FROM THE EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, Jim Haney
Looking Back on 28 Years As you approach your final NABC Convention and NCAA Final Four as NABC Executive Director, take us back to your first full year in the position. It is hard to believe that I have served as executive director of the NABC for 28 years! Wow! Okay, July 1, 1992, was the official start date as executive director. There was only one employee, me. Joe Vancisin, the previous executive director who had his office close by his home in Connecticut, had retired. Upon being hired by then NABC president Johnny Orr, I was told to move the offices to Kansas City to be close to the NCAA headquarters in Overland Park, Kansas. The move of the NABC offices to Kansas City was just one of a number of initiatives the NABC Board of Directors had identified as important next steps for the NABC to become more influential. In addition, they authorized me to hire a staff and, of course, find and negotiate an office lease. The offices were located approximately a mile from the NCAA headquarters in Overland Park. Over the next weeks and months a staff was hired. The huge challenge was to develop a revenue source or sources beyond member dues to support staff salaries and benefits not to mention rent, purchase of furniture and equipment, including computers, printers, etc. To generate new revenue streams, we focused on gaining approval of the NCAA Men’s Basketball Committee to present a fan event during the Final Four in which our coaches would participate. Thankfully and critically,
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they agreed. We called our fan event Fan Jam. That event opened the door for us to seek corporate sponsorship dollars to support a growing association. The 1993 Final Four was in New Orleans and we held Fan Jam in a hotel ballroom. It was modest with one corporate partner, Nike.
With a solid foundation created in year one, tell us about the years that followed. Just a year later, at the Final Four in Charlotte in 1994, Fan Jam had taken off. We had multiple corporate partners and the event was held in the convention center. ESPN telecast its SportsCenter shows inside Fan Jam. We were receiving national exposure through ESPN telecasts and college basketball fans in Charlotte flocked to the venue. They loved it! Our coaches were very visible. Over 80,000 people came through the turnstiles during a five-day period! We would continue to present Fan Jam in Final Four cities with good success after that. Years later, the NCAA would take over presenting a fan event, now titled Fan Fest, at the Final Four events of both the men and women. The confidence we experienced from building Fan Jam into a terrific attraction would become the foundation for creating a permanent fan event, the College Basketball Experience and the National Collegiate Basketball Hall of Fame as part of Sprint Center in Kansas City. That venue has received acclaim as one of the best interactive museums in the United States. The College Basketball Experience opened its doors in 2007 and continues to receive wonderful reviews! Thirteen Hall of Fame induction
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