Editor’s note: Dispatch MSU beat reporter Colin Damms sat down with MSU athletic director Zac Selmon for a wide-ranging conversation about the new landscape of college sports after the House v. NCAA settlement that allows athletic departments to directly compensate student-athletes with up to $20.5 million of its annual revenue. What follows is a transcript, lightly edited for clarity and length, of their conversation.
Q: It’s been a busy summer in college football and college sports at large; from where you sit as an athletic director, how has that gone for you?
Selmon: It’s been good. A lot of times, things run together, but I got in this business not because I felt like it was a job. I felt like it was a way to make an impact on young people, just because of what college athletics did for my family and (me).
My dad was the first in his family to go to school. One of his parents, my grandfather, was a sharecropper, so he would have never been able to afford to go to college unless it was for a football scholarship. And my three older sisters all went to school on scholarship, or two of them did; my third one got an academic scholarship as a Division III athlete. My parents would have never been able to afford to send me to Wake Forest.
In my opinion, there’s no better way to impact people in communities than college sports. A wild summer, as far as all the changes that are going on, but I feel like we’ve all gotten used to living in that world of uncertainty with a lot of different things. We’ve focused on what we can control and being OK with that.
Q: In your time, there’s been a lot of change with facilities. How important is that, not just where you want to have your student-athletes given the best care possible, but also the best facilities for fans and the best attraction for future athletes?
I think facilities are critically important, whether it’s at the high school level to college level, and now we have NIL, we have rev share (money paid directly to student-athletes) that we’re working through. So are we able to (upgrade) facilities as fast as we used to in this business? I don’t know. But at State, we know that facilities continue to be a huge part of the equation for us to be successful.
We don’t look at it as having a facility just to do it, or just for propaganda. We want to make sure it’s functional for our student-athletes, like an indoor practice facility. With the (House v. NCAA) settlement, roster sizes have gone down. We know that the Mississippi heat is not going anywhere.
Our plan is to make meaningful progress in the postseason, expanded games in the CFP. How do we keep our players safer and healthier throughout the season? That’s how we’ve looked at facilities.
Then there’s also the fan side. I feel like we’ve got the most passionate fan base in America. I love our fans, and we’re asking them to do a lot to stretch. It’s on us to make sure that we’re providing them the experiences, not just when they’re here for a game, but throughout the year, and how we communicate all of those things. We’ve got to continue to invest. A lot of times, everybody wants to go fast and get things done right away. That’s just not the reality we live in.
Q: In terms of the cost coming along with the new era, there’s some anxiety with fans about how those costs will be passed along to them, and there’s also a concern about staff and scholarship opportunities for some of those sports that are non-revenue sports. How do you approach sustainability and providing the sort of staff and care for your student-athletes in those sports?
We understand that football has been the economic driver for college football for some time. Men’s basketball has been an economic driver, but that doesn’t say that we don’t want elite competition and elite support. Our women’s soccer team was No. 1 in the country last year, won the SEC Championship.
… Our commitment is always going to be, we want to have a broad-based program. We don’t want to cut any sports. We don’t even want to look at that. We’re going to continue to find ways to be smarter and look at what has long been active in our enterprise versus what’s helping us progress.
We always talk about winning, and when we talk about winning. It’s always winning today, so you can … better yourself for tomorrow. If we have that approach, we always felt like the outcome on the scoreboard will take care of itself.
Q: How have conversations with coaches and staff in those programs contributed to planning for the new reality?
We met as a department staff (Thursday) morning, and we reflected on this time last year, when we talked about a lot of the changes that were coming down the pike. At that time, we said this is going to take all of us.
… With roster limits now being the thing, and scholarship limits going away, we’ve talked to all of our coaches about scholarship increases. We’re going to have 53 new scholarships this year, which is fantastic. It’s painful on the bottom line at times, but that’s the core of what we’re doing is trying to provide scholarships for young people …
I think we all want more answers as far as the rules and circumvention rules to the cap that we’re working through. What’s next year’s true number going to be from a rev share standpoint?
We don’t know that yet, but our coaches have been so collaborative and helpful. In an imperfect system that we’re all in right now, it’s not just at Mississippi State, ‘cause there are so many unanswered questions out there that we’re all trying to seek answers for.
Q: A big part of your tenure has been fundraising, and there’s been a transition from grassroots fundraising to earlier this summer, you were also able to announce record (larger) donorship.
Yeah, in this league you can’t do anything without resources, and we’re doing all we can to make sure that we can continue to show our thanks and our gratitude, because we do have great donors. Bulldog Club members have done unbelievable things.
… I came up in the fundraising side of the enterprise, so you realize pretty soon, last year’s record is now the floor. Now we’re going to chase our thing. We’ve got great donors who are making huge impacts and allowing us to fast-track a lot of the things that we want to do in the most complicated era in the history of college sports. When you’re figuring out the indoor practice facility, just finished up with the lights at Davis Wade. We’re doing a lot of different projects, and we couldn’t do it without private philanthropy and private support.
Q: (New head baseball coach) Brian O’Connor’s introduction was a big deal. Could you talk about the opportunity you saw there to bring in somebody with one of the best resumes in the sport, but also for a sport that at a lot of universities might be considered non-revenue. How unique an opportunity was it for Mississippi State to make a move like that?
That’s when you look at the history of college baseball, you don’t have it as it is without Mississippi State. You realize the magnitude and not just what it means in Starkville, but for people throughout the state and the region.
There’s a huge responsibility for a leader of our baseball program. Once you win a national championship, and what Coach Lemonis was able to do to win our first team national championship is incredible, we’ll continue to celebrate him as long as we’re here on this earth. But that’s the standard. You knew you had to go get somebody who could be a fit.
For me, it’s about, ‘Do you align with what we’re wanting to do?’ Yes, we want to not just get to Omaha, we want to win the national championship, but I’m a true believer that you can win and win the right way with class, using the game to teach people about life, prepare them about life.
I was fortunate that he saw how unique and special Mississippi State is, and he seems like he’s been here a long time already.
Q: Marc (Votteler, football general manager) also mentioned that in terms of the player agreements from NIL deals, a lot of that groundwork helped plan for rev share. In terms of future changes, is that another area that you’ve had to prepare for, whether it’s individually dealing with athletes or talk of collective bargaining?
During COVID, you learned there are so many different scenarios planned. Are you able to keep everybody safe? And that’s the first and foremost. And then, can you play a game? Can you travel? You had different scenario plans.
I see a lot of similarities in what we’re doing now. There are a lot of different scenarios depending on a lot of things that are outside of our control.
We can’t control if we end up collectively bargaining. … As we build out our systems, maybe the way to look at it is a two-way basketball player or a two-way player that can do great both ways.
We’re looking at it as talent management services. If we go one way, we can adapt.
Q: On non-revenue sports, with the way that rev share is paired with NIL, does this new era offer you flexibility to provide for (non-revenue) sports and make them sustainable?
It always stood out to me that previous rules, if you’re a piano student, you’ve got this elite talent, you could go give somebody a lesson. Maybe you could go to a nursing home in town and they could pay you 50 bucks, and you could play a piano for a nursing home.
For our athletes, you couldn’t do that. I think a lot of things that now our student athletes who do that as NIL came without the guardrails. Everybody was talking about the 1%, but there are so many other things that are going on.
Our team is working to help our student-athletes understand who they are. What are some of the goals that you have? How can we connect the dots and find meaningful opportunities for those athletes?
People sometimes will look at the rev share and the bigger numbers or the reported numbers, but there are so many other things that are positive because of these changes and what NIL is truly intended to be. We have countless examples of those, of student-athletes that can go out and get meaningful deals, but also give a lot of value back to communities and or businesses.
Q: Art Briles was at an open practice a couple of weeks ago. Is that a situation where you’re concerned about the optics?
That was 10 days ago or so. Our jobs are really hard. We’ve had a policy of, we want to make sure that this is a family feel, a family atmosphere. … Our family comes to everything, you know, and that’s something that we want. That’s something that attracted me to come here. I know it’s something that attracted Coach Lebby to come here. We put out two statements, and Coach Lebby addressed it as well. We all know we have professional boundaries and who’s got jobs here, who’s working here. But again, we do want it to be a family feel, knowing how hard and challenging these jobs are, especially during a training camp.
Q: Given the reputation there, with Art Briles (and the sexual assault scandal at Baylor when he was head coach), are there guidelines to help prevent a sort of distraction like there was at Oklahoma (where Lebby – then the offensive coordinator there – apologized after Briles was on the sidelines after a game)?
I can’t speak for anything that you’re referring to at Oklahoma.
I can speak for the department that I lead, and we want families to be a part of supporting our staff members. Again, myself included. If you see me at an event, you see my family at events. But we also know we’ve got professional obligations and boundaries, so that’s what we’ll continue to do.
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