Episode #170: Michael McFarland

🎙️ Building a Significant Athletic Department | Dr. Michael McFarland 

On this episode of the Significant Coaching Podcast, Matt Rogers sits down with Dr. Michael McFarland, Athletic Director at Commonwealth University-Bloomsburg, for a powerful conversation on leadership, culture, and what it really takes to build a thriving athletic department.

Dr. McFarland shares the philosophy that drives Bloomsburg’s success—Recruit. Retain. Graduate.—and breaks down how that mindset shows up every day through relationships, accountability, and a relentless focus on the student-athlete experience.

From developing coaches to improving retention and academic success, this episode is a masterclass in building something that lasts—something that goes beyond wins and losses.

If you’re a coach, athletic director, or leader looking to create a stronger culture and more meaningful impact, this conversation delivers real, practical perspective you can apply immediately.

🎧 Listen at coachmattrogers.com/podcast
 🎥 Watch at youtube.com/@CoachMattRogers

And don’t miss Part II, where we take this conversation into the recruiting landscape and what it means for today’s student-athletes and families.

Transcript

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On the latest edition of The Significant Coaching Podcast, a presentation of the coach Matt Rogers YouTube channel. Available audio only everywhere you get your favorite podcast. I'm your host Matt Rogers. This week's conversation is one I've been really looking forward to sharing with you. Dr. Michael McFarland, athletic director at Commonwealth University of Bloomsburg. Formerly Bloomsburg University joins the show and what you're about to hear is a masterclass in leadership perspective and doing this thing we call athletics the right way. Mike is as thoughtful and intentional as they come. He's smart, he's passionate, he's innovative, and it's no surprise he was selected to serve as president within the NCAA division to leadership structure through nta. When you listen to him talk, you understand quickly why people trust him to lead. In this part one conversation, we dive into what it really takes to build and sustain a healthy athletic department and moms and dads. This is so valuable for you because you need to understand what's happening behind the curtain at where you're sending your kids to go play and go to school. From Mike's recruit, retain, graduate philosophy to the way he empowers coaches and supports student athletes beyond wins and losses. Dr. McFarland demonstrates what college leadership can look like when you put your heart and soul. Into it. We even dive into some of the very cool things he's teaching in his sports management classes. He's very focused on setting his students up for monumental success, not just sports management success, but life success. Once they leave that campus. And as always, you can find more tools, resources, and guidance for your recruiting and coaching journey@coachmattrogers.com. Including my book, significant Recruiting, our sports specific recruiting journals, and opportunities to connect through speaking courses and one-on-one recruiting strategy sessions with me. Alright, let's dive in. Here's my conversation with Dr. Michael McFarland. Okay. Dr. McFarland, so great to see you. Thanks for being on the show. Hey, so happy to be here. Thanks for this opportunity. You've had a great run, have 15 years in at one school at ad role, that that is really rare these days. You know? It is, and I, I tell people all the time when I started, I was six foot four. Uh, I'm not that now. So they, you know, you get beat down a little bit, but you know, that's, that's why we work at athletics, right? Every run battle. And you want to, you wanna be better tomorrow than you work. The day before. And so, you know, really happy, really excited about the direction we're going up here at Bloomsburg. I got great people, I got great student athletes and, and just, that's what keeps me coming in. That is so good. I, I did that role for nine years at the D three and D two level, so I know exactly what you're talking about. Um, keeping your head up. Feeling like you're always stretching that neck is, uh, it's a big part of the job just to keep yourself from getting too beat down. Yes. I'm gonna throw a curve ball at you to start with,'cause I know you're a professor and I, I went through kind of your course catalog that you teach and I got really excited about some of the classes you teach. Give me a quick tutorial on sales, sponsorship and fundraising. Oh, it's a great class. I love it. I love that. It's, it's my, it's my favorite one and, you know, um, I could talk about it all day, right? But, uh, like, you know, we, we do, for example, elevator pitches, making sure you got the right, know what you need to know, and you got 30 seconds and, you know, what's your first impression?'cause you're not gonna get a second chance. Yes. Um, I break the class down into three sections. One is on sales, so let's talk about your traditional. Game tickets, you know? Yeah. Uh, could be, uh, any, anything on those lines. The second one is more the corporate side, corporate sponsorships, fulfillment, you know, how do you seal the deal? How is your proposal? And then my favorite part is the first topic, and I won't give you the secrets of what I do with it, but it's, it's really about the philanthropic gift and it's'cause it's about relationships. Right? Right. All of it is a relationship. I'm not gonna walk to you, Matt, and go, Hey Matt, I want a million dollars today. I'm gonna ask you for a million dollars probably next week. Right? Right. But that you, you know, you can't get there without that. And, and it's so nice to come in.'cause when you're in the ad chair, as you know, every day is different. Every challenge is different. Um, I just mentioned, uh, right as we were getting started, we're in our all in day giving right now. I talked about that today in my class. A little bit, right? We're in all in, uh, day of Giving. Got off the phone with an alum who committed a$25,000 gift for this exact thing. That's great. Now, if I'm in the middle of my class, I'm walking into that classroom and say, Hey folks, guess what happened today? Let me tell you about a phone call I was just on and the real life. And to see those students' eyes light up. Well wait a second. How many times have you talked to this person? What have you done? So I love that class. It is, uh, it is by far, uh, my favorite one. And actually the dean of our college was in my office earlier today. And, uh, we were talking about the class and we were talking about how I pair him up and partner him up and, uh, things like that. And he just said, that's a great idea, great concept. So we really work on that. That's the most fun section of the class. If I had to break it into three sections. Is really that philanthropic and talking about how to make those asks, but knowing that I'm not making an ask tomorrow. Yeah, especially, you know, it takes some time to be able to develop those relationships. I was a head college basketball coach and athletic director for a long time, and I was, I was probably in my early forties before I figured out that elevator speech. Before I really felt like, man, I got this. I've got it down to a tight 30 seconds, you know? Right. I know what I wanna say. I know how to convince them that I'm worth the time. I'm worth the conversation. I'm there for them. So that is huge. How do your students take that? What's, what's the journey look like for when you introduce it and they have to do it the first time? To kind of at that end, that, that final exam, what does that journey look like for your students? Absolutely. Um, you know, it's, it's a lot of the old stumbling, rumbling, fumbling, uh, you know, at the start of, well, I'm so and so, and they're like, where was your eye contact? How come you didn't shake my hand? How come you didn't, you know, how's your body posture? What are you doing? And Oh, okay, so there's one step, right? The second step then is. You're not se selling me, you're telling me, right. You're not gonna sell me on hiring you tomorrow, or, right. Making that connection. So how are we gonna make that relationship? And then the third one, and this is the one I always keep in my back pocket, is how do we end it? What's our walking away point? Hey Matt, I'd love to get together with you next week to talk some more about what we just briefly had a chance to today. Right. And I let them try to figure out what are you guys missing? What's our call to action? Yeah. And that call to action is where then the light bulb goes off with them. And a lot of it for me is I tell'em, be prepared. You know, and you think of the, the hotels, right? We've all stayed in a hotel. You got the three floor hotel, you got the 15th floor hotel, and you got the 30 floor hotel. I got a 30 floor hotel and I'm coming down with my guy, the person I need to have that relationship with. I'm gonna have a little bit more time as long as my surroundings allow. Yeah. If I'm on that 15th floor, I gotta maybe carve it back a little bit. But if I have three floors to go, you're right. It better be 30 seconds. I better make sure you know who I am, what we're gonna talk about, and what when, and how we're gonna get together to talk about it. So it's really, I, it's a great, you know, section of the class, but it's also a little bit more of, well now we've had that first relationship. Yeah. That first encounter. Guess what? I'm not asking you for money on the second encounter. I'm not coming at you. You know, and it's not all about philanthropic. Philanthropic is about, you know, giving and supporting because it's not all that, right? That's not the goal. But if I need to have a relationship with you to find out everything I can to know what your interests are, that's right. And so it's, you know, it's such a great experience. And to see the light bulb finally click with some of these students. It's amazing. Uh, in, in the class, uh, when we taught it this fall, one student figured out the what and the why, and I swear'em all to secrecy At the end of the class, do not tell any of your friends or, or you know, fellow majors what we're gonna do with this part of the project. And, and it's so neat because they don't. They keep it close to their vest, like, you haven't figured it out yet. That's so great. Keep working and, and you know, it's one of those, there's so many, few, so few secrets anymore in this world, right? I don't know how these kids are keeping it from every other one. So it's so neat to see and see it develop and evolve that way and see their skill then evolve. From being that? Oh, gosh. Uh, what, uh, I, you know, I'm a, this, this major, that major and there's some great videos out that we use from resources. And, you know, the, one of the neat things is the NCAA does some things through a lot of their, um, developmental stuff. Um, you know, and it's elevating your game and things like that. So there's some great tools out there and some great videos that I try to show and, and embed so that people can see. Look, you can still fumble and still recover. Yeah. But is your first impression the one where I'm gonna have a second time? Uh, and how do you really, you know, that has to be a learn skill. Like you said, it may take a while to get there. I don't have it the best. I, I mean, I've kicked donors off our sidelines at games'cause I didn't know they were donors. Yeah. And you go, Ooh, I should probably walk that back a little bit, have another conversation. Let me explain why this happened. And then you develop a better relationship. Sure. Because you're being transparent about it and saying, that's on me. And you have to be able to do that. Well, that, that 30 seconds is you're establishing trust. Absolutely. You're, you're, you're establishing authenticity. You know, without question, I'm, I'm not selling Bloomsburg right now. I'm selling me, I'm selling Mike. I'm selling Matt. Right? Yep, yep. Absolutely. At 20 years old, that's gotta be hard to, to grasp that. Well, I've got this job. I have to sell this. Well, no, no. You first. I'm not gonna buy anything from you if I don't trust you, if I don't believe in you, if I don't feel like there's something long term here, right? Yeah. And, and you know, Bloomsburg has a great degree. I can say this. My daughter graduated from it, uh, one of my two daughters. And it's professional sales and marketing. And I, uh, just, it gets me when we, when, when those students come in,'cause they have the elevator speech. They know what they need. Right? I'm like, I'll call on you guys last,'cause you're, you, you've already done this once or twice. But that's what's so neat about it, is'cause they get to see it in a different level and in a different context. Because selling something versus selling yourself are two entirely different things. And to be able to put'em together and marry'em, what a great college experience. It's, it's, it's, it makes me feel so good because it's where I want higher education to go. It, it's. I mean, yes, your sports management kids should all be taking that class, but so should your biology kids, so should your English kids. So, so should your communications kids, your engineering kids, we all have to sell something at some point. We all have to sell ourselves at some point for a job, for, uh, you, you know, I'm, I need a grant, I need a sponsorship, whatever that may be. We all have to sell ourselves. So I love that you're doing that. I, I can, and what I love the most about it, Mike, is that. The kids are keeping the secret because they're learning and they're having fun learning, you know? Absolutely. And, and they're, you, they're not passing it on test answers. They, they want everybody to feel the way they do about the confidence. I get. I bet they're getting Absolutely. And, and, and what's what's really neat is, you know, I tell'em all the time, your resume is, is your written sales pitch, right. Your elevator speech is your verbal connection. Yes. And you've gotta be able to pull off both because. You know, we could be disconnected right now. Gosh, are we gonna get back together? You know, are we gonna reconnect? Hopefully we've established enough of that rapport, trust in other to be able to do that. So yeah, I, I, I love it. I, we have great students. We have great kids, and the ones I love too. Even more importantly, we, I have a lot of student athletes who are in the sport management major. Yeah. And to see the looks on their faces. Even like she, my teammate never told me any of this. That, that, that's what's really great.'cause they're like. Oh, I remember the Title IX lesson, or I remember the lesson on, you know, whatever else. It could be the NCAAs and the differences between divisions one, two, and three. But boy, why didn't they tell me anything about this? Why didn't they, why didn't they gimme this? Because they want them to learn it too, and have that same feeling of, I don't have this concept yet. Let me gain it. It's a gift. They're giving a gift to their peers. You know? Absolutely. This, Dr. McFarland gave me this gift. I I'm, I'm gonna pass it on to you, but I, I want you to get it from him. I, I want you to have that same experience. I love that. That's the way, that's how education should feel, right. I, you know, and that's why I said I, I love coming outta that class. There's time, I think, I think they are excited when class ends. I think I'm the one who's not, right? Because I wanted to keep going so we can keep getting it going and keep it rolling. So it's, it's so great. You know, we're, we're gonna have part two, we're gonna get into recruiting, but I'm gonna bring all this back because. I think that 16, 17-year-old needs to understand that's where recruiting starts. You know, what's your elevator pitch? Who are you? Why should I recruit you? Why should I be interested? Why are you interested in me? You know? Right. It can't take, it can't take a half an hour to get there. You, you have to be able to say, this is why I'm interested in you. This is why I want you to be interested in me. So I'm, I'm gonna bring some of this back, but that is awesome. It gets me so excited about what you're doing and how you're doing it, and, um. It's, as a teacher, I, coming into your class, I bet I could steal about 20 different things of what I could do no matter what I'm teaching, just with that mindset. Right? I, I, I would hope so. Again, you know, and again, I say that because you know, you want them all to walk out. Feeling not only validated'cause they took the course and they got a grade and they did the work to get said grade right. But to walk away and say, wow, I got some, I got some confidence. I've got some things that are gonna be real life. I, you know, I'm not reading resumes. I don't need to read their resumes. Yeah. I want to hear their resume and I want to hear what they have to say. And that's what's important. Yeah. Yeah. And I tell recruits this all the time. Send an email to a college coach, you know, send'em your film, send'em your grades. If you don't call them and they don't get to hear your voice and they don't get to hear that you have the courage to make that phone call, number one, but number two, that you're really serious. This isn't an email you're sending to a 200 coaches, right? So can't wait to get into that with you. No, absolutely. I want to talk about retention. Yes. Because your numbers are eye popping. I mean, eye popping. I, I, I don't know if there's a study across the country for D one and D two. But I would imagine if you're not the number one in retention in the country, you've got to be in the top 10. Yeah. I, I don't know where we rank. I will tell you that, um, you know, since I've been here, and again in, in my 15th season, we, we try to look at things differently. I constantly, I call it RRG, recruit, retain, and graduate. Yep. Right. And for me, it's about improving those grade point averages. Right now, every team, we have 23 teams, 741 student athletes. Our overall athletics, GPA is above a 3.0 for all of those student athletes. What? And that's been a huge push for us because, you know, it's easy for coaches, I, we call it here, give'em the love. I'm gonna recruit you. You're part of my program. You may play, you may not play, but I still have to give you the love. And all of our coaches have bought into that and they give that love. And that's why we're so fortunate to retain many of these kids. Now, today's landscape transfer portal, other NIL, all of those things coming into play are probably gonna adjust those numbers a little bit. But that's not just gonna be a Bloomsburg adjustment. That's nationwide. That's divisions. You pick the division, pick the school. Pick the country, right. But one of the things that we've really put this push on is the RRG. You know, we're gonna recruit you, we're gonna retain you, and then I wanna watch you walk across that stage of graduation. And that's what's important. I just did a keynote on this for a conference out in, out in the northwest almost exactly that topic that you're talking about. The difficult part is the execution. It's, it's an easy to have the pH. It's easy to have the philosophy, right? Mm-hmm. What are you doing now that you're 15 years into this, you've been through probably at least two or three cycles with most of your staff. Mm-hmm. What are you doing? In terms of how you're pipelining and resourcing the coaches, you want, how you're getting those, those right coaches for your fit of, of your school. But what are you doing to make sure their, the buy-in is, is with that RRG? Because it's easy to say. Absolutely. Yeah. And then it's hard to do for 85 practices and then an off season, right? Correct. And and you, you've gotta model it from day one, right? From the time they get here. Yeah. Um, you know, we, we actually talked earlier today in our department meeting. We're changing some things up for the fall where we're gonna start meeting more with all of the student athletes from an athletics administrative piece, because. The coaches are gonna give'em the love. The coaches are gonna work with them. The coaches see'em every day. They see'em more than the faculty. They see'em more than the, the only other people who might see'em more is probably the person either in the residence hall, checking'em in when they go in, or somebody in the dining hall. Right, right. So. For us, it's really about having that coach be that first line of defense, but then having us back'em up and say, Hey, this is important. And if I have a new coach on staff, one of the first things I say to'em is, these are our general principles. Right. We call it pass here for Bloomsburg Pride, accountability, student athlete experience and success on and off the field. And every time I think back to what is that pride, and I say this all the time, I say this in recruiting. I say this to our coaches, I challenge our coaches, what does pass mean? Now we walking down the hall, Hey, what's pass mean? And it's really about that pride is, you know, showing your colors, showing your school colors, you know, accountability. Guess what? If you're not in the classroom, you're not an athlete. I say that to every recruit. What do you wanna major in? They're looking at me like, well, I'm a center on the basketball team. I, I don't need to major. No. What is your major? What are you interested in taking? Right? And then guess what? I'm also a member of the faculty and I'm gonna get a phone call when you don't show up at English 1 0 1 because the English 1 0 1 faculty member, I go have coffee with them once a week. Yeah, and being able to show them that it's more coaches, I tell'em the same, your accountability's different. Obviously you have to hit your budget goals. You know, we want the more Ws than Ls, everybody does, but. It's also about recruiting those, those young men and young women. It's about retaining those young men and young women, and it's about helping them to graduate. So we work on those things. We talk about'em at all times. Success can be measured in so many ways, you know? Yeah. No coach wants to, and, oh, in 10 season they all wanna be 10 and oh. So do I, but if, guess what? If we're hitting all of our other benchmarks, not gonna be happy with O and 10, but we'll take it. And if we put that, you know, that student athlete experience as, as paramount and they're having a great experience in the rest halls in their classrooms, on your team. It's a home run. Everybody's gonna be successful. So that's kind of how we do it. And we, we try to continue to push that, whether you're a new coach or whether you're a veteran coach. I have a couple coaches who are here, who've been here longer than me. They bought in. They understand what our goals are. Awesome. Um, and that's what's important now. Are they happy about budgets? No. Who is right? I'm not happy about my own personal budget. Right. But they, they, they've bought into the idea because they've seen what we've been able to do. They've seen that we're able to recruit a better student. Key word there. We get that better student. We get the better athlete as well. Yeah. So they've seen those elements and we can say, here's our data. And it's really fun going to your provost, your chief academic officer, and saying, here's our retention rates and guess what? We need additional support from the faculty side for X, Y, Z. And here's why we're at 87. I wanna be at 90. How can we get there together? And those are some of the key selling points that we've been able to put in place. So good. I I've, I've got a bunch of questions. I'm gonna kind of go backwards and come back, Tom. Yeah. Uh, I, I wanna talk about the p and past versus the pride. Yes. I wanna talk about where tolerance, grace fits into that. Do you put those words, those ideas, those principles into that? We, we don't. We don't say'em that way. Right. What we say is the pride. It's, it is a privilege to wear our uniform. It is a privilege to have bloomsburg across your chest, right? Don't lose that privilege. And we stress it in that way, um, a little bit because again, you're not gonna be an athlete if you're not an academic. Yeah. You're not gonna, and if you're, if you could be the worst athlete in the world, you still wanna be part of our program. We want you to be part of our program. So we do have some social standards that we. Adhere to. Um, and, and those are all important elements. We come out with the pride element and that pride piece. As in when I walk away and I tell the story a lot, uh, when I got here, our hall of fame was not in a hall. It was. In some trophy cases and in some boxes we put it in a true hallway. And that sense of pride, I kept pushing, this is how we're gonna get there. We're gonna build this pride and instill it within our student athletes. And the day that the contractors were here, putting up all the plaques on the wall, two football players walking down the hall in front of me and the one hits his, hits his buddy, and he says, I'm gonna be on this wall before you. And I stopped him in the hall and I said, gentlemen, that's the pride that I want you to tell your teammates about. You want to be part of this program forever, and the only way you can do that is to do the right things. And that's where we've been trying to get to. It's, it's, it's such an important message. It's leadership, it's accountability, but more importantly it's ownership. Your student athletes are saying, I want this for me, but I want this for us as well. Without question. I don't wanna get into the weeds with this, but. I know as the former a DA president, uh, you know, athletic Director Association for division two, uh, I know you just finished your, your time in that role and you still play a huge role in the Athletic Directors Association of, of nta and, and, and, and the ncaa, we're talking about a generation that's had to go through COVID mm-hmm. Has had to deal for the first time with, um. Pronouns and students that are getting more and more comfortable being who they are, and it's different. Mm-hmm. There's politics involved. How do you guys deal with all that in terms of making sure everyone's treated with respect, but understands we're gonna push you, we're gonna challenge you, we're gonna help you get to your potential, but we're gonna respect. Your opinions, your views, where, how do you deal with all that, Matt? That's, that's an evolving question. It's a great one. And I'll, I'll give you a a good example. Uh, one of the things that our conference does is we do a lot of DEI initiatives, right? And we did some listening sessions with, uh, in, in accordance with what our conference felt was very important. And it is very important topic on all fronts. Um. For me, coming outta that, we had some concerns that were raised by our student athletes, but they weren't necessarily DEI concerns. Some of them were right, some of them weren't. Some of'em were just, Hey, where are we in athletics? What, what, where are we going? What are we trying to do? Where do we stand? Where do we exactly, where do we stand? How can I become maybe more engaged or even less engaged? That's crazy. My coach tells me to go to the speaker, but my coach isn't there. Right. Things like that. So it's about modeling those behaviors. It's about talking to them and having those open things. I mean, my door is shut right now, but my door's open 99% of the time. And I will walk through our hallways. If I see a student athlete, you know, most of the time they're walking in tired, get their book bag, they're, oh, I gotta go through a lift. I gotta go to a practice and I'm stopping'em. How you doing? You know, try and put that smile on. Let'em know that we care. Let'em know what we show that we're, that it's important. And that whole piece of, you know, for us, a, a handful of years ago, we had a student athlete who came into me about bullying Within their own team. Yeah. Yeah. And we created what we call Protect our pack. It's really about, you know, some pretty lofty goals, right? Let's stop racism. Let's end bullying. You know, let's, let's make sure that we're protecting our brothers and our sisters that, that we're playing with and let's treat everybody with some level of respect. And it's a hard message for. It really is. But for many it's about protecting our pack, our pack of huskies. My teammates might not even be my teammates. It might be the other teams teammates. That's right. Um, and you know, when we see each other out and about, when we're at contests supporting each other, coming to other sports games, I, I love the fact we had a softball game the other day. Women's lacrosse stopped their practice. They all ran over. And stood at the fence and cheered for an inning and then went back into practice. Right? It's, it's showing that we're gonna protect each other, we're gonna work together. It's not all about, at the end of the day, it, it is, right? We all wanna win, but it's, it's about showing some, some compassion, some empathy to your other teammates and your other colleagues. And you know, it starts in the classroom, it starts on the field, it starts in our hallways and in our offices. And if we're modeling and leading that behavior and pushing that. Let's call it an agenda. It's not in a way of someone thinking an agenda, but of protecting our pac. We're pushing that message then, gosh darn it, our student athletes better do the same, and they have been, and I love that about our student athletes. Like I said, we have great, great student athletes and the coaches who are mentoring them and supporting them, we're equally as hard to carry that positive message. How often are you having a coaching staff meeting? For, we meet twice a month every other week. Uh, you know, sometimes it'll be three. I try and bring special guests in. Yeah. Um, today, um, we, we met this morning, um, and we brought in, I'll just slide over here. Um, something about red folder. Mental health counseling and working with our students and student athletes and providing services. You know, we have admissions come, uh, to our meetings. We have different folks come in. Sure. Staff meetings are boring. We all know that. Um, you know, we talk about budgets, we talk about things that nobody wants to hear about, but then we talk about those important things too. And we talk about how can we help? And I always end it, uh, today, ended it with, you know, is there anything else for the good of the group? And one of my coaches said, how about we all congratulate this coach for hitting a milestone? That's great. Silly me. I should have been the one to say it. I'm so happy my other coach did. But that's where that messaging is carrying on. We're all here to support each other. I, I, I figured those were the things I'm, I'm interested if the Protect the pack message is a part of that. Biweekly meeting. Is there a, a piece of that where you try and integrate or remind because it, it, it's, it's when you're trying to win games, you're trying to recruit, you're trying to get that, that kid in the door, you're trying to get to the conference tournament, it's, it's easy not to forget about those values, but to forget the reminder that needs to come with them for yourself as a coach and your players. Right. No, definitely Matt, and it's, it's probably not stated as much. Um, you know, we put it, uh, we put it on the back of every student athlete t-shirt, you know, the core messages. Love that. So again, they're seeing it, they're seeing it around the subliminal message. Right, exactly. And, and, and, you know, we, we try to do those kind of things. Um, you know, it's kinda like the pass program that we have it, you know, to protect our pack. It's there. They all know it. We could probably do a better job. Again, you know, as I say to every coach, we'll do our evaluations. There's always a category where a unionized environment and it says, you know. What's your win loss and the preseason evaluation gives you improve, maintain, or not applicable? There's not a coach on my staff where I don't click the box and prove, because unless we won a national championship in a sport the previous year, we need to improve on what we did the previous year. Right. So it, there's always that message where it's always important that we touch on certain things at certain times. Probably need to do it a little more and uh, you know, a good reminder to me as well to make sure we're selling the right messages. Do you do that pre-season and post-season with the evaluations with your coaches? Yes. Yeah. Yeah. So before their season begins and then come back to it. Yeah. So what we do is, uh, again, we're in a, a, a unique environment and a unionized environment. So I'll just give you the example. We just did our post-season evaluation for the winter sports.'cause now all of our winter sports are done, wrestling, basketball, swimming, et cetera. We did their end of season review and did their preseason evaluation for now 26, 27. Right on the yield. All that. That's, so the message is we wrap this thing up. Right, right. 25, 26 is kind of in the ball. 26, 27. Let's start preparing now.'cause guess what? The work starts again today. Yep. To look ahead and then during the course of the year, we'll, we'll touch on it. I meet regularly with my coaches, um, individually, um, to really kind of say, where are we? Where's our program? What do you have? What are some concerns? Uh, you know. Everything. Okay. Um, some meetings are very simple. Sometimes I'll get a text from a coach that says, Hey, I'm tied up. Can we reschedule? Or, I've got nothing this week unless you wanna get together and chat. So, you know, we kind of play it that way. But again, those messages come out more in those one-on-ones. Then they do maybe in the full group setting. Yeah. Well, I imagine it feels the same way when you stop a kid in the hallway or outside your office and Hey, how you doing? I would imagine once a week you get a nugget outta those conversations, like, Ugh. That needs to be a focus of topic in our next staff meeting. Absolutely. Absolutely. And, and again, you know, there's other vehicles out there, SAC and some of the others Yeah. Where those things can germinate up naturally. Yeah. But you know, a again, kind of the old adage, right? If you want to know something, go to your athletic training room. Uh, you're gonna find out every, so every, you're gonna find out more than you want, right? Um, because those student athletes are in there many times they're vulnerable'cause their knee hurts and Oh. Take my mind off it. Let me tell you something. That's right. Um, but, uh, you know, even there, um, you know, it's, it's about visibility for me, Matt. It it's about really, uh, I tell people all the time, I make it a point to, I call it a walkabout, where I'm gonna go from coach to coach office, say hello. If they're not in there, I'm, they might not see me that week. Or that day or whatever it could be. And I just make it a point to be and have that visibility. And we have a great setup here in our building that, uh, you know, overlooking our basketball court is a press box setting and our student athletes love to come up there and study. We have a student athlete lounge. They use that as well. But I tell every time I walk by and I could, I could probably pick five young ladies right now from our volleyball team who sit in there religiously. And they always forget to turn the light on over their heads. And I walk by and I turn the light on, and as soon as the light goes on, they know exactly who did it. They know exactly what that they're gonna get yelled at about it. And it's one of those where it's now become this ongoing joke. I think they leave it off intentionally now just to make me walk through. Um, but you know, that's where we, you do you get those kind of engagements? Where you're gonna get additional information about where they are and who they are. And, and I love it when a student athlete pops into my office, even if they're coming to my associate ad's office or our game ops who are right on each side of me and they're not there, or their door shut and they pop in. I'm asking'em how they're doing. I don't care that they're here to see the others. I wanna know what's going on. Hey, do you need anything? Can I help you with something? How are classes? Things like that. So it's really important to get and feel the pulse of those student athletes.'cause they're the ones who we're here for. And at the end of the day, you know, kinda like with any business, right? Anything. Your customer. Right. And that's, I don't like to use that term'cause I don't look at our student athletes as our customers, but I look at our student athletes as the people who need to be happy. Exactly. And if they're not happy, the coach probably isn't happy. We're probably not winning games, which means moms and dads aren't happy. And which usually means the president's knocking on my door saying, Hey, what's going on? That's right. Um, I could do this all day with you. I, I want to finish with what I think is another amazing stat that you and I have already talked about. Does every kid in your program had 3.0 last semester, right? Well, it was the average of them all. The average was three. So we had a couple below, but yeah. You know, and again, but for the most part Mo, for the mo, the every team was above a 3.0. Last, yep. In the fall. I'm a high, I'm a high school ad. Let's say I'm a small college ad. Gimme three bullets. Three things that your action steps that you and your coaches are doing. To push that there, what, what are you doing to help accelerate that? Yeah. Well, and, and again, I leave it up a lot to the teams to determine what those three are. Right? Okay. Um, but first and foremost, we have a group that has a study hall. They call it the Breakfast Club every morning. Right. Let's make sure that those y young people, right, I'm not gonna say men or women, I'm not gonna give that secret away. Yeah. Um, but let's make sure that they're doing a breakfast club. So they're up, they're studying, they're making sure that they're gonna move their grade point average above. Okay. The other thing is we don't exclude you. If you have a 4.0, that doesn't mean you don't have to be studying. Just because you're a good student model, the behavior show,'cause you could be in that same room, whether it's a classroom, whether it's the student athlete lounge, and you, someone could say, wow, Matt's really smart. Why is he here? He's here because we're making a commitment to athletics. It goes back to modeling as well. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And then the third one is, is probably the relationships with our faculty and making sure that we're doing the right things. You know, we tell, I always chuckle because I know the student athletes when they show up the couple minutes early, but the first class, right, I'm gonna know'em from their name. But when they show up the first class, the first two rows are taken right in the middle. I'm like, there's four of my student athletes right there. Right? Because the coaches are saying to them, be present, be visible. And usually by the end of that first class, every one of'em, if I don't know'em, is coming in and saying, oh, hey, by the way, I'm on this team. I'm a first year student. I'm a, I'm a junior. I'm, you know, I. Hopefully by the time they're a junior, I know'em, and usually by the time they're first year, I should know'em. Um, but we wanna make sure that they're doing that not only with me as a professor, but doing that with their English professor, their biology professor. So now all of a sudden, uh, we had a softball game the other day, two of our, uh, uh, health sciences, biology professors who are sitting in the crowd watching a softball game because one of our student athletes was in their class and they said, we have a game tomorrow. Why don't you come? The power of the invitation. Oh my goodness. It's huge. Huge. Yeah. And what that, what those two professors did for those girls, for them to feel supported and loved and cared about outside of that classroom. You don't have to go to every game just to show up every once in a while. So such a big deal. Yeah. And, and we stress it too. We love doing faculty. We call it, uh, faculty appreciation days at many of our sports. And the student athletes get to invite'em, and some teams have even expanded it. I, I had to chuckle when I saw our campus police walk in and I'm like, something must be going on. What's wrong? Said, oh, we were invited by the team. And, you know, it's like that is tremendous. That, that's taking it even one step further than what we're trying to do to engage the faculty to say we're engaging campus. Right. I love that. All right, I got an off the wall question for you. Where'd you go to high school? Went to high school at a small school in, uh, outside of St. Louis in Eureka High. What's the name of the high school? Eureka High School in Eureka, Missouri. Were you taught by a gentleman by the name of Jean Meyers Per chance? That name sounds familiar, but gosh, that was so long ago, Matt. Now you're really challenging me. Well, Jean is taught and coached. He was the basketball coach there probably, right, right around the time you were in school. Jean was my assistant at Maryville for seven years. Oh, okay. I, I, I know, I know, you know Maryville in St. Louis and I know Maryville and I saw that you were from fe, so I had to ask you about Jean and Jeannie. So Yeah, I, I'm sure you know them or know of them. They've been, they were there, they've been there for 50 years. Um, yes, I had to ask you about that. I got a couple quick rapid fire for you before, we'll, we'll end this and we'll jump into our recruiting conversation. Do you have a favorite artist or, or a musician or band that you like? You know, uh, to this day I'm gonna tell you this and, uh, you, you're gonna probably laugh at me. They've been around for over 40 years. It's a band called Morillion and I might be one of the only people who've ever heard of them. Um, spell it for me. Teasing. It's M-A-R-I-L-L-I-O-N. Um, and I've listened to'em since the early eighties. Um, and just love them. Try and go see'em anytime they come to the, the States. Uh, they're an English band and just have listened to'em for. Forever, it seems. I love new music, so I'm gonna check'em out. What are they, like, what's, uh, they're, if, if you had to categorize'em, they, I think, uh, you know, it's kind of more of a pro rock Okay. Yeah. Idea. Uh, you know, so, um, it, again, it's one of those where, you know, I just kind of fell in love with'em in the eighties and has, it's stuck. Are you a rush guy too? I'm not, that's what's crazy. My musical selections, uh, you know, I do a lot of, uh, background music in the office and, uh, my admin will come in and she'll be like, I have no idea what you're listening to. And I'll, I'll tell her. I'm like, oh, this is a great song. And so. Uh, you know, my, my wife, uh, you just tunes me out when we're in the car.'cause it's usually one of those where she's like, oh, I gotta listen to this, or I gotta listen to that. So, um, but no, I'm, I'm all over the board. You know, anything from, uh, sun Volt and Wilco, kind of that, you know, Al Rock Country sounds, uh, to, to some rock and roll to. You know, some, some of the progressive stuff. But, you know, just, I, I love, I love all kinds of music. Um, I think if I was anything else, if I could sing or play an instrument, I would've gone the music path. That's why I ended up in athletics. If you and your wife could travel anywhere in the world, where would you go? Um, my wife would want us to be on a beach somewhere, tropical island. Um, okay. We've done that a couple times and, uh, I always had a great experience, but that would probably be what it is for me. It's, it's somewhere where I can just disconnect and hang out with her. I'm with you there. What's one word that best describes your athletic department? I think I, I, I think it's gritty. Uh, I think we get after it. We try and do everything we can to win the day. Um, so gritty would probably be the word. Love that. Um, when it's all said and done, what do you wanna be known for? Oh, gosh. Um, I think if you ask my daughters or my wife, they tell you a different story than I'm probably gonna tell you. But I, I think the thing that, you know, when I walk away from Bloomsburg, whenever that is, I, I just want to people to understand that I did it because I cared and I wanted to see them be more successful than when they walked in the building. And that is very obvious my friend. Thanks for doing this. If you got out a lot of this, and I don't know how you didn't get a lot out of listening to this, this great leader come back on Monday, we're gonna dive into division two recruiting and what Dr. McFarland has seen, as president of the Division two a DA kind of where we're headed, and give some advice to your parents and student athletes out there that wanna play in college. So thanks for doing this, Mike. Thanks for having me. It's been great. What a great conversation with Dr. Michael McFarland. Man, it makes me excited about the future of college and college athletics, but it also makes me regret a little bit that I didn't do more with my college experience and I didn't take more of those sports management classes and, and do some of those leadership things within my sport that I could have. This is very, very cool stuff that he's doing. If you're a coach, an athletic director, or anyone leading people, there's so much to take away from this. The idea of recruit, retain, graduate sounds simple, but the discipline and consistency and care it takes to actually live that out every day is what separates good programs from truly significant ones. Now, Dr. McFarland is building something that goes beyond wins and losses. It's about relationships, it's about accountability, and most importantly. It's about creating an experience where student athletes can grow, succeed, and walk away better than when they arrived. That's significance. Now, don't miss part two. Coming on Monday, we're gonna take everything you just heard and apply it directly to recruiting. What it looks like today, we're division two fits, and what recruits parents and coaches need to understand and navigate it the right way. Until next time, stay focused on what you can control. Stay humble and keep chasing significance.