Stricklin’s sights: AD visualizes the future
GAINESVILLE — Five years running one of the nation’s college sports programs has coincided with a period of change beyond UF athletic director Scott Stricklin’s wildest imagination.
The emergence of the transfer portal and one-time eligibility waivers, along with name, image and likeness legislation, have empowered student-athletes to play where they choose and pursue compensation outside a school’s financial obligations.
SEC expansion with the addition of Texas and Oklahoma, scheduled to join the league in 2025, has further strengthened the nation’s top football conference while forcing others to scramble to keep up. A lucrative TV deal with ESPN allowed the SEC to borrow more than $300 million against future earnings to help its 14 member schools weather the massive financial impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, including $54.5 million in losses by UF’s University Athletic Association.
Stricklin, a 51-year-old Mississippian, now has spent 30% of his time as Gators’ AD — or 17 of 57 months since he assumed the job Nov. 1, 2016— navigating a once-ina-century health crisis still raging as the Gators gear up for the 202122 seasons.
When coach Dan Mullen’s 2021 squad kicks off Sept. 4 against FAU in the Swamp, the Gators will aim to defend their SEC East title and push for the program’s first visit to the College Football Playoff since its 2014 inception and first SEC title since 2008 when the school also captured its third national championship.
The men’s basketball program under Mike White has undergone a radical roster makeover this offseason after a second-round loss to No. 15 seed Oral Roberts in the NCAA Tournament, the program’s third consecutive second-round exit from the Big Dance. Known for its overall athletic excellence, the 2020-21 season was hit-or-miss for the Gators.
The men’s tennis team won the program’s first national title to extend UF’s run of winning at least one championship to 12 years. Yet the softball and baseball programs lost during their NCAA regionals in Gainesville while the mighty men’s track and field team finished fourth in the national championships. The women’s soccer and basketball programs hired new coaches.
Despite his hectic schedule, Stricklin took some time recently to sit down for an interview with the Orlando Sentinel.
Q: Do you see college sports stabilizing during the next five years?
Stricklin:
“Things are changing, no question about it. Change doesn’t necessarily mean bad, but it can be hard and challenging for a lot of people. We’re all learning our way, if you will, in this new environment. I actually think there’s new change coming and that we’re probably another four or five years from getting to the point where some it stabilizes. That’s just a guess; I could be totally wrong on that. It’s not unlike being in a game. You have a game plan, you go in and something happens and you got to adapt and adjust on the fly. We’re doing that right now in college athletics a lot more than we traditionally have.”
Q: What do you see as the primary challenge facing college sports?
Stricklin:
”The governance situation, where you have in Division I more than 300 schools
... there’s a thousand in the NCAA. The schools in the top part of that from a revenue and recognition standpoint have much different challenges than those on the other end of the spectrum. And it’s hard to come up with one collection of rules that helps those teams on the opposite end of the spectrum navigate the challenge they’re faced with. I don’t know what the answer is there, but the current model is not only incredibly bureaucratic, but it’s clunky. The constitutional convention coming up [scheduled for November] and a [22-person] committee has been put together — maybe they’ll see their way through it. The makeup of the committee is representative of the challenges we’re dealing with. You have schools all the way from the University of Georgia to Chico State. That’s not a knock on Chico State, but you have such a wide variety of constituents trying to come up with a solution.”
Q: It’s an especially challenging time for someone in your position amid the pandemic. What have you prioritized to push through these difficult times? Stricklin:
”Obviously, the health and safety of our student-athletes and our staff has been our No. 1 priority. Then beyond that to everything we can do to provide a championship experience, and understanding especially this last year we did not have the same level of resources because the people that come to our stadiums and to our events to help support the enterprise weren’t able to come in the same numbers. So we had to be a little creative in how we provided that experience, and sacrifices had to be made where we felt we could do so. But we’re also incredibly grateful to have gotten through the worst of it from the social impact of it. Think about where we were 12 months ago to where we are right now. Even though we have the delta variant as a big issue in our state right now, we also have a vaccine that over 60 percent of Floridians have gotten at least one dose of. A year ago we didn’t have that, so there’s a level of protection that we have access to that a year ago we had to rely on the social distancing and masking and those measures. We don’t understand as much as we’d like to about the virus, but we understand a little bit more how it spreads. We’re in such a better position relative to last year. We’re not where we want to be yet. Until we get COVID where it’s not impacting our society in any way we’re going to have to manage it. But we feel fortunate we do have access to vaccines and we’re keeping more people safe.”
Q. Given the rise in COVID-1 9 cases, what is the confidence level for having full capacity at football games? Stricklin:
”We’re in a position to welcome people back in regular numbers. Have no idea what the comfort level of fans is going to be. Based on ticket sales, it seems like there’s a lot of excitement. We’re ahead of where we were two years ago. We’ve sold out of student tickets for the first time in a few years, so that shows a level of excitement. Are those people going to show up? Are they going to wait until the delta variant really settles down before they show up? I can’t answer that. When people ask me if we’re going to have full capacity, I say that’s really up to the fans at this point whether they want to come and be a part of the environment.”
Q: How do you engender confidence among fans the Swamp is safe?
Stricklin:
“A couple of things, I’m really encouraged by the projections the medical people are showing that by the end of August the variant, the case counts will be coming down. I certainly hope that’s the case. But I go back to, we are in a state where we allow people to have free choice about making decisions and I would love nothing more than our community and our state to follow the lead of our studentathletes. Our football program is over 90 percent [vaccinated]. Other programs are well over 80 percent on our campus. That’s a great example. If our society and our state would follow that same example in our population, we would probably wouldn’t be seeing the variant we are seeing right now. There are breakthrough cases, but they’re incredibly rare. I’m optimistic the majority of people that are going to be coming to our games are vaccinated.”