Marty Hickman Quotations

No, no way. There's not even been discussion of it.

I believe there have been high school athletes in Illinois to use steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs. It's probably a small number, but I think it would be naive to believe there hasn't been any usage. People like Jose Canseco have brought this to the forefront, and it isn't going away anytime soon.

Class expansion has been one of those issues over the past decade that has repeatedly been brought to the forefront by member schools. However, until the membership was polled in the recent advisory referendum, there hadn't been the kind of support to warrant such an expansion.

Our membership felt that something had to be done to level the playing field.

We're thrilled to be able to celebrate our boys basketball centennial by directly involving the fans, who have supported our tournament in great numbers throughout the years is a fun was to get folks interested in our rich history and set the table for a terrific celebration in 2007.

We had a tremendous bid from Northern and we also had a tremendous big from the University of Illinois. At the end of the day our board concluded that we would return to the U of I.

The 37 schools that sued us agreed to this process and, quite frankly, I think it's time to move on and move forward and see how this works out.

People had their chance, had their opportunity to respond. At this point, our board is committed to going through with this expansion. Now, if somebody collected some data saying they want to look further into this expansion, it's something we'd look at.

My reaction is that I think it's great. I think it's a wonderful site and I'm hopeful that we'll be able to work something out to get back in there.

No, it really isn't. People who believe we have made a mistake by expanding the classes believe we will generate less revenue with this.