Wearing a gold tie that he's kept for many, many years, perhaps in hopes of one day wearing at Georgia Tech, and a ring commemorating the Yellow Jackets' football national championship in 1990, Todd Stansbury sat in what will become his office as athletic director, looking so comfortable it was as if he didn't leave Tech in 1995 to circumnavigate the globe with his wife Karen.
In between 1995 and Thursday when he was introduced as the institute's ninth athletic director, Stansbury first toured the Earth and then took what he learned as a linebacker under coach Bill Curry, student at Tech and then as an athletic administrator under Homer Rice and applied it to jobs at Houston, East Tennessee State, Oregon State, Central Florida and then again in Corvallis, where he spent the past 1 ½ years as athletic director.
All the while, returning to Tech as athletic director was his dream job, which is one of the reasons that Karen said he kept a few gold-colored ties … just in case.
In an exclusive interview with the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Stansbury, 55, laid out his vision for Georgia Tech's athletics, defined the challenges of the job and that athletics faces, and described what he wants from coaches.
This is part two. The first part posted earlier today:
Q: What are your aspirations in terms of the different teams in the ACC and nationally?
A: If you are competitive in the ACC, you are going to be competitive nationally. So that’s the focus, winning conference championships.
Georgia Tech has a long history of doing that in a lot of different sports. Building on that history that’s already there. …
The nice thing about being in a conference like the ACC is if you compete in conference you are going to be in the mix nationally.
Q: How much of the charge was about fundraising and that aspect of the job from Dr. Peterson?
A: Being the lead fundraiser is the responsibility of the athletic director, regardless of the situation because you are the face and you are the storyteller. Ultimately, what the opportunity we are providing young people, what that means, what that looks like and so I think that anybody that sees how this enterprise changes young people’s lives can fund raise.
Q: What do you look for in a coach? When you go to hire, what do you want?
A: The big differentiator is a coach that recognizes his environment, recognizes where he or she is. I mean that because every coach you hire has had a history of success or they wouldn’t make your radar screen.
In looking at what differentiates those coaches that are successful form those that were successful and somehow can’t do it at another place I really believe is the coach that looks at their environment and understands the competitive assets are. What are the differentiators?
That’s what I look for: is it a coach that just thinks it will be plug and play or outwork everybody else and ‘I’m a great recruiter.’ Or is someone that looks at the institution and says ‘This is what makes this place special and this is what we are going to go after.’ I think that’s what makes the difference. That’s one of those things you study as an athletic director. They all look good on paper or they wouldn’t get to the point where you are even looking at them.
They have to be educators. They have to view what they are doing as developing and changing young people’s lives because ultimately that, in my mind, is the special nature of intercollegiate athletics. If it’s somebody that’s just Xs and Os, and they could be at the pro level or not, is not something that I would be interested in.
Q: Are you going to serve as an adjunct professor here like you did at previous places you have worked?
A: Probably not. But if asked to assist Homer Rice with his leadership course, I think he could get me to come out of retirement.
Q: At UCF and Oregon State, you’ve been part of a lot of building and renovations of athletic facilities. Here, most stuff has either recently been constructed or renovated, with a couple of exceptions like the football locker room.
How does that affect how you do your job when you don’t have that on your plate?
A: That takes a lot of bandwidth. When you are building facilities, capital projects, it’s an incredible amount of bandwidth. Quite frankly, even renovations are huge projects. We are finishing a $43 million football renovation right now. That’s a huge project.
I think if you aren’t having to totally focus on capital projects it allows you to build in other areas, which is student-athlete programming and creating programs, one that put the student-athlete in a better competitive situation post-graduation, and there are also programs, such as, at UCF it was Knights Without Borders, at Oregon State it was Beavers Without Borders. Those are programs that change young person’s lives are also programs that donors see the value in.
I think that you are always going to be building something, or I will because I went to an engineering school, but that’s what I’m passionate about. Whether that’s a building, a program, a young person I don’t want to just manage a program, I want to make it better.
