Maximizing Your Opportunities

This post, authored by Texas A&M Commerce Athletic Director Tim McMurray, is the 2nd of 4 posts that reflect back on McMurray's original blog... Always Cultivate Your CROP

Every effective president or AD I have served under has had at least one common trait – always looking to advance our institution/program and progressively move the needle. We have attempted to accomplish that paradigm in several key areas toward serving our student-athletes. Before diving in on specific examples of opportunities to apply on your campus, it is very important to put yourself in the right mindset for assessment of opportunities for your specific department. Most of these ideas do NOT cost tens of thousands of dollars to achieve. As Jim Abbott reminded us in the Resources blog, not all resource generation has to come from hard dollars. Capitalizing on Opportunities is built on three key components:

TIME

STRATEGY

RELATIONSHIPS

While certainly intertwined in some cases, you will see below how each of these three pillars impacted the formulation and development of each opportunity highlighted below. This is not a pat on the back for A&M-Commerce or any one person, but rather it is intended to illustrate the importance of creating and effectively managing opportunities in a variety of areas within your department. A few examples of our recent Opportunities include:

STUDENT-ATHLETE PERFORMANCE TEAM

Our Student-Athlete Performance Team is simply Best in Class . This opportunity is the brainchild of Judy Sackfield, our Deputy Athletics Director for Student-Athlete Success. Judy is a ferocious student-athlete advocate and has assembled a team of athletics and campus professionals committed to serving all areas of student-athlete well-being. It exemplifies maximizing opportunity!

UNDER ARMOUR APPAREL FOR OUR TEAMS AND PROGRAM

We have an outstanding apparel, branding, and institutional engagement partnership with Under Armour, and we are consistently expanding and exploring opportunities to be a national leader in that space. I bolded the term partnership because we do not view it as a vendor contract, but rather a partnership where there is positive energy, innovative progress, and consistent communication to strengthen the project.

STRATEGIC COMMUNICATION PLATFORMS

Josh Manck joined our executive team in August of 2016, and he has not slowed down since. Recently, Josh earned a well-deserved promotion overseeing our primary communications and marketing platforms. One of the many areas he has advanced our program is through integrated and unified messaging, attention-to-detail on our student-athlete success, our digital and social engagement, and improved penetration into the competitive Dallas-Fort Worth media market. Time, strategy, and relationships have made his efforts a reality. This initiative has also begun to pave the way for improving our ticket sales and service strategies (sales AND service is important to distinguish and not treat as the same action).

MONTHLY BUDGET UPDATE TEMPLATE

Until September 2017, one of the key challenges for my head coaches was the ability to monitor their budgets effectively and get timely updates on encumbrances, account balances, and funds available. Conner Moreno – our Associate AD for Internal Operations – led a charge in partnership with our university accounting and budget office to create budget program templates that are easy to read for coaches and also align more efficiently for NCAA and EADA reporting on the back end. This was a perfect opportunity to earn goodwill on campus, be more efficient, and build trust with coaches.

TIME AND SCORE REPORT

Conner also works weekly with our Lion Champions Fund Executive Director Taylor Phelps and External Operations Coordinator Taryn Driver to create our weekly “Time and Score” Revenue Report every Monday afternoon. In full disclosure, this report went through numerous growing pains, adjustments, and style edits. It is now an easy to read, accurate, and detailed snapshot of our three key external revenue areas – private philanthropy (annual giving), corporate partnerships, and season/individual/group ticket sales. My metaphor for the report is every good team has to know how much time is left and what the score is. In that vein, we should always be mindful and alert to our revenue scoreboard. It has been very helpful!

Not directly related to this report, but Taylor (MBB) and Taryn (Volleyball) are both former student-athletes at TAMUC and graduates of our Honors College. Hiring them was definitely utilizing great OPPORTUNITIES!

SPORTS-SPECIFIC RULES EDUCATION

Similar to our financial monitoring and communication, we identified a gap two years ago in our sports-specific rules education and engagement. Katelyn Severance - our Associate Athletics Director for Compliance – is a servant leader to our coaches. She handles concerns, questions, and frustrations with poise and professionalism. It is refreshing to see strategic and intentional sports-specific rules education sessions, along with general compliance quizzes and updates during our monthly town hall (full staff) meetings. Our coaches and administration know that they have a great Opportunity to “ask before they act.”

INTERN RECRUITMENT AND PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT

Finally, the greatest opportunity can often lie in the attraction of talent to your department. We take great pride in our informal class visits with particular disciplines, our specific lectures we are invited to host, and our presence at both Sports Management and Career Services internship fairs. Three of our current interns - and two from last semester – represent our strong 2017-18 class. Rather than sink much money in at all, they are receiving experiential credit and Opportunities for enhanced positions down the road. WHAT an OPPORTUNITY!!

Perhaps some of the opportunities that we have put into place at Texas A&M Commerce will also make sense on your campus. Regardless, I encourage you to always consider new ways of doing things and make the most of the opportunities that come your way.