I had the opportunity to sit down this week with Sam Houston Athletic Director for a three part interview series that looks at different things going on in and around Sam Houston Athletics.
Part one takes a look at Williams’ thoughts on year one in CUSA and also talks on his thoughts about the new House Settlement documents that were recently filed that would get rid of scholarship limits. The next two parts of the series will look at different facility projects going on around campus and Williams’ thoughts on the new press box and future football scheduling.
A big thank you to Bobby for his time and willingness to sit down and talk about these items and for his
insights into the Athletic Department.
Part one: A look back to year one in CUSA and thoughts on the recent house settlement.
Q: How do you evaluate and grade the performance of the athletic department during the first year in CUSA?
A: I think we had some good times and challenging times too. I was excited that we were able to win a championship in one of the revenue sports (MBB) and then you evaluate how competitive we were with football with so many games coming down to the last play. We won 21 games in a
row in 2021 in football and won a lot of those games on the last play but didn’t have it go our way last year. If you really look at football and basketball those sports are the main reasons you make the move to CUSA and we showed we can compete and if things go our way we can win
championships.
There were some sports I was surprised that we didn’t compete at at a higher level but I thought the level of play in CUSA was more well rounded and more teams are invested at a higher level than what we were used to. I thought our women’s sports were the biggest surprise that we weren’t able to compete in some of those and we need to evaluate those. I thought our men’s track and cross country teams competed very well and also think Sonia has done a good job with soccer and there is positive momentum there.
When you look at us compared to new teams like Jax St they had a positive in winning a bowl game and we had a positive in winning in basketball and women’s golf. They had some last place finishes and so did we but I think we had one less than they did. Overall we competed and won two championships along with Bowling getting back to the national championship and had some positives from our first year.
Q: The first year in CUSA brought some exciting moments for many different teams. What was the moment that you will remember most from 2023-2024?
A: It has to be the two championships we won in Men’s Basketball and Women’s Golf. I think those two championships also caused a change in our athletic department and coaches and athletes started saying “hey we can win championships at this level”. I remember when I first took over in 97’ our goal was to win commissioners cups and when I set that up it encouraged teams across the department to be successful. It took us 7 years to win the first cup but when we did everyone started buying into it and teams that traditionally weren’t competing for championships started to win and compete for championships. I’m hopeful what Men’s Basketball and Women’s golf did this year encourages everyone that they can compete
at this level and raises their level of play.
Q: You recently mentioned that the travel was very difficult during year one in CUSA. What are some things that you are doing this year to try and minimize travel and make it easier on the teams?
A: Talking to students and coaches and having gone through it myself there are some adjustments we can make but it is a challenge. One of the glaring issues is the sports that have conference tournaments and if they are on the road before their conference tournament. We need to evaluate that and see if it is worth it to come back to Huntsville before the conference tournament after being out at a school like Western Kentucky or MTSU. I think it can save us money and also help with class time. Class time is another thing we have adjusted to over the years and continue to evaluate.
I think our operations and travel personel are trying to work out some of the problems we had. Fortunately, it is not funding that is the issue as we knew this is what the travel was going to be even when we were in the WAC and the finance and operations support from the University has
been really good. It is more of the logistics, timing and scheduling we are still trying to work on. Some of the travel we got this year compared to last year in football should help with easier trips like UTEP (El Paso) and FIU (Miami) on the schedule.
Q: One of the teams that had the most success during year one in CUSA was men’s basketball. What stood out to you the most about what Chris Mudge did during his first year as a head coach?
A: I have hired many successful coaches and Chris is towards the very top of the list especially when it comes to coaches coming into a new role or moving up from being an assistant to a Head Coach. I am really proud of how he handled things last season. How he managed the players, emotional up and downs of the season, not overreacting and making the right adjustments when needed. I was so pleased with how he made the move from Assistant to Head Coach and he is one of the best coaches I have been around.
Q: With the recent house settlement passing in congress and scholarship numbers increasing for all sports, how do you anticipate Sam Houston adapting to these changes?
A: I have begun conversations with our finance and operations teams about how we might implement this and what the structure to it might look like. When I initially saw the settlement proposals I was encouraged. It is one thing to go raise money at an auction but how do we get that into the hands it needs to get to and what does that structure look like to get it to the athletes? Some fans aren’t as interested in donating to NIL and would rather donate to an enrichment account or fund scholarships and it now allows us more flexibility to go to donors and say “This is how we are going to help the athletes” through funding additional scholarships.
The problem right now is congress and the states still haven’t signed off on this because everyone is looking at it differently and I hope we don’t over legislate this at the NCAA level so that we have a good structure to it. At the end of the day it sill comes down to funding. The challenge right now is we aren’t just immediately going to go to 20 more scholarships in football or 34 scholarships in baseball but we need to develop a plan to that gives our coaches flexibility on how we are going to distribute these scholarships to athletes.