Southeast's candidates for athletic director -- John Shafer

Background

The 62-year-old semi-retired commercial developer was AD at Eastern Kentucky for 19 months in 2003 and 2004 before leaving for health reasons. He has more than 25 years in athletic administration in the Southeastern Conference, beginning as an assistant business manager (and baseball assistant and football administrative assistant) at Auburn in 1977. He worked there at his alma mater for four years before going to Vanderbilt, serving 17 years as a senior associate AD at Georgia and spent four years as AD at Ole Miss, from 1998 to 2002.

Personality

"I'm a people person," Shafer said, "and I hate to lose. I'm very competitive by nature."

Shafer wants his people to be happy about coming to work and he emphasizes positives, but he also can deliver a kick in the butt when it's needed. "Absolutely. By nature, people want to complain. I know the problems. I don't need someone to come in everyday and tell me the problems. I want people to tell me the solutions to the problems, and I want to help them solve the problems."

What is your first priority?

"The highest priority is student-athletes and their welfare."

Asked specifically what changes he would make immediately: "The first thing I would do is try to change the attitude. You don't have to fix anything or raise money; you can just come in and, in a matter of hours, change. Immediately, that's the thing we're going to do is change our mindset. The reason that is No. 1 is because I believe we can do that easily."

Given the economy and the fear of "donor fatigue" for athletics, what will be the approach to raising funds?

"I think we need to coordinate our fundraising efforts, and you've just got to work at it everyday. You've got to make calls; you've got to go see people. You've got to convince them that what we're doing is right and that it's money well spent, that we'll be good stewards.

"If we can get the donors back in that were in before the problems, we're ahead of the game. They are not giving because they're mad. We have to re-recruit those people. We have to re-recruit season ticket-holders who have fallen by the wayside. That's the first fundraising priority. Immediately."

On making football at Southeast be competitive in the OVC:

"I think we need to schedule some wins. I think we need to look at scheduling and see how we can help coach out. We need to give him an opportunity to be fully funded in football and have the maximum number of scholarships available. Those two things would give immediate help. I know that there are some locker room issues in the end zone that we're addressing now as we speak, so those two things I think are the priority."

With this as a season in limbo, how do you deal with men's basketball?

"We will be behind in that program because of the situation. I haven't read [the NCAA allegations] so I'm not going to convict anyone or say anything about that. That's probably the program that has the most work to do to get righted because we'll be behind. We've got signing coming up and I don't know how we're doing in recruiting and how many scholarships we have to offer. All those things factor in. It will be a challenge, but an opportunity to move past what was happening and go forward."

Asked about steps for this year, including contact with coach Scott Edgar: "I'll have to see what is going on and get all the details, but my gut feeling is that I would talk to the coach who is coaching and try to help him be successful in the immediacy, and then study the rest of the situation. My first job is to help the interim coach be successful."

With so much emphasis on rebuilding football and men's basketball, how do you approach the other sports?

"I think talking with coaches and student-athletes and letting them know there's a bigger picture right now that will benefit them in the long run, letting them know I haven't divorced you, it's just that the focus needs to be in this area, this area and this area right now.

"I love gymnastics. I was at Georgia when Suzanne was there, in fact she was one of my sports. It was a special time with four or five national championships. I like volleyball, I like watching soccer, gymnastics. I'm going to leave them alone, but I will let them know there will be time constraints and probably budgetary constraints that we'll have to deal with in the short term to get over the hump."