When Chris Massaro became Athletic Director at Middle Tennessee State University in April 2005, there were challenges everywhere he looked. The football team was struggling to gain traction since moving from NCAA Division I-AA (now Football Championship Subdivision) to Division I-A (now Football Bowl Subdivision) in 1999 and had recorded the division's lowest initial APR score in 2003. The women's volleyball team was facing an NCAA investigation, and two days after he started, the women's basketball coach left.

Fast forward three years. The football team has won a Sun Belt Conference championship, went to its first I-A bowl game, and posted an APR of 958. Several other teams, including women's basketball, have placed among the top 25 in the country.

In addition, Massaro started the first capital campaign in department history, which helped fund a new baseball stadium. He also worked with the city of Murfreesboro to obtain $5.5 million to improve several other facilities.

A former Associate Athletic Director at the University of South Carolina, Massaro feels the Middle Tennessee State program is just starting to tap its potential. In this interview, he talks about upgrading the department through scheduling, dealing with budget cuts, and making a high school coach his first hire.

AM: What was your first goal when you started at Middle Tennessee State?
Massaro: The biggest thing I wanted to do was change the perception of our program. Locally, a lot of people associated us with the Division I-AA level, so we needed to brand ourselves as a Division I-A school. With our alumni, the key was to show them how much the university had grown in the past 10 years--we encouraged them to come back to campus so they could see the tremendous changes.

How did you brand your program as I-A?
A lot of it was scheduling. We've concentrated on bringing quality opponents to Murfreesboro. We played Virginia here last year, Maryland is coming this fall, and Georgia Tech, Vanderbilt, and Mississippi State are on the books for the future. We also have a five-game series with the University of Memphis, which many people thought could never be done. It's important to have signature home games like that so our fans will see us play these teams and associate us with them.

How were you able to lure those teams to your campus?
We're very fortunate to sit on the outskirts of Nashville, which makes a wonderful trip for visiting fans because there's lots to do in our area. We also promote our stadium as a great place to play. We have a terrific press box, suite facilities, and brand new turf while seating 30,000.

When the NCAA started allowing teams to schedule a 12th game, it opened up a lot of opportunities for us. We began by doing some two-for-ones. We still do some of those, but we have been able to negotiate more home-and-home series as well. The guarantees have gone up so much that schools with mid-range stadium capacities now have a little more incentive to play another road game instead of paying someone to come to their stadium.

What have you done to raise your profile in other sports?
We've paid careful attention to scheduling those teams, too. In men's basketball, we've been fortunate to get a five-game series with the University of Tennessee, one at our place, one in Nashville, and the other three in Knoxville. That will be the first time UT will visit us outside a tournament, so it's a very big deal for us.

In women's basketball, we have the University of Tennessee coming here the year after next as part of a three-for-one deal, which will be another signature moment for our program. We've scheduled Maryland as well, and we beat LSU here last year.
We're also working to promote the success of lower-profile programs. Our men's golf team finished 15th in the country last year and that generated a lot of local media coverage for us. In addition, men's track was 21st in the country, volleyball was a top 16 team, and our men's doubles team won a national tennis title.

You recently moved your radio broadcasts to a new station. Was that a part of changing the perception of your program?
Previously, we were on a Christian radio station and sports fans really had to work to find our games. We were able to get on an ESPN station locally and that's been great. It has given us much more exposure, and being associated with the ESPN brand shows that we're important.

The APR scores for your teams have been going up steadily and all your squads exceeded the 925 cutoff in the last set of NCAA reports. How have you managed to raise academic performance?
When I got here, our academic performance was poor--the first year the APR came out, we were an 812 in football, which was the worst in Division I-A. We clearly had to change our culture of academics.

Mostly, I made sure academics was important to the coaches, who then made it important to the student-athletes. We implemented a points system where student-athletes were penalized if they missed a study hall or class. Early in the process, we had a few players sit out games due to their poor academic performance and that really helped send the message to everyone that academics are very important to us.

One of your early hires was Rick Stockstill as Head Football Coach. What made you confident he would be able to turn things around academically?
We needed to hire a coach who believed in putting academics first, and Rick was sincere about that mission. He made an academic plan, and he has stuck with it. The first spring he was here, he went to 95 percent of the study halls just to make sure his players knew he was monitoring them. And when he left some guys home for his first road trip because they missed classes, the culture within the football program changed in a hurry.

What were the keys in making the school's first athletic capital campaign a success?
We had a lot of individual and group meetings to show potential donors the need for a first class facility and what it would do for our baseball program. We talked about how important it was to the look of our campus and our athletics department. We also stressed that it was a chance for donors to get in on the ground floor because we're still a growing product--every contribution is huge for us, so a donor doesn't have to give at the six-figure mark to be an impact player.

How did you get funding from Murfreesboro to improve your facilities?
Middle Tennessee State has long hosted many of the Tennessee Secondary School Athletic Association (TSSAA) championships. And for years, we really haven't gotten much out of it financially beyond some concessions revenue. The city of Murfreesboro wanted to host an event called the Spring Fling, which encompasses all the TSSAA spring championships, but the key component of it was really track and field. We told the city that we'd love to be a part of it, but that they would need to help us build some new facilities. The city agreed to provide $5.5 million. Most of that went to our soccer and track facilities and the rest went to the baseball stadium. For Murfreesboro, it's a good investment, as they'll get their money back through the increased sales tax revenue these events provide.

At the same time you're bringing in new money, you've been told to cut five percent from your budget due to university-wide cuts. How are you dealing with this?
We're looking to cut things that are not central to our mission. We're reviewing items one at a time and asking ourselves, "Do we really need this? Does this help us win? Does this help us build a bigger, better program?" For example, we've been spending $15,000 a year for fireworks at football games--post-game fireworks plus fireworks after touchdowns--and we can eliminate that. Maybe our entertainment quotient won't be quite as high, but it won't affect us competitively.

The NCAA recently announced it was penalizing your women's volleyball team with the loss of four scholarships for signing a player with previous foreign professional experience. What was it like going through the investigation and enforcement process?
It's just one of those unpleasant things you have to deal with sometimes. Sure, it wasn't under my administration or the current coach's when this young woman came to campus. But this is my school now, and we have an obligation to see it through in an up-front, thorough manner.

The case involved an international student-athlete from Brazil who had played professionally for a very short period of time in Germany, which can be a difficult thing to catch. We now have safeguards in place that should prevent this from happening again. We've educated coaches on the severity of the penalties and reiterated the need for due diligence when they're recruiting, particularly when it comes to non-traditional students. We also have some additional forms to fill out in these situations.

Why did you look to the high school ranks to hire a women's basketball coach?
People here kept telling me about Rick Insell, a high school girls' coach who had won 10 state championships at nearby Shelbyville [Central High School]. I just nodded my head while saying to myself, "There's no way my first hire here is going to be a high school coach." My background was at a Southeastern Conference school, so I was determined to hire an assistant coach from a high profile SEC or Atlantic Coast Conference program.

But the more I heard about Rick, the more intriguing the idea became. At President [Sidney] McPhee's urging, I called Rick and we had a wonderful conversation. Even over the phone, I could feel his tremendous energy. The other thing I liked about Rick is that he was a superb teacher of the game.

I knew he would bring a new level of excitement to the university. He would bring a fan base and help us generate interest and support for women's basketball. He's done all of that and more.

What kind of support did you provide him that was different from someone who had already been in the college environment?
Along with coaching high school basketball, he'd won national titles as a travel team coach, so he was very familiar with coaching at a high level and with the college game. His learning curve was actually pretty small--probably smaller than an assistant coach who was becoming a head coach for the first time.

The biggest issue was NCAA rules education. But he was smart enough to know that was a possible weakness, so he hired a former player of his who was working at the NCAA and was very knowledgeable about the rules as an assistant coach.

You've made a lot of changes in your short time at MTSU. What's next?
If you look at a product life cycle, we're really just starting the growth curve. Our challenge is to help make that growth curve a little steeper. We're blessed with a great location. We've got a great university. We've got great coaches and staff, so the only thing that can really slow us down is ourselves.