a daughter, Nicole, and two
granddaughters, Anika and Jasmine.
When he came to North Dakota State
University in the summer of 2001,
GENE TAYLOR inherited a
department surrounded
by a
whirlwind of
questions.
In his first year
as the director of
athletics at North
Dakota State, Taylor
was asked to
spearhead a comprehensive
study and
evaluation of the
Bison athletic department.
One year after NDSU’s push for men’s
and women’s ice hockey failed to gain
community support, the Arizona native made a
different, more daunting recommendation.
Taylor, with roughly a year’s worth of
research in his pocket, gave NDSU President
Joseph Chapman the thumbs-up to promote
NDSU’s 16 intercollegiate teams to Division I
status.
Beginning with the 2004-05 season,
NDSU will be a full-fledged Division I program
faced with building dollars and talent to
continue the winning tradition NDSU has
owned for so long at the Division II level.
Taylor himself knows how to work from
the bottom up. A student assistant to the
associate athletic director in his undergraduate
days at Arizona State University, Taylor came
to NDSU after a 15-year stint at Navy (1986-
2001) as an administrative assistant, assistant
ticket manager, ticket manager, assistant
athletic director for tickets and operations, and
associate athletic director.
A 1980 graduate in business management
from Arizona State, he received his master’s
degree in sports administration in 1985 from St.
Thomas University in Florida.
Taylor worked in the ticket office at
Southern Methodist University in 1985-86
directly before joining the Naval Academy and
was in the private restaurant business before
that for five years.
His tenure at Navy included serving as the
commissioner of the five-team Collegiate Sprint
Football League that includes Army, Navy,
Penn, Princeton and Cornell.
Taylor and his wife, Cathy, are the
parents of a daughter, Casey, and a son, Jared.
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