Mark Wharton was introduced as the new University of Tennessee at Chattanooga athletic director Wednesday afternoon. He comes to the university with 22 years of experience working in athletic departments at East Carolina, UNC-Asheville, UNLV and, most recently, Penn State.
Wharton comes in at a time when the biggest issue on the UTC athletic docket is the construction of a new athletic building, expected to be located across from McKenzie Arena once the university raises the funds. Some around the university feel that task is close to completion and that Wharton may be able to help push it over the top.
The Times Free Press spoke with Wharton about what's ahead for him at UTC:
Q: Coaches and search committee members alike raved about you seeming to be ready for anything thrown at you through the interview process. How important is preparation to you?
A: "I have to give a lot of credit to Penn State for broadening my experience. I might not have been all in in compliance, but we were together enough about issues and academic counseling that I learned just enough to be dangerous. I'm not an expert in it, but I can speak to it and relate to that individual that oversees that area. I want to learn more and more and more, and I can use the experiences at Penn State and East Carolina to be able to tweak something here.
"The first interview (at UTC) was about me, not Chattanooga. They wanted to pull everything out of the closet and try to work on what is my weakness. I felt prepared there wasn't. The second was seeing if I wanted to be here, what I could do and still them figuring me out. (Being prepared) was the strategy I took, and here we are.
"I've got to be prepared; an athletic director has to have a list - for every sport, they have to have the 10 best candidates for when that coach walks out the door because here it happens fast. It's an attractive place, you can recruit people here, and I just want to be prepared when things happen like that.
Q: You appear to have a plan in mind for your first 100 days on campus. What can you tell us?
A: "First and foremost, I have to go internally in the university and start the relationship there. I've heard stories that there may not be the strongest relationship with athletics the last couple of years, so that's first and foremost to get their buy-in. I have to learn more about what Chancellor (Steven) Angle's vision is, internally build trust and get to know development officers.
"Then there's 30 stakeholders that I want to get to very aggressively, to get to develop a plan that will attack and raise money above and beyond what we currently do, and tweak what we currently do. Everybody is an extremely talented professional, so nothing's broke.
"There are things internally I want to address, but it's not broke."
Q: You didn't have any control over it, but how do you feel about the timing of the hire with sporting events - including a big football game - having either started or starting up this week?
A: "I think the timing is perfect. When I start work, I'm going to jump in and we're going to be playing home football games, which provides me five days a week to be able to do my job and get into the community. With a game, you can add a sixth day. I feel that if we have football games, which bring in alums and fans, we're able to hit more and start those relationships.
"I'm going to have to walk around with a pad and remember everybody's name, but I can really start building relationships then."
Q: Attendance has been a hot-button issue around UTC sports. How much of that falls on you?
A: "It does fall on me. I need to do a great job of communicating that to the coaches. Our coaches need to spend time on campus, getting to the students, eating at the dining hall once a month. Then with resources, do we upgrade our marketing department and add a body there, would that show results? Do we have a relationship with a third-party ticketing company? I'm going to push them to get more groups - with the Boy Scouts, parents are going to come and get them bought in to the entertainment value.
"If you look at (Penn State's) Beaver Stadium, it seats 107,000, but once the (Jerry Sandusky child sexual abuse) scandal hit (in 2011), our average attendance fell to 91,000. It's great. It's still top 10, but we still had 16,000 empty seats. This year, with success, they've sold out, and you can use the little things done there - they use the same third-party ticket solutions and redid a lot of different things to get the community engaged - and I think a lot of that is using coaches wisely to get them out and invite them to come to games."
Contact Gene Henley at ghenley@timesfreepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @genehenleytfp.