Mike Bobinski, Georgia Tech’s new athletic director, has one hell of a work ethic. He spent March preparing to take the reins at Tech while wrapping things up at Xavier University (where he had served as director of athletics for 12 years) and serving as chair of the NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Committee (which selected teams for the NCAA tournament). He also squeezed in time to talk with the Alumni Magazine about his sports background and his aspirations for the Yellow Jackets.
What do you see as Tech’s greatest strengths? The strength of our Athletic Department flows from the institution. Georgia Tech is a place that has continued to grow in every way, from a stature perspective, from the quality of education, from the impact. As I look at our department, we have a lot of people who are committed to the place, who care about Georgia Tech, who are experienced and talented in their fields. Having passion for what you do and where you do it has a lot to do with success in athletics.
What do you see as the biggest weaknesses? I don’t come in thinking about weaknesses. I look at: What are our strengths? What are our opportunities?
What are the things we can be great at? It’s easier to focus on the shortfalls and the challenges, but those exist everywhere. What are things that need to be done better? There are the obvious things. The financial picture in college athletics is a challenge. We have to make sure we have resources in place to allow our teams to compete at the highest level. We need to have great crowds for football and basketball and other sports where we’re trying to raise revenue.
The very first thing I want to make sure is that we have an internal belief about who we are and what we can accomplish. It begins with the sense of, “We’re Georgia Tech, we have a chance to be a nationally competitive program, and we need to move toward that every day.” You need to strive toward something and try to move toward something that’s big.
Do you have a game plan of how you’ll tackle the job? The best way to do that is meet and talk to people face to face. That will be my first objective, a series of conversations with key administrative folks, other key folks on campus, key alumni, community leaders. It’s a long, long list that the president’s office has helped me assemble, as well as folks within the department, key donors, key benefactors. The more information I can gather, the more perspective I can gain from people who are familiar with the program, the better sense I’ll get of where we need to go.
It would be short-sighted to come in firing on day one and say I have the answers. I need to get that perspective and to understand why things are the way they are before I can chart an appropriate course for us to move forward.
What excites you most about working with a football program? It’s an unbelievable game. It’s so deeply woven into the sporting fabric of our country. I love the game of college football. These last years at Xavier where we don’t have a program have been enjoyable because I’ve been able to watch everybody. On a fall Saturday, I’m watching five games.
There’s nothing like a college football Saturday. Game day is such a tremendous experience. It has the opportunity to bring together your entire Georgia Tech family, plus others that we’d love to have join us from the greater Atlanta area. It’s such a great rallying point. I’m so excited to be part of that again, to get a chance to experience it, and hopefully being a part of achieving great success in the future.
How will you define success? In a general sense, I always believe in establishing really high goals. We’ve had tremendous moments of success and some sustained success. We’ve been in bowl games 16 straight years. We’ll continue to move that forward and to push the envelope to become a dominant team in our conference, to play at the national level. That’s something we should be striving for.
In basketball, you want to be a team on the men’s and women’s front that has a legitimate shot on a year-to-year basis making the NCAA tournament. Where I am now, we believe getting in is great, but becoming a second weekend team is the goal you want to have. Once you get to that second weekend, it’s all about matchups and who’s playing well at that point in time. And then anything’s possible.
Across the board, I believe in competing for championships and national prominence where we have a legitimate chance. It’s important that we set our sights high and have a plan in place to achieve those ambitious goals.
There are those who say that Georgia Tech’s high academic standards hinder recruiting. How do you look at that? I look at the opportunity that we’re going to be able to provide the young people who are part of our program to receive an education at a place like Georgia Tech and all that goes with it. It’s an unbelievable opportunity. Does that present challenges? Absolutely. But we want people who are willing to compete, who know that this provides an invaluable platform for the rest of their life. We ask a lot of our kids. The demands on their time are significant and real. To pretend that that doesn’t matter is foolish. But as long as we can provide them with appropriate support and find young men and women who are up to that challenge and recognize the value, it becomes a terrific strength.
How will your administrative and fundraising experience at Xavier shape your approach to the job? All of that experience is helpful in terms of perspective and understanding how things get done. I’m really simple in terms of how I approach my business as athletic director. It all begins with dealing effectively with the people who make up our program. I hate the term “people person,” which is really trite, but I believe that establishing relationships, establishing a vision and a positive, success-oriented environment is what it’s all about. All the experience that I have lets me understand situations and circumstances and how we might want to approach them. But it all boils down to having people who are energized, who have the right motivation and who have a plan and are executing that plan every day.
What would you like to tell Georgia Tech alumni as you start in this new role? Georgia Tech people have this amazing welcoming spirit and this desire to achieve great things. And I would say this: To all the Georgia Tech folks, I will be 100 percent committed to giving everything I have toward that end.
But that won’t be enough just for me to want that or for our department to want that. We’ll need the entire Georgia Tech family. From our graduates to our campus to the greater Atlanta community, we’ll need everybody to be at their absolute best for us to achieve the success that’s possible. If we’re able to get everybody headed in the same direction, the future is very, very bright for Georgia Tech athletics.
I couldn’t be more excited to be part of that amazing community. I couldn’t be more excited to get there and begin that work.
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Basketball and Track and Field are awful. What does he plan to do specifically with Woman’s Track and Field?