STARKVILLE — A brief lull in Zac Selmon’s introductory press conference Friday was abruptly ended by a metallic clanging from the right of the lectern.
As Selmon had predicted minutes earlier, his daughter “Meatball” had taken an interest in the cowbell.
“Told you,” Mississippi State’s new athletic director told his audience at the Bryan Athletic Administration Building.
Of course, the big mystery — how 8-year-old Rylee earned the nickname “Meatball” — was never solved.
“Get to know her,” Selmon promised. “You’ll figure it out.”
Those two sentences could apply to Selmon, the former Oklahoma deputy athletic director now tasked with his first AD job in Starkville.
Those around Selmon described who he is, where he came from and what he plans to accomplish in Starkville.
“I keep telling people, ‘He’s a great dude,’” Oklahoma Executive Associate AD for External Engagement Leah Beasley said. “That’s how I keep describing him.”
An athletic background
Before news of his impending hire broke Wednesday night, few if any Mississippi State fans likely had any idea who Zac Selmon was.
They might have heard of his father and uncles, though.
Selmon’s father Dewey played alongside his brothers Lee Roy and Lucious on a fearsome Oklahoma defensive line in the early 1970s.
When Selmon’s own talent earned him a scholarship to play tight end at Wake Forest, then-Demon Deacons offensive coordinator Steed Lobotzke was concerned.
With Selmon’s family history, he expected the worst: that the young player would carry in spades the haughtiness Lobotzke often sees in high-level high school recruits.
Instead, Selmon surprised him.
“Most of these 18-year-old kids in this recruiting process, they’re just these arrogant kids with big heads that never shut up,” Lobotzke said. “They’re not serious. They don’t have a good eye on the future. It can be an unimpressive part of the process. Zac was the absolute opposite.”
Now the offensive line coach at the Air Force Academy, Lobotzke said Selmon “saw through the BS” of the recruiting process and straight to the core of Wake’s mission: high-level academics and good football.
Selmon was a starter by his redshirt freshman season in 2004, catching 36 passes for 418 yards across four seasons. He did it quietly, too.
“A lot of guys talk about how hard they work, and I’m not even sure if I can remember what the sound of Zac Selmon’s voice is,” Lobotzke said. “He’s one of those guys who didn’t need to talk about all the work he was going to do; he just worked and became a starter and became an asset and won us football games. … He needs to be cloned and reproduced so there can be a whole sport full of guys like him.”
A history of giving
Under Selmon, the Sooners’ deputy AD for external engagement and advancement, Oklahoma just completed a record-breaking fundraising year.
OU exceeded its expectations by a significant margin — not just “a few million over the goal,” according to Beasley, who was hired away from Mississippi State’s athletic department in April.
“They just blasted through their goal, and that’s a testament to his leadership over that area and his relationships with our donors,” she said.
Oklahoma’s Sooner Club set annual donation records in 2018 and 2019 and set a record in 2020 for the most philanthropic giving in the history of the school’s athletic programs.
Perhaps that ties in with Selmon’s own penchant for giving, which dates back to his mother Kathryn’s choice to open a nonprofit called Food and Shelter for Friends in her Norman neighborhood in 1986, a year before Selmon was born. The organization is still around.
“It really just instilled in us (that) to live really is to give and help other people,” Selmon said.
While still in school, he co-founded a nonprofit with his sister, Shannon Selmon Carter, called the Shine Foundation. The organization serves those in need with an emphasis on children’s projects in Liberia and elsewhere in West Africa.
It was just early proof of the legacy Selmon — still shy of his 40th birthday — has already left.
“You almost could have called it at 17, 18 years old,” Lobotzke said. “You didn’t know if he was going to be President of the United States or president of a university or athletic director of an SEC school. You just didn’t know what it was going to be, but you knew it was going to be something huge. It was going to be something impactful.”
Making his own way
On the biggest stage of his still young career, Selmon has a chance to make that impact.
Athletic director jobs are rare in the Southeastern Conference, which Selmon called “the gold standard in college athletics.”
“It’s fun to be competing in the best conference in America,” he said.
Oklahoma is set to join the SEC ranks come July 1, 2024, and Selmon said he’s excited to go head to head with the Sooners and athletic director Joe Castiglione.
Selmon said Castiglione and North Carolina AD Bubba Cunningham — with whom Selmon worked during the 2014-15 academic year — offered the young administrator “a master class in leadership.”
“It’s been a true privilege to have Zac on our staff from his beginnings as a graduate assistant to his current role as deputy AD,” Castiglione said. “We know he will be a visionary leader for MSU and the SEC. He’s genuine and authentic and helps make everyone around him better.”
Selmon’s hire is also historic. He is the 18th athletic director in Mississippi State history but just the first who is Black.
His father and uncles, who received scholarships to OU, were the first members of his family to attend college; Selmon and his three sisters all earned athletic scholarships, too.
“As the grandson of a sharecropper, we know firsthand the hard work and how intercollegiate athletics has the power to change the trajectory of someone’s life,” Selmon said.
It’s why Selmon is stressing education — along with community service and competing with class and integrity — as part of his new role, delivering three key words to MSU student-athletes on Friday: “You will graduate.”
Those who do earn their degrees could get themselves on the same track as Selmon, who holds a master’s from Oklahoma as well as his bachelor’s from Wake Forest.
“His roots run deep here, and his family is very well respected,” Beasley said. “He didn’t just earn that by proxy. He earned it by the relationships that he formed, too — not just resting on his family’s laurels or what their reputation was. He built his own, and of course, it makes the Selmon family proud, I’m sure.”
Proud would be an understatement as Selmon’s career reached its next great height Friday. His wife Rachel and his daughters — “Meatball” and 12-year-old Shayne — looked on from chairs at the side to the stage.
Selmon’s parents were there, too. As he gazed out at Dewey and Kathryn, whose eyes shone with delight, Mississippi State’s new athletic director choked up.
Who could blame him?
“A lot of emotions,” Selmon said. “You can’t even describe all the emotions, but they’re all good.”
Theo DeRosa reports on Mississippi State sports for The Dispatch. Follow him on Twitter at @Theo_DeRosa.
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