Northern Iowa president Mark Nook emphasized how important the athletics department is for UNI’s overall exposure during Tuesday’s meeting with The Des Moines Register’s editorial board.
He noted, however, that "athletics is essential, but it’s not core."
“Almost everybody who hears about UNI will hear about our athletics program first before they hear about UNI in any other way,” Nook told the board. “So athletics is a door into the university, and we have to recognize that people are going to know of us through athletics first.
"That’s why I’m very interested in making sure — and our (athletics director) David Harris is absolutely there — we have to run athletics with a high degree of integrity because whatever athletics looks like to the outside is how they will view our university.