On Dec. 31, Dave Hart Jr. stepped down as Athletic Director at Florida State University after 13 years at the school. Six months afterward, Hart will receive the National Association of Collegiate Directors of Athletics’ highest honor—the James J. Corbett Award. The formal presentation will be made during a June 10 dinner at the NACDA Annual Convention in Dallas.

During his tenure at Florida State, Hart oversaw a football team that consistently ranked among the nation’s best while helping to raise the fortunes of many of the school’s other sports, which had been lagging. He also launched the department’s first major capital campaign and upgraded athletic facilities across the board.

Hart has also served as President of NACDA and the Division I-A Athletic Directors’ Association as well sitting on numerous national committees. He reached an agreement to leave the school after being told by new president T.K. Wetherell earlier in the year that his contact would not be renewed when it expired in Jan. 2009. From January until May, Hart served as a consultant to the Atlantic Coast Conference and Commissioner John Swofford.

Hart came to Florida State after spending eight years as Athletic Director at East Carolina where he got his start in athletic administration as an assistant athletic director four years earlier. A 1971 graduate of the University of Alabama, where he played basketball, Hart coached and taught at the high school level before joining East Carolina.

In this interview Hart talks about his time at Florida State, the demands of the profession, and the importance of professional development.

AM: Can you tell us what winning the Corbett Award has meant to you?
DH: I was first and foremost very taken aback by it, and to be honest, a little bit overwhelmed when I got that call. I had absolutely no idea that the award was forthcoming, and I feel very humbled and very honored to receive it. Being recognized by your peers certainly means a great deal and I feel extremely honored.

Looking back at your time at Florida State, what are you most proud of?
All of my best memories include people, primarily student-athletes, coaches, and staff. I’m very proud that we set a goal of achieving comprehensive excellence, and over a 13-year period, we set those wheels in motion, as evidenced the last two years by our finishes in the Director’s Cup—17th and then 15th.

As I look back at my career at Florida State, I have a lot be thankful for. I got to be part of a living dynasty in football, where we played for four national titles in a five-year window. I got to see men’s and women’s teams in national title games, Sweet 16, Elite Eight appearances, and Final Four settings, while watching student-athletes set records in community service hours and academic achievements. Those are some of the really great memories that I have. I’m proud of putting a facilities master plan in place as a staff and watching that come to fruition and deliver state-of-the-art facilities for our coaches and athletes. Watching Garrett Johnson being named a Rhodes Scholar in addition to a national champion in the shot put was certainly another highlight that comes to mind immediately. Those are some of the best memories.

But most of what was accomplished was done by people pulling in the same direction. People sharing the same values and priorities and not caring at the end of the day who got the credit—just that the student-athletes were provided opportunities to grow as people and students and athletes. That’s what was always most important for me.

How did you get everybody pulling in the same direction and staying on the same path?
It’s not an immediate buy in—that’s just the reality of it. When we first articulated our desire to build a program that could achieve at the highest level in all of our sports, men’s and women’s, and that doing so was going to be a departmental priority, I was met with some quizzical looks. But one of the most gratifying elements in my tenure was to watch how people took ownership and how student-athletes and coaches and staff all bought in to that being a very worthy undertaking.

You can’t accomplish something like that without resources, and people are your most important resource. It takes great people—staff, coaches, student-athletes—who work together and want to share the same priorities. So watching that come together was extraordinarily gratifying. The same was true of the facilities master plan. At first that was thought to be not doable in some corners. And then to watch it come together in a 10-year window was extremely gratifying for everybody who took part.

How did you win over some of those people who may have been skeptical at first?
It took time. From the facilities standpoint, we instituted the first major capital campaign in the history of Florida State athletics. Over a six-to-10-month period, we literally walked potential lead gift donors through our existing facilities to make them understand that this was not a “Keep with up the Joneses” effort. It was a real need that we had to ensure our future by enhancing our facilities and turning our attention to endowing scholarships.

Achieving comprehensive excellence was much the same. We had to educate people that while football has been and always will be the engine that pulls the rest of the train, we wanted all of our sports to compete as our football and baseball programs were competing and that was at the top of the national pyramid.

What do you think the biggest changes have been in the job of athletic director since you started at East Carolina?
I think the industry has changed dramatically and I think a lot of that has been driven by changes within the media and technology, especially instant access to news. There was a time when we didn’t have 24-hour cable sports, talk radio, and chat rooms. One role that will never change for student-athletes is that they will always be an institution’s most visible ambassador. What has changed is the instantaneous ability for their mistakes to be magnified—and they will be magnified. So we spend an inordinate amount of time in education and training, making them understand the spotlight they’re in.

Another change is the many stake holders that an athletics director has to be responsive to. That number has grown immeasurably over the years, and the job is now much like that of a CEO. I don’t know where else you find the complexity that exists with the job of an athletics director today, having to be responsive to your own staff and coaches, the student-athletes, the student body at large, the president, the president’s staff, the media, the conference officials, the NCAA officials, on and on and on. It’s a very challenging, undertaking to keep all of those balls in the air and find the proper balance—not only in the work environment but also in your personal life. You have to make certain that athletics and your responsibilities don’t totally engulf your life as it relates to your family. It’s a very challenging job, but I don’t know of another profession where you can have a positive impact on so many lives that you can have in the role of an athletic administrator.

How did you adapt as the profession changed?
I think you have to have the ability to anticipate. You can avoid a lot of problems with the ability to anticipate. However, no one is immune to problems and you can’t avoid them all.

With 400 to 500 student-athletes and 150 to 200 staff members, there are a lot of mines out there as you navigate those waters, but I think the ability to anticipate helps a lot. That means staying ahead of the curve, getting involved nationally, and knowing what the issues are. Whether it was the agent issue or gambling or whatever the case might be, we all share the same issues. And there’s no immunity granted. You can do the best job in the country in terms of education, but you know that you’re vulnerable, so you just try to stay ahead of the curve as best as you possibly can and for me that meant engaging nationally in NACDA and in the Division I-A Athletics Directors Association. Being able to talk to peers and share concerns, issues, and potential remedies is very important to understanding the profession.

How long did it take you to find that right balance?
A long time. I’m almost embarrassed to say how had a terrible time I had with balancing when I first entered the profession. I was totally engulfed in my profession, and I had to learn how to balance and make time for more important things, like family. I preach a lot now about that to younger administrators, that you have to learn to balance professional and family. That’s critically important.

It took me time to learn to delegate—that you can’t do it all. You hire good people and you trust them. You build an environment based on trust and respect and shared priorities. That’s what leaders do.

You also have to learn to say no. I talked about that a lot with staff and in mentoring younger people in the profession who call and ask advice. And it’s hard to say no sometimes. But if you don’t learn to say no, you can over commit yourself. Then you end up sacrificing something you shouldn’t, whether it’s a family priority or a priority on campus or something else that’s important to you. So you do have to learn to say no in order to strike that balance.

Another big help is the resources available to people in our profession. When I came into the profession, we didn’t have the same opportunities that my son, Rick, has as a young administrator [Athletic Director at UT Chattanooga]. We didn’t have opportunities like the summer institute Dutch Baughman created. NACDA, of course, now had a very similar program in the mentoring institute for young administrators. Those opportunities are priceless.

Yet even with these new programs, I think mentoring is still a very valuable component of athletic administration today. Everyone needs a sounding board—someone they can trust implicitly and is not afraid to tell you, “I think that’s a bad decision. You have to make it, but here’s why I say that.” Somebody who can be honest with you and help you grow.

What kind of experiences have you had with mentoring?
I’ve had the same mentors for 30 years, and I still call upon them today to bounce things off of and get their opinions on tough decisions. I’ve been blessed in that my father was in athletics all of his life. He was a football coach for many years and then got into athletic administration. So almost by osmosis I had a built in mentor, and he has served in that role since I got into this profession.

I also established other mentors that I leaned on for years. I can never totally repay the debt I owe Ken Carr. He hired me at East Carolina when I didn’t know much about anything in terms of athletic administration. He took a chance on me and trained me and brought me along in this profession. C.M. Newton, who I played for at Alabama, has been a good mentor for me. Gene Corrigan, Homer Rice and others have been people that I’ve leaned on.

I have a group of friends who are also athletic directors, about 10 of us, who met every summer at least 10 years. It’s an opportunity to talk about the profession and its challenges and that’s been invaluable.

Do you see yourself getting back into athletics administration?
I do, and I’ve looked at some opportunities that have come my way in the last few months. But I will know when it’s right. I want the next chapter in my professional life to have the same feel that East Carolina and Florida State had when I took those positions. And I’ll know when that feeling hits me again. If I’m blessed enough to get that opportunity—and I hope I will—then I do intend to continue to be connected to intercollegiate athletics.

Is there anything about athletic administration that looks a little different to you now that you’re a step back from the day-to-day demands of the profession?
This is a profession that affords you the opportunity to make a difference in the lives of a lot of people. But don’t let it go unsaid that it is a very tough profession. It can challenge your fortitude. It can challenge your beliefs. But I was always a student-athlete’s athletic director in that the biggest priority for me was always the student-athlete. One visit with a student-athlete, current or former, can take the worst day you’d ever thought you could have and turn it into a good day. So I think that association is something that you always go back to. When you hear those young men and women say what that athletic experience meant to their growth as a person, I don’t know if there’s a more satisfying feeling in the world than that.

And while it can be a very difficult profession, you have to stick to your core values. If you’re suddenly being asked to do things that would have compromising the boundaries of your core values, sometimes you have to do the right thing and say, “No. I’m just not going to go there,” which can be hard to do. Then you have to hope that you can land back into an environment where you can operate within those core values which you’ve always held firm and cherished.

As I step, back, I see the reason I’ve done this for 25 years is primarily to watch those young people grow and have success in the competitive arena of athletics, but also in the academic arena while also learning how to grow as people and deciding who they want to be and who they will become. Then there’s the relationships with the coaches and the staff. I know there are a lot of professions that afford you opportunities to create those types of relationships, but it’s hard to beat the bonds that develop in intercollegiate athletics.

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