UTEP Director of Athletics Jim Senter Introductory Press Conference

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(Opening Remarks)
"Well, good afternoon. I'm not brave enough to start my first press conference with Spanish like my colleague Dr. Natalicio did. I would like to say thank you for the opportunity. I can tell you that I am really, really honored to be here and be named the Athletic Director at UTEP. I am humbled by it. It's not everyday that you follow an icon like Coach Stull, and I don't know if you all call him Coach or Bob or Director Stull, but he's known by a lot of different names in the industry. The good news is, it's one thing to follow a man as the next Athletic Director, but thank goodness I don't have to follow him as the football coach, because he did a pretty good job doing that as well. But he really truly leaves a lot of big shoes to fill here and coach, congratulations. I'd be remiss if we didn't give coach a round of applause and tell him thank you. Coach, now the real work begins as you get to Columbia and you and Kim get settled in your new home. I'm sure there are a lot of projects around the house that you have been putting off for a long time, so you'll be able to get busy on those.

"I'd like to thank the search committee and in particular Richard [Adauto] who chaired the search. He did a great job. And I appreciate the work and the effort. If you have never done one of these, you don't have any idea how they can just consume you and take over your life. I'm sure Richard is the happiest man here today besides myself because this chapter now is closed and he can get on to doing the rest of the things in his world that he does. He's got a lot of different tasks and jobs that he does.

"I'd like to thank the search committee and the service that everybody put in on that. This has been a very, very thorough process, from just going to the application process to the Skype interview to the on-campus interview. And so my wife and I, during the interview process, there was about a seven-minute window where they were going to turn the room from one meeting to the next, about seven minutes and I just happened to turn on my phone real quickly and about 50 text messages and 100 e-mails came in and I went 'Wow.' But I saw that five or six came from my wife saying 'How's it going? What do you think?' And I was able to just say 'It's great, better than I thought it would be.' And then Estrella [Escobar] came in the room and said 'Gotta go,' and so here we are. So it has been fast and furious.

"I also want to take the time, I'm going to ask my wife, this will embarrass her but I'm going to ask her to stand up and turn around and wave to everyone. This is my wife Susan. Without your spouse support and obviously that of our family members, and in particular we have four children, three of them are out of the house and we still have one daughter who's a freshman in high school that will relocate here. But without their love and support, it's hard to do what you do in athletics because you have to be all in. This isn't a job, it's a lifestyle. It's what you choose to lead and you choose to live if you're going to be successful in it. And so that's what our family is, and we're thrilled to death to be here and have the opportunity.

"During my interview process, I shared with the committee and everybody that I came in contact with about my vision for an athletic department. I started off talking about our guiding principles that I believe we've got to run a department by. It really does start off with this idea that our job is to educate young people here. And my job as the athletic director is to make sure that student-athletes reach their highest potential both academically and athletically. It's so important that you remain focused on that. Dr. Natalicio and I talked earlier today, we talked about you can get caught up in the business of doing sports and the business of athletics and raising money and budgets and buildings and all those things. You just need to recalibrate yourself and focus on young people and the role that we play in the development and the opportunity and the access that athletics allows for young people to come to college, many of whom would never, ever be here. And so it's really important that you focus on student-athletes and the student-athlete experience. And we're going to be committed to making sure each young person that comes here maximizes their potential. They all have different amounts of potential, but you have to have a commitment to maximizing their experience while they're here on this campus and we'll be about that. And then to a larger extent, how can I be a part of every student that comes to UTEP on a much grander and bigger scale.

"I think it's important that you set the ground rules of how you're going to run your administration and this idea that we're going to respect all people and we're going to treat people with dignity and we're going to treat them with fairness. It's important that that's a bedrock for how you're going to interact with people. It doesn't matter who you're talking to about it. I really believe that respect is that universal language. It crosses all cultures, it crosses all languages, it crosses all social economic levels. People know when you respect them, and that's what we're going to be about under my leadership.

"The last guiding principle is this idea that we're going to do the right thing. When I say do the right thing, I mean we're going to follow the laws, we're going to follow the rules and policies and procedures of our governing bodies, from the federal level to the state level to the community and system level obviously on our own campus. I keep talking about this idea that if you understand the spirit of the rule, then you'll stay on track. Unfortunately some people are always looking for the gray area. If you learn and understand the spirit of why rules are in place, they are there to protect generally, they are there to keep people out of trouble and out of problems, they are there to create fairness and equitability. And so if you do that and you understand the spirit of the rule, you'll be in great shape. And so we'll focus on those three guiding principles under my administration.

"The fun things that I talk about all the time with our coaches and staff and our student-athletes are what I call my triple A philosophy. And this is where I start to get wound up because man, at the end of the day this is what we're all about, this idea that the first day is attitude. Everything starts with a positive attitude. If anybody is in here and says I don't want to be around somebody that is negative, hold your hand up. Nobody wants to do that, right? Everybody wants positive people in their organization. And I believe that that's the bedrock of being successful. You don't look at the glass as always being half full. You're going to find the reasons why you can and you should and you want to sell the city of El Paso and why you want to sell UTEP to everybody, instead of focusing on the things that it doesn't have, that you wish it had, focus on the things that we do have and we've got a lot to sell here. And focus on those kinds of things. The only way you can do that is if you're positive. So I'm going to tell you gang, that's probably one of the number one things you're going to hear me talk about all the time, positive, positive, positive.

"I think most of the positive people that I have been around have got two characteristics generally that I see out of them. Number one, they're humble. When I say humble, that's not a word that we use in America today very often. But it's this idea don't think less of yourself, but think of yourself less. Put other people before you. Serve other people. And you'd be amazed the kind of good things that will happen when you do that. And the other thing is, this idea of being grateful. And when you're excited every morning that you get up to do what you do and you have all your faculties about you and you've got meaningful work to do that has a transformational impact on young people's lives, man if you can't get fired up and excited about that, you shouldn't be in college athletics. You're in the wrong business. You shouldn't be in higher education. And so that's a big part of this idea of being successful, is attitude.

The second one that I talked about is action. What do you mean by that? I mean get up early, stay late, roll up your sleeves and go to work. There is no shortcut to success. You've got to put in the time. It doesn't matter what profession you're in, you've got to have laser-like focus and you've got to pour your heart and soul into something if you want to accomplish something that's meaningful. And so you've got to be able to roll up your sleeves, go to work, work hard, come early and stay late. And so now you've got two of the ingredients of success, right? You've got a great attitude and you're willing to work to get to where you want to go.

"The third thing that I talked about is this idea of accountability. And the challenge that every human being has every day when we get up is, am I going to own what happens to me today? And I'm not talking about the randomness of some crazy thing. I'm talking about, am I going to prepare, am I going to follow a process that I know has been tested and will produce positive results in my life, or am I going to sit around and go 'Oh woe is me, I didn't get the recruit, I didn't get the win, I don't have what I need to get my job done.' You're going to own it, right? So attitude, action and accountability. Those are the tenants of my leadership, what I believe and my philosophy as we move forward.

"The last thing I want to share with you is that, my sense already is that this is a very very warm place, there are a lot of great people working in this organization and the university. People have been very open and welcoming to me. Of course, it's a short period here but I can sense that we've got a lot of great things to sell here. But great organizations start with great people, just like the people who gathered in this room today. I appreciate you being here. I can tell you that we want to build a culture of family, and I think that resonates with people. This idea of family really comes down to everyone is valued. No one is perfect. We all know that. But everybody is valued. And so we're going to focus on building a family culture, and we're going to focus on valuing everybody. You're going to hear me talk over and over and over about this idea that every person makes a difference. And I mean that from the bottom of my heart. There is not anybody in this community who couldn't make a difference and be a difference maker for UTEP Athletics. My job and our staff's job is to go out and engage this community like never before to get more people involved so they can make a difference and be a difference maker. With that, I think we'll open it up for questions."

(On the salary for the next football coach)
"I have been told that we will be competitive in our salary. I'm a big believer that it's not always about the money. I'm going to tell you folks, if you're only going to say you've got to have the most money to hire somebody, I'm going to tell you I disagree with that. If you're going to say you've got to have the best of everything, I'm going to tell you I disagree with that. We should be striving towards those endeavors, but if you have everything, then heck anybody can do the job, right? I'm looking for somebody that's going to come in here and be a difference maker and appreciate this place and what they do, not just the salary."

(On his evaluations of the athletic department as of now)
"As I said earlier, Bob Stull has been here 20+ years as the athletic director. The athletic department is in pretty good shape, right? Now, there is no question, there are a lot of things I don't know about the athletic department. We are actually going to sit down this afternoon with Bob and Chris Park and myself and I'm going to learn more in-depth and the details and the intimacy of our department so I get to know it better. But I think it's in really good shape, and I think there are a ton of great people here. Look at coach's track record of hiring folks and the number of people who have gone on and had successful careers as administrators. So I think that speaks for itself."

(On why UTEP and why now)
"Great question. That was one of the first questions out of the search committee. I have told people this, I think some people raised their eyebrows like 'You've got to be kidding me,' but it really is is the truth. I had had my eye on this job for over 20 years. I've known about UTEP, and let me tell you all the different reasons why. First of all, coach Stull won here in football. And I have always looked at this place and said 'Gosh, that place is a sleeping giant.' And it has the ability to be more than it is and people have shown here that you can win. Now the question is, can we sustain winning? And how do we get there? And I think it comes back to what attracted me to this job is, we have proven that you can win at UTEP, right? Number one. Number two, we have a great city. And you can say anything you want, this is a great city. And then when you take in the community of Juarez, we have nearly three million people to be able to try to energize and engage in a meaningful way to elevate UTEP and UTEP Athletics. Obviously, look outside. It's a chamber of commerce day today. I don't know if you guys dialed that in just for me. But my sense is, and my wife is from the Phoenix valley, so we're very used to this topography and this weather. And so we enjoy that and can appreciate that. When we got off the plane last night, we talked about 'Wow it's amazing, the lack of humidity.' And trust me, there is a lot of humidity in South Carolina. It's so noticeable when you walk off the plane, you go 'Wow, that's just amazing.' That's just a tiny sample of some things. But one of the things that I like and I appreciate is the fact that this institution has a well diverse, well-rounded academic offering. There are some institutions that you can go to and you don't have the full plate of academic courses and majors in graduate degrees. This place has that. And that's stuff that we can sell when we're on the road recruiting. So those are just a handful of them, but at the end of the day if I didn't believe that we could win here and we could compete for championships, I wouldn't be standing here. I believe with all my heart that we can."

(On rebuilding the football program)
"I do not have a coach in mind already. We have been talking, Richard and myself and coach Stull, on the transition as well as doing a coaching search. So we are already in search mode. And so we have been working on that ever since basically the job was offered to me. That part is going well. Let me just tell you gang, there are no shortcuts to success. You have to respect the process. And I don't care who we hire. We could hire Nick Saban tomorrow. And he could come in here and there are no shortcuts to success. It takes time to go out and recruit the right kind of student-athletes who will matriculate, who are going to develop. We've got to do a great job of evaluating talent and developing that talent. What I will tell you is, and I know everybody has this angst of my gosh, there's an early signing period December 20th. My understanding is right now, we do not have any commitments at this point in time. We'll have to get a coach hired, we'll do it as quickly as we possibly can. We're not going to sacrifice speed for quality, right? We're going to be focused on finding the right fit for this institution. And as I said, it's going to be somebody who's going to look at this place and say 'I can sell the heck out of it. Look at what I've got to work with.' And so we're going to go out and find somebody like that. I will share with you some of the attributes that I think we're looking for. We're going to find somebody that has great integrity. If I'm going to hitch my wagon to a horse, I want it to be somebody that I can trust. And we're going to hire somebody with great integrity. I think we're going to find somebody that has demonstrated the ability to move the football and score points. You only have to score one more point than your opponent nowadays, and everybody tends to miss that fact, but at the end of the day we've got to find somebody that can score points. This is a high-scoring league and you've got to score enough points to beat your opponent and you've got to play good enough defense to hold them. So we'll find somebody that can do that. We certainly want to be able to find somebody who is a great recruiter. At the end of the day, recruiting isn't just about identifying 25-50 young people in football or any other sport that everybody else in America is recruiting. What you need to do is find the right fit for this place, the type of young person that is going to live out the ideals and the values of UTEP and UTEP Athletics and is going to thrive in this environment. So we've got to find a coach who can evaluate talent, and can sell that vision to young people, and they're out there. We've just got to work hard at it. It's not easy. But we've got to work hard at it. And so the other thing I would say along with that, obviously the ability of our next head football coach to build a staff that is talented, really good teachers, really good people, people of character, and the ability of people to go out and hit the road recruiting. And I will say this, I'll add one more thing. When you look at the state of Texas, probably next to the state of Florida, maybe Ohio, there are as many Division I prospects in the state of Texas as anyplace else in America. It's time for us to get our share of those great players to come to El Paso and play for UTEP."

(On juggling two jobs over the next couple of weeks)
"I can tell you this, there are a lot of things going through my mind. If you wake up at 2:30, 3:00 in the morning you will not go back to sleep, I assure you because all these things are running through your mind. The next 15 days or so, I will be balancing and juggling two jobs and responsibilities, those that I have at The Citadel and those I am about to have working with our leadership team in hiring a new football coach. So it's all on the plate."

(On the football search)
"I can tell you we have had a lot [of coaches reach out]. But I'm not going to get into the specifics of candidates. I'm not going to talk beyond today about the process that we're involved in. From this day moving forward, I will not be talking about the search until we have a press conference and announce our new coach."

(On UTEP's facilities)
"Let me be honest in saying this, I haven't been in every facility. But Coach Stull on my interview took me through many of them. I have not been in this facility as an example. All you've got to do is look out the window here, right? Look out the window in every direction and you see God's beauty. But I tell you what makes it great, fill it. Right? You want to make a difference in Conference USA? Fill it. Fill the basketball arena. Fill it. That's where every single person can make a difference and be a difference maker. We've got to engage the El Paso community and the Juarez community to be a part of everything that is happening here and generate the excitement."

(On getting the community engaged in UTEP Athletics)
"There's not one thing. I think people are looking for one single goal. Like if I go do X, people will show up. It's not like Field of Dreams, when you say 'Built it and they will come.'   That doesn't exist. It's a lot of hard work, it's taking some risks. I'll tell you, probably the biggest ingredient of all is winning. Winning drives people to come in and watch. Being exciting drives people to come in and watch. And so we've got to hire the right kind of coaches who do that and get it done. Now the flip side of that is, I will tell you, being engaged in the community and making sure that you're visible and people know that they're welcome. That's a big part of it as well. I don't know what things the staff has done here to engage the community and do that. I'm going to learn about it very quickly and get up to speed and ask a lot of questions. But certainly, I think every community and every organization and every university and athletic department can do a better job of that."

(On working with Tim Floyd at Idaho and the UTEP basketball program)
"I was a young defensive line coach in 1986 when Tim Floyd got the head basketball job. He put together an amazing staff. He did a wonderful job there and really set that program up to have success for the next 10 years. It was neat to see coach when I was on my visit here and we got to spend about another hour at the airport. We happened to be on the same flight flying back to Charleston that day so that was really fun getting to catch up and reminisce a little bit with Tim. But I'll tell you this, coaches are the biggest evaluators at what they do. There isn't any coach in this university or the ones that I've worked at that doesn't hold themselves to a high standard. And they have the most invested and the most to lose. And so trust me, they know that they're being evaluated. They are evaluating themselves and they're the toughest on themselves. With that being said, every program is being evaluated. Every day that each one of us gets up, you're being interviewed by somebody. You just don't know who is interviewing you. Now think about that for a second, they're watching the way you speak, they're looking at your passion, they're watching your work ethic, they're gauging your language, everybody here is being evaluated and our coaching staff is no different. I'm not going to come out and say 'Gosh, this coach is doing good, this coach is doing bad.' My job is to be supportive of our coaches until we get through the end of the season and evaluate their progress. And often times, what coaches need is somebody to come along and say 'Hey coach, Keep your head up, keep your head up, we're going to be OK. Keep doing the right things, you're doing all the right things.' You can't always control the outcome of what happens, and that's what I think people don't understand. I don't think most people understand the way coaches pour themselves into their effort. And even beyond that, they don't achieve the results that they want. And so that's the challenge for all of us, is to keep pouring yourself into it over and over. If you keep doing it long enough, if you have the right recipe, it will start to show up and you'll have success."

(On goals for the first year)
"Let me talk about the first 100 days or so, some things we're going to get done. Number one thing, we're going to get a good football coach and his staff hired. We've got to do that as quickly as we possibly can. The second thing I'd like to be able to do is meet as many of our top donors as I possibly can in terms of having a face-to-face meeting with them. Part of that is to bank on their help and support for the university, but it's really to gauge the kind of areas that I need to begin focusing on. When you ask questions, you just listen. Hey guys, tell me how we're doing and what can we do better. What do you think we need to be doing. People do not have a problem sharing your thoughts with you, I can tell you that. Everybody's got a thought, everybody's got an opinion and I want to hear them. I want to do that with our top donors, I would like to be able to do that with our corporate partners and see how we're doing there with IMG and see if there's something we can do to enhance those relationships. I'd also like to be able to hold a series of town hall meetings. And what I mean by that, I want to go out where everybody else is at and ask those same questions. How are we doing? What is it going to take for you, what is it going to take to get folks from the East side to come over here and participate in our program. And let's listen to what they have to say. Sometimes that can be painful. They'll say you don't do this, you don't do that. And so I recognize that we may hear some things. But that's the kind of feedback I need to have so that we can go to work."

(On upcoming facility projects)
"I'm not going to comment on all those different types of things right now, because I don't know them well enough. I can tell you this, if you're not continually enhancing facilities you're falling behind. We will be focused on that, to tell the student-athlete experience, to tell the story, to talk about the history and the future and the traditions. There is no college or university in America that is not working on athletic facilities. And we'll continue to do that same thing."

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