Why is Doug Gillin? It’s a good question, despite it making little sense. The decade-long Appalachian State University Athletics Director is currently in a position of great power. Despite looking ornery in the above picture (second row, fourth from the left, striped tie), he’s in an advantageous position. All but one of the head coaches are his hires (Wrestling’s JohnMark Bentley is the exception and it’s hard to imagine a more secure coach presently), he gets along with Short Queen Chancellor Heather Norris and there’s been hints that Norris being promoted from interim gives Gillin more free reign.

Despite firing his own hire Shawn Clark, Gillin’s seat is cool. That changes if Dowell Loggains fall on his face. For now, the man is at the peak of his power.

Gillin has been chasing an endzone for the last decade as it related to funding scholarships, cost of attendance, NIL, revenue sharing and everything else that makes up the Ever. Changing. Landscape. Of. College. Athletics.

The man deserves credit for trying. 2015 App State would be slack-jacked seeing at what 2025 App State has. Facilities? Everything except the Holmes Center has been majorly renovated at least once. Money? As mentioned in the below interview, the App State athletics budget has gone from $23 million to nearly $50 million in 10 years, and it’s been done in a government/nonprofit model where everything brought in is what has been spent. Branding? This is debatable as it’s more subjective than anything, but I believe the App State brand is among the best in what is the Group of Five. Football gamedays has gone from sometimes having 18,000 for lesser games to having 31,000 be a disappointing number. Even the Sun Belt is completely revamped, partially due to Gillin (and Everts, it must be said). App State went from a league outlier that was screwed over in non-football scheduling and subject to continual whining by Louisiana coaches to the center of of a beastly regional division, chock full of rivals who want to buy a ticket to see those games.

If you have to give Gillin a grade for his decade in charge, I’d put it at A-.

Why A-minus? There’s been some doldrums in non-football sports, especially in the late 2010s. Then there was the “pandemic cuts” to get rid of men’s soccer, men’s indoor track and field and men’s tennis. All three sports with facilities that the women’s teams would continue to use, and can balance the M/F scholarship ratio under Title IX (which might not be enforced anymore because look at who’s the Secretary of Education).

There’s other things such as the continual harping on donations. Not donation emails or phone calls. Those are fine. But inserting it into every PR piece and speech. I remember a couple times on Gillin’s “Ask the AD” columns there was an obvious fake question of “How can I donate to the Yosef Club?” That allowed Gillin to give his stump speech.

When you continually raise ticket prices, capitalize on success to bump up prices by 25% or more and offer amenities aimed at Instagram influencers more than fans (baseball fire pits, for one), it does grind away after several years.

Speaking of baseball, I’m also still mad about putting up the fence right before one season started and thus ending the Kassouf Korner tradition after the season ticket renewal deadline with no notice to ticket holders. That fence earned the nickname the Great Wall of Gillin. Again, A-minus for a reason.

Gillin’s gotten mixed reviews from former staffers. Dressing people down in hallways has happened. Job responsibility piling up to keep money going into other buckets.

Last year, the Friday before Helene threw the chess board in the air, Gillin went on the offensive against what he felt like was an incompetent Schaeffer Center and a community that took and took but didn’t give back like they need to. It was a stark public departure from the benevolence displayed time and again. Gillin’s main beef with the Schaeffer Center was the summer concert in Kidd Brewer Stadium, which he felt was poorly promoted. He did not like letting the Schaeffer Center promote events in the stadium and publicly told the Board of Trustees this, and also felt like Athletics put in too much work for too little return.

Notice how this year, there’s no stadium concert. And Athletics’ recent comedy show announcement has the event in the Appalachian Theater, not the on-campus Schaeffer Center.

Those community comments have not been followed up on. Probably because Helene was literally a week later because then everyone was #MountainStrong (not #MountaineerStrong because that’s a cease and desist against former players). There were far more important matters at hand than petty squabbles about who’s doing the metaphoric dishes in the Town of Boone, Watauga County and App State commune.

(and maybe Heather told him to pipe down because I know for a fact local leaders did not appreciate those comments, even if Gillin was right, which is debatable)

That all being said, Gillin gave his employees, one a contracted employee and the other a full-time employee, a chance to interview him on Nothing But An App State Podcast. Here’s the highlights. If you follow closely, much of this isn’t news. Maybe there’s something new?

• Guess what? College athletics has changed so much in the last five years! Bret Strelow, who works in Athletics, concurs.
• Strelow drove a go-kart for the first time this summer. Adam Witten, who changed real-world jobs to continue being the App State Football play-by-play announcer, likes go-karting.
• The interview was in the first days of July. The House Settlement just became official.
• Institutions can distribute up to $20.5 million annually. There’s backpay from 2016 to 2024 for athletes built into the settlement. So many layers!
• Removal of scholarship limits, addition of roster limits.
• FBS Football is now 105 scholarships/roster spots, baseball is 34.
• NIL is tied in as well. Third-party NIL deals over $600 bring in oversight and such.
• Strelow filibustering, talking about many of the changes.
• Gillin speaks! We saw the House settlement coming, but it took a while.
• Been proactive in revenue sharing. Hired Brittany Whiteside to be Chief of Strategy. She was one of Gillin’s first hires in 2015, now coming back.
• Contracts involve agents and student-athletes.
• Part of it is giving coaches feedback. We’re all going through it for the first time. Continue to refine. Trying to develop a long-term, sustainable model.
• Is this gonna be here for years? Maybe not, it’ll likely morph again. Proactive and not reactive.
• Getting a degree is still the No. 1 priority. Main things won’t change. Just gotta innovate and adapt.
• It used to be that you could provide student-athletes a bagel but not cream cheese.
• What is App State’s revenue strategy? Gillin says we can’t spend what we don’t have. No deficit. There’s not another pot of money that just showed up.
• The current athletics budget is in the “high 40s,” aka near $50 million. Gillin previously said he wants that to get to $100 million eventually.
• With a “high 40s” overall budget, App won’t be near $20.5 million revenue sharing limit. But gotta be competitive. Seeing how everyone else is spending on different sports.
• You’re seeing restructuring and cost-cutting across the country, including at App State.
• Gillin says you’re seeing “Autonomy 4” schools making cuts as well. “We’re not different.” Talent acquisition will be a key standpoint with this new dynamic, as there are negotiations now.
• “We’re going to have to be in the multiple millions of dollars in this space.” Won’t be $20.5 million, but need to grow it over time.
• Football, basketball are big parts of it, baseball and softball mentioned as well.
• Strelow asks a weird long-winded question that delves into the importance of fan support. Gillin mentions the comedy show just announced for the Appalachian Theater (Gillin beefed with the Schaeffer Center last year over the summer concert and the lack of promotion and money it brought in).
• Guess what? Gotta create more revenue.
• Gillin says you can still do partial scholarships, but full scholarships are more important now since it’s across the board.
• Gillin goes into baseball. The old 11.7 scholarship limit is now 34, but the roster size decreases from 40 to 34. Thus, scholarship enhancements are costing us a lot more. Gotta raise money, gotta be competitive.
• Mentions the Mayo Game in Charlotte, licensing such as CFB26 to bring in revenue.
• Wants the budget to get to $50 million and then get to $75 million in the next five years. Ten years ago, it was $23 million. Mentions getting from $75 million to $100 million in the following five years.
• Lots to do. Including the East Side project to add more luxury suites.
• Says the good news is that a lot of the facility projects are now or soon will be behind us, “then we can raise money for those other buckets we’ve talked about.”
• Witten asks about enhancing the athlete experience, such as NIL education. Tee’s up Gillin to talk about those programs. Gonna see “continued requirement of financial literacy.” Gillin says it will be “true NIL.” Also will teach resumes, etiquette and community service skills to student athletes. Says they’re reaching student athletes earlier than ever before, on how to balance the checkbook and do taxes.
• Strelow says alums have reached out about retro pay.
• Delves into NIL collective, 3333. Says it was important, but is now morphing. Where’s the best ROI for that dollar? So many buckets!
• Brand presence is “as good as anywhere in the Sun Belt.” Notes that it helps enrollment as enrollment numbers drop (American birth rates dropped from 2007 onward and those 2007 kids are now 18 years old).
• Gillin mentions (nonsense) $112 million economic impact on the community. (Economic impact studies are wild guesses using fuzzy math, in my opinion, but they look good on paper and look good to investors and people with multiple commas in their bank accounts who love good marketing pizazz)
• The fanbase is supportive. How about that? Basketball is playing a home basketball game in Hickory again (vs High Point). Gillin says App just had one of its best Bubas Cup (Sun Belt all-sports trophy) finishes ever.
• Thank you Dear Gillin for sharing your vision.
• Indoor Practice Facility demo to build a new one has begun. Gillin says it’s taken a long time to happen (Everts and App State originally presented a debt-riddled project to the state and got denied, which was described to me as embarrassing). Gillin says big machines are really cool. The new indoor facility is a full-sized field. It can have offense and defense in there at the same time. Full-sized soccer field is possible. Can have two sports in there at once. Band and ROTC can be utilized. Gillin is legit excited about it and its future.
• Texas State question! Yay Strelow! Gillin says having someone leave is somewhat new. Do we add a 14th? Gillin says we’re in a data-collection phase on that. Gotta grow the Sun Belt and drive revenue.
• What do we look forward to? Excited for Volleyball’s Chad Sutton. Then you’ve got defending Sun Belt Champions in Cross Country, defensive MAC Champions in Field Hockey, says Aimee Haywood’s soccer roster is as good as ever. Women in Motion event already has more registered than all of last year. The goal is to raise over $100,000 at that event, then divvy it up for women’s sports. Oh yeah, the Mayo Game. “We sold a bunch of tickets, we need to sell more.”