 Good evening. This is what's going on. I'm John Lee our guest this evening is Kevin blue the new athletics Director at UC Davis Kevin. I want to thank you for being on our show. Thanks for having me appreciate it very much my pleasure my pleasure, so Would you say you're a jock ha I Don't know if that word really describes very many of us that you know have played college sports You know I'm an avid Sports watcher sports fan sports participant, but I think the word jock is a little maybe a little pass a Well, the I think the theme tonight is to talk about student athletics correct, so The first word student is what is one of the things that distinguishes UC Davis as we put the word student first Yeah, and always have so First let's talk about what you were like when you were a little kid. How much did you play sports? How much did you do school? Well, what were you like as a kid growing up? Yeah, it was I played a lot of sports I grew up in Toronto, Canada where I played hockey like most young Canadian people do and In the winters I played golf in the summertime baseball in the summertime a little bit of basketball here and there But my family it was a it was a really big sports family and you know, I've loved love competing since I was you know really small and That's sort of carried me through my career and I still we still get to the good thing about my job is you still get to compete Even though you're not playing Well, there are a lot of levels of indication of whether or not you're doing better Whether or not you're at the top of your game We're gonna get into some of those indicators as we go on so Did you play sports in high school? I did so I I was a Played hockey all the way up through graduating in Toronto. You have all your teeth. I do. Yeah, we wore face masks In Toronto, but the yeah, no, I enjoyed that. It's a big part of the the fabric of the culture of Canada is that sport absolutely, you know, I miss it a little bit being down here, but You know, I get to look back on on my childhood fondly with memories of hockey. So I played hockey through high school. I Also ran a little cross country Played some junior varsity basketball and then focus my you know, I played golf in college So golf was a big part of my life throughout high school But you know during the winter it wasn't so I was play with the black ball Yeah, no, it's too cold too much ice too much snow. It was good to get some time off You know you you you practice a lot and you work really hard in the spring summer and fall and the winter was a good time to Rejuvenate a little bit and I think that I think golfers from up north Have a have an ability not to get burned out because they're you know, they're able to take that time and and do something else I'm not gonna talk about what I know about golf because it's very limited so You went to college on a golf scholarship. I did I graduated from high school in 2001 and I Went to Stanford to play golf which was a great honor And it was something that I dreamed about when I was when I was young The you know Tiger Woods had a big influence on us. Yeah, he did play golf there. Yeah So it was it was something that you know, I was really Proud of that proud of that opportunity and really enjoyed it and I was I was you know Ironically, actually the first time I went to college. I was on a plane on September 11th, 2001 Ready to take off and go and go to college for the first time from Toronto to San Francisco and It was actually nine o'clock in the morning when all the things the unfortunate Incidents happened in New York and they told us to go home And take our bed take go get our bags go planes for the next four or five days It was it was a long time. I didn't get down for a little while So that was an interesting Obviously it was a tragic thing that happened and it was just interesting to sort of be a part of air travel on that day But I yeah, so I eventually made it down there and had a great four years graduated in 2005 and you know Move my way through grad school and some jobs and here I am Well, we want to go through some of those jobs, but let's go through grad school first your I Mean, let's talk about undergraduate what half of what we're talking about is the balance between being a Student and being an athlete. How did you do that? How did that work for you as an undergraduate? It's a good question. I think a lot of people Don't realize if you're not for if they're not familiar with how student athletes are They don't know they don't realize the passion that that a lot of student athletes have not only for their sport But also to do well in school And I just had the mindset that I wanted to compete at everything I did including my academics And you know Stanford is a school that is demanding just like you see Davis and the level of competition You know in golf is very high as well So it was just you know, I think a lot of us when we get in those environments. We just thrive Being tested and pushed and and the opportunities that we have are extraordinary So I just felt fortunate to be there and worked as hard as I could and you know It's challenging but at the end of the day you get to do what you love and compete While also getting a fantastic education. There's not too much wrong with that And you know, that's the type of perspective that we like to develop in our student athletes here as well So I'm going to subtly bring in my first set of statistics here in this morning's be it reported that the last cohort of students that entered UCD and other schools in 2009-2010 are now in a cohort six years later where they're measured for graduation and Davis had a fairly spectacular. I want to say 87% Of the entering freshman athletes Graduated in four years Yes, and that's something that you know, we're proud of that we We'd like to see that number continue to grow and that is that is part of the of the expectation When you know as far as how we're running our athletics program. We expect that academic performance to be high You know, we're fortunate enough to lead the Big West Conference. I think for the fifth year in a row And in football we've we've been fortunate enough to lead the Big Sky Conference for I think three years in a row now Maybe four So that's you know, we're proud of that's a big part of what we're trying to do The additional statistic is compared to the entire student body at UCD. It's only 2% less Yeah, I haven't seen I've seen stats that indicate it to be equivalent as well Statistically equivalent as far as I'm concerned. That's my point. Yeah, is it somebody that devotes 20 30 hours a week? To their athletic performance on top of being a full-time student correct Somehow has to do time management and focus their energy so much That when they're in the classroom when they're in the home studying They're putting the same focus as they are when they're in the weight room or when they're in the field or when they're on the court Performing yeah, and I think being tested and pushed that way is really Conducive to developing the type of habits that are going to carry you forward through the rest of your life When you have other competing priorities whether it be work family other interests, etc. So I think that it's The ability to be a student-athlete in a demanding environment while it is the hard road in many ways in the short term It does strengthen our young people to be able to Develop the the type of toughness and the type of perspective of the type of grit and the type of emotional intelligence That's required to be successful down the road and what we are increasingly trying to do is Be be intentional about how we're developing those characteristics and I think that's really important It's really important for people to understand that, you know, there's there's eight million High school students who play varsity sports in the United States and in the state of California is 750,000 or so So it's the idea of balancing school and sports is is not confined to a small niche of people. It's a quite a broad cultural phenomenon in the United States and You know to the extent that there's schools like Davis that can demonstrate To all the young people out there that yes, in fact, you can do both at a high level And you know, it's cool to try to do both at a high level. I think those are really that's a really important message. I agree so in 2001 you started as a freshman and now 1615 years later, you're the athletic director You're 33. You're very young for somebody at your level in your position at a division one double-a school You made one Side road where you went to grad school. Why did you decide to go to grad school? And what did you study? That's a good question. So when I was playing golf I was fascinated with the psychology of high performance and sports psychology And I wanted to learn as much as I could about that. So I did I went to I did a PhD in sports psychology at Michigan State University's Graduate School of Education And I was fortunate to study under one of the foremost academic sports psychologists in the United States named Dr. Dan Gould and he he remains a mentor of mine and I really learned a lot at my original goal was to be a sports psychology coach on the PGA tour then I was lucky enough to be able to do some coaching at a very high level while I was in grad school and You know, I enjoyed that but I also realized that the intellectual challenge of it was Was something that I don't know if it would be sustaining for a 40-year career and I you know, I wanted to try my hand on the business side of Sports and in a situ in situations where there's a bit more diversity in terms of the intellectual challenge And that's what the athletic director job is right. There's a lot of there's a there's a diversity of You know, there's a diversity of requirements that it takes versatility to be to be proficient at You know, I on a regular basis. I will interact with our student athletes, you know our undergraduate students our staff our coaches our supporters and our donors our faculty, you know our central administration as well so the the number of So-called languages that you need to speak is is pretty extensive and that's just that's a really fun part of my job Well, it's integral. It's imperative that you be able to be a social animal and can talk those different Languages to those different groups of people and translate between each other. I love to say that the pomo miwak Native American Indian of this land the word for farmer is person who does a thousand things Well, didn't and well that's that's my contribution. I mean that that's one way of translating Aggie Well, I mean what what a farmer does every day is gets up in the morning It makes a long list of things to do and then tries to get as many of them done as possible I mean, that's what you do every day and That's what Aggie land is about So what you do your PhD dissertation on The topic was about a construct in sports psychology called sports intelligence And it's essentially like tactical intelligence and how you learn and I use the the arena of golf the context of golf So the question that I was trying to understand was how do you learn how to play smart? Right, so some people have really good technical skills and they're strong and hit the ball far and then other people You know with the same bubble what same so yeah Well, Bob Watts is highly intelligent from a from a from a golf IQ standpoint But but the point is like how what are the components of learning how to play? Smart and how does that process work? And you know, I ended up I guess concluding or I get you know proposing that there's there's a set of psychological skills that are Enable golfers to understand how to practice and how to improve and then there's a another set of skills that allow golfers to understand how to compete and how to perform and Those two things are somewhat different from each other Right hand and left hand. Yeah, well, I think that I don't believe in right brain and I think there's some correlation between the two but I think that you know that we called it developmental intelligence and I think that that is a It's an important thing for athletes, right some athletes understand The path that they need to go down to really improve they understand how to identify their weaknesses and then how to seek help or train themselves to eliminate those weaknesses And some athletes are really able to persist and and work hard and and and move towards improvements So there's all there's a set of psychological skills that's correlated with it an ability to improve Of course talent matters, but all else equal from a talent standpoint Whoever understands the process process of improvement and understands how to commit to it and understands how to involve Other people to help them that that person is gonna improve faster, right? So that was the topic of it I didn't it wasn't a I don't think it was a very very good dissertation done It was interesting, but I just think that it wasn't necessarily You know an empirical study or anything like that Well, what I love is that you like to talk to PhDs about their research and you like to apply it I mean to you that's one of those languages that you learned how to walk through the door and shake hands and be on the other side and Chat with them about what they're doing and what they care about Yeah, I'm intrinsically interested in those types of things and that's why I chose to work at in the university environment Then your question at the beginning about being a jock I wouldn't describe myself as that And I think that a lot of sort of intellectually curious athletes wouldn't describe themselves as that as well But I think it's sometimes it's it takes the you know some faculty by surprise that About the level of intellectual curiosity that exists in the student-athlete population and that's one thing that we're really trying to Squash is this notion of you're either, you know a jock or you're a nerd, right? You can be both So my very favorite UCD story, I guess this is my time to tell my stories my favorite UCD athletic story is the year that we had three starters on the football team that got accepted to med school Yeah, that's a UCD story now. It doesn't happen very often that level of achievement But graduating on time Following through on things those those are the things that matter. Yeah, and I think that that type of thing Maybe not specifically med school, but that type of academic achievement has been consistent here For a long time and I think people should not be surprised by it anymore and not only is it here It's not at the majority of of division one programs, but it is in many division one programs more than I think people here really understand You know, I use the example when I talked to faculty of Princeton Princeton at the FCS level in division one is FCS. Yeah, so the football championship subdivision good, which is You know, you have the big schools that play in football bowl games And then you have division one schools that don't play in football bowl games But they still have division one football And that distinction isn't really just about football. It's about sort of the overall economic model of the athletic department but the Princeton is the best athletics program in the country at the FCS level of all the division one FCS programs Princeton is the best and By by the directors cup ranking that that that comes out every year ranking the overall athletics program achievement for the year so You know, it's not and really the number one school on the directors cup ranking for 23 years in a row for all a division One has been Stanford 22 or 23 years. I can't remember the exact number, but nonetheless those are two examples of institutions where their student-athletes achieve academically at a very high level and The results also show that the the institutions achieve it athletically at a very high level And I just think that it's important for our community to understand that we will always maintain our our commitment to academics and We will continue to get better competitively, but that doesn't you know improving competitively does not preclude Maintaining a really robust commitment to high-level academics to believe that these two things are mutually exclusive is just factually untrue It's also biologically untrue people that are good athletes have a Great capacity to learn and to benefit from their experience Yeah, I think that that that's I mean that's an interesting way of thinking about it I think that culturally is the issue that I think sometimes in college athletics where it goes wrong is is it's a cultural issue where there's a belief That prevails in the culture of athletes Having you being treated differently and being being treated in ways that don't aren't there is celebrity. Yeah So and and and that's not the best developmental opportunity for for those athletes as young people and The fact is there are plenty of environments. I've just named a few where Their athletes are really good athletes and they're really good students and the institution has success in both athletics and academics and you know Davis aspires to Maintain and strengthen our academic performance, but also really make a lot of strides on the competitive side as well So I'm just going to rattle off of a half a dozen names here and these are just examples most of them stayed in sports, but I'm fairly old and these are older people so they've had their whole life The first one is Bruce Gallaudet the sports editor of the Davis Enterprise When he was 17 he lived in Covina and the Covina paper didn't cover the high school football sports And he was a cornerback on the defense of the of his high school football team He went down to the editor and said you should be covering high school sports He said we don't have anybody to do it and Bruce said I'll do it and He loves his job every day. I mean nobody enjoys going to work more than Bruce does so he's been great Do he covers this extensively? He he is a great ambassador for sports in this community and we're happy that he covers us So with that let's segue to everything you want to do with the future of UCD. I mean, it's a big question The the way that I think about it is I try to break down the entirety of athletics into areas where we can try to distinguish ourselves from from our competitors and you know, that's when you think about it from a strategic standpoint the College athletics is about creating differentiation against your competitors and creating areas of strength that can Can distinguish you and then also covering up any areas of weakness that you might have relative to your competitors So if you think about those things, you know for for UC Davis our academic reputation is Is a strength at the moment There are some weaknesses that we need to address. I think facilities is one area where we can continue making progress Uh, there are a few facilities that are somewhat left over from previous eras And we're working right now on projects to to be able to fund raising opportunities to be able to improve those Um The same goes for just our overall business operation can Can improve and become modernized a little bit to help us generate more operating revenue Which will help fund our operating budgets of our of our teams at a higher level So those are some things that we're working on. I think where we have the biggest opportunity to distinguish ourselves And do so on a national level Is in um, it's in a category that we call student-athlete outcomes And that's you know, what we're referring to is Uh, not only academics, but also things like postgraduate opportunities and jobs and grad school placements for for student-athletes and the ability to leverage the alumni network And you know leverage the participation in sports for the development of character and and packaging up these things in a really highly professional manner and and Making sure that we have a you know, we're building nations best infrastructure For producing great student-athlete outcomes and we have a lot of good things in place now I just think we need to refine it. I think we need to be able to You know create a compelling recruiting brand around it And and I expect that that'll lead to some differentiation for us, which is good, you know, we want um in addition to Focus a focus on student-athlete outcomes being the right thing for our students And align with the values of our institution It also Can lead to some recruiting upside when we're able to Create a really outstanding opportunity for young people to come and get a great education and end up with a fantastic job Or grad school opportunity afterwards So you have a game plan. You have six points. You want to talk about each of them Yeah, well, we you know, I I think um One of the things that I found early in my tenure here is that There hasn't been a clear definition of success At the university in recent times for athletics. So if somebody said hey UC Davis, how would you consider? What would you consider success in athletics and there there hasn't been a really great answer to that question Uh, at least that I can tell well, there's the causeway classic on saturday. That's one one. Yeah, when in that game is very important But um, so what I've tried to do is I I you know, I've I've tried to Evolve that discussion so that we do have a definition of what success looks like and and it comes down to six things for us and I'll go through each of them. The first is You know, we will consider ourselves successful if our student athletes are being educated in an exemplary fashion and that means not only academic Uh outcomes that are equivalent to the student body But also as I mentioned earlier career opportunities and personal growth that our student athletes experience while they're here Um, a second sort of measure of success for us is the degree to which Our athletics program enriches the undergraduate experience for all students at Davis And this is an area where we're going to continue to focus on um, because the sports are a really great opportunity for Our student body to socialize uh to to celebrate, you know being together being with friends watching friends compete Having fun in a sort of communal Setting it's traditionally where people think of as being a college student Yeah, and it's and it's and these days is not really even about the sport per se. It's about the social time Right, and you know, so we'll continue to refine how we interact with our student body and and and how we create value Um for our students in terms of enriching their experience. So that that would be Accomplishing that would would be considered for us a measure of success The third is that we really want to enhance the academic enterprise Not just coexist alongside of it. And what I mean by that is We, you know, we athletics is an interesting laboratory For collaboration on on research What you know my previous stop at stanford we Worked with in athletics we worked with the school of medicine and some of the neurologists there on a concussion study that involved the football players wearing accelerometers in their mouth guards So these types of collaborations can really enrich in the The academic enterprise that is occurring at our university And that's what we aspire to do in athletics is really add value there A fourth measure or criteria of success for us is is being competitively successful In competition which unlocks additional opportunities for alumni and donor relations So when we're winning and and there's a lot of people that are involved in Being around our events and enjoying The opportunity to connect with each other that that's a broader platform for the entire university when it comes to alumni and donor relations So we will consider us ourselves successful once, you know, if we can if we can accomplish that A fifth is we you know, we we also know that The university at large can Can benefit from much more earned media exposure when athletics is is performing at a high level You know, there's there's all sorts of examples out there in higher education about the the impact the positive impact of an athletics program being competitively successful driving additional Branding and earned media opportunities. So we're focused on that too. I just want to insert an example of that which is When magic johnson became a freshman at michigan state They added another thousand students to the student body that year. Yeah, and and that's those kind of examples are are They're relatively common I mean There's the growth At a place like the university of oregon has correlated with their football success over the last 10 years And yeah, you know the same is true for a place like boise state and football and in basketball a place like gunzaga So just to name a few west coast examples, it's a it's a very It's a very evident and and pronounced impact of of high-level athletic success on the on the sort of notoriety and branding of the university so That's what we hope to accomplish that as well and our sixth kind of indicator of success is that as I mentioned this earlier But we want davis to be an external facing example for young people in our state About how to be a student athlete and the fact that trying hard and we want our student athletes to be evidence that trying hard in sports and school is Is not only possible, but it's it's cool and it's the right thing to do So we want people from all backgrounds to see our student athletes who also come from all different backgrounds And you know identify with them, you know, I look like her i'm from a neighborhood that she's from And you know, she's a great, you know basketball player or volleyball player And i'm a 12 year old and I like basketball and volleyball and I like school too And I wasn't sure if trying hard in school is cool, but she does So I will also right and whether those people decided to come to davis or not It's not really, you know, that that's not really a specific concern of ours We just want people to understand what it's like To to see student athletes who operate at a high level in both academics and athletics and emulate them and This is important for, you know, youth coaches to understand. It's important for parents to understand Like I said earlier, it's a there's a lot of people in this country that play school or play sports and go to school at At the at high school and below ages And the more examples they have of people that do it in a way where they're paying attention to both And doing well at both that's better for everybody. So that's what we're committed to Unfortunately in professional sports, it's the You know, first off, they get paid a lot of money But secondly when they do something stupid, then it gets a lot of exposure, right? When they do something good, it doesn't Yeah, I think that's part of that human nature and nature in general. Yeah, yeah You can do nine things right and one thing wrong and people remember the wrong thing. Correct the So long term where where do you see UCD athletics being five years from now? Well, I you know, I think we we have a few things we're Trying to set out to accomplish one of them is we would like to contend with princeton and some of the other Very successful fcs level athletic departments and see if we can get up In in our in the director's cup standings to the overall top 50 And which would put us in contention to be one of the top fcs level programs in division one And so that that's that's a competitive goal of ours. We you know, we we want to continue graduating our student athletes at a rate that is Equivalent to the overall undergraduate student body We want to continue the academic performance in terms measured by GPAs So those are two things that are sort of traditional outcomes that we feel are really important We uh We also think that there's some more progressive forward thinking Accomplishments that we would like to to to meet or to make And set an example for others in college athletics and one of them being making sure that we're Stewarding and educating our student athletes from all backgrounds including underrepresented minority backgrounds and socio economically Disadvantaged backgrounds in a really elite nation leading way. I think just being progressive in that Area is really important and it's you know having that philosophy is commensurate with the university's belief in In committing to first generation college students and that's that's we share that in athletics as well we You know, there's a there's a number of different outcomes around Percentages percentage of our seniors that we know are placed in jobs or grad school by By graduation day like that's a really important outcome for us. We'd like to be able to Demonstrate that we're enhancing the character You know, whether it's emotional intelligence or grit of our student athletes as they go through school as well And as I mentioned earlier, we want to make sure that there's in five years It's tangible that we've we're adding value to the academic enterprise Uh, not just coexisting alongside it. So It's we're we're going to we plan to be comprehensive in in how we improve And you know, that means competitive success And that also means continuing to operate in a more progressive integrated fashion with the university Well, you know, I think you've said some really wonderful things and I think we're at the end of the interview Do you have anything else you want to say? I appreciate you having me on. No, it's my pleasure. Absolutely I want to thank you for being on our show. Thank you for sure. Yeah for sure. Excellent. This is what's going on Thanks for watching. Good evening