When Dan Johnson checked his e-mail Wednesday, a message appeared from the person he had been trying to reach since the middle of the summer.

Barbara Henderson, a senior associate athletic director at Syracuse University, sent Johnson instructions of who to contact within the university to present his proposal to change the campus landscape. For more than a year, Johnson has been on a mission to commission a sculptor to create a statue of SU football legend Ernie Davis. Now Johnson knows to call Domenic Iacono, associate director of University Art Collection, which manages all artwork on campus.

‘She apologized for not getting back to me, and it’s exciting that we’ve got some movement on this again,’ Johnson said of the e-mail.

While the SU Department of Athletics moved too slowly on this project, I applaud that the proposal will receive full attention before various representatives of the university. An idea of this magnitude merits discussion.

Though I agree with the athletic department in that an Ernie Davis statue is a tremendous idea, the bottom line is the university will now discuss the idea. That’s all you can ask for.

Despite the fact SU Director of Athletics Daryl Gross did not return calls seeking comment on this story, he told Johnson in the spring he endorses the statue. But the proposal is no longer an athletic department issue because the decision to place any piece of artwork on campus rests with the university.

It took a while to make that leap. Johnson originally presented the idea to Gross in late February. Gross eventually handed the project to Henderson during the summer. The athletic department did not know the correct name of the university committee that handles a proposal for a statue until Wednesday. The proposal hadn’t actually been presented to the campus artwork committee, not the statue committee, until that date. Iacono, who is also a member of the campus artwork committee, said he was unaware of Johnson’s idea until he received the same e-mail Henderson sent Johnson.

Now, Johnson knows what to do. At the committee’s first meeting this semester in early November, he must submit a formal proposal in writing. Not only must it include a rough cost estimate and how he will raise the money, but names of all artists and their sketches.

Iacono said representatives from many sectors of the university will be present, including the Office of the Chancellor and the development office, which manages all gifts to the university. Iacono also said the Office of Alumni Relations would likely be interested.

While the statue would be a gift to the university, SU would still spend money. Iacono said the university would likely have to match the $150,000 cost of a life-size statue in the hours spent planning. Through his dedication to the project and various connections, Johnson said he will likely be able raise that amount in an unknown time. Therefore, it will be up to the university to decide if the statue is both positive for the university and financially feasible.

The process will understandably take months, maybe years. Since the proposal wasn’t at the top of the athletic department’s agenda, it probably won’t be at the top of the university’s either. To compare, Iacono said the Sol LeWitt ‘Six Curved Walls,’ Chancellor Nancy Cantor’s wall outside the Crouse College building, took about a year from the initial proposal to the unveiling.

But at least the process is prodding along. Before last week, it was stagnant.

Iacono said he often hears ideas for art on campus floating around but doesn’t take them seriously until reviewing them with the rest of the campus artwork committee. He said the only other recent sports-related idea was a proposal to create a statue of the university’s mascot, Otto the Orange. The leaders of that proposal envision a similar campus icon to that of the bronze nittany lion at Penn State. But there has been little movement on that front.

The university may ultimately agree with former Athletic Director Jake Crouthamel, who didn’t want to solely honor Davis when there are many other worthy players. Iacono wondered whether the Ernie Davis room in the Carrier Dome with its portrait of Davis was enough.

But Johnson’s argument prevails. Davis, who died of leukemia in 1963 before playing in the NFL, led Syracuse to its only national championship in football in 1959 and was the first black player to win the Heisman Trophy in 1961.

Johnson doesn’t have a loose idea. He is clearly one of the most passionate Syracuse fans in the area.

To illustrate: Johnson said he was the first person to propose a domed stadium for SU sports in 1969. After attending a high school football game in Rochester, he realized the field at Archbold Stadium was an embarrassment. He organized a group of five people that collected 20,000 signatures and the endorsement of Democratic mayoral candidate Lee Alexander to build a new stadium. Though Alexander was elected, the idea fell through. The plans were too grand. Not only would the stadium have been a home for SU sports but minor league baseball, professional soccer, NASCAR and other sports as well. It would have been located at the New York State Fairgrounds (the Carrier Dome opened in 1980).

That determination hasn’t left. Johnson intends to heed Iacono’s advice and present a variety of designs by different sculptors and their costs.

In the end, it will come down to whether the university wants to honor Davis on an even larger scale and whether it wants the spend money to do so. While I think Davis deserves a statue, what’s most important is that many representatives from the university will sit down and talk about it. The proposal was lying on a desk for months. Come November, the discussion will finally begin.

Ethan Ramsey is an assistant sports editor at The Daily Orange, where his columns appear every Tuesday. E-mail him at egramsey@gmail.com.

Published on October 2, 2005 at 12:00 pm