MSU Athletic Director

[EdwardDrayton]

Listening and Speaking are nice qualities for a Fundraiser and a Motivational Speaker.

Can the dude swing a heavy AXE? Because there are some trees that are going to need to be cleared to rebuild our Favorite NICHE program.

Listening and knowing when to speak for most effective impact are critical skills in the everyday life of any leader.

[Offshore Dawg]

I've had two VPs take over my department in the last 3 years. The first had all the answers on day one and began changing things immediately. He was gone in less than 2 years. The second told us on day one that he wasn't going to make any changes for at least 90 days. He is currently on his sixth months and making significant improvements.
Sometimes you have to learn a little about where you are before you can fully lead.

This all day every day ^^^^^^^^^^^^^

[Saltydog]

I heard him do a pretty long radio interview a few weeks ago. Really good.

Yeah, I met him recently and he's a super nice guy. I've actually heard a couple of interviews with him. Very articulate guy. Not sure how good he's doing on the job just yet. I think that remains to be seen but until then I'm behind him.

[StarkVegasSteve]

The interesting thing with ADs is that honestly unless they are on a playoff or tournament committee, you want as few people to know their name as possible. Because if your AD is in the news a bunch it generally means one of your programs is in bad shape.

[was21]

That's good to know. I haven't heard a peep. That's why I asked. I hope he's as good or better than Byrne.

Speaking of Byrne, hardly ever hear anything from him either, and he seems to be doing a pretty good job.

[RockyDog]

Has he done anything since he's been here? What is the consensus on him? It seems we hired him and then I haven't heard a peep about since. His ass better be prepared to step up.

Hopefully he?s spending time and effort on non club sports.

[Schultzy]

I heard he wants one million dollars for NIL like right ****ing now.

[CaptainObvious]

Hopefully, he is starting to vet our next baseball coach while weeding out all of the NON-Baseball fans who follow Mississippi State by telling them to GTFO!

[Jarius]

I agree. He has been missing in action. No radio interviews that I know of. No speeches extolling his vision of our atheletics. No reaching out to the Alumni or fan base that I know of. I hope we didn?t hire a complete flop. He better step forward or he?s going to lose a large segment of the fan base with what is going on presently in baseball.

If you have not heard Selmon on the radio then you have not put much effort into finding him on the radio. He has been on Sportstalk Mississippi, Bo bounds, Hail State plus, and Thunder and Lightning with interviews. That’s just about every single place you could go and do an interview for MSU sports.

[gtowndawg]

I heard he wants one million dollars for NIL like right ****ing now.

[Cooterpoot]

He's not the attention whore Cohen was.

[NWADAWG]

Has he done anything since he's been here? What is the consensus on him? It seems we hired him and then I haven't heard a peep about since. His ass better be prepared to step up.

I hope and assume he is doing a lot in the background as well as the interviews he's done. Seems super impressive. I will confess my lack of knowledge of his history other than some locations he's been. Does anyone that knows him better have any insight on his experience and how he operates with hires? Just curious what the process might look like if Lemonis continues on same path. Either way, my first impression of him is he will do a good job with it.

[InTheIttaBenaHotSun]

I heard he wants one million dollars for NIL like right ****ing now.

But we really need at least 2M.

[StarkVegasSteve]

I hope and assume he is doing a lot in the background as well as the interviews he's done. Seems super impressive. I will confess my lack of knowledge of his history other than some locations he's been. Does anyone that knows him better have any insight on his experience and how he operates with hires? Just curious what the process might look like if Lemonis continues on same path. Either way, my first impression of him is he will do a good job with it.

I mean he's never been in the big chair before. His experience at both OU and UNC was more on the fundraising side of things and the day to day business of an athletic dept. A bunch of big picture stuff. He's been under two great ADs in Joe Castiglione and Bubba Cunnigham who are some of the most well respected ADs in all of college athletics. It's hard to say what he's seeing with Lemonis. I doubt his feet have been in the same place long enough to really sit down and evaluate the program. That's probably not a popular answer, but this isn't John Cohen. He's not going to have the baseball knowledge of John Cohen or know the history like Stricklin. He's going to be a little bit more like Greg Byrne in the sense that he's a pair of fresh eyes on the product. I don't think he's Byrne because you could tell immediately that Byrne came in and was going to remake the athletic dept in his image. I don't think Selmon will go that route. Luckily for him, he doesn't have 30 years of catching up to do like Byrne did. He just needs to bring us into this decade with some stuff on the marketing side that Cohen just didn't have a clue on.

[R2Dawg]

I mean he's never been in the big chair before. His experience at both OU and UNC was more on the fundraising side of things and the day to day business of an athletic dept. A bunch of big picture stuff. He's been under two great ADs in Joe Castiglione and Bubba Cunnigham who are some of the most well respected ADs in all of college athletics. It's hard to say what he's seeing with Lemonis. I doubt his feet have been in the same place long enough to really sit down and evaluate the program. That's probably not a popular answer, but this isn't John Cohen. He's not going to have the baseball knowledge of John Cohen or know the history like Stricklin. He's going to be a little bit more like Greg Byrne in the sense that he's a pair of fresh eyes on the product. I don't think he's Byrne because you could tell immediately that Byrne came in and was going to remake the athletic dept in his image. I don't think Selmon will go that route. Luckily for him, he doesn't have 30 years of catching up to do like Byrne did. He just needs to bring us into this decade with some stuff on the marketing side that Cohen just didn't have a clue on.

Agree on new AD. He will approach this differently.

Not sure what 30 year of catching up Byrne had to do. The biggest thing he did is not put up with the Croom mess any more and bring in Mullen.

[StarkVegasSteve]

Agree on new AD. He will approach this differently.

Not sure what 30 year of catching up Byrne had to do. The biggest thing he did is not put up with the Croom mess any more and bring in Mullen.

Bringing us out of Templeton Desert. Had Larry still been the AD, Raffo would've been the baseball coach and I fully believe Croom would've gotten not one, but two more years. We just did stuff in an antiquated way. We also had no clue how to market or promote. Greg basically had to restart the marketing dept.

[bobcat91]

He is being seen and heard by anyone who wants to take the time to find out. Most of the coaching staff is relatively stable unless Lemonis crashes this year then it gets interesting. My hope is he is talking to and meeting with everyone to get a feel of where we are at as a fan base and potential large scale donors. His priorities right now should be to be seen and heard by the fan base, start making moves as far as facility improvements and lining up a new era of NIL and fundraising. If he can nail the NIL and Fundraising he will surpass what everyone thinks Byrne did here. I'm hoping he is so successful that he becomes what we measure in every other AD