CHARLOTTESVILLE – When football recruits visit Virginia, they almost always leave with a business card in their pocket. It belongs to U.Va.’s new athletic director, Carla Williams.
Since being hired, Williams has made time in her schedule to meet with recruits and their families, in all sports, who come to campus considering Virginia.
“She’s standing there and talking to the moms of these young men, basically saying that they can do anything. And that she’s an example,” football coach Bronco Mendenhall said during an interview last week. “Right at the beginning Carla said, ‘I’m here to help and I love being involved in recruiting. Use me.’”
Mendenhall, heading into his third season rebuilding the Cavaliers’ football program, knew he needed help from his new boss, and it went beyond her pitching in during recruiting visits. What Mendenhall really needed was financial support, something both he and Williams agreed was lacking for his sport to compete in the ACC.
“It didn’t take very long for me to start to realize that we’ve got a structural problem in football,” said Williams, a former Georgia administrator who started at Virginia in October. “We are understaffed in some areas. Obviously we’ve got some facility issues in some areas. Our budget is not where it needs to be. All of those things need to change to have a consistently competitive football program.”
Mendenhall, hired after the 2015 season by former AD Craig Littlepage, said launching construction on a new football facility is still probably three years out, but Williams has been able to address other support shortcomings holding his program back immediately.
“I knew that before any shovel went into the ground for a facility, that we had serious deficiencies that we had to address now,” Williams said.
Williams said Virginia needs to increase its revenue, selling more football tickets and attracted more private donations. As she did with his recruits, Mendenhall has lent his time to meeting with boosters and organizations, helping Williams make the pitch for more support.
The push is off to a strong start.
With a plan to add $500,000 to the annual operating budget each year, not counting adjustments for travel, Williams said the Virginia Athletic Fund, the fundraising organization that supports U.Va., quickly raised $1 million for what she dubbed a “short-term emergency fund.”
That money has gone to doubling the number of analysts on the football staff from three to six and taking the strength and conditioning staff for football from three to five coaches.
“I really took the job knowing and believing that, in spite of some of the deficiencies, we’d still have success,” said Mendenhall, who went from two wins his first season to six last year. “The deficiencies, that became clearer with time. … She’s taken each one of those and is just kind of checking them off the list.”
Overall, the budget doesn’t appear to have grown much, but that’s because the team has two fewer charter flights in the 2018 season than it did in 2017.
Last fiscal year, football’s operating budget was $3.25 million. This year, it’ll be $3.275 million.
According to financial data provided by schools under the Equity in Athletics Disclosure Act, only North Carolina State spent less money on football in 2017 than U.Va, among ACC schools.
In Williams, Mendenhall has an athletic director eager and willing to change that.
“I think it’s remarkable that Bronco and this coaching staff and this team were able to win six games last year,” Williams said. “I really do. Considering a lot of the challenges, I think that is very promising for the future. You’re really talking about a coaching staff that has made the most out of what they have in front of them.”
As U.Va. looked for a successor to the retiring Littlepage, the search committee tasked with hiring a new athletic director asked Mendenhall what he would look for in a new boss. He recommended finding someone with strong character, someone with a coaching background and someone with experience working with a major football program.
Williams, a former college basketball star and then assistant coach and administrator at Georgia, checked off all three of those items. And while her experience working with Georgia – one of the nation’s most successful and well funded football programs – appealed to Mendenhall, Williams said her time at academically rigorous and cash-tight Vanderbilt might have better prepared her to run the show at U.Va.
There, the Commodores’ program relied heavily on private donations and the money from their conference, the SEC.
The ACC is hoping to get a revenue boost from the upcoming ACC television network, a partnership with ESPN. The network launches in the fall of 2019, and conference athletic directors don’t know yet what the financial impact will be.
Virginia averaged just 39,398 fans per game last season, ahead of only Boston College, Duke, Syracuse and Wake Forest in the ACC. The Cavaliers finished 6-7, going to a bowl game for the first time since 2011.
“There’s room for improvement in every single area of revenue for us,” Williams said. “We know that in order to get people in the stands, the product on the field has to be attractive. So, how do you do that? You have to have better players and you have to be able to attract better players.”
That’s why Williams is right there with Mendenhall on the front lines, especially when it comes to attracting recruits to the program.
“You cannot thrive without great talent,” Williams said. “I love recruiting. I love talking to parents. I love talking to prospects. And I’ve done a lot of that.”