NASHVILLE - A little more than three weeks from his official start date as Tennessee's athletic director, John Currie may feel overwhelmed by his to-do list.
There's so much to do to ensure he's ready to go full speed when he takes over the Volunteers on April 1.
One objective, though, took precedence this week.
"The primary thing I've got to do today," Currie said by phone Thursday morning, "is I've got to make sure that I get Mrs. (Mary Lawrence) Currie to the beach. My kids (Jack, Virginia and Mary-Dell) have spring break here, and I'm about to leave them for a couple months to get the job started.
"We usually can't plan vacations during the spring because we're always planning on basketball - men's and women's NCAA (tournament) basketball. This is a rare opportunity to actually take them somewhere. I've got to get Mrs. Currie to the beach, get her some place warm, hopefully some place with bad cellphone coverage and no internet.
"It's been great to connect with a lot of great old friends from Tennessee. We're very fortunate at Kansas State and I'm proud of the team we have in place. Our acting AD, Laird Veatch, one of my first hires back in 2009, is already taking over, so to speak. Succession planning is part of being of a leader, and I think he's doing a great job. I'm actually on leave right now.
"I'm making a lot of telephone calls, checking in with people and certainly I'm very excited to get started."
Since accepting the Tennessee job last week just a couple of months short of his eighth-year anniversary as the athletic director at Kansas State, Currie likely has spent nearly every waking second on his phone.
The phone calls, text messages and emails he's received from folks associated with Kansas State and Tennessee and involved in college athletics around the country number in the thousands.
"I have been on the phone nonstop," Currie said. "I've still got about a hundred text messages I haven't responded to that I'm going to respond to personally, but it's been very exhilarating."
One of Currie's first orders of business is forming his UT executive team.
The recent departures of Chris Fuller to Syracuse and Jon Gilbert to Southern Mississippi from Dave Hart's cabinet mean there are vacancies to fill at Tennessee, but Currie isn't rushing the process or revealing how many people he'll have, whom he'll keep or who might go with him from Kansas State.
"I know that there's outstanding people in Knoxville because I knew a lot of them that were there when I was there," he said, "and the people that have come that Dave has brought on his team are good people, too. Like I said last week, I'll be doing a lot of listening - two ears, two eyes and one mouth for a reason - because I want to get to know folks.
"Over time what you do is you kind of evaluate where you might have a few gaps and then figure out how to fill the gaps."
Tennessee athletics is in a much different place now than when Hart took over in September 2011.
The separate men's and women's departments were in the process of merging. Tennessee was in a dreadful spot financially and just wrapped up the NCAA case involving its football and men's basketball programs. Legendary coach Pat Summitt had just announced her Alzheimer's diagnosis. The football Vols were still wandering in the wilderness under Derek Dooley.
Hart wasn't perfect as Tennessee's athletics director, but academics, fundraising and the department's financial standing improved significantly under his watch.
Currie is facing a different set of challenges as he takes over, and he insists he's changed as a leader since leaving Tennessee for Kansas State.
"All of us, when we were young guys and we're all coming up, we say, 'When I'm the AD, I'm going to do this,' or 'I'm going to do that,'" he said. "Certainly I felt like when I went to K-State I was extremely well prepared.
"I'd been offered incredible training and opportunities by the people I worked with and for at Tennessee, like Doug Dickey and Joan Cronan and Mike Hamilton and lots of other people. I had the opportunity at Tennessee to work around hall of fame coaches like Coach (Phillip) Fulmer and Coach Summitt and lots of other great folks.
"I felt pretty prepared walking into that environment in Manhattan, Kansas, which was a total turnaround situation. We were facing a $2 million budget deficit for the coming year. We had a lot of old facilities. We had some trust issues and stuff like that. But until you actually sit in the chair and it all comes at you, you really don't understand what it's really like.
"Having that eight years of experience and some highs and lows and all that kind of stuff let me put it this way: I'm much better prepared to be the athletics director at Tennessee in 2017 than I would have been in 2009."
Contact Patrick Brown at pbrown@timesfreepress.com.