State of the Frogs: TCU athletic director reflects back on 2019, looks ahead to 2020
Jeremiah Donati has been at the helm of TCU athletics for more than two years now.
In some ways it feels longer, given his stint as deputy athletics director before succeeding his longtime mentor, Chris Del Conte, in December 2017. In other ways, it doesn’t.
But Donati has been pleased with how his vision is being implemented early on in his tenure.
“We’ve made a lot of really good progress,” Donati said. “We’ve made a lot of strategic changes that will help us long term. Our teams continue to play at a high level, and, to some degree, we’re going to be evaluated on wins and losses.
“But I think the trajectory of all of our programs looks very positive, and I expect 2020 to be a big year.”
Of course, football remains king on campus and in Texas. That’s the school’s signature program and Donati is well aware of that. He has full faith that coach Gary Patterson will make the necessary changes and adjustments to get the Horned Frogs competing for championships again.
Donati reflected back on the 2019 season, including the decision to bring beer sales to Amon G. Carter Stadium, as well as look ahead to the spring game — tentatively scheduled for April 4 — where the school will unveil the $100 million east-side expansion project.
Donati sat down with the Star-Telegram for an in-depth interview on the state of TCU athletics.
On beer sales and other changes at home football games: “The changes were all very positive. We had fewer behavior incidents in the stadium than we’ve had in a long, long time. I was really happy with that. We worked out some early kinks.
“Again, beer sales were never intended to be a financial boon, but it did exceed expectations financially. I think some of that was in part with the huge crowds we had for Texas and Baylor. Overall, it was a success. We’ll fine-tune some things. We’re sending out a season-ticket holder survey next month to figure out where we can improve. Overall, I felt like it was a big success.”
On early feedback on beer sales at basketball games: “Obviously smaller crowds, but we’ll know much more once we get into conference play. It’s run very smoothly. Every game I have about one person that walks up to me and thanks me for doing this, but we haven’t had wide-spread consumption at basketball games. You have Sunday afternoon games and Tuesday night games, I don’t think those are big windows for folks to buy a lot of beer. Not that we want that. We just want to improve the fan experience and give people the option if that’s what they want when they go to an athletic contest.”
On possibly selling hard alcohol to the masses at football games: “I don’t know of any college teams that are doing that at their on-campus venues. It’s more of a thing if you played at a neutral site like AT&T Stadium, but we haven’t even looked at that or considered it. The beer sales was one jump, but getting to that point would be years down the road and not something on my radar.”
On beer sales aggravating some fans by eliminating the in-and-out policy: “As the season went on, we heard less and less of that. I think we had great crowds for Texas and Baylor. Like with anything else, it’s just going to take a little time for our fans to get comfortable with that. But one of the reasons for eliminating the in-and-out, besides legal liability issues, was to ensure that we’ve got a great crowd ready for the second half. I think in both cases [against Texas and Baylor] we did. I was really pleased with that.
“Ultimately that will help our team long term. Overall, the total administration of the in-and-out policy went better than expected. I think about 10% of our fans weren’t a fan of it just because of the in-and-out, but as the season went on, I spent a lot of time responding directly to those folks so that they understood where we were coming from. Like I said, it’ll just take a couple years to really change that aspect of the game day culture for some folks.”
On the difficulty of drawing fans to games in today’s market (TCU averaged 42,881 fans at home this season): “Overall the sports business is set to grow 3% and a lot of that has to do with sponsorship rights and media rights. The actual only decline is in-game attendance. This is across the board, this isn’t just a TCU issue. So you’re absolutely fighting it.
“You’re fighting what I would call a distracted consumer. They’re looking at their phone. You can watch the game at a tailgate, watch it at a bar. You can watch it everywhere, so you’re kind of competing against yourself. But I think overall fan attendance was good.
“Next year we have one home game in September against Prairie View A&M. It will be a night game since it’s on Big 12 Now/ ESPN+. We’re able to dictate the start of that game. It’ll be the first game with the new east-side expansion. The first two home games this year, we did have heat issues.”
On the east-side expansion: “It’s coming along well. We intend to essentially open it around the time of our spring game for the donors.”
On TCU’s basketball game at Dickies Arena: “I thought it went well. We’ll certainly go back. When we will is a good question. We don’t have any games scheduled, but we’ll continue to look for games that are a good fit there. The facility is sparkling. It was a really fun night, other than the final score. I think it’s a good venue for basketball. They’ll have a lot of success when they host tournaments and that kind of thing.”
On possibly playing Big 12 games at Dickies: “No, we’re not considering any conference games. Anything can change in the future, but the games that make the most sense for us would be November and December non-conference games, especially games where your students are gone on break.
“The one kind of drop-off is the student experience. The student experience at Dickies is not nearly as good as the student experience at Schollmaier. We have a much more intimidating home-court environment. That’s the big difference.”
