Following a two-year period in the Ohio athletic department that has included sports cuts, misspent funds, a gambling scandal, numerous coaching departures and an unbalanced budget, Jim Schaus is looking to lead Ohio out of the Dark Ages.

In a news conference yesterday where he announced a campaign titled the “Bobcat Renaissance,” Schaus announced the Ohio athletic departments’ plans for the next five years, including a plan to build an indoor practice facility for the Ohio football team and other athletic programs to use in times of cold weather.

“The (five-year) plan will be done a number of months from now, but I wanted to give our constituents a sneak preview of where we are headed in terms of our future vision,” Schaus said.

For many years, the thought of an indoor practice facility has been merely a rumor, but Schaus said that plans are being formulated in the beginning stages to construct such a building.

“We feel like (an indoor facility) is extremely important for us to move forward with our sports programs,” Schaus said. “I look at a sport like football, and I think there is only one other school in our conference that doesn’t have an indoor facility, or isn’t planning on completing a facility or has access to a real indoor facility.”

While Schaus did not put a timetable on the creation of the complex, he said he hoped it would be completed by the end of the five-year campaign.

“Every year that we aren’t able to address it in a certain way is another year that sports programs…don’t have that advantage to practice and compete at the highest level,” Schaus said. “It’s hard to put a timetable on external efforts; we want to do it as soon as we can.”

With all of these great ambitions comes a need for money, and according to last week’s Board of Trustees meeting, the Ohio athletic department already has a $1.8 million deficit for the 2009 fiscal year.

Despite these money problems, Schaus is confident that Ohio will escape the deficit and gain the funds needed to produce these upgrades.

“(The deficit) didn’t happen overnight; it happened over a series of years and through a series of initiatives,” Schaus said. “I think there are a lot of circumstances in our business that certain decisions were made and we put ourselves in a situation where deficits do grow.We know what we have to do, and all of us have to get that in a manageable position so that we can address program needs.”

Schaus emphasized an importance in building relationships with the Athens community and surrounding areas as a means to raise money for these future projects as well as to make Ohio one of the premier programs in the Mid-American Conference.

Another proposed initiative calls for all of the money collected in the Bobcat Club to be put toward athletic scholarships. Previously, funds that accumulated from such a fund went to a variety of programs within the athletic department.