CHATTANOOGA — Touring Chattanooga’s McKenzie Arena facilities he would soon oversee as the school’s new athletic director, David Blackburn was shocked to learn in the spring of 2013 that the athletic department had only 17 computers to assist its 298 student-athletes — and two of those didn’t work.
“That was unacceptable,” Blackburn said. “But the school immediately set out to change that.”
There was a lot about the Chattanooga athletic department that needed changing two years ago and much of it involved money. Or lack thereof.
And while the school still needs money, and probably lots more of it than it currently can lay claim to, the tireless efforts of Blackburn, predecessor Rick Hart, senior associate AD Laura Herron and others to change what was wrong at Chattanooga while embracing much that was right were richly rewarded Wednesday.
Despite the fact that not a single Mocs athletic team or individual won a sporting event Wednesday, it just might go down as the greatest day in athletic department history.
After all, when was the last time you, Moc Maniac, can remember your men’s teams winning the Southern Conference’s Commissioner’s Cup forbest overall success on the field, your women’s teams finishing second in the Germann Cup (the distaff version of the Commissioner’s award), and 11 of your 17 sports teams achieving a perfect Academic Progress Rate score of 1.000 for a single year, with 14 of the 17 at or above the national average?
Imagine.
All that.
In one day.
“It just shows we’ve got quality coaches who’ve gone out and signed really good people,” Blackburn said over his cell phone during a break from the conference spring meetings in Hilton Head, S.C. “Anytime you see this kind of success from your student-athletes, there are a lot of people to thank — their parents, their head coaches, their assistants and our support staff.
“As I’ve told our coaches from the beginning: Use your obstacles as a pathway to success.”
Chattanooga alum and booster Doug Dyer has followed and supported the program for close to 50 years. He knows the obstacles that have often dwarfed the program, everything from poor funding to poor facilities to poor support.
A 1981 graduate, he’s stunned at the recent growth of the athletic department both on the field and in the stands, where Chattanooga led the league in attendance in football and men’s and women’s basketball during the school year just ended.
“We started tailgating the season before (former Mocs quarterback) B.J. Coleman transferred back here,” Dyer said in reference to the 2008 football season. “We had four or five couples drop in. We’ll now have 250 people come by for our luau party at the (First Tennessee) Pavilion.”
In this case, statistics don’t lie. Only once previously (2005) have the Mocs won the Commissioner’s Cup in the 37 years they’ve been a part of the league. Moreover, perhaps far more importantly, the athletic department’s spring GPA of 3.11 was the highest in program history.
“I think that may be the most phenomenal part of this,” Dyer said. “It’s amazing that this program can post these APR scores when so many (SEC) schools have unlimited budgets and don’t come close to that number.”
To support his point, while two UT sports had perfect four-year averages, eight Chattanooga sports did. And both Mocs football and women’s basketball were higher than their Vols counterparts.
Having been an associate athletic director at UT before coming to Chattanooga, Blackburn chose to sidestep any comparison between the two schools, and the Big Orange has certainly improved its APR scores the past two years under athletic director Dave Hart.
But as Dyer pointed out, UT has an unlimited athletic department budget by comparison, running north of $100 million this past year. The Mocs’ budget was less than $15 million.
Talk about using your obstacles as a pathway to success.
Not that Blackburn is content with Wednesday’s wonderful news.
“I really believe,” he said, “that if we maximize our fundraising and our recruiting, we can get even better.”
Perhaps Chattanooga can. Perhaps Chattanooga will.
But for now, Dyer’s words surely ring true for Mocs Maniacs everywhere, especially now that the school has 58 computers to help its athletes.
“Take everything, globally so to speak, and every UTC sport has a coach who’s perfect for that sport,” he began. “You put it all together, the Commissioner’s Cup, the Germann Cup and the APR, and there couldn’t be a better time to be a UTC fan than right now.”
Chattanooga’s David Blackburn introduces Matt McCall as men’s basketball coach at the University Center on April 14.
DAN HENRY/CHATTANOOGA TIMES FREE PRESS.
