From Athlete to Administrator

by: Rod Smith
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When Arizona State University appointed Gene Smith as the school's 18th director of athletics on July 27, 2001, the Pac-10 school gained both an experienced and accomplished leader. Before arriving in Tempe, Smith served as athletic director at Iowa State University (1993-2000) and at Eastern Michigan University (1986-93). At Iowa State, he coordinated the financial and physical transformation of the Cyclone athletic department, including the construction of a $6.1 million three-story football press tower at Jack Trice Stadium and the $2.3 million Johnny Majors Football Practice Facility.

A three-year varsity letterman as a defensive end during his college days, Smith played and then coached five seasons at Notre Dame. He then spent two years working as a marketing representative for IBM before beginning his administrative career at Eastern Michigan in 1983 as assistant athletic director for non-revenue sports. Since 1986, when he assumed permanent reigns of the EMU athletic department, Smith has been applying the communication, time-management and decision-making skills he learned as an athlete to help improve the programs he now oversees.

AFM: You try to get others involved in the decision-making process, even though you have the final decision?

GS: Exactly. People know, and I know that I have the ultimate responsibility and make the ultimate decisions on things. But one of the great things I think that we have been able to do in our business over the years is develop some really talented people with great experience. What we have to do is allow those people to continue to grow, because many of them want to be athletic directors or senior administrators, and so when you're in a decision-making process or when you're trying to put something together you allow them to be a part of it. Let them have input and be creative. But they ultimately know, and I understand that the decision is mine, the responsibility is mine.

People tend to support what they build. When they are involved in putting something together or finalizing a decision they have more ownership in it and obviously want to be more involved in making sure the outcome is what we intended it to be. It's a great way in my view to help develop a program.

AFM: When you hire a new coach, like you recently did with Coach Koetter, what are your priorities? Are you looking for an offensive or a defensive coach, a player's coach, or a disciplinarian?

GS: I've been fortunate enough to hire football coaches in the past and many of the things that I looked for in (hiring ASU's new) football coach are the same things that I look for in all of my coaches. First of all, I look for a leader - a person who understands how to establish a vision. Then, I look for a person who can motivate because it is imperative that within that leadership style to be able to motivate people to come together and help those people move toward a common goal is exceptionally critical. I look for a person who understands the big picture of higher education. While we have this incubator that we're responsible for called football, we are part of a bigger picture that is higher education. And we need to recognize our role in higher education and operate that way. I look for a person who is a planner, a goal-setter, who has great communication skills. Obviously, relative to the technical side of the job, (I look for) a good teacher, a good recruiter.

You really have to break it up from there relative to their management skills because you are also hiring a person to handle a budget - they have to be a budget manager, a personnel manager, an equipment manager, or a facilities manager. Or at least be able to be strong in personnel management to handle all the duties and responsibilities that exist in running a complex organization like a football program.

So, I don't embark on my searches and say to myself, all right I'm looking for just that part of football that people tend to focus on - an offensive guy, defensive guy or whatever. Coaching football is bigger than the scheme that you run. Those things I just talked about are high priorities for me. And from there, we switch into the type of game that I'm looking for. I never have a predetermined idea of what I'm looking for relative to schemes or philosophies because I believe you build your philosophy around your talent. Great players make great coaches and you adjust your schemes to great players.

In this particular case, I was able to find a coach who had all the different things that I look for that I mentioned earlier but happened to have a reputation as a wide-open offensive style of coach, an attacking type of philosophy defensively, and a high priority on being creative in special teams and the kicking game area. So, I feel fortunate that I found a coach that from the public point of view offers an exciting brand of football. But I must confess that I also saw guys out there that probably would have run the ball 95 percent of the time.

AFM: How would you define your management style?

GS: I'm more of a participatory type of manager. I believe that we have a lot of talented people that we employ, and I try to be inclusive in my decision-making processes as we deal with issues and how we move our program forward.

AFM: How much day-to-day interaction do you have with new Sun Devil head football coach Dirk Koetter or with other members of his staff?

GS: Our situation is a little bit difficult right now because we are in the middle of construction so we are spread out all over the place in temporary offices until our building is done. Right now, I'll meet with (Coach Koetter) twice or three times a week in different settings. Once we are in our new building our interaction will be daily because that's my style. Of course, it won't necessarily be formal meetings, but seeing him on a daily basis and touching base and making sure everything is fine - that's my style.

AFM: What can an assistant coach do to make themselves a more attractive head coach prospect, whether it be at their own college or somewhere else?

GS: I think a lot of that is networking. When I started my search process, I received calls from so many people recommending so many others. We had to research and check out every name we got. When you're searching (for a new coach), you can't leave any stone uncovered. So assistant coaches need to really just have strong networking and hopefully they have the opportunity to get the interview and then they just have to sell themselves. In Division I-A, you're going to look for, first and foremost, that person who has been a decision-maker, who has sat in the seat and demonstrated the ability to lead and move a group of people toward a common goal and be successful in that effort. So existing head coaches obviously have an edge. But if you're an assistant coach who has a diverse resume and has a huge network of people who help you, usually you can get that opportunity to interview. And when you get in that interview, you just need to be very good at presenting how you would run your program. We saw last year some assistant coaches being hired as head coaches. So, I don't think it's impossible. It has happened and I just think coaches need to keep working at it.

I think another point is that some coaches need to take a hard look at taking the opportunity to lead I-AA or II programs. That's difficult once you are an assistant coach at a major I-A level. Sometimes it's difficult to say to yourself 'I'm going to go I-AA, be a head coach and work my way back up.' That's something that I think coaches need to continue to look at.

AFM: Obviously, when hiring a new coach you're not just looking at one side of the issue but rather the entire picture. How do you specifically go about finding a coach? Do you use a committee?

GS: First of all, I believe that when you're in that process of finding a coach you have so much that you have to do and protect - the integrity of the search process relative to confidentiality. In my view you have to have knowledgeable people about the game and running a football program involved in the search process, and you're also recruiting. In my particular case, I believe there were anywhere from 20 to 22 job openings in a two-week span. So I was moving in a pretty intense market. I had two people help me - one of my associate athletic directors, who happened to be a former football coach, and (another guy) what I call a consultant who was my go-between, did a lot of background and leg work for me, and helped set things up. My associate Don Bocchi and I basically went out on the road and interviewed for five straight days. So we did it pretty expeditiously. At the end of the process, I did have a small committee that I brought my final candidate to and allowed them to ask questions that I may have missed. But I also knew that the committee would support my recommendation and I felt fortunate that after they met with him they enthusiastically supported the person that I brought to them.

AFM: While firing a coach is never easy, as athletic director you obviously have to deal with this situation from time to time. What were some of your major concerns involving your recent decision to fire ASU head coach Bruce Snyder and what lead to your ultimate decision?

GS: Well, my first concern was to make sure that once I made the decision to handle it in the most humanistic way possible. We were fortunate to have a coach who had been here for a very long time and had success in his early years, obviously going to a Rose Bowl, and was just a classy individual who operated with integrity. So, I wanted to make sure that he and his assistants were handled in the most humanistic way possible. Providing them an opportunity to move on with their lives. First and foremost, I wanted to make sure that was the focus of myself and my staff.

As for the decision itself, it was just a matter of where we want to be with our program and where we have to be with our program. We had had three successive mediocre years relative to wins and losses; we needed to improve our competitiveness in the Pac-10 and nationally. It comes down to where we feel our program should be relative to the resources that we make available for the leadership to run the program. We have outstanding facilities, we have a great academic institution, we have a great place to recruit to. We really want our program to be better than 6-5 and 6-6.

Along with that is the hardcore business decision of it. In the (Division) I-A environment, the majority, if not all of your revenue comes from your football program and your customer base in (the football) market is responsive to a highly competitive program. We needed to have more attendance, more excitement in our program and to get more people to come to our games, so that became a major focus of ours. A certain level of apathy had set in in our market, and we had lost a significant portion of our customer base. That's the hardcore reality that we balance in higher education. Because you can have a person like Bruce (Snyder) who has the highest of integrity, is a good person and runs a clean program, but in the end we do have to win ball games.

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