December 23, 2023 • 53 mins
Doug is joined by University of California Riverside Athletic Director Wesley Mallette to discuss his North Jersey athletics background, his experience playing football at James Madison, his transition to college athletics administration at volatile Cal Berkeley, the biggest factor in the decline of the Pac-12, and facing the challenge of having to save the athletics program at Riverside.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:06):
Hey, what I welcome in. I'm dog godlig. This is
all ball.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
And as part of All Ball, we are going to
share with you a conversation, a two part conversation that
I had with West Mollette. Wes is the athletic director
at UC Riverside. If you know that name, you see
Riverside a couple different things. One they got Mike mcpio's
the head coach. He is a Filipino American and was
(00:32):
also the coach of the Year, a Filipino Coach of
the Year. And together they not only won at Uston Riverside,
won the Big West, but they've saved sports at UC Riverside,
literally save sports. So with that part of this conversation,
big part of this conversation is over an il, all
(00:55):
the changes coming, all the changes that have already come
by everything that's going on in the in the world
of college athletics. And he's super unique in his perspective.
How unique, well, he was a student AUTHT himself. He's
worked in the professional space at BT at PAC twelve.
(01:15):
You know, he's also worked in a high major athletic
department at cal Berkeley, and of course now he works
at UC Riverside.
Speaker 1 (01:23):
Which is more low major what we all call mid major.
Speaker 2 (01:25):
Now, and so I think it's a it's a fascinating look,
fascinating look at college athletics. And oh yeah, by the way,
his son is a talented college basketball player at Pepperdine.
And so there's there's a bunch of different layers to it.
Let's get into our conversation here. It is with Wes Mollett.
Speaker 1 (01:50):
Well, she grew up where.
Speaker 3 (01:52):
I grew up in North Jersey. So where I grew up,
I grew up in a town called form Park, basically
form Park, Madison, mark Town, East Hanover, that area of
North Jersey, Marris County, New Jersey. So I tell people
all the time, you know, growing up in North Jersey,
I'm so thankful for it every day because you learn
so much about yourself. You learn how to deal with adversity,
(02:14):
you learn how to do with everything that can be
thrown at you, including weather, that wherever you go from
there in the world, you know, everything is easier.
Speaker 2 (02:24):
So were you know, were you an all sport athlete
or just just football?
Speaker 3 (02:29):
I was football, baseball, track and field, but growing up
I actually played soccer, and because my mom wouldn't let
my younger brother and I played football until we were
a little bit older. So I'll never forget when my
brother was able to negotiate us playing football, and that
was so we used to I was just telling Michael.
(02:52):
During the summers, you know, my mom grew up in Membn,
North Carolina, and her and my dad was from Willington,
And so every summer we would ride in the station
wagon and I'd be in the back. I'd be in
the back seat with my younger brother Chris, or six
of us all together, but my younger brother, Chris and
I we'd be in the back and we were really
seeing where we went instead of seeing where we were going.
(03:13):
It was that whole deal, no seatbacks, you know.
Speaker 2 (03:15):
Like, yeah, that's how we drove across country. We moved
here from New York, and we were in the back
of a station.
Speaker 3 (03:22):
Wagon yep, and so you see, you know, you're looking
where you've been instead of where you're going. But so
at one point we were a little bit older, and
my mom used to hate driving through tunnels. So on
the way down we used to go through I forget
which tunnel, maybe it was the tunnel in Baltimore. There
was one that you go and you go under obviously,
so you're going under underwater. And my mom was used
(03:44):
to hate that. So you used to say, okay, Chris
and West, I need you guys to talk to me,
you know, talk me through. So my brother Chris says,
on one condition, and my mom is like what, and
she's like, we get to play football if we do this,
and so she's like, all right, all right, just talk
me through it. So he did it and we ended
up we started playing football after that and the rest
(04:05):
is history. But the great part about is I could
see my younger brothers negotiation skills because Chris went on
to become a lawyer. He played at Princeton, his wife
played at Princeton, and he has four boys, three of them.
One played at Northern Illinois, one's playing at Iowa right now,
and you know, he's got two more and his youngest
is getting recruited by everybody, you know. So it's it's
(04:26):
amazing how it started this whole journey of football and
sport and life and how we kind of give back
in our respective areas. He's a head coach at Chicago
Hope Academy out in Chicago, and both of us find
our passion and giving back through through athletics.
Speaker 2 (04:42):
And you went Jami, he went to Princeton and those
are great academic schools. How how was academics in your household?
Speaker 1 (04:49):
Like? How did how did your mom do it?
Speaker 3 (04:52):
So my mom she raised I have an older sister
from my dad's first marriage, my sister Nancy, and and
the gap between my three my four older siblings, myself
and my younger brother between me and the next one
up is seven years, so you know we're we're we're
thirteen months apart. But education was always critical. So oldest
(05:14):
brother went to Harvard, sister went to Ructors. Cousins went
to Columbia. My mom was either the valid I think
she was the valedictorian at Bennett College where she went.
Then she went to Mahari Medical School. My dad went
to MAHARII my dad they divorced when I was little.
But my dad was a neurologist. My mom was a
psychiatric nurse. So the academic piece was never it could
(05:38):
never be compromised. And the athletics component was as long
as you do well academically, you could continue to play.
But what we found was the balance was so critical,
and the better we did academically, the better we did athletically.
So and our kids, all of our kids, my brother's sisters, myself,
all of our kids have done extremely well academically too.
Speaker 1 (06:00):
Psychiatric guys, Wow, she must have seen some stuff.
Speaker 3 (06:02):
Huh yeah, yeah, So it was again when we were little.
She's My brother and I were the test dummies for
all the things she had to do, like when she
had to work on the restraining holds and see if
this worked. And here, you know, my brother and I
were like high school football guys at the time, figuring
out where we're going to go to college and all that,
and here comes my mom. And my mom was a
basketball player. Because everybody said, where does my son get
(06:25):
his basketball skills? And I say from his grammy. You know,
my mom. But she played in a time where, you know,
it was very tough for girls to play, and her
father found out she was playing because she broke her
finger in a game and she, you know, had to
tell them what happened, and that was kind of it
for basketball for her. But she was the heck of
a basketball player. And then I think that's where my
(06:46):
son absolutely gets it from. But my mom used to
tell she she we'd go through the restraining holds with her,
and here we are. My younger brother and I are
high school athletes, you know, both of us had to
play college somewhere, and she's literally taking us down with
like one two moves like these grips. Like I can't
even begin to describe how painful it was. But I
was like, yeah, mom, I think you're gonna be okay
(07:06):
running that psyche unit if anything gets out of hand.
Speaker 1 (07:09):
So crazy. What was your college decision?
Speaker 3 (07:13):
Like, so initially, you know, we were this was a
time obviously before social media, before videos and everything else,
Like everything was vhs, you know, you send out. So
I initially went to JMU and I was running track
and after my you know, I moved through my freshman year,
(07:34):
I was like, god, I really missed football. I was
going to go to Rutgers to play, but at the
last minute, I just decided I wanted a different experience
and I went on a visit to JMU and just
fell in love with it. So after a year a
jam you after my freshman year, I talked to the
coaches and I was like, hey, you know, it's like
I kind of want to get back in and they
were like, okay, well we know what you've done and
(07:55):
where you've been. You're running track here right now. So
you know, from that point I shifted over to football
and that was that. But recruiting wise, you know, growing
up in the Northeast, you really get recruited by a
lot of schools in the Northeast, especially back in the
late eighties. So I'm totally dating myself, but hey, it
is what it is, right, But back then it was
(08:18):
you know, everything was VHS tape. Coaches will come out
and see you. And the one thing that I learned
was your recruitment is only as good as your head coach, right,
And so you have two types of coaches at the
high school level. You have the coaches who are there
who can really develop young men and women for the
next level, whether it's D three, D two, D one, NAI,
(08:40):
whatever it may be. Then you have the coaches who
are out there trying to be the big person in
the bar on the weekend, right, talk about their teams
and everything else. So I tell parents, when I talk
to parents a lot now on the high school side,
make sure, I mean, obviously you have to have the talent,
but you want to make sure that your kid has
a coach who actually has connections and can push them forward.
You know that's going to help them. So I find
(09:03):
you know, again, that was thirty years ago, but now
it's no different. You know, you still have to have
coaches who can really connect and get kids where they
need to be. And that lesson that I learned was
prevalent and never more prevalent when make a decision when
we moved down to southern California from the Bay Area,
because you know, we moved between Houston's freshman and sophomore
(09:25):
year and he was he was at Silesian College prep
up in the Bay under Bill Mellis and his whole staff.
There just great group of human beings. And the hardest
day of my life outside of well, obviously, you know,
there was a lot of hard days, but probably the
hardest day as a parent was the day I drove
(09:45):
over to Silligion with him and he was telling his
high school teammates that he was moving to southern California
between his freshmen and sophomore year. I felt like the
worst parent in the world. It all worked out, you know,
Houston ended up all cif three years in a row. Sophomore, junior,
senior year. Absolutely killed it at pacifica Christian. But more importantly,
he helped build the culture of a school because the
(10:06):
school was so new. But the thing is, Doug, the
reason we chose pacifica Christian for him, he and I
when we talked it through, was Jeff Barakoff, who's the
head coach there, unbelievably connected and had anywhere from forty
to sixty Division one coaches in that gym every year,
and he was a builder of guards, right so, Houston,
(10:30):
when we moved down here, that's why we you know,
we landed in Orange County, and I just made the
drive back and forth to the riverside every day because
that's where he had is the best opportunity, and it
all worked out. He think he ended up with close
to forty one offers, you know, but that all stemmed
from the fact that he had a coach who was connected,
had relationships, and was a good coach on top of that.
Speaker 1 (10:52):
So let's go back to you.
Speaker 2 (10:55):
You know, most stories that have guys that go astray
start with a single parent. Okay, but now you're painting
the picture of Harvard Princeton, Rutgers JMU Columbia and whatever,
and now you go to school and you're running track
and then you're deciding to play football, Like, how did
(11:16):
you not fall through the cracks?
Speaker 3 (11:19):
So I think it was basically the way our mom
raised us right, and she taught us a lot of
things about life. But the biggest thing is my mom
always said, like, the biggest sin that you could commit
is squandering the gifts that God gives you, right and
recognizing the gifts that you have, do everything you can
to maximize those. You know, it's not going to be easy.
(11:42):
Nobody said it would be, and especially you know, when
you grow up as one of a handful of kids
of color in you know, the area of North Jersey
that we grew up in, you learn a lot of
things really fast. But the biggest thing that you learn
is yes, you have to really you have to excel
at the level that others don't necessarily have to just
to be in a position where you're on level footing.
(12:05):
And I think the thing for me was, you know,
I knew, you know, you ask how my brothers and
sisters and I ended up where we are today. And
everybody's doing great things, making tremendous impact in the world
because we learned from her. You know how important it
(12:25):
is to follow your passion and pursue that and everything
else will follow. And so, you know, my mom would
always tell me parenting is the toughest job you'll ever love.
I never really understood that un till I became a parent,
and I think all of us who are parents now
really understand what understood understand what that means. But she
just instilled in us a work ethic that was based
(12:46):
on that was based on faith, family, how you treat people, athletics,
and just really getting an enjoying life, and matter where
you are, no matter what you're doing, how you treat
people is everything. My mom is probably the kindest human
being that I've ever been around. There's a lot of
people who are nice, there's a lot of people who
(13:07):
do nice things, but kindness is something that it comes
from within. And so when I would watch how my
mom would maneuver through the most difficult and challenging and circumstances.
You know, she worked nights at the hospital. You know,
she worked eleven to seven. And so when my younger
brother and I, because again my older siblings were older
than us, when we would get ourselves ready for school.
(13:27):
We learn how to wash our clothes, do the dishes,
iron do all the chores around the house, get ourselves
ready to go. From the time we were five, six, seven,
eight years old. So we had that level of discipline
and that was the thing, Like we are such a
discipline family across the board, and we operate with, you know,
just an incredibly laser focus when it comes to doing
(13:50):
the things that we want to be successful at and
what it takes to do it and to be successful.
And so we learned, like you're you know, it's like
my boy Mike Tomlin says, there is no secret. The
secret is work, right, you got to work and you
got to put it in. And so that just like
showed us, like we watched what she could do what
she did, and like, if our mom can raise five
(14:12):
of us by herself and do the job that she did,
we have no excuses, you know. And so I think
that set us on the trajectory that we were on.
And then she also taught us the importance of being
you know, an important, an important factor in being a
strong member in your community is to make sure you
treat people with kindness. And you start there, you know
(14:36):
and everything else from their flows. So that I think
was the key is just how we were raised. I
always telling people like I did the best of both worlds.
I was raised in the Northeast, so I learned, you know,
a lot about just toughness across the board. But I
was raised by a mom who's from the South, so
I learned about compassion, kindness, and just you know, southern hospitality,
(14:57):
if you will. So combining those things together has been
probably one of the most important things for me and
things I try to instill invoke my son and my daughter.
Speaker 2 (15:05):
So okay, so you hadn't played what in a year
when you went from track to football?
Speaker 3 (15:10):
Mm hm.
Speaker 2 (15:13):
So when when you say, okay, I want to play football,
defensive back, wide receiver, Like, how did it go through
your decision on or their decision where to use you.
Speaker 3 (15:22):
So it was one of those things where you know,
high school, I was running back. Growing up, I was
running back. Got to college, you know, we we ran
we we had moved to a three receiver set. We
basically single back and uh, you know, we had like
nine running backs in the room. So talk to a
couple of guys. You figured the fastest way to get
(15:44):
on the field, special teams and being in the top
six and the receiver rotation and you'll get on the field.
And so that was the plan and that's what you
know I was able to do. You know, it comes
back fast, it doesn't go anywhere. And you know, again
my my first initial plan was go to Rutgers and
play there. But the hard thing was it's like I
(16:04):
knew I needed and wanted a different experience. And with Rutgers,
like I mean at the time, Dick Anderson was the
coach there. I mean, they were winning one game a
year every year. So it's like you're going to go
to Rutgers, You're going to get your head beat in
and you're not really gonna have a great experience. The
thing that I realized with JMU was, holy cow, this
is a great experience. Like from a student perspective and
(16:25):
a student athlete perspective. The people were great, you know,
the professors and the faculty tremendous. The culture on the
campus was fantastic, and I'd still tell people to this day,
I challenge anyone to meet someone who competed at JMU
in any sport who had a bad experience. And you know, Doug.
When I look at it and I look at the
trajectory that that program has been on and where it
(16:46):
is now, it's amazing. You know, it's really amazing to
see that, you know, where they are thirty years later.
But that's intentional, you know, that's investing in your kids.
That's investing in the student athletes, investing in the culture
and what you're going to build around it. It's kind
of what I modeled UC Riverside around in terms of
how we want our student athletes to feel, what we
(17:06):
want them to experience, and how we want them, you know,
to walk away from their four or five years here like,
holy cow, this is tremendous because again it's like you
know as well as I do, like these three four
five years, you know, four or five years in college. Well,
I guess now with the COVID year and the portal
could be up to six, right, But you know, it's
(17:27):
like it's it sets the tone for literally for the
rest of your life and how you're going to show
up and what you're going to do and how you're
going to be. So I want to make sure and
it's not possible for every kid to have a great
experience but I want everybody to experience what I experienced,
which was great teammates, great program, opportunity, opportunity to be successful.
(17:47):
You know, you have a great experience, and thirty years later,
you know you're you're still on text chains with your
old teammates, who are your best friends and your kids,
aunts and uncles, et cetera, et cetera, And it just
carries on and you have that that tradition that you've
really built and the pride that you have, you know,
from where you went to school and where you competed.
Speaker 4 (18:11):
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Speaker 2 (18:24):
So what is what is so special about jam You Like,
I've been there, it's an incredible campus. Obviously if Sildy's
now like new and mass Wrient, it's incredible.
Speaker 1 (18:34):
But what what's it really like to be there? What
makes it so special?
Speaker 3 (18:38):
The people and the culture. You know, it's like it's
it sounds so cliche, but it's really true, Like and
the culture starts at the top. You know that when
I was there, Ron Carrier was the president at the
time he was on campus. He's shaking your hand. He
may not remember everybody's name, obviously you got you know,
(19:00):
at the time was fourteen fifteen thousand students maybe and
now it's twenty five thousand. But he was involved. You know,
he was a president who was involved. The faculty were
the same way. You know, professors were you know, when
you were on campus and you run into him, sit down,
chat you up, have a conversation, ask you about you,
how your life was going, how you were adjusting, et cetera,
(19:21):
et cetera. And from an athletics standpoint, Casey Carter was
She's a legend. She was our you know, student athlete,
academic person and just the advisor for so many and
here we are like all these years later. The equipment staff,
the coaching staff in the different teams, but your teammates, like,
(19:43):
there's a certain type of kid that would go to
JAMU and still does just an all around good quality
human being, right, And when you're around that and it's
a feeling that you have. Right. We always talk about, yeah,
a program could be great on paper, and you know,
they could do all the right things, but the culture
is really the feeling right and what it feels like
to be part of it. Here at UC Riverside, I
(20:05):
built a culture for us now that's listening and caring,
and it meets people where they are to help them
get to where they need to go. And I find
that from a leadership standpoint, I've taken a lot of
my cues from what I learned to Jmu in terms
of how people lead, and I lead with joy, passion, integrity,
and purpose and a whole lot of energy and enthusiasm.
(20:26):
But I found that again with doctor Carrier, JMU and
the presidents who you know succeeded him since he retired,
and the you know and since he passed and everything
else it's been. It's been unbelievable because everyone who goes
there has a similar experience. And I find as a leader,
you don't have to have all this stuff right. We
(20:48):
don't have a lot of the facilities, and we're not
competing in the facility's arm arms raised the way we'd
want to hear at UC Riverside, right. But what we
have is our people, and people are the secret weapon
because we have coach just who can develop young men
and women. We're winning because everybody's bought in. People are aligned, right,
We don't always agree, but we're aligned. We have a
(21:09):
great Chancellor, Kim Wilcox, who every step of the way.
You know, when we talk about stuff, we talk about
stuff from the standpoint of here's our endpoint of what
we're looking to do and how we want to get there.
Then we talk about how we get there together. You know,
our Head of Student Affairs, Vice Chancellor Brian Haynes, same way,
Our Head of University Advancement Monique Dozers, same way, our
provosts Liz Walkin, same way. And it trickles down. So
(21:31):
when you have senior administration and you have athletic staff,
ad head coaches administration, it trickles down to the student
athletes and it impacts their experience. So to me, that
model of JMU, which is why I'm always so high
on it, was everything and that's what makes it different
from other places. And I think when you talk to
(21:52):
people today, you still see and feel that, you know,
purple and gold passion that everybody has for the place.
Speaker 1 (21:59):
She did that, what was your plan?
Speaker 3 (22:03):
Go to Maryland? Got my master's degree at Maryland?
Speaker 1 (22:06):
What was that was that? The plan? Or that that
just happened, Like, how did you.
Speaker 2 (22:11):
How did you decide to go to Maryland and get
a master's.
Speaker 3 (22:14):
So I knew. I knew initially I wanted to go
into broadcast journalism. And this was one of the other
reasons that now I'm in college athletics, right, because at
the time I couldn't do the internships because of conflicted
with practice. Right, So I went into PR and then
I went into I knew when I was then I'm like, well,
(22:34):
what do I want to do? So I knew I
wanted to get my master's degree, and I an opportunity
to go to Maryland, went to Maryland College Park, got
my master's there in journalism, and from there I wanted
to combine the undergrad degree in communications in PR with
the master's in journalism and really move into entertainment, in
entertainment media, if you will. So I'd like to say
(22:55):
it was all part of a master's plan, but actually
just came together. So when I was at Maryland getting
my master's in journalism, I met a gentleman named Craig
Muckel who was at B E. T at the time.
And you know, Craig was a black entertainment Television and
I did an internship with them. The internship two years
later turned into a job, and a couple of years
(23:15):
after that, I found myself enrolled as senior director of
Communications at b E. T. And I had a four
or five year run at BEET, which was fantastic, and.
Speaker 1 (23:23):
That all were working for Bob Johnson. Yep.
Speaker 3 (23:26):
I worked for Bob Johnson. I worked under Curtis Simons
who was head of the EVP of marketing, Clint Evans
who was under him, and a woman named she passed
a few years ago, Dannette Wills, who was absolutely fantastic
on the PR side, and they taught me a lot,
so much about, you know, the entertainment side, strategic communications,
(23:48):
and really how to build a brand right. And at
the time, during my time at BT, we had a
lot of fun, and I think it was probably one
of the five, maybe one of the three most impact
and fun experiences in my life, you know, professionally. The
other two probably my time at cal and uc R
here and then probably the most the most impactful and
(24:09):
the most fun was launching slam Ball with Mason Gordon
and Mike Tolan and that whole crew in two thousand
and two and two thousand and three, which made it me.
Speaker 2 (24:18):
Okay, you're getting You're like, you're you're getting ahead of
you're gonna I want to get to slam ball, Like,
give me a second, bro Okay. So so yeah, it'd
be uh huh.
Speaker 1 (24:28):
And then how'd you decide to leave?
Speaker 3 (24:33):
I'd done everything I could do at that point. It
was time to make the next step, you know, And
I find times in I've been there about four just
under five years, and there was really there was no
the growth opportunities weren't there anymore. And I'm a lifelong learner.
I always want to grow. And so made the decision
to leave and went in a slightly different direction at
(24:53):
that point and went to and to investor and media
relations for Victoria's Secret parent company Limited brand and spent
a year and a half in Columbus, Ohio, managing media
and helping on the internal or sorry, investor relations side
with on the Victoria's Secret and the Bath and Body
Works brand side. Loved it, but entertainment was really my thing,
(25:19):
and I really am a coastal person, so I knew,
you know, I always wanted to be in California. And
then the opportunity with MTV Networks came up, and that's
how I ended up in Santa Monica.
Speaker 1 (25:30):
So that was Monica. You Movese, san Monica, We're going
to MTV. What was your actual job to be.
Speaker 3 (25:35):
Vice president of Communications at MTV Networks?
Speaker 1 (25:39):
What were you doing?
Speaker 3 (25:41):
All media relations, strategic communications, events, brand related stuff for
the networks? So like MTV, VH one, MTV two, h
MTV Films, Nickelodeon Movies and they started a record label
(26:01):
at the time, Nickelodeon and Jive Records, and they did
one and really just helping that brand from one to three.
When I was there in Santa Monica.
Speaker 1 (26:12):
How did slam Ball come to be?
Speaker 3 (26:14):
Oh? Man, so slam Ball. So when I was making
the next move after MTV Networks, I worked on slam
Ball my last year there. It was just getting started
and then I just went out on my own and
slam Ball was my first client. And Mason Gordon, creator
(26:37):
and founder along with Mike Tolan, you know, Tolan Robbins.
They were like, Hey, we're gonna We're gonna build this thing,
and man, Doug, it was it was it was so
much fun. Man. It was like you're recruiting. You're you're
on the road, you're recruiting guys. You're trying to find
individuals who like you're basically building something that is a
(26:57):
sport that's airing on television, but you're also building a league,
right and you're recruiting guys. And a lot of the
guys that we found either ex football, ex basketball, or
the combination of who really weren't afraid to mix it
up in a sport that combined you know, gymnastics, basketball, football,
(27:20):
hockey all rolled into one, you know, and the arena
that it was played in, and it was amazing. You know,
we did my partners and I at the time, we
did all the branding for him. We did all the communications,
all the media relations side, and then we did whatever
it took to help that brand really get off the ground,
you know, and it was. It was definitely one of
(27:44):
the most impactful things because everywhere we would go, you know,
when people would watch it, then we're like, oh my gosh,
it's the greatest thing ever. And here we are twenty
something years later and Mason Gordon, you know, and the
company that brought it all the way back and I
know they had to run this past year on ESPN.
So it's good to see.
Speaker 1 (28:01):
How did you get into college athletics.
Speaker 3 (28:04):
That's a great that's a great question. So about fifteen
years into my corporate career, if you will, because after
MTV Networks, I went up to the Bay Area and
helped an ad agency build out its PR, marketing and
event management and engagement department because ad agencies at the time,
in the early two thousands were trying to really expand
(28:26):
and figure out what else can we do besides traditional
advertising and really expand the brands that we're working for.
So about halfway through it, I just realized I was like,
you know, I really missed college athletics and I really
missed building people. You know, the corporate life was fantastic,
(28:46):
it was amazing, but like I said, going all the
way back to my childhood, leading a life of impact
and making an impact is so important to me. So
I was doing a lot of consulting work at the time,
and you know, circa twenty thirteen, connected with a gentleman
named Phil Eston who's now the athletics director in Minnesota.
(29:11):
Phil was at CAL at the time. Now he's an
ad in Minnesota, and he took Saint Thomas from Division
three to Division one in one year. So Phil and
I talked, and Phil's like, hey, we have a real
issue here. And again, when you look at all my background,
the thread, the common thread through all of it is
issues in crisis management, strategic and brand communications and the
(29:33):
external relations sign and so Doug he he's like, hey, man,
we've we're going to need a head of strategic communications,
an associating for strat comms here at CAL. And you know,
I talked to him, met with Sandy Barber, and then
went to CAL. And the whole reason I went to
CAL at the end of thirteen was to help them
(29:54):
change the narrative because if you remember, at the time,
Cow was last in the country in football and graduation
success rate, and that was a story that their donors
and their alums they you know, someone told me when
I got there, they were like, some of the donors
would rather not go to the Rose Bull for fifty
more years than be dead last in GSR in the nation,
not in an institution like UC Berkeley. So I got
(30:16):
there and I worked with the crew there and Herb
Benison and everybody else there, and we built a plan
to really change the narrative, but also tell the story
on how we were going to rebuild the athletics brand
from a narrative standpoint. We brought in a bunch of
media people that covered you know, Cal athletics, talked them through,
this is what APR is, this is what GSR is.
(30:37):
This is why their GSR was last in the country
because the narrative was guys were going to failing out
of school, but that wasn't the case. You know, guys,
a lot of guys were leaving early and going to
the NFL and not coming back to finish. So it
impacted the graduation success rate. So we were able to
do that, worked with Sunny Dykes, who was the coach
at the time, and within two years we went from
(30:59):
work the first in the league and the conference in
the PAC twelve at the time academically and rose to
one of the top teams of the most competitive teams
in the PAC twelve during the time that I was there.
And so that's what brought me back into college athletics
and quite frankly, just I missed it. You know. It's
like it was something that I had dabbled in here
and there as a professional, done some consulting work with,
(31:20):
but I knew I also wanted to create opportunities for
young men and women in college athletics to have a
relatable experience with someone in administration who had walked a
mile in their shoes, and quite frankly, for a lot
of the kids, someone who looked like them and someone
who could guide them when things got really hard and
they didn't feel like they were on an island or
they didn't have people they could relate to, if you will.
(31:43):
So that's what brought me back into college athletics, and
you know, eleven years later in the athletics director's chair.
Speaker 1 (31:49):
So give me your best Berkeley story.
Speaker 3 (31:53):
Oh man, Oh, there's so many. I'm just trying to
think of the ones that I could say publicly, if
you will, because I had many welcome to Berkeley moments,
so well, one of them I learned about, you know,
Berkeley is the home of the professional protesters. We were
(32:17):
in we were in the athletics building, uh, and we're
in the a D suite and at the time it
was myself, Mike Williams was the a D took over
from Sandy Barber. Chris Pesman, who's now the a D.
At Houston, Jenny Simon O'Neill, who's still still there, Oshrendport,
who's now the ad at Lasal I'm thinking Jane Jackson
(32:40):
was there too, and a few other people. So we're
in the AD suite and all of a sudden we
hear you know, you're you're used to hearing the protest
on campus, but we hear this huge commotion, like what
is that noise? All of a sudden, he's getting closer
and closer, and the next time we know it's in
our building, right, and it's getting louder and louder, And
then the next we know, we're overrun in the AD
(33:02):
suite by about probably thirty forty fifty kids, however many
could fit in there, and they all sit down and
they're sitting on the floor and they're standing up and
they're locking arms, and I'm like looking like, what's happening
right now? Like why are you guys here? What's the problem?
What did we do that would cause you to come
in here and disturb the day like this? And had
(33:23):
nothing to do with us, right, and had with some
of the issue on campus that were upset about. And
I'll never forget Like we sat there and we were
like we were literally we were trapped in our offices
for hours. So we ended up they ended up leaving
after a period of time, but we had to call
campus police. They had come in and they just started
taking the kids out one at a time, those who
(33:44):
didn't leave on their own. But I remember saying to
the leadership of the group, I said, here, here's my card,
call me and let me sit down and try to
help you through whatever your issue is. And so then
Doug we sat down in the conference room a couple
of weeks later, and I literally talked them through how
to be more effective when they're trying to get their
point across. For I don't even remember what the issue was,
(34:06):
something with labor on campus, had nothing to do with us,
But they came back like a year later. I ran
into them on campus and they told me how much
it actually helped, you know, because they were yoused to
just we're upset.
Speaker 1 (34:18):
So you helped the protesters protest more effectively.
Speaker 3 (34:20):
I helped protesters get their point across more effectively without
disrupting everybody's day if you will, you know so, and
they were able to kind of move through it. But
it was, yeah, that was one Berkeley moment man there
it is the home of professional protesting. But I remember
in the time I was there, there were a total
of seventeen days that I did not have an issue
(34:41):
or something that we had to work through. From an
athletics standpoint, yeah, I tell people like, and I make
no bones about it, it was easier to save the
athletics program at UC Riverside from being eliminated. Then three
months on campus in Berkeley and athletics. You know, So
(35:01):
the ucs are tough, but that is far and away
the toughest one. Sometimes I feel like it's a you know,
when people necessarily difficult. Sometimes I feel like, yeah, we
don't need to make it. It doesn't need to be that difficult.
Speaker 1 (35:17):
Okay, So how did the path leads your Riverside?
Speaker 3 (35:24):
So from cal I went over to the PAC twelve.
Was there for about a year and a half and
the opportunity Tamika Smith Jones called me, who was the
eighty year at the time, There was an opportunity.
Speaker 1 (35:36):
Let me take you back real quick. You're at the.
Speaker 2 (35:38):
PAC twelve, okay, and obviously the PAC twelve essentially is
no more now, right, didgit like, what was that like,
what was that the atmosphere of work, Like.
Speaker 3 (35:52):
I will say this, there's a lot of really great
people at the PAC twelve who really care about cared
about the schools and the direction that was going, and
wanted to do great work. How do I say this?
I think it was. I think if people are honest,
(36:17):
those who were in the PAC twelve, whether you you
know I was school side and conference slash network side,
I don't think anybody could honestly say with the direction
that it was going, that you could see any other
outcome than what happened. You know.
Speaker 1 (36:34):
Well, so let me let me give my read on it.
Speaker 2 (36:36):
Okay, So I remember when conference expansion happened, when they
got there and they got their new TV deal, and
my thought at the time was I actually thought, obviously
the PAC twelve network and having all the kind of
regional networks, I thought that was a weird strategy, right,
so weird.
Speaker 1 (36:55):
I didn't like the.
Speaker 2 (36:56):
Strategy and it proved to be a real hard strategy
to X you. But the actual TV of deals they got,
I thought, we're home runs. Considering again, this is from
as talent at ESPN at the time, and what I'd
always been told like those are people associated with the
(37:16):
success of the sports teams. It's not really how it works, right,
because of the time zone issues, you know, Pacific time zone.
You know, you can't have a game at six, nobody
shows up. You have a game at seven that's a
ten on the East Coast, and two thirds of the
viewers of college sports are on are in the Eastern
time zone. So you're kind of screwed either way. And
(37:38):
TV companies are kind of screwed because they had to
play top dollar for something that's not really worth top dollar.
So I, you know, I understand there's lots of things
that were mismanaged, but I actually thought that.
Speaker 1 (37:52):
Deal was a decent was a good deal.
Speaker 2 (37:54):
It was probably over the probably overpriced because you're not
going to get much value out of some of those
late games, right.
Speaker 3 (37:59):
Right, right, So I can't speak to the deals specifically,
but I think the challenges, obviously, you know that we
all face, were being in a place where the production
quality of the games was outstanding, right. The coverage of
(38:22):
the games, you know, with the with the producers, the directors,
the on air talent, the studio shows outstanding. The hard
thing was obviously visibility and distribution so people could see it,
you know, and it was a challenge that was you know,
beyond our control, if you will, those of us in
the day to day. But to your point, I think,
(38:42):
if it's in a perfect world, I'm sure that if
everybody went back and could do it all over again,
there's probably a few things that they would do differently.
But I think also it's it's I will say this,
I think the lesson if we always talk about like
don't miss the lesson, right, well, that was the lesson.
I think if you talk to the athletic directors who
(39:04):
were in the PAC twelve during that time period from
twelve to to this year, twelve to twenty three, if
you will, and those who've left in our different places now,
you'll hear a common theme which will be consistent, and
that is sometimes you know, you have to listen to
(39:24):
the experts in the room, and I don't think the
experts in the room who are the ads, were listened
to enough. You know, the decision makers, the presidents and
the chancellors, you know, working with the commissioner and company. Yes,
they made decisions that they made, but I don't think
(39:44):
I don't think that enough people when a lot of
decisions on whatever level they were being made, were listening
intently or listening and really adhering to what the ads
were saying with the experiences that they were going and
what they needed to really keep their programs competitive, you
know with the SEC the Big Ten than what they
(40:07):
were doing. And quite frankly, when the ACC network came
online and launched and just you know, just crushed it
out the gate, you know. So I think that the
lesson is, as you go forward, conference offices need to
make sure they're really listening to the leadership in the
room from an AD standpoint, and that the ads are
(40:27):
aligned with their presidents and chancellors and that those discussions
are happening before decisions are made, you know, at a
higher level.
Speaker 1 (40:37):
Okay, So now how do you get to riverside?
Speaker 3 (40:40):
So so okay, So Tamaka Smith Jones, she was looking
for a senior associated for Strategic Communications and external Relations
and it's in my wheelhouse. And I missed being on
campus and was the opportunity to get back on campus
and there was a they had a need and the
need was established a visual in relevancy and that you know,
(41:01):
I'm one who will never back down from a challenge
like I love a big challenge, said okay, we could
do this, and so I said, look, it's going to
be a three year endeavor to really get it to
where it needs to be, and here's how we're going
to do it. Two years into it, yes, it all
worked out. Took the job, moved down here southern California,
and three years in. Two years in we're going through
(41:28):
COVID Andy. There was the threat that the entire program
was going to be eliminated. So now it's like, you know,
we've worked hard to establish the visual and relevancy and
now we've got to work and locks up with the
senior administration on campus to keep the program the whole thing,
not just like five seven sports, one or two sports
(41:50):
all seventeen. So it's like okay, again, big challenge, but
going all the way back. So what my mom had
prepared us for. No challenge in life is going to
be too big if you for it right. So we prepare, focus,
and execute. So what we do. And so Tamica took
a job with Kennesaw State and left to be their
COO in Atlanta, and I was made the intermay d.
(42:14):
And then I worked with with all the appropriate people,
we built a plan, and the plan included a financial
sustainability model, included an operational excellence model, operational efficiency model,
and the Excellence model in terms of how we were
going to compete in spite of not having certain things,
in spite of having to cut almost three million from
the program during COVID to figure and survive, to figure
(42:36):
out how we're going to go forward. So we're able
to do it, and here we are. You know, three
years later, I mentoring year six now for year four
is zad. But here we are. With all the lessons,
in my opinion, that I've learned throughout my career all
came full circle with having to save the program. But
the most important one, Doug was really understanding like, hey,
(42:57):
there are no days off of leadership. Right. Leadership hard,
but if you do it the right way and you
get people aligned and everybody's on that same mission, here's
how we do it, and that's what we're able to do.
So now you know, we're we just came off arguably
our most successful year ever, one of them at the
Division one level. Two Coaches of the Year and men's
(43:19):
basketball and men's soccer, multiple student Athletes of the Year
and different sports number you know, double digit all conference,
you know players academically, our entire program is it just
under three point two GPA every team, all seventeen teams
or above a three point zero. People are happy, the
culture is great, and even in the midst of everything
(43:42):
that we're dealing with. And by the way, I listened
to I listened to the pod that you did with
bells Are that was fantastic. By the way, and we
work with Jason with our collective. He's probably, in my opinion,
the smartest person in the room when it comes to
that stuff. And if not the smartest, he's in the
top three. But with all the issues that we're dealing
(44:03):
with across the NCAA landscape, to me, we're going to
be okay simply because we have the core things in place,
the people, the culture, you know, the alignment, the mindset,
how we work with campus and just figuring out how
we get to where we need to be by being
good stewards over the resources we have while we work
(44:24):
to acquire those that we want and those that we need.
So that's the long and short on the journey, the
path two and where we are now at you see riverside.
Speaker 2 (44:33):
Okay, So for people who don't know, Okay, so you
take over as ad exactly.
Speaker 3 (44:39):
What January of twenty one?
Speaker 1 (44:45):
Okay, so you'd been is right into the coast.
Speaker 3 (44:47):
Twenty one yep. So twenty one, twenty two, twenty three,
twenty four will be my fourth year.
Speaker 1 (44:53):
Okay, so this is Smack Davin. When was COVID was twenty? Right?
Speaker 3 (44:57):
It was March of twenty until twenty two twenty one,
and COVID was about two years, right, give or take.
Speaker 1 (45:08):
It was like a well, it started in March of
March of twenty It.
Speaker 2 (45:12):
Started in March, and yeah, I guess it was over
pretty much the next end of the next March, right,
wasn't it? Or we had the limit an NCAA tournament
that next year.
Speaker 3 (45:25):
Yeah, we're still probably about a year and a half,
give her take. I mean, it's we all have COVID
brein now, right, like just trying to remember.
Speaker 2 (45:31):
Yes, totally, So okay, so when what when?
Speaker 1 (45:38):
What were you doing? When was the the program is
going to be eliminated?
Speaker 3 (45:42):
When?
Speaker 1 (45:42):
When when did that come?
Speaker 3 (45:44):
That was made public? August twenty ninth of twenty one, No,
August twenty twenty August twenty ninth of twenty is when
it come.
Speaker 1 (45:52):
Oh yeah, it was made public.
Speaker 2 (45:54):
When was it made privately known that, holy cow, we
may shut down our athletic programs.
Speaker 3 (45:59):
Don't know because I found out when it was made public.
Speaker 1 (46:02):
So okay, So where were where were you at that moment?
M M.
Speaker 3 (46:08):
The moment I found out that it was out there,
I was at home and I was in the garage
because I'd set the garage up as a garage office.
And I remember I got a call. I don't remember
who the call came from, but somebody called me and
told me that this was out there, and I was like,
we what? And so I looked at it and I
(46:31):
was like, how public is this? Because it was kind
of buried on a website somewhere. And then once I
realized that, I think it was about three or four
days later, we huddled and we started building a plan
on what we what we needed to do to kind
of turn this thing around. Tamaco Smith Jones was still
here at the time as a AD so it might
have been Tamac Goog called. I don't remember who called,
(46:53):
but talked to Tamaica, talked to the senior athletics about
leadership team at that time, and we just went to
work and started building a plan on what we needed
to do to make sure this didn't become a real,
a real thing, because here's the thing we were watching.
I think it was Stanford had to cut seven sports,
was it, and then eventually had to bring them all back.
(47:14):
Clemson had to cut some William and Mary schools all
around the country were cutting because you know, people were
we were in COVID and nobody knew it was gonna happen,
and budgets were of concern, et cetera, et cetera. And
then I believe pretty much all the programs that cut
sports had to end up bringing them all back, right,
because that's one thing you never really went on. So
(47:35):
so yeah, I think I was in my garage, you know,
in my garage office, at my COVID garage office, and
I was just I was stunned. And then when it
became real, but it's like, Okay, this is actually a
real thing, and we have to really kind of figure
this out. It was about four days later when we
were meeting on it, early September, right before Labor Day
that time.
Speaker 1 (47:54):
What was your idea how do you think it was
going to get fixed? Or do you think it wasn't sayable?
Speaker 3 (48:00):
No, I believe there was sayable. And the reason for
that is because I was like, there's two things right. One.
I knew as we kind of went into it, we
had to make I had to make sure that I
threaded the needle of you know, because it wasn't adversarial.
So I didn't make sure that it wasn't adversarial. It
was it was out there because literally was a financial
decision that our financial possibility that people were talking about.
(48:26):
But so I knew, Okay, we just have to make
the case, make the point. But I knew we needed
to win the court of public opinion. We need to
make people aware of it, and we needed to make
sure that the campus knew, campus leadership knew if we're
able to do this, here's how we can do it.
Because the questions were on the table, do we eliminate it,
does it go division three? Division two? Does the state
(48:46):
division one? What does that look like? And how do
we kind of maneuver in that space? And so I
knew there was only one way to go, which was
to remain Division one. So we worked with them they
put a task force together. I worked with the task
force in Collegiate Sports Associates CSA. They came into an
assessment of not just where our program was, but where
mid major programs of like similar size and like mindedness
(49:10):
with respect to the academic uc deal and everything else
where they were and how they were faring. And you know,
as well as I do, Doug, a handful of programs
in the nation are profitable. Everybody's in the red right.
This is you have the academic model for athletics, and
you have the business model for athletics. The business model
is a lot of what you and Bells we were
talking about, you know in your podcast with him. That's
(49:32):
where you know the money game is being played, if
you will, right, the academic model is where ninety percent
of Division I universities operate. At the mid majors, the
Group of five for the most part, and the lower
level pack fives where we're still in that academic model.
You know where it's not. You know, if you have football,
(49:53):
your football program is not you know, bringing in millions
and millions of dollars to the university. You're there and
your educ hitting kids and you're building the programs the
right way, so bring it all the way back. The
plan that we put in place to fix it involved
making sure all the stakeholders were apprized of the situation.
Our donors, our fans, alums, the alumni, our current student athletes, parents, media,
(50:19):
you name it, you know, folks on campus. And then
it was how are we going to tell the story
about why we're here in the mission of athletics and
why it's important. So we engaged in that. We did
a petition, an online petition. I'm drawing a blank on
what those things are called again, you know the ones
where everybody signs, oh gosh, I'm drawing a blank on it.
(50:40):
But we did one of those and it garnered fifteen
thousand signatures. There was a letter writing campaign to campus
administration to let them know how people were feeling. And
then I just went on a media blitz and did
a lot of interviews you know, all over the country,
halftime some of our games on esp and others, you know,
(51:01):
talk shows, et cetera, et cetera, and just told the
story of why athletics at this level really matters and
the ultimate impact of negative impact of losing an athletics
program especially at a university it's following the education model,
and especially at a U see, you know, and then
we were able to make the case and so we
you know, we were I May May of twenty twenty
(51:25):
one or May of twenty twenty two, we receive word
that the program was going to go forward. And it
was a great day, you know. But what kept me
going through the whole thing every night for eleven months
or however long it took. What I would wind the
night down on my screen I would have. I'd go
through each team, and I'd look at the faces of
(51:47):
all of our student athletes and our coaches and our staff,
and I realized, like, hey, failure is not an option here.
You know, these are the individuals that you're fighting for
every day to keep this program going. And you know,
when I would look at their faces, I knew, like
it's real. You know, when I was on campus, because
we were back on campus in October of twenty because
(52:10):
we were still doing games. You remember that we're trying
to figure out games with no fans for basketballs were
starting all that, so we were full go the whole time.
But when I'd see the kids or student athletes, when
I'd see the coaches, see their families, see their friends.
I knew, like you know, It's like, dude, you can't
fail failures not you cannot fail at this one. Losing
(52:31):
is not an option here. All right.
Speaker 2 (52:35):
That's it for Part one the Combo with Les Mallett.
Stay tuned for part two. Reminder of The Doug Gottlieb
Show airs daily three to five Eastern Time. It's also
on a twelve to two Pacific. You can download that podcast.
Just type in Doug Gottlieb Show. Wherever you download this podcast,
you can probably get that one as well. And I
truly appreciate you joining me. I'm Doug gotlig This as
(52:57):
all ballp
Hey, what I welcome in. I'm dog godlig. This is
all ball.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
And as part of All Ball, we are going to
share with you a conversation, a two part conversation that
I had with West Mollette. Wes is the athletic director
at UC Riverside. If you know that name, you see
Riverside a couple different things. One they got Mike mcpio's
the head coach. He is a Filipino American and was
(00:32):
also the coach of the Year, a Filipino Coach of
the Year. And together they not only won at Uston Riverside,
won the Big West, but they've saved sports at UC Riverside,
literally save sports. So with that part of this conversation,
big part of this conversation is over an il, all
(00:55):
the changes coming, all the changes that have already come
by everything that's going on in the in the world
of college athletics. And he's super unique in his perspective.
How unique, well, he was a student AUTHT himself. He's
worked in the professional space at BT at PAC twelve.
(01:15):
You know, he's also worked in a high major athletic
department at cal Berkeley, and of course now he works
at UC Riverside.
Speaker 1 (01:23):
Which is more low major what we all call mid major.
Speaker 2 (01:25):
Now, and so I think it's a it's a fascinating look,
fascinating look at college athletics. And oh yeah, by the way,
his son is a talented college basketball player at Pepperdine.
And so there's there's a bunch of different layers to it.
Let's get into our conversation here. It is with Wes Mollett.
Speaker 1 (01:50):
Well, she grew up where.
Speaker 3 (01:52):
I grew up in North Jersey. So where I grew up,
I grew up in a town called form Park, basically
form Park, Madison, mark Town, East Hanover, that area of
North Jersey, Marris County, New Jersey. So I tell people
all the time, you know, growing up in North Jersey,
I'm so thankful for it every day because you learn
so much about yourself. You learn how to deal with adversity,
(02:14):
you learn how to do with everything that can be
thrown at you, including weather, that wherever you go from
there in the world, you know, everything is easier.
Speaker 2 (02:24):
So were you know, were you an all sport athlete
or just just football?
Speaker 3 (02:29):
I was football, baseball, track and field, but growing up
I actually played soccer, and because my mom wouldn't let
my younger brother and I played football until we were
a little bit older. So I'll never forget when my
brother was able to negotiate us playing football, and that
was so we used to I was just telling Michael.
(02:52):
During the summers, you know, my mom grew up in Membn,
North Carolina, and her and my dad was from Willington,
And so every summer we would ride in the station
wagon and I'd be in the back. I'd be in
the back seat with my younger brother Chris, or six
of us all together, but my younger brother, Chris and
I we'd be in the back and we were really
seeing where we went instead of seeing where we were going.
(03:13):
It was that whole deal, no seatbacks, you know.
Speaker 2 (03:15):
Like, yeah, that's how we drove across country. We moved
here from New York, and we were in the back
of a station.
Speaker 3 (03:22):
Wagon yep, and so you see, you know, you're looking
where you've been instead of where you're going. But so
at one point we were a little bit older, and
my mom used to hate driving through tunnels. So on
the way down we used to go through I forget
which tunnel, maybe it was the tunnel in Baltimore. There
was one that you go and you go under obviously,
so you're going under underwater. And my mom was used
(03:44):
to hate that. So you used to say, okay, Chris
and West, I need you guys to talk to me,
you know, talk me through. So my brother Chris says,
on one condition, and my mom is like what, and
she's like, we get to play football if we do this,
and so she's like, all right, all right, just talk
me through it. So he did it and we ended
up we started playing football after that and the rest
(04:05):
is history. But the great part about is I could
see my younger brothers negotiation skills because Chris went on
to become a lawyer. He played at Princeton, his wife
played at Princeton, and he has four boys, three of them.
One played at Northern Illinois, one's playing at Iowa right now,
and you know, he's got two more and his youngest
is getting recruited by everybody, you know. So it's it's
(04:26):
amazing how it started this whole journey of football and
sport and life and how we kind of give back
in our respective areas. He's a head coach at Chicago
Hope Academy out in Chicago, and both of us find
our passion and giving back through through athletics.
Speaker 2 (04:42):
And you went Jami, he went to Princeton and those
are great academic schools. How how was academics in your household?
Speaker 1 (04:49):
Like? How did how did your mom do it?
Speaker 3 (04:52):
So my mom she raised I have an older sister
from my dad's first marriage, my sister Nancy, and and
the gap between my three my four older siblings, myself
and my younger brother between me and the next one
up is seven years, so you know we're we're we're
thirteen months apart. But education was always critical. So oldest
(05:14):
brother went to Harvard, sister went to Ructors. Cousins went
to Columbia. My mom was either the valid I think
she was the valedictorian at Bennett College where she went.
Then she went to Mahari Medical School. My dad went
to MAHARII my dad they divorced when I was little.
But my dad was a neurologist. My mom was a
psychiatric nurse. So the academic piece was never it could
(05:38):
never be compromised. And the athletics component was as long
as you do well academically, you could continue to play.
But what we found was the balance was so critical,
and the better we did academically, the better we did athletically.
So and our kids, all of our kids, my brother's sisters, myself,
all of our kids have done extremely well academically too.
Speaker 1 (06:00):
Psychiatric guys, Wow, she must have seen some stuff.
Speaker 3 (06:02):
Huh yeah, yeah, So it was again when we were little.
She's My brother and I were the test dummies for
all the things she had to do, like when she
had to work on the restraining holds and see if
this worked. And here, you know, my brother and I
were like high school football guys at the time, figuring
out where we're going to go to college and all that,
and here comes my mom. And my mom was a
basketball player. Because everybody said, where does my son get
(06:25):
his basketball skills? And I say from his grammy. You know,
my mom. But she played in a time where, you know,
it was very tough for girls to play, and her
father found out she was playing because she broke her
finger in a game and she, you know, had to
tell them what happened, and that was kind of it
for basketball for her. But she was the heck of
a basketball player. And then I think that's where my
(06:46):
son absolutely gets it from. But my mom used to
tell she she we'd go through the restraining holds with her,
and here we are. My younger brother and I are
high school athletes, you know, both of us had to
play college somewhere, and she's literally taking us down with
like one two moves like these grips. Like I can't
even begin to describe how painful it was. But I
was like, yeah, mom, I think you're gonna be okay
(07:06):
running that psyche unit if anything gets out of hand.
Speaker 1 (07:09):
So crazy. What was your college decision?
Speaker 3 (07:13):
Like, so initially, you know, we were this was a
time obviously before social media, before videos and everything else,
Like everything was vhs, you know, you send out. So
I initially went to JMU and I was running track
and after my you know, I moved through my freshman year,
(07:34):
I was like, god, I really missed football. I was
going to go to Rutgers to play, but at the
last minute, I just decided I wanted a different experience
and I went on a visit to JMU and just
fell in love with it. So after a year a
jam you after my freshman year, I talked to the
coaches and I was like, hey, you know, it's like
I kind of want to get back in and they
were like, okay, well we know what you've done and
(07:55):
where you've been. You're running track here right now. So
you know, from that point I shifted over to football
and that was that. But recruiting wise, you know, growing
up in the Northeast, you really get recruited by a
lot of schools in the Northeast, especially back in the
late eighties. So I'm totally dating myself, but hey, it
is what it is, right, But back then it was
(08:18):
you know, everything was VHS tape. Coaches will come out
and see you. And the one thing that I learned
was your recruitment is only as good as your head coach, right,
And so you have two types of coaches at the
high school level. You have the coaches who are there
who can really develop young men and women for the
next level, whether it's D three, D two, D one, NAI,
(08:40):
whatever it may be. Then you have the coaches who
are out there trying to be the big person in
the bar on the weekend, right, talk about their teams
and everything else. So I tell parents, when I talk
to parents a lot now on the high school side,
make sure, I mean, obviously you have to have the talent,
but you want to make sure that your kid has
a coach who actually has connections and can push them forward.
You know that's going to help them. So I find
(09:03):
you know, again, that was thirty years ago, but now
it's no different. You know, you still have to have
coaches who can really connect and get kids where they
need to be. And that lesson that I learned was
prevalent and never more prevalent when make a decision when
we moved down to southern California from the Bay Area,
because you know, we moved between Houston's freshman and sophomore
(09:25):
year and he was he was at Silesian College prep
up in the Bay under Bill Mellis and his whole staff.
There just great group of human beings. And the hardest
day of my life outside of well, obviously, you know,
there was a lot of hard days, but probably the
hardest day as a parent was the day I drove
(09:45):
over to Silligion with him and he was telling his
high school teammates that he was moving to southern California
between his freshmen and sophomore year. I felt like the
worst parent in the world. It all worked out, you know,
Houston ended up all cif three years in a row. Sophomore, junior,
senior year. Absolutely killed it at pacifica Christian. But more importantly,
he helped build the culture of a school because the
(10:06):
school was so new. But the thing is, Doug, the
reason we chose pacifica Christian for him, he and I
when we talked it through, was Jeff Barakoff, who's the
head coach there, unbelievably connected and had anywhere from forty
to sixty Division one coaches in that gym every year,
and he was a builder of guards, right so, Houston,
(10:30):
when we moved down here, that's why we you know,
we landed in Orange County, and I just made the
drive back and forth to the riverside every day because
that's where he had is the best opportunity, and it
all worked out. He think he ended up with close
to forty one offers, you know, but that all stemmed
from the fact that he had a coach who was connected,
had relationships, and was a good coach on top of that.
Speaker 1 (10:52):
So let's go back to you.
Speaker 2 (10:55):
You know, most stories that have guys that go astray
start with a single parent. Okay, but now you're painting
the picture of Harvard Princeton, Rutgers JMU Columbia and whatever,
and now you go to school and you're running track
and then you're deciding to play football, Like, how did
(11:16):
you not fall through the cracks?
Speaker 3 (11:19):
So I think it was basically the way our mom
raised us right, and she taught us a lot of
things about life. But the biggest thing is my mom
always said, like, the biggest sin that you could commit
is squandering the gifts that God gives you, right and
recognizing the gifts that you have, do everything you can
to maximize those. You know, it's not going to be easy.
(11:42):
Nobody said it would be, and especially you know, when
you grow up as one of a handful of kids
of color in you know, the area of North Jersey
that we grew up in, you learn a lot of
things really fast. But the biggest thing that you learn
is yes, you have to really you have to excel
at the level that others don't necessarily have to just
to be in a position where you're on level footing.
(12:05):
And I think the thing for me was, you know,
I knew, you know, you ask how my brothers and
sisters and I ended up where we are today. And
everybody's doing great things, making tremendous impact in the world
because we learned from her. You know how important it
(12:25):
is to follow your passion and pursue that and everything
else will follow. And so, you know, my mom would
always tell me parenting is the toughest job you'll ever love.
I never really understood that un till I became a parent,
and I think all of us who are parents now
really understand what understood understand what that means. But she
just instilled in us a work ethic that was based
(12:46):
on that was based on faith, family, how you treat people, athletics,
and just really getting an enjoying life, and matter where
you are, no matter what you're doing, how you treat
people is everything. My mom is probably the kindest human
being that I've ever been around. There's a lot of
people who are nice, there's a lot of people who
(13:07):
do nice things, but kindness is something that it comes
from within. And so when I would watch how my
mom would maneuver through the most difficult and challenging and circumstances.
You know, she worked nights at the hospital. You know,
she worked eleven to seven. And so when my younger
brother and I, because again my older siblings were older
than us, when we would get ourselves ready for school.
(13:27):
We learn how to wash our clothes, do the dishes,
iron do all the chores around the house, get ourselves
ready to go. From the time we were five, six, seven,
eight years old. So we had that level of discipline
and that was the thing, Like we are such a
discipline family across the board, and we operate with, you know,
just an incredibly laser focus when it comes to doing
(13:50):
the things that we want to be successful at and
what it takes to do it and to be successful.
And so we learned, like you're you know, it's like
my boy Mike Tomlin says, there is no secret. The
secret is work, right, you got to work and you
got to put it in. And so that just like
showed us, like we watched what she could do what
she did, and like, if our mom can raise five
(14:12):
of us by herself and do the job that she did,
we have no excuses, you know. And so I think
that set us on the trajectory that we were on.
And then she also taught us the importance of being
you know, an important, an important factor in being a
strong member in your community is to make sure you
treat people with kindness. And you start there, you know
(14:36):
and everything else from their flows. So that I think
was the key is just how we were raised. I
always telling people like I did the best of both worlds.
I was raised in the Northeast, so I learned, you know,
a lot about just toughness across the board. But I
was raised by a mom who's from the South, so
I learned about compassion, kindness, and just you know, southern hospitality,
(14:57):
if you will. So combining those things together has been
probably one of the most important things for me and
things I try to instill invoke my son and my daughter.
Speaker 2 (15:05):
So okay, so you hadn't played what in a year
when you went from track to football?
Speaker 3 (15:10):
Mm hm.
Speaker 2 (15:13):
So when when you say, okay, I want to play football,
defensive back, wide receiver, Like, how did it go through
your decision on or their decision where to use you.
Speaker 3 (15:22):
So it was one of those things where you know,
high school, I was running back. Growing up, I was
running back. Got to college, you know, we we ran
we we had moved to a three receiver set. We
basically single back and uh, you know, we had like
nine running backs in the room. So talk to a
couple of guys. You figured the fastest way to get
(15:44):
on the field, special teams and being in the top
six and the receiver rotation and you'll get on the field.
And so that was the plan and that's what you
know I was able to do. You know, it comes
back fast, it doesn't go anywhere. And you know, again
my my first initial plan was go to Rutgers and
play there. But the hard thing was it's like I
(16:04):
knew I needed and wanted a different experience. And with Rutgers,
like I mean at the time, Dick Anderson was the
coach there. I mean, they were winning one game a
year every year. So it's like you're going to go
to Rutgers, You're going to get your head beat in
and you're not really gonna have a great experience. The
thing that I realized with JMU was, holy cow, this
is a great experience. Like from a student perspective and
(16:25):
a student athlete perspective. The people were great, you know,
the professors and the faculty tremendous. The culture on the
campus was fantastic, and I'd still tell people to this day,
I challenge anyone to meet someone who competed at JMU
in any sport who had a bad experience. And you know, Doug.
When I look at it and I look at the
trajectory that that program has been on and where it
(16:46):
is now, it's amazing. You know, it's really amazing to
see that, you know, where they are thirty years later.
But that's intentional, you know, that's investing in your kids.
That's investing in the student athletes, investing in the culture
and what you're going to build around it. It's kind
of what I modeled UC Riverside around in terms of
how we want our student athletes to feel, what we
(17:06):
want them to experience, and how we want them, you know,
to walk away from their four or five years here like,
holy cow, this is tremendous because again it's like you
know as well as I do, like these three four
five years, you know, four or five years in college. Well,
I guess now with the COVID year and the portal
could be up to six, right, But you know, it's
(17:27):
like it's it sets the tone for literally for the
rest of your life and how you're going to show
up and what you're going to do and how you're
going to be. So I want to make sure and
it's not possible for every kid to have a great
experience but I want everybody to experience what I experienced,
which was great teammates, great program, opportunity, opportunity to be successful.
(17:47):
You know, you have a great experience, and thirty years later,
you know you're you're still on text chains with your
old teammates, who are your best friends and your kids,
aunts and uncles, et cetera, et cetera, And it just
carries on and you have that that tradition that you've
really built and the pride that you have, you know,
from where you went to school and where you competed.
Speaker 4 (18:11):
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Speaker 2 (18:24):
So what is what is so special about jam You Like,
I've been there, it's an incredible campus. Obviously if Sildy's
now like new and mass Wrient, it's incredible.
Speaker 1 (18:34):
But what what's it really like to be there? What
makes it so special?
Speaker 3 (18:38):
The people and the culture. You know, it's like it's
it sounds so cliche, but it's really true, Like and
the culture starts at the top. You know that when
I was there, Ron Carrier was the president at the
time he was on campus. He's shaking your hand. He
may not remember everybody's name, obviously you got you know,
(19:00):
at the time was fourteen fifteen thousand students maybe and
now it's twenty five thousand. But he was involved. You know,
he was a president who was involved. The faculty were
the same way. You know, professors were you know, when
you were on campus and you run into him, sit down,
chat you up, have a conversation, ask you about you,
how your life was going, how you were adjusting, et cetera,
(19:21):
et cetera. And from an athletics standpoint, Casey Carter was
She's a legend. She was our you know, student athlete,
academic person and just the advisor for so many and
here we are like all these years later. The equipment staff,
the coaching staff in the different teams, but your teammates, like,
(19:43):
there's a certain type of kid that would go to
JAMU and still does just an all around good quality
human being, right, And when you're around that and it's
a feeling that you have. Right. We always talk about, yeah,
a program could be great on paper, and you know,
they could do all the right things, but the culture
is really the feeling right and what it feels like
to be part of it. Here at UC Riverside, I
(20:05):
built a culture for us now that's listening and caring,
and it meets people where they are to help them
get to where they need to go. And I find
that from a leadership standpoint, I've taken a lot of
my cues from what I learned to Jmu in terms
of how people lead, and I lead with joy, passion, integrity,
and purpose and a whole lot of energy and enthusiasm.
(20:26):
But I found that again with doctor Carrier, JMU and
the presidents who you know succeeded him since he retired,
and the you know and since he passed and everything
else it's been. It's been unbelievable because everyone who goes
there has a similar experience. And I find as a leader,
you don't have to have all this stuff right. We
(20:48):
don't have a lot of the facilities, and we're not
competing in the facility's arm arms raised the way we'd
want to hear at UC Riverside, right. But what we
have is our people, and people are the secret weapon
because we have coach just who can develop young men
and women. We're winning because everybody's bought in. People are aligned, right,
We don't always agree, but we're aligned. We have a
(21:09):
great Chancellor, Kim Wilcox, who every step of the way.
You know, when we talk about stuff, we talk about
stuff from the standpoint of here's our endpoint of what
we're looking to do and how we want to get there.
Then we talk about how we get there together. You know,
our Head of Student Affairs, Vice Chancellor Brian Haynes, same way,
Our Head of University Advancement Monique Dozers, same way, our
provosts Liz Walkin, same way. And it trickles down. So
(21:31):
when you have senior administration and you have athletic staff,
ad head coaches administration, it trickles down to the student
athletes and it impacts their experience. So to me, that
model of JMU, which is why I'm always so high
on it, was everything and that's what makes it different
from other places. And I think when you talk to
(21:52):
people today, you still see and feel that, you know,
purple and gold passion that everybody has for the place.
Speaker 1 (21:59):
She did that, what was your plan?
Speaker 3 (22:03):
Go to Maryland? Got my master's degree at Maryland?
Speaker 1 (22:06):
What was that was that? The plan? Or that that
just happened, Like, how did you.
Speaker 2 (22:11):
How did you decide to go to Maryland and get
a master's.
Speaker 3 (22:14):
So I knew. I knew initially I wanted to go
into broadcast journalism. And this was one of the other
reasons that now I'm in college athletics, right, because at
the time I couldn't do the internships because of conflicted
with practice. Right, So I went into PR and then
I went into I knew when I was then I'm like, well,
(22:34):
what do I want to do? So I knew I
wanted to get my master's degree, and I an opportunity
to go to Maryland, went to Maryland College Park, got
my master's there in journalism, and from there I wanted
to combine the undergrad degree in communications in PR with
the master's in journalism and really move into entertainment, in
entertainment media, if you will. So I'd like to say
(22:55):
it was all part of a master's plan, but actually
just came together. So when I was at Maryland getting
my master's in journalism, I met a gentleman named Craig
Muckel who was at B E. T at the time.
And you know, Craig was a black entertainment Television and
I did an internship with them. The internship two years
later turned into a job, and a couple of years
(23:15):
after that, I found myself enrolled as senior director of
Communications at b E. T. And I had a four
or five year run at BEET, which was fantastic, and.
Speaker 1 (23:23):
That all were working for Bob Johnson. Yep.
Speaker 3 (23:26):
I worked for Bob Johnson. I worked under Curtis Simons
who was head of the EVP of marketing, Clint Evans
who was under him, and a woman named she passed
a few years ago, Dannette Wills, who was absolutely fantastic
on the PR side, and they taught me a lot,
so much about, you know, the entertainment side, strategic communications,
(23:48):
and really how to build a brand right. And at
the time, during my time at BT, we had a
lot of fun, and I think it was probably one
of the five, maybe one of the three most impact
and fun experiences in my life, you know, professionally. The
other two probably my time at cal and uc R
here and then probably the most the most impactful and
(24:09):
the most fun was launching slam Ball with Mason Gordon
and Mike Tolan and that whole crew in two thousand
and two and two thousand and three, which made it me.
Speaker 2 (24:18):
Okay, you're getting You're like, you're you're getting ahead of
you're gonna I want to get to slam ball, Like,
give me a second, bro Okay. So so yeah, it'd
be uh huh.
Speaker 1 (24:28):
And then how'd you decide to leave?
Speaker 3 (24:33):
I'd done everything I could do at that point. It
was time to make the next step, you know, And
I find times in I've been there about four just
under five years, and there was really there was no
the growth opportunities weren't there anymore. And I'm a lifelong learner.
I always want to grow. And so made the decision
to leave and went in a slightly different direction at
(24:53):
that point and went to and to investor and media
relations for Victoria's Secret parent company Limited brand and spent
a year and a half in Columbus, Ohio, managing media
and helping on the internal or sorry, investor relations side
with on the Victoria's Secret and the Bath and Body
Works brand side. Loved it, but entertainment was really my thing,
(25:19):
and I really am a coastal person, so I knew,
you know, I always wanted to be in California. And
then the opportunity with MTV Networks came up, and that's
how I ended up in Santa Monica.
Speaker 1 (25:30):
So that was Monica. You Movese, san Monica, We're going
to MTV. What was your actual job to be.
Speaker 3 (25:35):
Vice president of Communications at MTV Networks?
Speaker 1 (25:39):
What were you doing?
Speaker 3 (25:41):
All media relations, strategic communications, events, brand related stuff for
the networks? So like MTV, VH one, MTV two, h
MTV Films, Nickelodeon Movies and they started a record label
(26:01):
at the time, Nickelodeon and Jive Records, and they did
one and really just helping that brand from one to three.
When I was there in Santa Monica.
Speaker 1 (26:12):
How did slam Ball come to be?
Speaker 3 (26:14):
Oh? Man, so slam Ball. So when I was making
the next move after MTV Networks, I worked on slam
Ball my last year there. It was just getting started
and then I just went out on my own and
slam Ball was my first client. And Mason Gordon, creator
(26:37):
and founder along with Mike Tolan, you know, Tolan Robbins.
They were like, Hey, we're gonna We're gonna build this thing,
and man, Doug, it was it was it was so
much fun. Man. It was like you're recruiting. You're you're
on the road, you're recruiting guys. You're trying to find
individuals who like you're basically building something that is a
(26:57):
sport that's airing on television, but you're also building a league,
right and you're recruiting guys. And a lot of the
guys that we found either ex football, ex basketball, or
the combination of who really weren't afraid to mix it
up in a sport that combined you know, gymnastics, basketball, football,
(27:20):
hockey all rolled into one, you know, and the arena
that it was played in, and it was amazing. You know,
we did my partners and I at the time, we
did all the branding for him. We did all the communications,
all the media relations side, and then we did whatever
it took to help that brand really get off the ground,
you know, and it was. It was definitely one of
(27:44):
the most impactful things because everywhere we would go, you know,
when people would watch it, then we're like, oh my gosh,
it's the greatest thing ever. And here we are twenty
something years later and Mason Gordon, you know, and the
company that brought it all the way back and I
know they had to run this past year on ESPN.
So it's good to see.
Speaker 1 (28:01):
How did you get into college athletics.
Speaker 3 (28:04):
That's a great that's a great question. So about fifteen
years into my corporate career, if you will, because after
MTV Networks, I went up to the Bay Area and
helped an ad agency build out its PR, marketing and
event management and engagement department because ad agencies at the time,
in the early two thousands were trying to really expand
(28:26):
and figure out what else can we do besides traditional
advertising and really expand the brands that we're working for.
So about halfway through it, I just realized I was like,
you know, I really missed college athletics and I really
missed building people. You know, the corporate life was fantastic,
(28:46):
it was amazing, but like I said, going all the
way back to my childhood, leading a life of impact
and making an impact is so important to me. So
I was doing a lot of consulting work at the time,
and you know, circa twenty thirteen, connected with a gentleman
named Phil Eston who's now the athletics director in Minnesota.
(29:11):
Phil was at CAL at the time. Now he's an
ad in Minnesota, and he took Saint Thomas from Division
three to Division one in one year. So Phil and
I talked, and Phil's like, hey, we have a real
issue here. And again, when you look at all my background,
the thread, the common thread through all of it is
issues in crisis management, strategic and brand communications and the
(29:33):
external relations sign and so Doug he he's like, hey, man,
we've we're going to need a head of strategic communications,
an associating for strat comms here at CAL. And you know,
I talked to him, met with Sandy Barber, and then
went to CAL. And the whole reason I went to
CAL at the end of thirteen was to help them
(29:54):
change the narrative because if you remember, at the time,
Cow was last in the country in football and graduation
success rate, and that was a story that their donors
and their alums they you know, someone told me when
I got there, they were like, some of the donors
would rather not go to the Rose Bull for fifty
more years than be dead last in GSR in the nation,
not in an institution like UC Berkeley. So I got
(30:16):
there and I worked with the crew there and Herb
Benison and everybody else there, and we built a plan
to really change the narrative, but also tell the story
on how we were going to rebuild the athletics brand
from a narrative standpoint. We brought in a bunch of
media people that covered you know, Cal athletics, talked them through,
this is what APR is, this is what GSR is.
(30:37):
This is why their GSR was last in the country
because the narrative was guys were going to failing out
of school, but that wasn't the case. You know, guys,
a lot of guys were leaving early and going to
the NFL and not coming back to finish. So it
impacted the graduation success rate. So we were able to
do that, worked with Sunny Dykes, who was the coach
at the time, and within two years we went from
(30:59):
work the first in the league and the conference in
the PAC twelve at the time academically and rose to
one of the top teams of the most competitive teams
in the PAC twelve during the time that I was there.
And so that's what brought me back into college athletics
and quite frankly, just I missed it. You know. It's
like it was something that I had dabbled in here
and there as a professional, done some consulting work with,
(31:20):
but I knew I also wanted to create opportunities for
young men and women in college athletics to have a
relatable experience with someone in administration who had walked a
mile in their shoes, and quite frankly, for a lot
of the kids, someone who looked like them and someone
who could guide them when things got really hard and
they didn't feel like they were on an island or
they didn't have people they could relate to, if you will.
(31:43):
So that's what brought me back into college athletics, and
you know, eleven years later in the athletics director's chair.
Speaker 1 (31:49):
So give me your best Berkeley story.
Speaker 3 (31:53):
Oh man, Oh, there's so many. I'm just trying to
think of the ones that I could say publicly, if
you will, because I had many welcome to Berkeley moments,
so well, one of them I learned about, you know,
Berkeley is the home of the professional protesters. We were
(32:17):
in we were in the athletics building, uh, and we're
in the a D suite and at the time it
was myself, Mike Williams was the a D took over
from Sandy Barber. Chris Pesman, who's now the a D.
At Houston, Jenny Simon O'Neill, who's still still there, Oshrendport,
who's now the ad at Lasal I'm thinking Jane Jackson
(32:40):
was there too, and a few other people. So we're
in the AD suite and all of a sudden we
hear you know, you're you're used to hearing the protest
on campus, but we hear this huge commotion, like what
is that noise? All of a sudden, he's getting closer
and closer, and the next time we know it's in
our building, right, and it's getting louder and louder, And
then the next we know, we're overrun in the AD
(33:02):
suite by about probably thirty forty fifty kids, however many
could fit in there, and they all sit down and
they're sitting on the floor and they're standing up and
they're locking arms, and I'm like looking like, what's happening
right now? Like why are you guys here? What's the problem?
What did we do that would cause you to come
in here and disturb the day like this? And had
(33:23):
nothing to do with us, right, and had with some
of the issue on campus that were upset about. And
I'll never forget Like we sat there and we were
like we were literally we were trapped in our offices
for hours. So we ended up they ended up leaving
after a period of time, but we had to call
campus police. They had come in and they just started
taking the kids out one at a time, those who
(33:44):
didn't leave on their own. But I remember saying to
the leadership of the group, I said, here, here's my card,
call me and let me sit down and try to
help you through whatever your issue is. And so then
Doug we sat down in the conference room a couple
of weeks later, and I literally talked them through how
to be more effective when they're trying to get their
point across. For I don't even remember what the issue was,
(34:06):
something with labor on campus, had nothing to do with us,
But they came back like a year later. I ran
into them on campus and they told me how much
it actually helped, you know, because they were yoused to
just we're upset.
Speaker 1 (34:18):
So you helped the protesters protest more effectively.
Speaker 3 (34:20):
I helped protesters get their point across more effectively without
disrupting everybody's day if you will, you know so, and
they were able to kind of move through it. But
it was, yeah, that was one Berkeley moment man there
it is the home of professional protesting. But I remember
in the time I was there, there were a total
of seventeen days that I did not have an issue
(34:41):
or something that we had to work through. From an
athletics standpoint, yeah, I tell people like, and I make
no bones about it, it was easier to save the
athletics program at UC Riverside from being eliminated. Then three
months on campus in Berkeley and athletics. You know, So
(35:01):
the ucs are tough, but that is far and away
the toughest one. Sometimes I feel like it's a you know,
when people necessarily difficult. Sometimes I feel like, yeah, we
don't need to make it. It doesn't need to be that difficult.
Speaker 1 (35:17):
Okay, So how did the path leads your Riverside?
Speaker 3 (35:24):
So from cal I went over to the PAC twelve.
Was there for about a year and a half and
the opportunity Tamika Smith Jones called me, who was the
eighty year at the time, There was an opportunity.
Speaker 1 (35:36):
Let me take you back real quick. You're at the.
Speaker 2 (35:38):
PAC twelve, okay, and obviously the PAC twelve essentially is
no more now, right, didgit like, what was that like,
what was that the atmosphere of work, Like.
Speaker 3 (35:52):
I will say this, there's a lot of really great
people at the PAC twelve who really care about cared
about the schools and the direction that was going, and
wanted to do great work. How do I say this?
I think it was. I think if people are honest,
(36:17):
those who were in the PAC twelve, whether you you
know I was school side and conference slash network side,
I don't think anybody could honestly say with the direction
that it was going, that you could see any other
outcome than what happened. You know.
Speaker 1 (36:34):
Well, so let me let me give my read on it.
Speaker 2 (36:36):
Okay, So I remember when conference expansion happened, when they
got there and they got their new TV deal, and
my thought at the time was I actually thought, obviously
the PAC twelve network and having all the kind of
regional networks, I thought that was a weird strategy, right,
so weird.
Speaker 1 (36:55):
I didn't like the.
Speaker 2 (36:56):
Strategy and it proved to be a real hard strategy
to X you. But the actual TV of deals they got,
I thought, we're home runs. Considering again, this is from
as talent at ESPN at the time, and what I'd
always been told like those are people associated with the
(37:16):
success of the sports teams. It's not really how it works, right,
because of the time zone issues, you know, Pacific time zone.
You know, you can't have a game at six, nobody
shows up. You have a game at seven that's a
ten on the East Coast, and two thirds of the
viewers of college sports are on are in the Eastern
time zone. So you're kind of screwed either way. And
(37:38):
TV companies are kind of screwed because they had to
play top dollar for something that's not really worth top dollar.
So I, you know, I understand there's lots of things
that were mismanaged, but I actually thought that.
Speaker 1 (37:52):
Deal was a decent was a good deal.
Speaker 2 (37:54):
It was probably over the probably overpriced because you're not
going to get much value out of some of those
late games, right.
Speaker 3 (37:59):
Right, right, So I can't speak to the deals specifically,
but I think the challenges, obviously, you know that we
all face, were being in a place where the production
quality of the games was outstanding, right. The coverage of
(38:22):
the games, you know, with the with the producers, the directors,
the on air talent, the studio shows outstanding. The hard
thing was obviously visibility and distribution so people could see it,
you know, and it was a challenge that was you know,
beyond our control, if you will, those of us in
the day to day. But to your point, I think,
(38:42):
if it's in a perfect world, I'm sure that if
everybody went back and could do it all over again,
there's probably a few things that they would do differently.
But I think also it's it's I will say this,
I think the lesson if we always talk about like
don't miss the lesson, right, well, that was the lesson.
I think if you talk to the athletic directors who
(39:04):
were in the PAC twelve during that time period from
twelve to to this year, twelve to twenty three, if
you will, and those who've left in our different places now,
you'll hear a common theme which will be consistent, and
that is sometimes you know, you have to listen to
(39:24):
the experts in the room, and I don't think the
experts in the room who are the ads, were listened
to enough. You know, the decision makers, the presidents and
the chancellors, you know, working with the commissioner and company. Yes,
they made decisions that they made, but I don't think
(39:44):
I don't think that enough people when a lot of
decisions on whatever level they were being made, were listening
intently or listening and really adhering to what the ads
were saying with the experiences that they were going and
what they needed to really keep their programs competitive, you
know with the SEC the Big Ten than what they
(40:07):
were doing. And quite frankly, when the ACC network came
online and launched and just you know, just crushed it
out the gate, you know. So I think that the
lesson is, as you go forward, conference offices need to
make sure they're really listening to the leadership in the
room from an AD standpoint, and that the ads are
(40:27):
aligned with their presidents and chancellors and that those discussions
are happening before decisions are made, you know, at a
higher level.
Speaker 1 (40:37):
Okay, So now how do you get to riverside?
Speaker 3 (40:40):
So so okay, So Tamaka Smith Jones, she was looking
for a senior associated for Strategic Communications and external Relations
and it's in my wheelhouse. And I missed being on
campus and was the opportunity to get back on campus
and there was a they had a need and the
need was established a visual in relevancy and that you know,
(41:01):
I'm one who will never back down from a challenge
like I love a big challenge, said okay, we could
do this, and so I said, look, it's going to
be a three year endeavor to really get it to
where it needs to be, and here's how we're going
to do it. Two years into it, yes, it all
worked out. Took the job, moved down here southern California,
and three years in. Two years in we're going through
(41:28):
COVID Andy. There was the threat that the entire program
was going to be eliminated. So now it's like, you know,
we've worked hard to establish the visual and relevancy and
now we've got to work and locks up with the
senior administration on campus to keep the program the whole thing,
not just like five seven sports, one or two sports
(41:50):
all seventeen. So it's like okay, again, big challenge, but
going all the way back. So what my mom had
prepared us for. No challenge in life is going to
be too big if you for it right. So we prepare, focus,
and execute. So what we do. And so Tamica took
a job with Kennesaw State and left to be their
COO in Atlanta, and I was made the intermay d.
(42:14):
And then I worked with with all the appropriate people,
we built a plan, and the plan included a financial
sustainability model, included an operational excellence model, operational efficiency model,
and the Excellence model in terms of how we were
going to compete in spite of not having certain things,
in spite of having to cut almost three million from
the program during COVID to figure and survive, to figure
(42:36):
out how we're going to go forward. So we're able
to do it, and here we are. You know, three
years later, I mentoring year six now for year four
is zad. But here we are. With all the lessons,
in my opinion, that I've learned throughout my career all
came full circle with having to save the program. But
the most important one, Doug was really understanding like, hey,
(42:57):
there are no days off of leadership. Right. Leadership hard,
but if you do it the right way and you
get people aligned and everybody's on that same mission, here's
how we do it, and that's what we're able to do.
So now you know, we're we just came off arguably
our most successful year ever, one of them at the
Division one level. Two Coaches of the Year and men's
(43:19):
basketball and men's soccer, multiple student Athletes of the Year
and different sports number you know, double digit all conference,
you know players academically, our entire program is it just
under three point two GPA every team, all seventeen teams
or above a three point zero. People are happy, the
culture is great, and even in the midst of everything
(43:42):
that we're dealing with. And by the way, I listened
to I listened to the pod that you did with
bells Are that was fantastic. By the way, and we
work with Jason with our collective. He's probably, in my opinion,
the smartest person in the room when it comes to
that stuff. And if not the smartest, he's in the
top three. But with all the issues that we're dealing
(44:03):
with across the NCAA landscape, to me, we're going to
be okay simply because we have the core things in place,
the people, the culture, you know, the alignment, the mindset,
how we work with campus and just figuring out how
we get to where we need to be by being
good stewards over the resources we have while we work
(44:24):
to acquire those that we want and those that we need.
So that's the long and short on the journey, the
path two and where we are now at you see riverside.
Speaker 2 (44:33):
Okay, So for people who don't know, Okay, so you
take over as ad exactly.
Speaker 3 (44:39):
What January of twenty one?
Speaker 1 (44:45):
Okay, so you'd been is right into the coast.
Speaker 3 (44:47):
Twenty one yep. So twenty one, twenty two, twenty three,
twenty four will be my fourth year.
Speaker 1 (44:53):
Okay, so this is Smack Davin. When was COVID was twenty? Right?
Speaker 3 (44:57):
It was March of twenty until twenty two twenty one,
and COVID was about two years, right, give or take.
Speaker 1 (45:08):
It was like a well, it started in March of
March of twenty It.
Speaker 2 (45:12):
Started in March, and yeah, I guess it was over
pretty much the next end of the next March, right,
wasn't it? Or we had the limit an NCAA tournament
that next year.
Speaker 3 (45:25):
Yeah, we're still probably about a year and a half,
give her take. I mean, it's we all have COVID
brein now, right, like just trying to remember.
Speaker 2 (45:31):
Yes, totally, So okay, so when what when?
Speaker 1 (45:38):
What were you doing? When was the the program is
going to be eliminated?
Speaker 3 (45:42):
When?
Speaker 1 (45:42):
When when did that come?
Speaker 3 (45:44):
That was made public? August twenty ninth of twenty one, No,
August twenty twenty August twenty ninth of twenty is when
it come.
Speaker 1 (45:52):
Oh yeah, it was made public.
Speaker 2 (45:54):
When was it made privately known that, holy cow, we
may shut down our athletic programs.
Speaker 3 (45:59):
Don't know because I found out when it was made public.
Speaker 1 (46:02):
So okay, So where were where were you at that moment?
M M.
Speaker 3 (46:08):
The moment I found out that it was out there,
I was at home and I was in the garage
because I'd set the garage up as a garage office.
And I remember I got a call. I don't remember
who the call came from, but somebody called me and
told me that this was out there, and I was like,
we what? And so I looked at it and I
(46:31):
was like, how public is this? Because it was kind
of buried on a website somewhere. And then once I
realized that, I think it was about three or four
days later, we huddled and we started building a plan
on what we what we needed to do to kind
of turn this thing around. Tamaco Smith Jones was still
here at the time as a AD so it might
have been Tamac Goog called. I don't remember who called,
(46:53):
but talked to Tamaica, talked to the senior athletics about
leadership team at that time, and we just went to
work and started building a plan on what we needed
to do to make sure this didn't become a real,
a real thing, because here's the thing we were watching.
I think it was Stanford had to cut seven sports,
was it, and then eventually had to bring them all back.
(47:14):
Clemson had to cut some William and Mary schools all
around the country were cutting because you know, people were
we were in COVID and nobody knew it was gonna happen,
and budgets were of concern, et cetera, et cetera. And
then I believe pretty much all the programs that cut
sports had to end up bringing them all back, right,
because that's one thing you never really went on. So
(47:35):
so yeah, I think I was in my garage, you know,
in my garage office, at my COVID garage office, and
I was just I was stunned. And then when it
became real, but it's like, Okay, this is actually a
real thing, and we have to really kind of figure
this out. It was about four days later when we
were meeting on it, early September, right before Labor Day
that time.
Speaker 1 (47:54):
What was your idea how do you think it was
going to get fixed? Or do you think it wasn't sayable?
Speaker 3 (48:00):
No, I believe there was sayable. And the reason for
that is because I was like, there's two things right. One.
I knew as we kind of went into it, we
had to make I had to make sure that I
threaded the needle of you know, because it wasn't adversarial.
So I didn't make sure that it wasn't adversarial. It
was it was out there because literally was a financial
decision that our financial possibility that people were talking about.
(48:26):
But so I knew, Okay, we just have to make
the case, make the point. But I knew we needed
to win the court of public opinion. We need to
make people aware of it, and we needed to make
sure that the campus knew, campus leadership knew if we're
able to do this, here's how we can do it.
Because the questions were on the table, do we eliminate it,
does it go division three? Division two? Does the state
(48:46):
division one? What does that look like? And how do
we kind of maneuver in that space? And so I
knew there was only one way to go, which was
to remain Division one. So we worked with them they
put a task force together. I worked with the task
force in Collegiate Sports Associates CSA. They came into an
assessment of not just where our program was, but where
mid major programs of like similar size and like mindedness
(49:10):
with respect to the academic uc deal and everything else
where they were and how they were faring. And you know,
as well as I do, Doug, a handful of programs
in the nation are profitable. Everybody's in the red right.
This is you have the academic model for athletics, and
you have the business model for athletics. The business model
is a lot of what you and Bells we were
talking about, you know in your podcast with him. That's
(49:32):
where you know the money game is being played, if
you will, right, the academic model is where ninety percent
of Division I universities operate. At the mid majors, the
Group of five for the most part, and the lower
level pack fives where we're still in that academic model.
You know where it's not. You know, if you have football,
(49:53):
your football program is not you know, bringing in millions
and millions of dollars to the university. You're there and
your educ hitting kids and you're building the programs the
right way, so bring it all the way back. The
plan that we put in place to fix it involved
making sure all the stakeholders were apprized of the situation.
Our donors, our fans, alums, the alumni, our current student athletes, parents, media,
(50:19):
you name it, you know, folks on campus. And then
it was how are we going to tell the story
about why we're here in the mission of athletics and
why it's important. So we engaged in that. We did
a petition, an online petition. I'm drawing a blank on
what those things are called again, you know the ones
where everybody signs, oh gosh, I'm drawing a blank on it.
(50:40):
But we did one of those and it garnered fifteen
thousand signatures. There was a letter writing campaign to campus
administration to let them know how people were feeling. And
then I just went on a media blitz and did
a lot of interviews you know, all over the country,
halftime some of our games on esp and others, you know,
(51:01):
talk shows, et cetera, et cetera, and just told the
story of why athletics at this level really matters and
the ultimate impact of negative impact of losing an athletics
program especially at a university it's following the education model,
and especially at a U see, you know, and then
we were able to make the case and so we
you know, we were I May May of twenty twenty
(51:25):
one or May of twenty twenty two, we receive word
that the program was going to go forward. And it
was a great day, you know. But what kept me
going through the whole thing every night for eleven months
or however long it took. What I would wind the
night down on my screen I would have. I'd go
through each team, and I'd look at the faces of
(51:47):
all of our student athletes and our coaches and our staff,
and I realized, like, hey, failure is not an option here.
You know, these are the individuals that you're fighting for
every day to keep this program going. And you know,
when I would look at their faces, I knew, like
it's real. You know, when I was on campus, because
we were back on campus in October of twenty because
(52:10):
we were still doing games. You remember that we're trying
to figure out games with no fans for basketballs were
starting all that, so we were full go the whole time.
But when I'd see the kids or student athletes, when
I'd see the coaches, see their families, see their friends.
I knew, like you know, It's like, dude, you can't
fail failures not you cannot fail at this one. Losing
(52:31):
is not an option here. All right.
Speaker 2 (52:35):
That's it for Part one the Combo with Les Mallett.
Stay tuned for part two. Reminder of The Doug Gottlieb
Show airs daily three to five Eastern Time. It's also
on a twelve to two Pacific. You can download that podcast.
Just type in Doug Gottlieb Show. Wherever you download this podcast,
you can probably get that one as well. And I
truly appreciate you joining me. I'm Doug gotlig This as
(52:57):
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