"Whatever your wants and interests are, we've got a place for you": Catching up with Director of Athletics Chris Massaro, Part 2

MURFREESBORO, Tenn. — While the Blue Raiders have finished successful seasons across the athletic department in the spring, the administration of both MT athletics and MTSU have been hard at work behind the scenes readying for the next step in Build Blue Now, as well as various efforts to continue to push MT to the forefront of modern athletic departments.

Now, with seasons wrapped up and time to look ahead, there are plenty of updates to be shared on construction timelines, new projects, and looking ahead to the fall semester.

Staff writer Sam Doughton sat down with Director of Athletics Chris Massaro to learn about some of those updates, as well as other odds and ends from the end of another great year in Murfreesboro.
This is Part 2 of our end of the year Q&A at GoBlueRaiders.com. You can check our part one HERE.

The following conversation has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

A lot of the Build Blue Projects are starting to hit major milestones in the near future, most notably with the Outdoor Tennis Center here on campus. What is the latest timeline for that project?
We're going to break ground in August on that project. It's really exciting. For us to continue to be a No. 1 seed and be a top 25 team and make the jump to a Top 10 and eventually be able to win a national championship, this facility needs to be built. It is scheduled to be completed by fall 2023. So, by the start of the school year in 2023, this facility will be completed.

I know internally, there have been a lot of meetings across departments getting ready for the Student-Athlete Performance Center. Most notably, we've seen the surveying process underway on the future site of the SAPC. What updates can you give Blue Raiders about where we are on that project?
There's a ton that's been done on it already, primarily in the design process. We're winding up the final design process. We've hired the contractor already, so we know who's going to build it. Once they get the design documents, we'll get a better estimation of the cost, and I'm sure we'll make some decisions once we get that process completed.

We're scheduled to start construction with demolition of our existing weight room, which will happen at the conclusion of next football season. We'll end the season in November, hopefully play in the championship game in December. Shortly thereafter we should see the bulldozers over there.

People are going to see it. Right now, it's still conceptual. We've talked about fundraising. Obviously, fans aren't in the design meetings and those kinds of things. But to be able to see dirt moving and construction will bring another level of excitement to our fan base that this is actually happening.

One piece of construction that's already brought a lot of excitement to folks driving by the Murphy Center has been the glass replacement. That process looks like it's wrapping up pretty soon. How pleased are you with how that's turned out?
I think it's made a remarkable difference. I know we've taken some before and after pictures, but I think it just looks remarkable now. You can see reflections off of it, and once we start playing basketball with the automatic tint, we'll be able to shut out some of the sunlight, so we won't have sun streaks on the floor. It's a fabulous project, it's changed the look of our building. We can't wait, because we've got new glass in the Glass House to celebrate its 50th birthday this winter.

For that 50th anniversary, there has been a part of the Build Blue Process that fans have been able to affect directly with the court redesign. When is that redesign expected to be on the court officially?
There's a lot of commitments on the court through the summer. We've got camps, commencement and convocation in August. So, soon after convocation is when we'll be able to sand it down and paint it, which is about a month-long process. Some time in September is when we'll see that.

I'm excited about it! Fans did such a great job that we were able to take elements from different designs that were submitted and come up with a great court that all our coaches love.

A lot of our day-to-day missions here in the athletic department are supported primarily through our Annual Fund, which is currently fundraising for the end of year. How important is that fund to the success of Middle Tennessee?
We can't pay our bills without the support from our fans. Our fans have responded in a great way to our fundraising drive. Certainly, if you believe in your hometown university, if you're an alum, if you believe in the mission of collegiate athletics, if you believe in the education of these student athletes and helping them accomplish their dreams then your contributions are welcomed and very much needed. We help make dreams come true.

This is really what is critical to us to be able to accomplish our goals and become a dominant force, not only in the current C-USA, but in the future C-USA. We're going to need additional support. There are all kinds of economic strains that are coming to collegiate athletics, and the private support is going to be more critical than ever.

If you're thinking about joining the BRAA or looking to renew your membership by June 30, we certainly encourage both.

Helping secure that private support has been a plethora of new hires at the BRAA, with folks like Hans Malebranche, Clair Freels, Robert Sampson, and Leigh Ann Brewton really hitting the ground running in that office.
They have! We're really pleased with the work of Lee De León, who is our Deputy AD for External Affairs. He was able to hire an all-new crew in the BRAA. And those new individuals you mentioned are just fabulous people. You love spending time with them, and the reaction we have received from our fans has been tremendous towards those individuals.

It's because they are passionate, they care about the mission. They believe in people and they believe in athletics. They believe in what we can do. They're out there pounding the pavement, and we've got more numbers than we've had in a long time helping solicit donations. I'm excited to see them go through a whole year's cycle and see what we do.

One thing that was exciting about the BRAA staff to me was the job they did with helping restructure the operations of the BRAA, so things are a little leaner and little more targeted in certain spots, with options such as team-specific funds for donations. It's given Blue Raiders ways to support that they might not have known about before.
I thought that was great how they clarified that whatever your wants and interests are, we've got a place for you. Lee did a really good job, along with Hans after he was hired, of picking people whose strengths matched each other. It's really a cohesive unit. That was the advantage of starting anew. We weren't just replacing one part, we were able to look holistically. Those people fit together well. I think our fans can see the passing and progress.

Live Streaming has been a topic of discussion at MT for a long time. What discussions are being made for the future of live streaming our events at MT?
We just got back from our C-USA Spring Meetings in Destin, Fla., and we spent two or three hours, which is a lot of time in these meetings, talking about streaming numbers, particularly our ESPN+ numbers, and how many people view our games as a conference. Now, it's really definable. They can see how many people have tuned in and for how long they've watched. Those numbers are important to us because we get measured by that.

The other piece we spent a lot of time talking about is social media and its engagement. It's not just the number of followers you have, but how do you engage them, how long do they stay on, how long the conversations are and so on.

What we need to do is prepare ourselves to be our own broadcast entity. That means we have to buy new equipment for the control room. (Our current equipment) is probably a dozen years old, and it's being operated with band-aids. Once we get a new control room built and get new equipment, I think fans will see a remarkable difference in our TV quality.

Right now, to broadcast anything at an ESPN+ quality, we need to use our University TV Production Truck. It is a great asset. But it's such a great asset, that sometimes it's hard to schedule. We have trouble finding times for it for all of our basketball games, not to mention labor issues staffing those games.

We need to have a complementary system to that, and with this new control room, we will. When the TV truck is not available, we'll be able to do broadcasts at the same kind of quality without some of the labor and production that the TV truck requires. That's important to us because we need to up the quality of our streaming. That's evident.

We need to drive our fans to watch the streaming when they can't attend our games. It's really important to us. It's a lot more important now than it was five years ago. And that's not going to change.

Finally, we've got some fall sports that made some big steps last year coming back with a lot of the same faces. How excited are you to see them get ready and eventually take the field come fall?
We had a great fall. I'll start with the programs that won conference titles, which are our two cross country programs. What they've been able to do to put our programs on a national platform is fantastic. Our expectation is that we'll enjoy that same kind of success that we had.

Volleyball made the semifinals of the conference tournament, which is the farthest we've gone in quite a while. So now, how do we build to that next step? What we've seen is great incremental improvement in our volleyball program in the last three years, that's really been good. We need to make sure our culture in volleyball remains great, because that will fuel that success.

Soccer had a good year. And we need to celebrate an individual like Peyton DePriest, one of those once-in-a-generation type soccer players that have come through here. Her accomplishments have been remarkable, becoming the conference's all-time leading scorer. She's had a great career, and sometimes when you see a great presence like that leave, the collective can take over for them. One person is not going to be able to replace all those goals, but I think we can be better. We had some young, talented players who were around last year. I'm excited to watch them shine in their own light.

Football had a good season that when you take a step back, and realize we went through four different starters at quarterback and the way we ended the season with wins at FAU and in the Bahamas Bowl against a really good Toledo team.
To have the guts of that team back, and the leadership we have on this team from our defensive line group to our quarterback room, you just see leaders all over the place. As we integrate some of our transfers, your existing leadership is really important, and I'll hang my hat on that defensive line group every time. I'll hang my hat on our quarterback room, every time. We open up at James Madison, that's going to be a tough ball game, but I can't wait for it.

Middle Tennesee State University Athletics

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