UNT AD mulls challenges

MeanGreen61 · September 3, 2006

Athletic director mulls challenges

UNT's Villarreal looks back on five years of effort

09:03 AM CDT on Sunday, September 3, 2006

By Brett Vito/ Staff Writer

Rick Villarreal knew a big challenge was waiting when he agreed to take over as the University of North Texas athletic director back in the spring of 2001.

The boisterous former pizza mogul with a trademark mustache just didn’t know how big until he sat down to discuss the previous year with his new staff.

“The first meeting I had with [uNT football coach Darrell Dickey], I asked him about the season and he told me that at the last game, there were about 600 people in the stands,” Villarreal said. “That was the first wake-up call that we had a real challenge ahead of us — and a big opportunity.”

Villarreal talked about that opportunity and what he saw as a chance to turn an athletic department with mostly floundering teams, an apathetic fan base and few big-money boosters into a power in the Sun Belt Conference and beyond from the moment he stepped to the podium at his introductory news conference.

Reaching those goals has been a constant battle ever since, but as Villarreal looked back earlier this month, he was generally satisfied with his first five years at UNT.

“It was one of the hardest transitions I have ever been a part of,” Villarreal said from his office in the Mean Green Athletic Center that was merely a concept when he arrived at UNT. “But it’s the one that gives me the most satisfaction. What our staff, coaches and athletes have accomplished would be considered very successful by anyone’s standard.”

The athletic center is just one of the new facilities that has popped up in Villarreal’s tenure that essentially entered year six with the football team’s season opener at Texas on Saturday. A softball field, tennis complex, academic center and a whole new complex dedicated to women’s sports also have been built or renovated.

UNT’s football team has won four conference titles under Dickey from 2001-04, while the women’s soccer team has been to the last two NCAA tournaments.

UNT has also increased its graduation rates among athletes from 37 percent to 67 percent.

Those milestones have put the Mean Green in a better position, but even the biggest Villarreal supporters would acknowledge a few missteps along the way.

An opportunity to land a spot in Conference USA slipped away. Boosting game attendance and raising funds continue to be a challenge. Fouts Field, an archaic facility by today’s standards, was a problem when Villarreal arrived and remains one today.

A speech that was meant to bolster enthusiasm among UNT students wearing other university’s T-shirts got Villarreal into some hot water shortly after his arrival when he stumbled over his words and spoke about female students changing into UNT shirts in his office.

Former UNT President Dr. Norval Pohl acknowledged that not all has gone as planned for the man he helped hire but was happy with Villarreal’s achievements after five years.

“I am a huge supporter of Rick,” Pohl said. “I think he has done a fantastic job and has the right priorities. He puts the students first.”

Starting from scratch

UNT was searching for someone to breathe life back into its athletic program and convince the school’s coaches, administrators and fans that the Mean Green really could succeed on the Division I-A level back in 2001.

At the time, UNT’s prospects didn’t appear very promising.

UNT had only resumed competing in Division I-A in football in 1995 and had a 19-47 record since making the jump from I-AA. The men’s basketball team had a 45-116 mark in the same span.

There were only 100 members in the Mean Green Club, a group of athletic boosters, and UNT’s facilities were mediocre at best. Fouts Field opened in 1952 and only so much could be done to upgrade it.

Those factors seemed to be pushing the glory era of UNT athletics under legendary football coach Hayden Fry in the 1970s further and further into the past.

Villarreal has tried to turn the tide with ideas that have sometimes been unconventional.

Students who wore University of Texas or Texas A&M University hats or shirts on campus became targets for Villarreal, who would offer new UNT gear to those willing to trade.

The fans who used to park next to Fouts Field for football games were told to clear out to make way for tailgate parties.

“Rick came in and shocked some people early on with his ideas of what could happen here,” said Deputy Athletic Director Hank Dickenson, who is in his 12th year as an administrator at UNT. “Five years down the road, while maybe not everything has happened that he planned to do, he has set the bar so much higher. In conjunction with the football team’s success and a great president, Rick was defiantly the missing piece of the puzzle.”

Getting creative to advance

Villarreal said he basically had to start from scratch when it came to fundraising because actively raising money was not part of the university’s culture.

Villarreal has started to change that attitude, thanks in part to Dickey.

Dickey had a long-term relationship with Houston furniture mogul Jim McIngvale, who donated $1 million toward the construction of the Mean Green Athletic Center. California businessman and UNT alumnus Ronald Waranch later kicked in $1 million for a tennis center.

Those two large donations helped Villarreal’s staff raise $12.3 million in his first five years.

“Based on what I know now, I am comfortable with $12 million, but I wish we would have raised three times as much,” Villarreal said. “It’s not from a lack of effort. … If you look at the university as a whole, fundraising is not where we want it to be.”

UNT was able to stretch that money, thanks to its neighbor Liberty Christian High School moving to a new campus. UNT purchased Liberty’s old facilities for $5.1 million and has since turned a portion of the campus into a women’s athletic complex that has helped address its gender equity issues.

UNT’s soccer team left the recreational field it played on since its inception in 1995 for a new stadium this fall.

“Rick is my third athletic director, and he has done more for my program than any of the others,” UNT soccer coach John Hedlund said. “He has come in and given us so much that has helped us succeed. A lot of athletic directors will say this is what they are going to do for you and might even draw you up blueprints, but it never happens. Rick is a guy who will tell you what he is going to do and gets it done.”

Villarreal said his most important achievements include improving facilities that helped put some UNT teams on par with other Division I programs and addressing gender equity issues. UNT’s women’s tennis team played in a city park before moving to the Waranch Tennis Pavilion last season. The softball team UNT added to its athletic lineup in 2004 also will have its own on-campus facility for the first time this year.

New turf was installed in Fouts Field before last season.

Villarreal is confident more improvements will happen soon, thanks to more productive fundraising.

“In the last month we have gotten a $150,000 gift and a $50,000 gift,” Villarreal said. “We are working gifts every day, six- and seven-figure gifts. The cultivation process will pay off in the very near future.”

A new student athletic fee and improved advertising and concession sales have helped UNT push its budget from just over $8 million to $13 million in Villarreal’s five years.

But perhaps Villarreal’s greatest accomplishment has been in helping bring some enthusiasm back to UNT for its athletic teams, an achievement that can also be credited in part to Dickey’s run of four Sun Belt titles.

“You have to give Rick credit for helping change the attitude on campus,” said Steve Thomas, a 2001 UNT graduate who still follows the program. “He wanted to do that before anything else.”

A miss or two

Even with all of UNT’s progress, Villarreal acknowledges that there have been a few disappointments in his tenure.

Perhaps the biggest came when the landscape in college athletics shifted in conference realignment. UNT officials have long said they want to play in a regional conference that includes teams from Texas such as SMU, Rice and Houston that would create rivalry games and boost fan interest.

That opportunity came when Conference USA expanded. UNT made a presentation to the league along with Louisiana Tech and UTEP, which received the last invitation in the spring of 2004. UNT later had a chance to join the Western Athletic Conference but passed on moving to the West Coast-based league because of the strain the travel would put on its athletes.

Instead UNT stayed in the Sun Belt, a still-developing league based in Louisiana and Arkansas. UNT is the only Texas team in the conference.

“We were a couple of years behind when it came to Conference USA,” Villarreal said. “I know today that we can be competitive with our facilities and budget.”

A bid to Conference USA might also have helped UNT address its continuing problem with attendance. Even during the Mean Green’s bowl run in football, from 2001 to 2004, UNT averaged between 14,769 to 18,694 fans for its home games. The men’s basketball team averaged just over 2,100 fans a game last year.

UNT ranked No. 97 nationally in football attendance and didn’t crack the top 100 in men’s basketball last season.

Villarreal also has missed on a few of his coaching hires. The softball team’s first coach, Stacey Segal, scheduled more games for her team than is allowed by NCAA rules, and didn’t complete the year before resigning, setting a new program back. Villarreal also recently hired Joe Dykstra to replace Mona Nyheim-Canales, a swimming coach he hired and worked with for four years before not renewing her contract for the upcoming season.

Tension with Dickey and his coaching staff also has boiled over at times. This season will mark the 10th straight year that UNT has played five home games or less. The Mean Green often play non-conference games on the road against national powers in exchange for six-figure payouts that fund the athletic department.

Villarreal has cut back on those games in recent years, but several challenges remain.

“Rick has done a good job, and we have a good relationship,” Dickey said. “But it’s quite natural for the head coach of a football team that is playing people [teams] 90 percent of the time that have a lot more resources to want those same resources. The athletic director has to balance the books. Those two things don’t mesh, but we work through things.”

A plan for the future

In some ways, UNT is coming to the end of a cycle as Villarreal begins his sixth year.

The athletic and tennis centers are finished and the women’s athletics complex is nearing completion, giving Villarreal time to turn his attention to two of the bigger projects on his original wish list: a new football stadium and a baseball program.

Villarreal said adding a baseball program would hinge on raising enough money for a stadium, a project that has been pushed back multiple times. A total of $4 million to $6 million is needed, about $400,000 of which has been raised.

Replacing Fouts Field will be an even bigger undertaking.

“It will be a whole process,” Villarreal said. “A lot of things we have been able to accomplish we have been able to do on our own from increased revenue, the Mean Green Club and some donations. Building a stadium is going to take the involvement of every fan, alum and the local community. You just don’t go out and say that we are going to start raising money for a stadium. You have to go out and find out what’s out there and go from there.”

UNT has the general plans in place and is studying what it will take for the project to be completed.

UNT Board of Regents chairman Bobby Ray said that Villarreal and the athletic department would likely form a fundraising group that would try to put together the financing for a stadium in the near future.

And while not all of the goals Villarreal set when he was introduced at UNT have come to fruition, enough have become reality to convince some diehard Mean Green fans that he just might be able to reach even the biggest of his goals.

“What Rick has done gives me confidence that he can do more,” said Brad Olson, a 1973 graduate and booster. “The boosters who have been here and remember what the past was like support him. Some of them don’t like his timetable and ask what the university has done to merit support, but I think Rick has done a lot. … You have to go back to the Hayden Fry era to match what Rick has accomplished in the last five years.”