NEW LOOK ATHLETIC DEPARTMENT

director for facilities and operations; Annie manager, Thundering Herd Sports Properties;

Torain, assistant athletic director for academic services; Teddy Kluemper III, associate athletic director for development; Dawn Kirtner, assistant athletic director for business operations; Beatrice Crane Banford, senior associate athletic director for Olympic sports/SWA; Christian Spears, director of athletics; Debra Boughton, executive associate athletic director for championship planning and resources; Greg Beals, head coach, baseball; John Sutherland, senior associate athletic director for development and Big Green Executive Director; Arlin Vieira, special assistant to the director of athletics; Taylor Hickman, associate athletic director for capital campaigns and signature events; Rodney Kasey, assistant athletic director for digital strategy and brand management; Ryan Crisp, associate athletics director for annual giving, ticket sales and fan engagement; Cedric Prowell, assistant athletic director for equipment operations; Sean Tuttle, associate athletic director for compliance; Sharrod Everett, assistant athletic director and football chief of staff; and Grant Traylor, associate athletic director of communications

BY KEITH MOREHOUSE

Just north of Third Avenue, behind the Dot Hicks softball complex, there’s a lot of activity going on in the bullpen. Well, not a bullpen yet, but it’s coming. Several excavators are pitching mounds of dirt around the site. Marshall’s long-awaited ballpark is no longer a project on paper. College baseball on Marshall’s Huntington campus is on the horizon.

“At last, the new baseball stadium is real,” said Christian Spears, the university’s energetic athletic director. “All of the people who said, ‘They’ll never do it, it won’t happen, they’ve failed for 60 years,’ — well, today earth is being moved and construction is underway.”

The doubters and naysayers have had plenty of valid reasons to be skeptical. Herd legend and longtime head coach Jack Cook — who passed away in 2021 — had attended two separate stadium groundbreakings. He infamously remembered that the administration began promising him a new ballpark back in the 1960s.

It turns out those stadium blueprints were a real enticement to lure former Ohio State baseball coach Greg Beals to Huntington to become Marshall’s next head coach.

“The bones are here, I believe that,” said Beals. “I see what’s going on across the street and I’ve got a big picture in mind. We’re going to have a brand-new ballpark; and when it opens next year, I think we can be the big show in town every March and April.”

The stadium is on target to open for the 2024 season, an ambitious timetable by any measure. Beals is willing to wait, he said, and to get to work building a program for the Thundering Herd in the ultra-competitive Sun Belt Conference. He coached the Buckeyes to three NCAA tournament appearances and knows what it takes to win at the highest level.

The baseball park is just one of a myriad of facility improvements around campus. Edwards Stadium has a new playing surface; and a new, much larger video display will fill the south end zone this fall. The Henderson Center sports a brand-new arena floor with that ubiquitous “M” logo at center court. Venerable Gullickson Hall and its gymnasium got a makeover worthy of an HGTV show.

Christian Spears

Marshall University Athletic Director

In fact, the old home of Marshall’s athletics offices and physical education classes looks better today than it has since its construction in 1961.

When Christian Spears was introduced as Marshall’s new athletic director in February 2022, his plan was to resurrect pride in the Marshall brand. He wanted to ensure the brand was represented at every facility on campus, and his template for the cosmetic transformation sounded simple enough.

“A little bit of paint, a little bit of graphic, a little bit of pride and more wins,” Spears explained. “When people feel great about their environment, the results start to turn pretty quick.”

Those results came quickly. Marshall’s win over No. 8-ranked Notre Dame in South Bend woke up the Herd’s football echoes and is likely the most noteworthy win in school history. Marshall won nine games including a victory in the Myrtle Beach Bowl over UConn. The Herd basketball team got off to its best start in 36 years and finished the regular season at 23-6.

One thing Spears has noticed in less than a year on campus is that Marshall fans will tell you how they feel. When the new floor was laid down at the Henderson Center, there was one subtle omission that fans — loudly and clearly — let Spears know about. The famous Bruce Morris footprints were gone. Those prints marked the game-winning shot Morris made from 89 feet, 10 inches back in 1989 against Appalachian State. Proving that he can take a little criticism and advice, Spears had the footprints reaffixed to the floor.

He also made the decision to put tarps over parts of the stands in both Edwards Stadium and the Henderson Center. That has reduced capacity in both venues, but Spears reasoned the moves were necessary. At Edwards Stadium, the eventual plan is for a deck and that new video display to be installed in the south end zone. As for the Henderson Center, if you’ve ever trekked to the upper seats, you know the high anxiety it brings. Spears said it was the responsible call to make to keep fans away from those sections.

“I asked the risk manager to come look at our upperlevel basketball seats and he said, ‘We sit people up here?’ That was all I needed to hear,” said Spears. “I made the decision to cover those seats and eliminate the risk they pose to fans.”

There’s also another matter keeping athletic directors up at night. How do they deal with the new frontier regarding name, image and likeness (NIL)? NIL allows athletes to make endorsement deals, cash in on making personal appearances and profit from their athletic endeavors. Assisting Spears in navigating these tricky waters is Huntington native Tyler Hutchison. The former Yale football player is now a certified financial planner who oversees “The Thunder Trust,” Marshall’s collective created to help within the new realm of NIL.

“Our students aren’t here to get rich off of NIL,”

Hutchison said. “What hits the media headlines nationally might be more prevalent in the Power 5 conferences, but that’s certainly not what’s happening here. That said, our athletes are happy to make a few hundred dollars to be in a commercial or to spend a few hours at a local nonprofit organization.”

The NIL rules expressly prohibit pay-forplay deals, but a quick Google search shows that some schools seem to be playing by their own rules. And the bigger the school, the bigger the deals.

“The two things you can’t do is offer pay-forplay or induce recruits with money,” Spears said. “Well, that’s what everyone’s doing, and there’s no one stopping them. When you couple these NIL issues with the newly formed transfer portal that allows athletes to transfer to other schools without sitting out a year, you quickly see how the work of college coaches just got much harder.”

Hutchison said he realizes NIL money doesn’t grow on trees, and at a smaller university like Marshall there won’t be any get-rich-quick offers for athletes. In fact, The Thunder Trust has partnered with several nonprofits around the Huntington area — like the A.D. Lewis Community Center and the Facing Hunger Foodbank — to pair athletes with NIL opportunities that also give them a chance to leave a mark on the community.

“The athletes at Marshall are not expecting exorbitant financial deals from NIL,” Hutchison said. “They’re happy to make a few hundred dollars to help supplement their day-to-day expenses, whether it’s buying winter clothes, taking a date to dinner and a movie or paying for a plane ticket to fly home for Thanksgiving or Christmas. They just want to feel appreciated.”

All this keeps Christian Spears and his staff in the athletic department quite busy. College sports is changing at warp speed. Luckily, that fast pace suits Spears just fine.