In the fall of 2003, Vanderbilt University radically reshaped its NCAA Division I athletics program, eliminating the position of athletic director, dissolving the department, and creating the Division of Student Life to take its place. In an effort to better emphasize academics and integrate student-athletes into the mainstream student body, Chancellor Gordon Gee announced he was "declaring war" on the culture of athletics.

Around the country, people were shocked. Outgoing Athletic Director Todd Turner, who hadn't been consulted on the changes, argued that Vanderbilt had lost its credibility. Some predicted the school would soon be unable to field competitive teams, and others assumed the next step would be for Vanderbilt to cut its program entirely.

Instead, since the changes, Vanderbilt athletics have had a resurgence, with impressive results this year in football, baseball, women's bowling, and men's and women's basketball. In this interview, David Williams, who oversees athletics in his role as the university's Vice Chancellor, talks about making progress toward the university's goals, facing his critics, working with coaches, and fixing the problems of collegiate athletics.

AM: Almost four years ago, Vanderbilt restructured its athletic department, moving it under the Division of Student Life. How is this experiment working?

Williams: We think we're doing well. One of our purposes was to better integrate student-athletes into the student body, and we feel we're on the road to doing that. Academically, our overall student-athlete grade point average has gone up. When we started, it was about 2.8 and now it's 2.93, compared to 3.1 for the whole student body, which we plan to match.

Financially, we're on a major campaign to increase scholarship endowments, which are the lifeblood of continued success at any school. And athletically, we've been very pleased with the performance of our teams. Our football program is better than it's been in years, our women's basketball team won the SEC tournament, our men's basketball team reached the Sweet 16, our baseball team started the season 20-0, and our women's bowling team won the NCAA Division I championship, making them the first team in Vanderbilt history to win a national title. We've signed most of our coaches to long-term contracts and so far we've been very successful at fending off inquiries from other schools that want to hire them.

How does the new structure help student-athletes academically?
It's our obligation to make sure they're seen as students off the field, not as athletes. We believe integrating student-athletes into the rest of the student body gives them a fuller perspective on university life, which is going to help them do better in school. We also insist they take more responsibility for themselves academically.

For example, we tell student-athletes we will not automatically pay for them to go to summer school. Each year, student-athletes have to state their case for taking classes in the summer, and this has prompted them to take a lot more responsibility during the fall and spring semesters.

I had one student who had been given a deficiency for excess absences, which is something we just don't tolerate here. I tell our student-athletes, "If you've got a deficiency for excess absences, don't even apply for summer school." So I sent this student-athlete back to talk to his professor. Afterward, the student-athlete came to me and said, "I'm so glad you made me do that, because I'd never talked to a professor before. And it wasn't bad." Now he talks to the professor all the time.

Does having responsibilities as General Counsel, Secretary of the University, and Professor of Law mean you're spending less time on athletics?

Absolutely. I don't spend as much time on athletics as an athletic director would, but I have four Directors of Sports Operations (DOSO) who fill the day-to-day roles required by athletics. Each DOSO has oversight of one revenue sport plus two to four Olympic sports. When we set up this system, we looked at what athletic directors really do and asked ourselves what responsibilities could be delegated.

Am I going to make the football schedule? Absolutely not. The DOSO can do that. I might sign the contract, but the responsibility for creating that schedule belongs to the DOSO. That's another thing about this system--it gives each DOSO very effective training for moving up in his or her career.

What effect does this structure have on coaches?
We see coaches as developers of young people, and I believe the new structure gives them a little more freedom and a little less pressure. Last year, at the beginning of the men's basketball season, when half the city was screaming for the coach's head, right off the bat I went on a local radio talk show and said, "Kevin Stallings was our coach last year. He's our coach this year. And he'll be our coach next year. So you can stop making all the negative calls."

That gives our coaches a sense of support. They understand we're not going to fire them because they had a losing season, or two losing seasons, or because they didn't get into the tournament. It's important that the public also knows that's our approach.

Are your relationships with coaches different because you're a vice chancellor rather than an athletic director?
Probably, but I don't see that as a positive or a negative. Yes, coaches deal with someone who has a broader role in the university, and who's not focused on athletics 100 percent of the time. But even if they don't see me every day, they know I'm devoted to athletics. We meet as a group every two months and I talk with each coach one-on-one at the end of their season, when we discuss what they need to do to keep moving forward.

What do you do to keep your coaches from leaving?
We try to be fair from the very beginning, and if we need to renegotiate, that's what we do. There are on-field performance incentives and there are also academic incentives based on grade point average, APR, and making academic honor teams. And there are developmental incentives, based on how many of their student-athletes get into professional and graduate schools. There's an incentive for getting kids to come back to finish school after leaving early for the pros.

Like many other schools, we also offer completion bonuses to provide coaches an added incentive to finish a contract here. We design contracts so that if a coach is going to leave, they'll leave a very good situation--and they'll leave money on the table.

Now, if another school wants them badly enough, they'll probably cover the money. So one of the most important things we do is make sure we're creating a family environment here. We have 16 sports, and we're not going to grow any larger, which makes this a more intimate place to work. And the type of academically motivated students who come to Vanderbilt is a big advantage, too.

Your men's basketball fans made headlines this winter by storming the court after beating top-ranked Florida. This act broke an SEC rule and earned Vanderbilt a $25,000 fine. How did you react?
I understood our fans' joy because I was excited, too. But there's a reason behind the SEC's policy: We don't want anybody getting hurt. We explained this to our fans and told them we need to make sure we don't break this rule.

Our student leaders were extremely apologetic. They wrote letters to the conference commissioner and to Florida Head Coach Billy Donovan apologizing for their behavior. I wrote a letter of explanation to the commissioner asking him not to fine us, even though I understood that he had to. We paid the $25,000 fine but it hurt because Vanderbilt athletics has never had the money to pay for itself and probably never will.

How do you handle working with the media?
I am honest with them and I am accessible. The media around here understand they're not going to reach me every time they call, but they know I will always get back to them. I give them my cell phone number and my home number. They also know I'm going to tell them the truth. The media has a job to do, just like we do. And any time they get too far off-track, I pick up the phone and make sure they have the facts, instead of having to rely on rumor or second-hand information.

As a lawyer, do you approach this job differently from other administrators?
Unfortunately, I approach everything as a lawyer, even grocery shopping. I'm very conscious of the law as it relates to the university, although I make sure to never give myself legal advice.

I'm currently working on a paper about tax exemptions and I've spent a good portion of time thinking about how collegiate athletics fits into the equation. Universities are exempt for education, so athletics needs to maintain that educational relationship, before people start saying we shouldn't be exempt anymore. For example, if you're running a football program that's bringing in gobs of money and someone asks, "Who gets to sit in the stadium?" and "What is the graduation rate of the kids who are playing?" we need to link our answers back to the reasons why we were originally given the exemption, which is our role as an educational institution.

We need to recognize that higher education and athletics don't always fit together perfectly, and that's not going to change. I'm not one of the people who says athletics shouldn't be part of a college education process--just the opposite. I believe athletics are an important part of the endeavor and one of our greatest strengths.

What can other schools learn from the changes put into place at Vanderbilt?
You don't have to copy what everybody else does. In other words, do what's best for your institution depending on its specific situation. Carve out your own place and don't be afraid to try something different. We decided to change the way we approach athletics because we wanted to take a stand. Maybe we came out with a little bit of an attitude that it was us against the world, but we're just trying to do what we think is right.

A lot of people tell us, "I just don't understand how you can do this without an athletic director." That's like saying you can't have a university if you don't have a university president. Well, sure you can. We didn't do away with the athletic director's duties--we just changed the way they're done and who does them. To me, that's the essence of what makes America great. Yes, it means looking at new models. Yes, it's hard work. But collegiate athletics needs to change, and if you ask me how those changes are coming, I'd say, "Slowly."

What do you want to change next at Vanderbilt?
We have 11 teams with a cumulative grade point average of 3.0 or better, but we want all 16 to be at that level. And while we have a healthy student-athlete graduation rate, there is a much lower percentage of athletes versus non-athletes going on to professional or graduate school. When a senior student-athlete comes to me and says, "I'm not going to make the pros, so I'd like to go to law school," I have to wonder, "Does he have the grade point average to go to law school? Have we done a good enough job preparing him? Did we identify that need early on?"

We're getting better, but that's something we need to keep working on, because a lot of kids come to college without knowing what they want to do afterwards, and we're failing them. When someone comes for a recruiting visit and he or she tells us they're interested in business, what exactly does that mean? Does he or she want to become the CEO of American Express? Does that person want to run their own business? Does he or she want to teach business? If we don't ask, then we're not going to find out. If we don't find out, then we can't expose them to all the options they need to explore while they're still here.

We also continually evaluate the differences between Vanderbilt students and Vanderbilt student-athletes. I understand there are constraints on student-athletes' time--but I still believe we can do a better job.

For example, we have something here called Alternative Spring Break, where a good portion of our kids go help somewhere in the world, say at a medical clinic in rural Mexico. Not too long ago, I had a student-athlete and her coach in my office. This young woman wanted to go on an Alternative Spring Break trip, but the coach expected her to stay at Vanderbilt and practice with the team. So I said, "Hey, coach, it ain't about you. It's about her. This is what she needs to do to become the person she wants to be. We've got to find a way to let her go, even if it means missing practice." And we did.

What do you like about your job?
There's something different every day, and I never have to worry about being bored. If you paid me the same amount of money but told me I could stay home, I'd still come to work. Man, I'm having a blast here.