CRAWFORD | One on one, Louisville's Heird talks Payne hire, football, AD process and more

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- For the University of Louisville Athletic Association board, it was blissful normalcy. Not a single television camera set up in the back of the room. Not a single issue was promising to hijack the board's attention.

When the board met last Friday morning, the proceedings were noteworthy for just how un-noteworthy they were, after years of crisis within the department.

The board extended the contracts for the men's soccer and women's rowing coaches. It heard reports. It did discuss qualities it would like to see in a new athletic director, but there were no fireworks.

Josh Heird, the interim athletics director, left the room for that discussion, but not before his regular report to the board, in which he ran through a list of positives: Final Fours in field hockey, volleyball and women's basketball; both swimming teams in the Top 16 nationally; volleyball coach Dani Busboom Kelly signed to an extended contract; women's basketball coach Jeff Walz signing a 7-year extension designed to keep him at Louisville for the rest of his career; football recruiting picking up (and 1,067 new season tickets sold, for a total of $485,000 in new revenue, triple the number of new season-tickets sold all last season); Denny Crum Hall set to open this summer; Angel's Envy Club set to open in the fall; new wifi in Cardinal Stadium, and so forth.

And then there's the hire of Kenny Payne as men's basketball coach, which Heird told the board was, "a transformational hire. As, as I've said, he's one of the more unique individuals I've probably ever met in my life, as far as his ability to bring people together. And as I've said, he's the greatest coach of all time -- until November, and then the season starts. I can promise you, he will lose a basketball game, probably lose more than one. But just like I said, his unique ability just to be humble, and at the end of the day, going back to what we were talking about here, he genuinely cares about people. And not just his players, he cares about his staff, he cares about his community. And those are the type of people that we have, and we're going to continue to hire in this athletic department."

Since Payne was hired, Heird said that the school has sold 382 new season tickets, bringing in $680,000 in new revenue.

After the meeting, I spoke with Heird on several matters regarding the department. That discussion follows:

EC: If you were going to highlight a few things as keys for the department in the next few months, what would you point to?

HEIRD: We've got to get our headcount from a staffing standpoint, back to where -- I'm not saying where it should be, or where it was -- but you know, where it should be to really support our programs. Because we were very active in really reducing our expenses, and credit Vince (Tyra) for understanding and really seeing what was coming, you know, I think we were one of the first athletic departments to go down that road. So on the front end, it was very helpful to us. Now on the back end, we have some work to do to get the score back to where it needs to be for our coaches and student athletes. So that's important.

And then, you know, I really do want to try to provide some additional funding from an academic standpoint to make sure that all of our student athletes can take all the classes they want in the summer. Obviously, we take care of them from just a normal financial aid standpoint in the spring and the fall. But we have a number of student athletes who want to take classes in the summer. We've got to try to provide that support. So financially, I think, I would continue to just say, shift our priorities, because capital projects are always going to be important, no matter what we do, we've got to continue to maintain the facilities that we have, and increase that at times. But we have really good facilities. We have facilities that are on par with some of the best in the country. And so how do we maintain those and incrementally increase that from time to time? I mean, obviously, the baseball project is a big one for us, the indoor facility there. But outside of that, how do we really maintain everything that's been built? We have good facilities, so shifting those priorities, because I think that's what recruits and student athletes think are more valuable now. Right? It's that support for mental health, health services, those things are, there's such a larger priority on those than there was in previous years, creating opportunities to educate them around NIL so that they are very well educated in that space, and they can thrive in that space. So those are some things we're going to try to do.

EC: Not many weeks go by without a significant NIL story. Has it evolved the way you thought it might?

HEIRD: Like we mentioned in the meeting, for the state of Tennessee to just flat out say that coaches can be involved in where dollars are given (from collectives), I mean, that's a shift, right? I felt like that was always kind of the line that nobody was willing to cross, and now it's like, hey, and Tennessee does it, somebody else is going to do it. And then all of a sudden, that has to be the norm. And that's why I said, you know, is there an opportunity for us to create some sort of standard that says, 'This is a level playing field, and this is where everybody across the country is going to come from?'"

EC: The most frequent financial question I hear these days is about naming rights for the football stadium? Where do those talks stand, and is there light at the end of that tunnel?

HEIRD: I think there is. We've engaged a third party and they've been doing a lot of a lot of work. And then we've been having discussions with potential partners, and some very good discussions. Anybody wanting to make that commitment, you know, it's a big commitment, right? That's not just, 'Hey, do you want to put your name on our stadium?' For us, we want it to be a true partnership. So we've been working on the academic side of things to say, 'Is this an opportunity for our potential partner to get involved from an academic standpoint?' I mean, their employees. Is there an opportunity to increase the value of what they're providing their employees with a partnership? So it's so much more than having a name on a stadium. That's what we're trying to achieve."

EC: You talked about the hire of Kenny Payne. What has it been like working with him as he has begun to put his staff together, and to get out a bit into the community?

HEIRD: It has truly been a lot of fun to work with him, and I don't want to say help build this staff, this is his staff, but for me to just serve as a little bit of a sounding board as to what he thinks is needed amongst his staff and how he's going to structure that and put it together. And like a lot of people have talked about, he is just a very unique individual in his ability to care for people, to care for student athletes, to just care for people in the community. And, to me, that's what we really, really needed here. And, obviously, that's why he was given the opportunity to be the head coach here.

EC: One more. You're doing this job on an interim basis. They were in there today talking about qualities they want in an athletic director. A group of supporters out there is actively pushing the name of a former athletic director. A search firm is working. Do you just completely have blinders on to all that, or how do you go about your job with all that going on?

HEIRD: I don't think it's blinders. Right? I think it's the way I would operate if I was doing this job permanently. And that's just, you hit the nail on the head, it's doing the job. And it's nothing more than that. And, you know, we're going to listen to people in the community. That's been something that I've said from the beginning, that I want to do, I will do, I have done. But on the flip side, we have to make sure that we take that input, and based on our experiences, when I say 'our' I mean, our staff, our coaches, our senior staff, and making the best decisions for the athletic department and the university, and that's what we're going to continue to do. I've said it from December 13. We're going to make the best decisions for this university and the athletic department and that's not going to change.

After that, I thanked Heird for taking a few minutes. He responded, "Vanilla enough for you?"

But after the run this university has had lately, there's not much wrong with a little vanilla.

Copyright 2022 WDRB Media. All Rights Reserved.