Marshall University Athletics
Asked&answereD: Q&A With Marshall AD Christian Spears
5/1/2024 5:00:00 PM | General
New segment to address topics of interest within intercollegiate athletics
HUNTINGTON, W.Va. – Marshall Athletics is proud to announce the addition of AskeD&AnswereD – a new segment with Marshall Director of Athletics Christian Spears.
In this periodic segment, Spears will answer questions pertaining to the ever-changing world of intercollegiate athletics and the impact those changes have on the direction and future of Marshall Athletics.
Q: Coaching searches are an inevitable part of collegiate athletics for an Athletic Director. How does Marshall navigate head coaching searches and what is the thought process to determine who the best candidate is to lead a program for the Thundering Herd?
CS: Every search is completely different, which can make it difficult to develop a consistent set of principles. You are dealing with a certain scenario, and you have to manage each scenario differently. Take our recent departure of Kim Caldwell to Tennessee: the transfer window is open, and we have student-athletes entering the portal daily, so the sooner you can come up with a decision, the better for your program. We want to do a national search, and everyone is at the Final Four, so you have the opportunity to have timely conversations and you can go quickly if the timing lines up like it did with this particular search.
(Tennessee AD) Danny (White) wanted to make an announcement during the Final Four and he did. If you paid attention to the National Championship on TV, you saw it all over the ticker. That was all by design. I know Danny, so I knew he would wait to announce the hire then, so once he started recruiting Kim, I knew that was going to be the timeline so that I could start having conversations and preparing with agents and coaches, making phone calls to get a sense of who was interested.
What Kim did in one year got a lot of folks interested. We went to the NCAA Tournament for the first time in 27 years, so it's 'Hey, you can win there!' Suddenly, people who may have said no before were saying I'd absolutely be interested. Not to mention, you have one of the three best women's basketball jobs in the country, arguably, choosing Marshall's coach. When that happens, you have the ability to decide-and-do a little bit quicker. You determine who is interested and you move a little quicker, knowing who you can get and then you set your lineup.
I had who I wanted. I wanted Juli from the very beginning. That was my target, but Nos. 2 and 3, I needed to know that they would be in the mix. We zeroed in on the situation and found a way. We had some quick conversations – 'How soon can I see you?' and 'Can you get here?' We got it scheduled with folks and we ended up with a great person leading our program in Juli Fulks.
Q: In athletics, they say 'You always have a list' regarding potential coaching changes. How does an athletic director build that list of candidates to expedite a transition?
CS: There's lots of different ways to cultivate it. In basketball, what I've been doing is mock interviewing coaches for about the last decade at the Final Four – primarily, on the men's side. While I do that, I always ask, 'Who is the top assistant on the women's basketball side at your school?' That's something I'm curious about because I want to know if that person is even familiar with what's happening on the other side of their gym. Often, those programs share facilities and there's great adjacencies between them. That leads the conversation about what kind of understanding and culture they will bring, how they will adapt and work with other people in the department and if they know what's going on around them. I'd say 90 percent of the time, they have a great person on their mind that I write down and start to look up and track on.
For about the last decade, agents have called me and said, 'Hey Christian, this is who I think has a shot at a head coaching job. Will you do me a favor and meet with them?' There's just a lot of different connections from that process that I've been very fortunate to have made over the decade – not just with the agents, but with the assistant coaches and the rising stars in our business.
Being open to doing that has allowed for the list to expand. Then, if someone gives me a name, I always ask the people I'm working with – particularly, the Sport Administrator – to give me your list. We do this independently and don't share ideas. If we have the same names on our list, it validates that their network is saying something similar to my network. That's another practice that you can do to make sure those on your list are the right ones to go after and it also gets those on your staff involved in the process, which is a good thing.
Q: With the evolution of collegiate athletics in your 25+ months as Marshall's Athletic Director, how much more important is the role of NIL (Name-Image-Likeness) and what is Marshall doing to position itself well while looking to its future?
CS: Anytime there is an aspect that presents itself as a competitive advantage for our program, we are going to try to be the best at it. Let's understand what that means to be the best – benchmark against our league, get a sense of what the rest of the schools are doing in the Sun Belt and how do we become the best.
We've got to figure out what other people are doing and then we have to make it Marshall. At Marshall, there is more to coming here than just the transaction received from NIL, so if someone is only 100% interested in the transaction, this might not be the right school for them. A student-athlete or family who recognizes that there's more to Marshall than the transaction is exactly the student-athlete and family that we want to invest in. We still want to be competitive in the transactional space, so let's go get the resources and let's pick the student-athletes that understand that it's more than just the resources and let's invest in them. That's how we're going to approach NIL. When our student-athletes become great, we are going to use it as a retention tool – this community cares about you and we're going to invest that much more in you. If that means the transactional investment, then so be it. By that time, they'll know what's happening on the transformational investment.
Q: One of the strengths of Marshall University has been its national brand. How has Marshall utilized that in all aspects while also taking its licensing and branding to a new level to help its success?
CS: We can argue that we have the best brand in the league! There is anecdotal evidence that we do. You can look at TV viewership, you can look at licensing revenues, you can look at name recognition and you can look at who picks us for events. A good example is last year's bowl game (2023 Scooter's Coffee Frisco Bowl).
We had no understanding that we would go to the Frisco Bowl. It wasn't a secondary bowl or a primary bowl; it was literally a bowl that had no contractual relationship with the Sun Belt. What it came down to was they did a TV review and they looked at schools who could possibly come to the Frisco Bowl and, when both sides of the equation didn't come through on their primary vehicle, they said, 'We want Marshall for brand recognition and what we think will give us the best opportunity to show well on TV.' That doesn't happen by chance.
Yes, we've had decades of success, and our history is phenomenal, but we are also actively trying to elevate our brand to put us in new markets and to give ourselves better brand recognition. I think we've done a really good job of that over 25 months and the financials bear that out. We have done better because we receive a revenue stream from Marshall's Name-Image-Likeness and that revenue stream has grown. That will only get better.
Q: What have the last two months been like for you, personally and professionally? Jack Cook Field opened, Softball started its 2024 season with a former MU star leading the program, Women's Basketball won a Sun Belt Championship and went to the NCAA Tournament, there were two coaching hires in a 10-day span and we just completed one of the more successful Football Spring Game weekends in recent memory with 140+ former players returning. That's a ton of activity and a lot to process!
CS: You have to love what you get to do, so thankfully, I love it. One of the best things you get to do as an Athletic Director is you get to put a team together. The team that we have put together, I'd put against anyone. We've got really good people in every area. If you are at a school like Marshall, every person has to be a rockstar – every single one of them. You can't have a rockstar in licensing and not have a rockstar in marketing. You can't have a rockstar in fundraising and not have a rockstar in ticketing. Everyone has to be great and we have a great team right now! Some of them were at Marshall when I arrived and some we promoted from within and others, we did national searches. All of them are A-plus people. Some of our progress hasn't been easy, but we've managed it at a super-high level because we have unbelievable people in every area.
For all the latest information about Marshall Athletics, follow @HerdZone on Twitter and Instagram.
To follow all Thundering Herd sports and get live stats, schedules and free live audio, download the Marshall Athletics App for iOS and Android.
In this periodic segment, Spears will answer questions pertaining to the ever-changing world of intercollegiate athletics and the impact those changes have on the direction and future of Marshall Athletics.
CS: Every search is completely different, which can make it difficult to develop a consistent set of principles. You are dealing with a certain scenario, and you have to manage each scenario differently. Take our recent departure of Kim Caldwell to Tennessee: the transfer window is open, and we have student-athletes entering the portal daily, so the sooner you can come up with a decision, the better for your program. We want to do a national search, and everyone is at the Final Four, so you have the opportunity to have timely conversations and you can go quickly if the timing lines up like it did with this particular search.
(Tennessee AD) Danny (White) wanted to make an announcement during the Final Four and he did. If you paid attention to the National Championship on TV, you saw it all over the ticker. That was all by design. I know Danny, so I knew he would wait to announce the hire then, so once he started recruiting Kim, I knew that was going to be the timeline so that I could start having conversations and preparing with agents and coaches, making phone calls to get a sense of who was interested.
What Kim did in one year got a lot of folks interested. We went to the NCAA Tournament for the first time in 27 years, so it's 'Hey, you can win there!' Suddenly, people who may have said no before were saying I'd absolutely be interested. Not to mention, you have one of the three best women's basketball jobs in the country, arguably, choosing Marshall's coach. When that happens, you have the ability to decide-and-do a little bit quicker. You determine who is interested and you move a little quicker, knowing who you can get and then you set your lineup.
I had who I wanted. I wanted Juli from the very beginning. That was my target, but Nos. 2 and 3, I needed to know that they would be in the mix. We zeroed in on the situation and found a way. We had some quick conversations – 'How soon can I see you?' and 'Can you get here?' We got it scheduled with folks and we ended up with a great person leading our program in Juli Fulks.
Q: In athletics, they say 'You always have a list' regarding potential coaching changes. How does an athletic director build that list of candidates to expedite a transition?
CS: There's lots of different ways to cultivate it. In basketball, what I've been doing is mock interviewing coaches for about the last decade at the Final Four – primarily, on the men's side. While I do that, I always ask, 'Who is the top assistant on the women's basketball side at your school?' That's something I'm curious about because I want to know if that person is even familiar with what's happening on the other side of their gym. Often, those programs share facilities and there's great adjacencies between them. That leads the conversation about what kind of understanding and culture they will bring, how they will adapt and work with other people in the department and if they know what's going on around them. I'd say 90 percent of the time, they have a great person on their mind that I write down and start to look up and track on.
For about the last decade, agents have called me and said, 'Hey Christian, this is who I think has a shot at a head coaching job. Will you do me a favor and meet with them?' There's just a lot of different connections from that process that I've been very fortunate to have made over the decade – not just with the agents, but with the assistant coaches and the rising stars in our business.
Being open to doing that has allowed for the list to expand. Then, if someone gives me a name, I always ask the people I'm working with – particularly, the Sport Administrator – to give me your list. We do this independently and don't share ideas. If we have the same names on our list, it validates that their network is saying something similar to my network. That's another practice that you can do to make sure those on your list are the right ones to go after and it also gets those on your staff involved in the process, which is a good thing.
Q: With the evolution of collegiate athletics in your 25+ months as Marshall's Athletic Director, how much more important is the role of NIL (Name-Image-Likeness) and what is Marshall doing to position itself well while looking to its future?
CS: Anytime there is an aspect that presents itself as a competitive advantage for our program, we are going to try to be the best at it. Let's understand what that means to be the best – benchmark against our league, get a sense of what the rest of the schools are doing in the Sun Belt and how do we become the best.
We've got to figure out what other people are doing and then we have to make it Marshall. At Marshall, there is more to coming here than just the transaction received from NIL, so if someone is only 100% interested in the transaction, this might not be the right school for them. A student-athlete or family who recognizes that there's more to Marshall than the transaction is exactly the student-athlete and family that we want to invest in. We still want to be competitive in the transactional space, so let's go get the resources and let's pick the student-athletes that understand that it's more than just the resources and let's invest in them. That's how we're going to approach NIL. When our student-athletes become great, we are going to use it as a retention tool – this community cares about you and we're going to invest that much more in you. If that means the transactional investment, then so be it. By that time, they'll know what's happening on the transformational investment.
Q: One of the strengths of Marshall University has been its national brand. How has Marshall utilized that in all aspects while also taking its licensing and branding to a new level to help its success?
CS: We can argue that we have the best brand in the league! There is anecdotal evidence that we do. You can look at TV viewership, you can look at licensing revenues, you can look at name recognition and you can look at who picks us for events. A good example is last year's bowl game (2023 Scooter's Coffee Frisco Bowl).
We had no understanding that we would go to the Frisco Bowl. It wasn't a secondary bowl or a primary bowl; it was literally a bowl that had no contractual relationship with the Sun Belt. What it came down to was they did a TV review and they looked at schools who could possibly come to the Frisco Bowl and, when both sides of the equation didn't come through on their primary vehicle, they said, 'We want Marshall for brand recognition and what we think will give us the best opportunity to show well on TV.' That doesn't happen by chance.
Yes, we've had decades of success, and our history is phenomenal, but we are also actively trying to elevate our brand to put us in new markets and to give ourselves better brand recognition. I think we've done a really good job of that over 25 months and the financials bear that out. We have done better because we receive a revenue stream from Marshall's Name-Image-Likeness and that revenue stream has grown. That will only get better.
Q: What have the last two months been like for you, personally and professionally? Jack Cook Field opened, Softball started its 2024 season with a former MU star leading the program, Women's Basketball won a Sun Belt Championship and went to the NCAA Tournament, there were two coaching hires in a 10-day span and we just completed one of the more successful Football Spring Game weekends in recent memory with 140+ former players returning. That's a ton of activity and a lot to process!
CS: You have to love what you get to do, so thankfully, I love it. One of the best things you get to do as an Athletic Director is you get to put a team together. The team that we have put together, I'd put against anyone. We've got really good people in every area. If you are at a school like Marshall, every person has to be a rockstar – every single one of them. You can't have a rockstar in licensing and not have a rockstar in marketing. You can't have a rockstar in fundraising and not have a rockstar in ticketing. Everyone has to be great and we have a great team right now! Some of them were at Marshall when I arrived and some we promoted from within and others, we did national searches. All of them are A-plus people. Some of our progress hasn't been easy, but we've managed it at a super-high level because we have unbelievable people in every area.
For all the latest information about Marshall Athletics, follow @HerdZone on Twitter and Instagram.
To follow all Thundering Herd sports and get live stats, schedules and free live audio, download the Marshall Athletics App for iOS and Android.
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