A panel featuring national and college media, a longtime college athletics administrator, and an academic expert in the field will examine the merits of major college sports at the biennial Dick Joyce Sports Symposium Tuesday, April 14, at St. Bonaventure University.

“Big-time College Sports: The Dollars and Sense of It” will be presented at 11:30 a.m. in the theater of the Quick Center for the Arts. The discussion is free and open to the public.

Headlining the panel will be Dr. Richard Southall, director of the College Sport Research Institute at the University of South Carolina. He’s also an associate professor of sport and entertainment. 

Southall’s research focuses on critically examining the NCAA’s Collegiate Model of Athletics. He teaches courses in college sport, sport ethics, event management, and management theory. 

His research has led to peer-reviewed journal articles, including publications in the Journal of Sport and Social Issues, Journal of Sport Management, Sport Marketing Quarterly, Ethnic and Racial Studies, and Journal of Issues in Intercollegiate Athletics. 

For the past six years, Southall has been a consultant for the plaintiffs in the ongoing O’Bannon v. NCAA litigation. In July 2014, Southall was invited to testify before the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, & Transportation during a committee hearing on the safety and well being of college athletes.

The panel discussion will be moderated by Lee Coppola, ’64, retired dean of St. Bonaventure’s Russell J. Jandoli School of Journalism and Mass Communication. 

The panel also features: 

• Rachel (George) Axon, ’06, an investigative reporter with USA Today Sports Media Group since 2012. In that role, she has covered a range of issues related to the NCAA, pro and Olympic sports. Axon came to USA Today after two years covering the University of Florida for the Orlando Sentinel. 
• Jim Marchiony, ’76, associate athletics director for Public Affairs at the University of Kansas. He handles public relations efforts at Kansas Athletics and oversees its licensing efforts and its Hall of Athletics. Marchiony came to Lawrence in August 2003 from the University of Connecticut, where he served as associate athletics director for External Relations. Prior to his stint at UConn, he spent more than 17 years at the NCAA, serving the last five years as media coordinator for the NCAA Division I men’s basketball tournament.
• Joe Pinter, a senior journalism and mass communication and history major at St. Bonaventure. Pinter has been the co-editor-in-chief of The Intrepid, one of the campus newspapers, and a reporter for SBU-TV News. He is a 2014 Jim Murray Scholar.
• Jenny Surane, editor in chief of The Daily Tar Heel, the award-winning student newspaper at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She’s a senior majoring in business journalism who plans to work for Bloomberg News after graduation. 

Prior to the talk and panel discussion, a workshop on college media and how they should cover college sports will be held at 10 a.m. in Dresser Auditorium of the Murphy Building. 

Joining Axon, Pinter and Surane for the workshop will be Chris LaPlaca, ’79, senior vice president for corporate communications at ESPN, and Mike Vaccaro, ’89, lead sports columnist for the New York Post. 

Axon, a graduate of Pioneer Central School, will be honored at a dinner the night before the symposium with the John Domino Award. 

Domino graduated from St. Bonaventure in 1984 and helped usher in the video era while an undergraduate, successfully lobbying the administration to acquire a truckload of professional video equipment being sold by a local school district. 

Domino worked for NBC Sports before joining ESPN. He was regarded as one of the growing TV sports network’s best and brightest personalities when he left to return to the Buffalo area and join the Empire Sports Network. He told friends he was coming back because someone in the family was battling cancer.

Domino was that someone. He died in 1994. The Russell J. Jandoli School of Journalism and Mass Communication celebrates his courage, his skills and his humanity by presenting the John Domino Award to a St. Bonaventure graduate who has excelled in his or her sports journalism position. 

Held every other year, the symposium honors the memory of Dick Joyce, SBU class of 1960, a former sportswriter for The Associated Press who died in 1988 at age 53.  

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About the University: The nation’s first Franciscan university, we believe in the goodness of every person and in the ability of every person to do extraordinary things.  St. Bonaventure University cultivates graduates who are confident and creative communicators, collaborative leaders and team members, and innovative problem solvers who are respectful of themselves, others, and the diverse world around them. Named the #3 best college value in the North by U.S. News and World Report, we are establishing pathways to internships, graduate schools and careers in the context of our renowned liberal arts tradition. Our students are becoming extraordinary.