March 1, 2005

ATHENS, Ohio - On February 18, 2005, Athens native and 1990 Ohio University graduate Rick Walls was named executive director of the College Football Hall of Fame in South Bend, Ind. Currently the director of operations for the Morristown, N.J.-based National Football Foundation, Walls will begin his new role on April 4.

Walls majored in sport industry at Ohio and began his involvement with the College Football Hall of Fame - then located in Kings Island, Ohio - as an unpaid intern. When the internship ended, thus completing his graduation requirements, Walls accepted the temporary position of assistant director of the Traveling College Football Hall of Fame.

After five months of traveling around the country, Walls accepted a full-time position with the organization.

"I was running the events at the facility, including the football games and other special events that took place on Galbraith Field, which was the 10,000-seat football stadium where Cincinnati Moeller played their home games," said Walls. "Unfortunately, we learned that the Hall of Fame was going to be closed and moved to South Bend, Indiana. Fortunately for me, they asked me to move with the Hall as the archives and collection manager."

So in 1993, Walls moved to South Bend and became the liaison between the Hall of Fame and all the design companies that were building and creating the new facility.

"I was working with the audio-visual people as well as all the schools and universities throughout the country," Walls said. "I was collecting photographs, film footage and archival material to help make the displays for the museum. Interestingly enough, I was working with an architectural company called Gerard Hilferty & Associates which is located in Athens, Ohio."

In 1995, with the new museum almost complete, Walls left the organization to work for a lumber company in Cincinnati. A year later, he worked for a fitness center, where he met his wife Julie. Then, in 1997, the National Football Foundation moved from New York to New Jersey and brought in Walls as the special projects and eastern region coordinator.

"There, I was in charge of basically running the scholar-athlete program, working on the Hall of Fame elections and also coordinating about 30 chapters of the Foundation in the eastern region," said Walls. "My job was to go around and help start new chapters and work with them to strengthen their membership and speak at their banquets."

After a year, he was promoted to be the director of public relations for the NFF. In 2002, he was promoted again to be the director of operations, overseeing the day-to-day operations of the entire organization.

One of the most interesting aspects of Walls' position is that he handles the tabulation of the Bowl Championship Series rankings.

"Five years ago, the Foundation was approached by Roy Kramer, who was the commissioner of the Southeastern Conference," said Walls. "He said he was looking for an impartial organization with national credibility to take over the BCS tabulations. Maybe he foresaw that it might be controversial.

"We gladly accepted and have been the official tabulator and release mechanism for the BCS standings for the last five years. I guess my title is specifically the BCS standings coordinator and I act as the go-between between the public and the conferences coordinating it."

According to Walls, the computer in his office that handles the BCS formula is nothing special.

"It's really just a normal computer that anyone would have on their desktop," he said. "Part of my job is just collecting all of the information from the contributors on a timely basis. We then copy and plug those numbers into an Excel document that contains the formula the BCS people have come up with. When the numbers are calculated, we check it, double-check it and triple-check it to make sure we've got them right before we send them out to anybody."

For a time, the very first person who Walls sent the BCS standings to was fellow Athens High School graduate Fred Harner, who is now the director of the Yankees Entertainment & Sports (YES) Network Online.

"Fred was at ESPN.com and they were affiliated with the BCS through their partner, ABC," said Walls about Harner, who was a graduate assistant for the Ohio football team in the mid-1990s. "We would give him advance copies of the standings so that he could develop the website, create the graphics, get it all laid out and have it ready to go when the announcement was being made."

The most rewarding part of Walls' job is when he serves as the producer and director of the organization's annual awards dinner at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York City every December.

"We create the audio-visuals for the show and coordinate the speakers for a crowd of 1,500 filled with stars and celebrities from football present and football past," said Walls about the gala event. "It's about a two-hour, 20-minute show that we have to have down to a science. They didn't teach me that in sport industry.

"I also really enjoy going to the Honors Court meeting, which is the group that selects the Hall of Famers. I'll be sitting at a U-shaped table with guys like Bo Schembechler, Vince Dooley, Gene Corrigan and just the superstars in the world of collegiate football. Listening to them talk about certain players and coaches and getting to hear their inside great stories about their experiences, that to me is just one of the cool things I get to do."

When Walls was an undergraduate at Ohio, he was a work-study student for the financial aid office in Chubb Hall. He also was an assistant baseball coach for Athens High School and the Athens American Legion squad and volunteered with the Ohio sports information department. Besides serving pizza in the football press box, Walls tracked three-point shots during Bobcat basketball games, including Dave Jamerson's record-setting14-of-17 performance from behind the arc against the University of Charleston on Dec. 21, 1989.

According to Walls, the College Football Hall of Fame has several internship opportunities available each year. To contact him, please send an email to rwalls@footballfoundation.com.

With 119 chapters and over 13,000 members nationwide, the NFF is a non-profit educational organization that runs programs designed to use the power of amateur football in developing scholarship, citizenship and athletic achievement in America's young people.

For information on joining the Southeastern Ohio chapter of the National Football Foundation, please contact chapter president Scott Welsh at 740-591-2225 or welsh@frognet.net.