Athletic Director Greg Seitz

GREG SEITZ

ATHLETIC DIRECTOR

Greg Seitz was named Director of Athletics at Jacksonville State on February 26, 2016 after more than two decades of service to the University. Seitz, who is in his 29th year in the athletic department at JSU, served as interim Athletic Director for 14 months, marking his third term as the interim Athletic Director for the Gamecock athletic department. In Seitz’s six-plus years at the helm, the Gamecocks have seen unprecedented success on the field and in the classroom. The 201516 season saw JSU’s highest ever finish in the men’s Capital One Cup at No. 18, ranking the Gamecocks in the top 20 athletic departments among 347 NCAA Division I athletic programs. The 2016-17 season also saw JSU finish in the top 40 at No. 39, tied with Louisville, Harvard and South Carolina and 35 spots ahead of the next Ohio Valley Conference program. Seitz was instrumental in the Gamecocks’ move from the OVC to the ASUN Conference in 2021, a move that brought JSU back to its first Division I conference home, and the inception of ASUN Football, which debuts in the 2021-2022 academic year. The move came after the Gamecocks dominated the OVC in a tenure that saw them win 81 conference titles – nine in football - and make over 50 trips to NCAA Postseason play. The 2015 football season saw the football team post it’s first-ever No. 1 ranking in school history, and earn the No. 1 National seed in the FCS Playoffs before advancing to JSU’s first Division I National Championship Game appearance. The Gamecocks set more than 50 school records and ranked in the top three in attendance at the FCS level after hosting three-straight home playoff games. The Gamecocks won a JSU- and Ohio Valley Conference-record five consecutive league titles and won a league-record 36-straight OVC games from 2014 to 2018, the second-longest conference win streak in FCS history. The Gamecocks were the only Division I program to win its conference title outright during those five seasons. They would win again in 2020 to give them their ninth OVC title and sixth in a seven-year span. In the classroom, the Gamecock student-athletes posted a record 3.31 GPA for the 2019-20 academic year, the highest cumulative GPA in school history. The Spring 2020 semester guided the year to its record-breaking mark with an impressive 3.47 GPA for the term. JSU followed that up with an impressive 3.256 GPA in 2020-21, the ninth-straight year the student-athletes achieved at least a 3.0 cumulative GPA. In fact, the past four years under Seitz’s leadership have resulted in the four highest cumulative GPAs in program history.

Seitz has been with JSU since 1993, when he began working as assistant sports information director. In 1999, he became Sports Information Director and was promoted to Associate Athletic Director in 2002, before being promoted to Senior Associate Athletic Director in 2011. During his term as interim and Athletic Director, Seitz has been instrumental in many of the facility upgrades at Jacksonville State, including renovations at Rudy Abbott Field at Jim Case Stadium, Pete Mathews Coliseum, the Athletic Sports Performance Center and the recently approved football facility that will include a new dressing room, player’s lounge, training room, hydrotherapy recovery, meeting rooms, coaches offices, equipment and laundry area, theatre-style team meeting space and a game day recruiting area. Seitz was also involved in the softball stadium and dressing room expansion. In the summer of 2016, Seitz unveiled plans for a $7.5 million renovation to JSU’s Baseball Stadium, Rudy Abbott Field at Jim Case Stadium. The project was completed in time for the 2019 season and includes a 1,000-seat spectator grand stand with a shade canopy, an elevated, shaded entertainment or hospitality deck and service amenities, a new state-of-the-art press box and a game operations center. The summer of 2017 saw Seitz and the Board of Trustees release their plan to install new state-ofthe-art high definition video boards in BurgessSnow Field, Rudy Abbott Field and University Field, while also placing new scoreboards at the JSU Soccer Field and the JSU Tennis Courts. That project went one step further in 2019, when a pair of video boards were installed in Pete Mathews Coliseum. Also in 2017, Seitz announced an extension of a 14-year partnership between JSU Athletics and Adidas, securing the Portland, Ore., based company as the Gamecocks’ official athletic apparel and footwear brand through the 2021-22 season. Seitz has served on the NCAA Men’s Final Four Media Coordinator team for the last 10 years and also serves on the administrative team for the NCAA Division I College World Series. He is currently a member of the NCAA Championships Financial Working Group that was formed in 2019. He was named to the NCAA FCS Football Committee in 2016 and served as the chair of that committee in 2019. In addition, he served as a member of the NCAA Football Oversight Committee in 2019-20 and is as a site representative for the NCAA during the Division I Baseball Regionals and Super Regionals. He has worked numerous NCAA Championships and Alabama High School Athletic Association events over the last 28 years. In 2002, he became the first SID elected as President of the Alabama Sports Writers Association and currently serves as the organization’s secretary and treasurer.