Up Close With The Pittsburgh Sports Report
Greg Amodio

Greg Amodio was named director of athletics at Duquesne University on Aug. 4. The 42-year old Amodio previously served as associate athletic director for marketing at Xavier University. While he inherits a relatively successful athletic department at Duquesne, the university’s most visible program, the men’s basketball team, has struggled over the past two-plus decades. Revitalizing the program will be a main component of Amodio’s role at Duquesne.

A native of Long Island, NY, Amodio spent nearly 10 years at Xavier. PSR editor Tony DeFazio sat down with Amodio in September to discuss his challenges at Duquesne.

PSR: What is your top priority as you get settled into the day to day aspects of your job?

Amodio: Right now, coming into the position, it’s a period of assessment. It’s my opportunity to come in, and part of the charge I’ve been given by Dr. Dougherty is to review the program in general, and to determine what we’re doing well, where we need some help, and how can we advance our cause in other areas.

So I’ve been spending a lot of time with our head coaches. I had 16 one-hour meetings last week. I met with every head coach for an hour just trying to assess where we’ve been, where we are now, what is the potential for each program to move into the future, and just taking some time to figure out exactly where we are right now.

There’s no doubt that one of the areas that I’ve been charged to come in and look at seriously is men’s basketball. To try to figure out how to come in and continue to move that program in the right direction, because it really should be the economic engine that fuels the rest of the athletic program. The Atlantic 10 is without a doubt a men’s basketball league, so if we can continue to elevate the success of the men’s basketball program, we will hopefully see additional revenue down the line that can hopefully support that program and all the programs across the board.

PSR: At your press conference, you spoke about getting back some fans who feel “disenfranchised” and also the need to have student support? How do you go about accomplishing those two things?

GA: What we really need to do is just be back out in the market. Maybe over the last year to year and a half here at Duquesne, there have been brakes put on a lot of things. I think it’s our charge to go back out into the market. I spoke to the Alumni Board of Governors a little bit about where we are, and I’ve been getting into all the President’s Receptions at the football games. Even tonight, I’m going to the Pirate game with donors.

Part of it is for me to be out and to be as visible as possible with our donors and with our alumni, to let them know that business will be conducted in a different fashion. And hopefully, the program will move up to a different level. I think obviously people are excited about any level of change, so we’ve heard a lot of really positive feedback about the general change and the new athletic director and hopefully a new mindset and a new focus.

But I think it’s about getting back out into the public and letting let people know that business will be different. At the same time, we have to show them that things will be different.

The second part of that is going back to the students. With the students, it’s just outreach. It’s getting back to the students and letting them know that these teams belong to them. These are teams of their peers and they’re looking for that support and this is a sense of pride, not only for athletics, but really for the overall university. We really need the students to be part of that. The students create an atmosphere, especially at men’s basketball games. When the students are getting rowdy and they’re having fun and they’re getting into it, they help to fuel the rest of the crowd – the alums, the donors, the ticket-holders. Before you know it, everybody’s kind of working together to build on the mission.

PSR: Where does the financial commitment to the program come from?

GA: It’s got to be a combination of internal and external. These are the things that I’m being asked to do, to take a look at where we are in terms of budget scenario. Are there dollars within our own budget, just through budget reallocation in athletics so we can be better using the dollars that we have in place? So we’re taking a look at those types of things.

Again, the overall university and how they view the programs and obviously additional funding there as well.

But I think the new thing in the picture is the fact that we’re being asked to go and find external sources for new funding. And that is my strength and my background. Whether it is to increase the season-ticket base, rekindle and enhance what we’re doing with the Dukes’ Court, go out and get involved in corporate partnerships. We need to go back to the corporations locally, and in a lot of cases, many of those corporations are chock-full of Duquesne alumni. And they can help us on some level, even if it’s just finding the right person to get to and the right door to knock on.

But we have to start somewhere. I think there was a hesitation in the past, that because men’s basketball wasn’t doing very well it wasn’t the right time to go out and sell the product. And that’s the best time to go out and sell the product. Because you have to.

And part of that is that we can’t be afraid to start our commitment at a lower level. The hope is that if we can find someone who is willing to make a $2,500 commitment now, as we continue to grow and the program continues to grow, maybe that $2,500 commitment turns into a $25,000 commitment.

But at some point, we need to go out and start creating relationships and that’s what we’re going to be doing out in the market now.

PSR: You’ve talked about Duquesne “fitting a niche” in the city sports landscape – what is that niche?

GA: I think we are who we are. We’ve got a great alumni base in town. It’s a building that’s an attractive building and the size is good, 6200 seats, and that fits a niche. When I say “niche” I mean that we’ve got a great opportunity to be family friendly entertainment. You hear a lot about the professional sports teams and how much it might cost for a family of four to go to those types of things. And you may even find that a little bit with Pitt, I’m not sure what their pricing structure is, but I think we can put together some nice packages that can be very family friendly.

Whether it is men’s basketball or women’s basketball or football, we want to give an opportunity for families to get together. Even families are so busy nowadays; they need some time that they can program into their schedules. So how can we give them a quality experience? How do we provide the games, the halftime entertainment, the premium item giveaways, the contests and events – all the collateral elements that go around the game, so that it’s not just about the game. It truly becomes an event. That’s what we have to do, is create an event. You can’t do that at every game, so we need to take a look at the schedule and find the best opportunities. Look at the date of the game, the time of the game, the opponent obviously, and create maybe 3, 4, 5 great packages during the course of the year, where we load up the games with a lot of great things. So ultimately people come to the games, win or lose, at the end of the day we want people to walk away and say, “Hey this was a lot of fun.”

And they go out and let people know and then you get positive word of mouth. But ultimately we want people to walk away from Duquesne games and say, “Geez, we’ve never seen that before. That’s something new. We had a great time.” And then they start to spread the word out in the community.

PSR: How long will it take to get the basketball program where you want it to be?

GA: It’s always evolving. You’re always molding a program. We’re already into September and games start in two months, so we’re really behind a bit now. You want your sales proves to start the day you’re done in March. That next day we’ve got to be planning and selling for 2006-07. So you can see we’ve already missed a pretty sizable window here for sales and opportunity.

The biggest charge here for this year will be a period of assessment. I need to see how we do business as an athletic department, make any necessary changes and put the right systems in place for us to be successful in the future.

Part of that will go along with our coach and the type of players we have and all of those types of things. We’re always trying to bring better student-athletes in overall and fit into the mission of who we are as a university and find a happy marriage between the two, because by no means will we ever compromise the academic integrity of the institution.

PSR: What other “reclamation projects” are comparable to what you’re facing here?

GA: There are schools all over the country that fall into the same type of situation. But the one thing I do want to accentuate as we look at Duquesne athletics is that there are a lot of great things going on at Duquesne athletics. Men’s soccer has been successful, women’s lacrosse, and football obviously, and cross country…we’ve had very good success with our programs. The problem is that our most visible entity is men’s basketball, which has not had the same success. So the tendency is for the public to think that Duquesne athletics are down. I want to make sure that we continue to accentuate the positives about what’s been going on there, and at the same time I want to be sure that we’re not just trying to build a men’s basketball program, but we want to build an athletic program across the board that’s highly competitive in all phases of the Atlantic 10. We want to be strong across the board so that when we show up anywhere, people will say, “Oh geez, Duquesne’s here and that means we’re in for a battle.”

PSR: Do you get a feeling that the city is waiting for Duquesne to have success, and once they do it’s something will catch fire?

GA: That’s what I’m told over and over again. When I was being interviewed for this position, the more and more I looked at it, the more and more I could see that. There is a great affinity for the program, there is a great alumni base here in Pittsburgh, and people are kind of waiting for something to happen.

I think the naming of a new athletic director is one element that I think people found to be positive, just because of the potential for a new mindset. There are people out there. It’s just a matter of two things, really. We’re in a position where we can’t wait for people to come back when we’re successful, therefore we need to be out on the street now communicating to people that we understand that the product has been down a little bit and we’re working to make that better. But at the same time, we need their support to help that process along.

It goes back to that same mindset of investment. Make an investment in us now. Help us now get back to where we need to be, and you will be part of that building process. Be at the forefront of that process.