Georgia Tech AD: ‘We need to be Atlanta’s hometown college team’

Recently hired Georgia Tech athletic director Ryan Alpert was a guest on 680 The Fan on Tuesday morning, speaking with the station about his first month on the job at Tech and the future of the Tech athletic department.

Alpert, 37, spoke on a number of topics relating to the Yellow Jackets. The former deputy athletic director at Tennessee was asked how he builds interest in Tech athletics in a city as large as Atlanta while competing with professional franchises and other nearby colleges.

“Obviously winning cures a lot,” Alpert said. “We’ll launch a strategic plan initiative to build our brand. One of the five major topics is going to be brand advancement. We need to be Atlanta’s hometown college team. I think that’s critically important. Obviously we have our alums, we have the people that are directly connected to us, but there’s a huge base here, a gigantic population. There’s things that we can do to engage more broadly than just our alums is going to be critically important.”

Here are some other notable comments Alpert made during Tuesday’s segment:

On how Tech can be competitive in the current era of college athletics

“You’re running a major business. I think that’s the key. We have 17 sports here at Georgia Tech, two or three that are profitable. How are we investing those resources, how are we growing our resource base, how are we analyzing the national landscape both to put Georgia Tech in a position to help our coaches be competitive and then also the Institute to put us in a position to be most competitive moving forward.

“At the end of the day, you’ve gotta generate resources, you have to have fan engagement, you’ve gotta be engaged with the institute. That’s what I loved about this opportunity is what Dr. Cabrera and what his leadership has meant, the investment in athletics, how he has positioned being an elite academic institute and an elite athletic department and gave me the opportunity to come in here and lead that.”

How Alpert will try to continue to grow resources

“There’s never been a time more in college athletics where resources is tied to winning. That’s obviously revenue sharing and NIL. For the player acquisition space you have to be dynamic in today’s era of college sports to have success. Those areas that I think we have significant growth in is really what attracted me to this job is Atlanta. We need to be a lot better in our corporate sponsorships, we need to be engaging companies and have a presence.”

Who are some Alpert’s targets when it comes to raising financial support

“We’re gonna call everybody and anybody to gain support. From an NIL standpoint — revenue share we’re gonna be maxed out here with the distribution we can provide at the 20.5 (million dollars). And then what we need is companies and organizations within the marketplace that desire to have our athletes come out and make public appearances, be spokespeople for their organizations, do social media posts.

“That is why we have this differentiating factor here in Atlanta. If we can max out what we can provide and then as a full percent escalate every year, and then engage the business community, that’s exactly how we can win at a high level.”

On increasing attendance outside of students and alumni

“I think it’s how you market and how you communicate. What I’ve found in my career is consumers are willing to pay even more than what they’re paying today, or they’re interested if they desire to be in a premium area, to have different access.

“This marketplace, we have tremendous stadiums, one thing they have is diversity of product. So they’re bringing consumers in and then they’re selecting the path they’re on. I think we have to market better, we have to be in the community, we’ve got to build a brand and then we need to build a diversity of product that brings people in.”