By Staff
Athletic Management, 18.3, April/May 2006, http://www.momentummedia.com/articles/am/am1803/qawhite.htm
When Alan White became Athletic Director at Elon College in 1979, he was a physical education professor called on by the school’s president to oversee a small NAIA athletic department. Now, 27 years later, White is retiring as Athletic Director of Elon University after shepherding the program though moves to NCAA Division II and then into Division I.
During White’s tenure, Elon has won four national championships (including back-to-back NAIA football titles in 1980 and 1981) and 53 conference crowns while producing more than 500 all-conference athletes. White served as President of the NAIA Athletics Directors Association and was named District 26 Administrator of the Year five times. He was named the NAIA National Athletics Administrator of the Year in 1989 and inducted into the NAIA Hall of Fame in 1993.
Spurred by the school’s overall growth, White moved the program into NCAA Division II along with the rest of the South Atlantic Conference in 1993. Elon joined the Division I ranks in 1999 as a member of the Big South Conference before joining the Southern Conference in 2003.
A 1962 graduate of Wake Forest, where he was an All-ACC halfback, White was an assistant football coach at Elon before earning a master’s degree at the University of North Carolina and an EdD from Mississippi State while serving as an assistant football coach at each school. He returned to Elon as an assistant professor in 1974.
In this interview White talks about growing an athletic department, changing the school’s nickname, and dealing with increased parental involvement.
AM: What were you trying to accomplish by moving to the NCAA?
White: In the early ’90s, Elon was moving forward in virtually every area. Our academic standards were improving. Our student affairs functions were getting better and better. There were more program offerings and more interest in pursing international studies and travel. We felt we needed to move athletics to a different arena to help better promote and market the university as a whole.
How did you raise the funds needed to make the move to Division I?
When we decided to move to Division I, we hired a full-time fundraiser for athletics, who helped increase our donations from alumni and supporters. We also had guarantee money from some of our game schedules. We eventually got some money from the NCAA and our conference as well. And the university helped us because they knew it was a tough move.
When you first moved into Division I, the football team competed as an independent. How important was it to get the football program into a I-AA conference?
We started in the Big South, but it did not have football as a championship sport. We made it clear from the start that football was important to us and we would certainly like to have it as a conference sport. The Big South tried to get it going but wasn’t able to get the six members needed for NCAA recognition.
We were excited when a spot opened in the Southern Conference because it was a good fit geographically for us and has a history of success and prestige. Because of our history of success in football we wanted to be associated with a league that also had a proud history where we could hopefully be competitive.
Where do you feel Division I-AA football is heading?
There is a great deal of discussion going on right now about the nomenclature itself. We’re trying desperately to get that changed, and I think it’s probably going to happen within the next year or so. People tend to think that all of our teams are a I-AA classification, but it applies only to football and that causes confusion sometimes.
I would also like to see some of the schools that are not able to succeed at the I-A level in football start participating in I-AA. And I’d like to see us be able to expand the number of teams in our playoffs.
You’re in an area with a lot of high-profile BCS institutions. How do you compete with them for fans?
We’re sitting here in the backyard of the so-called Big Four—Wake Forest, Duke, North Carolina, and N.C. State. On any given Saturday, some of those teams will be playing at home. A lot of people in our town graduated from those schools and have some loyalty to them, so we become secondary. As a result, we’ve altered some of our game times to get people who go to one of the Big Four games in the afternoon to come to our game at night. In basketball, most of the ACC schools play on Saturday afternoon so we try to play on Saturday nights.
Also, we’re fortunate to have good quality kids here, so we give our fans the chance to get to know them better than athletes at some of the major institutions. Our fans can have more personal contact with our athletes and develop an affiliation with them.
How do you encourage those kinds of connections?
As an example, prior to our basketball games, we have a chalk talk with fans. One of our assistant basketball coaches will come up and give a game report. We also bring in some of our student-athletes and let the fans see who they are and find out more about them. It’s more of a personal touch than you’re able to get at some of the major programs.
What was behind the school changing its nickname from Fighting Christians to the Phoenix in 2000?
We were founded by the United Church of Christ and that was reflected in our original name. As the university grew and became more diverse, we thought that some people may have felt excluded by the name. We wanted to have an inclusive feel for the university, so we made the move and it was well received. There were a few older alums who took issue with it, but not many.
The Phoenix name has been good for us. The campus virtually burned down in 1924 and had to be rebuilt, and that was the inspiration—rising from the ashes as the Phoenix. We sell a lot more apparel with the Phoenix logo than we sold with the old one.
What advice do you have for administrators who are facing a name change?
It’s important to involve all of your constituents in the process, and not rush into anything. We had open forums for everyone to talk about the possibility of the name change and get reactions to the idea. We also let them make suggestions about what we should call ourselves.
You’re retiring at the end of this school year after 27 years on the job. How has being an athletic director changed during your career?
Certainly all the changes we’ve been through here as an institution have changed how I do my job. There has been an increasing need for resources and money to finance the program. More generally, there has been increased attention paid to gender equity issues and making sure we have good balance within our program. Then there are the improvements in facilities and the adjustments in academic standards by the NCAA. There are so many different elements to the job now and so many different constituents to satisfy.
The hardest part is that I can’t have the same kind of personal relationships I developed when everyone reported directly to me. It’s easy to become more and more isolated from the coaches and athletes.
What did you do to avoid becoming more isolated as the program grew?
The establishment of our Student-Athlete Advisory Council has been very helpful. It’s an opportunity to meet with representatives from all the sports and get a feel for what’s happening with their teams. I also have a cabinet representing the various elements of the program that I meet with weekly. But anytime you grow the way we’ve grown, you really have to put forth an effort to make sure that everyone is being heard—and that’s difficult to do sometimes.
Is there anything you know now that you wish you had known when you first became an athletic director?
I wish I had had a little more experience in marketing and promotions. We’ve been able to hire people who have that expertise and have helped us move forward in that area, but I wish I had known more about that area of administration.
Most of all, I wish I had known that parents were going to be as involved and as vocal about their children as they have become at the collegiate level. I think I’ve had more calls from parents in the last three to five years than I had during my whole career prior to that.
I understand they want their child to be successful and are used to him or her being successful. But they fail to realize they’re setting the wrong example by getting too involved, and that the kids can learn a lot by dealing with problems themselves.
How do you handle those situations?
You try to listen to the parents and if there is a problem you can address, you address it. But sometimes a problem can’t be resolved to the satisfaction of the parent, especially since most of the time it boils down to playing time.
I think a lot of parents today are very involved with their kids in the various sports levels. They start out coaching youth teams and financially supporting those teams, so they have a voice in what’s happening. Then they expect to have that same sort of input at the collegiate level. Sometimes they’re a little unreasonable about their expectations and not able to deal with the reality of the situation.
How has technology changed the job?
Computers and e-mail have created tremendous changes, both good and bad. You can certainly communicate more efficiently with e-mail, but you also receive a lot of stuff that you used to not have to deal with. It takes some time during the day to deal with all those inquiries that can get to you so easily, and it certainly makes things happen more quickly.
Was it hard to learn to delegate as the department grew?
Yes, because I was used to doing things myself and being responsible for them. Turning some of that loose has been difficult. Not everybody is going to do it the way I did it, but you have to give people freedom to do things their way. I’m fortunate to have some people who have been with me about 20 years. They know how I like to have things done. It’s easier to let them take a task and run with it than it might have been if we had constant turnover.
How has your background helped you as an athletic director?
Although I was a professor before I became an athletic director, it helped a great deal more that I had been a coach and player. Now there are more athletic directors who are coming from legal or business backgrounds. What I think they’re lacking a lot of times is that playing and coaching experience. It’s hard for them to have a depth of understanding or a true appreciation for some of the things that coaches or players struggle with. I think playing or coaching experience enables someone to provide better insight to the problems those people are faced with.