Iannacone Means Business as USD’s Athletic Director

First, it’s the look:

That ever-present smile that makes you think that what he’s doing is actually fun, the neatly cropped hair with touches of gray, and a suit that would sell copies of “Dress for Success.”

Then, the delivery:

Words, with a thick Eastern accent, roll off his tongue like those in a memorized speech. But they are oh-so believable. His lips are moving, but is it live, or is it Memorex? Who cares? You get the message. Furthermore, you like it.

Then comes the product.

No need. You’ve already bought it.

He is a salesman, a businessman. He is Tom Iannacone.

Don’t be fooled by the title--athletic director of the University of San Diego. He is the CEO of Alcala Park athletics. And he means business.

Listen to what his constituents and employers have to say.

Hank Egan, basketball coach: “He’s a professional. He understands what you’re doing. He knows what you have to accomplish. His approach is businesslike, and this is a business. It is a way of advertising the university.”

Thomas Burke, vice president in charge of student affairs: “He has a very deliberate, measured style.”

John Cunningham, baseball coach: “Whenever I talk with Tom, I come away thinking positively.”

Michael Gilleran, West Coast Athletic Conference commissioner: “He’s very prepared. He’s a thinker. He thinks before he speaks.”

Brian Fogarty, football coach: “He’s all business and very good at it.”

Dan Yourg, Iannacone’s assistant athletic director: “I can’t keep up with him.”

Few can.

Nine days ago, the last of 5,865 students at USD finished final exams.

The first semester of the 1988-89 school year was complete. Soon the campus would empty, and the classrooms would remain dark until next year.

Students and teachers would have almost 6 weeks off to relax, enjoy, celebrate the holidays and ring in the new year.

But over in the northeast corner of the campus, Iannacone’s office remains open during the break, and the man who occupies it is working diligently.

There will be no vacation. He says he has too much work to do and claims too little time to do it.

The lights will burn bright and long, as they have all semester. The phone will still ring and be answered. In this modest office in the USD Sports Center, pencils and papers and typewriters and files will not be idle.

“I’ll probably take off (Dec.) 25th and watch some football on (Jan. 2),” Iannacone says with a smile. “But other than that, I have too much work to do.”

An Easterner experiencing his first “winter-less” Christmas season, he probably would not even notice the change if not for the absence of students outside his office window and door.

This week, Iannacone has worked in tranquility for the first time since he began his duties as athletic director Sept. 1.

For Iannacone (I-ANN-a-cone), it has been 4 wonderful months of orientation to the school, its students, faculty and administration, the community and Southern California.

While comprising budgets, establishing decorum and administering to daily crises, he mostly has spent his first semester acquainting himself with the university and its people.

He is eager, but cautious, about implementing his philosophies and aspirations when it comes to the university’s athletic department. But don’t expect to see hurricane-like changes in personnel, facilities or athletic teams. Iannacone is enough of a realist to know if something isn’t broken, don’t fix it.

Iannacone was not brought in as an emergency respirator. The athletic department was breathing fine--has been now for at least 9 years since the former athletic director, the Rev. Patrick Cahill, took the program in 1979-80 into NCAA Division I (except football, which remains Division III).

But Iannacone knows the department cannot stand on its reputation. It must progress. He understands business principles, and his principal business is athletics at USD.

When Iannacone arrived, the USD football team was well into its practice regimen, the season beginning in 10 days. The women’s volleyball team, men’s soccer team and men’s and women’s cross-country programs were under way.

Many of the other sports--which include men’s and women’s basketball, crew and tennis, men’s golf and baseball and women’s swimming and softball--were already in place.

While Iannacone would be overseeing athletics, most of the coaches, staff and student-athletes were prepared when he arrived. That suited Iannacone fine. It allowed him to get used to the position.

“Little by little, I’m getting the overall picture,” Iannacone said. “From there, I can identify needs, set goals and develop a plan. I’m still in that process. We’re making progress. But if you want to make something good, you need to have a good foundation.

“Everything starts with a philosophy. Everything you do is based on a philosophy. It gives you a reason for being and gives you direction to get there.”

That philosophy, for Iannacone and the university, begins with education. That’s what it’s all about. Athletics at USD are just one of many side aspects of the university. It is just one of the many ways that a student can express herself or showcase his talent.

USD doesn’t emphasize the win-at-all-cost mentality, just mentality. It is a demanding school with high entrance requirements, which sometimes makes it difficult to lure top recruits.

They also, by all accounts, run a clean program. You don’t hear or read about drug scandals, “hush funds” or Prop. 48s. Recruiting letters are typed on standard white paper, not minted on 1,000 green ones.

But that doesn’t mean they don’t strive for success. On the contrary, Iannacone says. “Our society is success-oriented. So is your work in the classroom. Athletically, you don’t get grades, you get wins or losses. There’s really no difference between athletics, academics and business. It’s the struggle that’s important.”

That is one basis of Iannacone’s philosophy. And within it, Iannacone is working to build the best athletic department he can.

“With the fact that I’m new, I’m going to have some new ideas,” he said. “But principles don’t change. Values don’t change. The key is not to be afraid of the unknown. There’s a lot of things I want to do here. It all regards upgrading everything.”

Starting with the renovation of existing offices and addition secretarial support, Iannacone then looks to upgrading the athletic facilities.

With the existing gym (originally constructed as an auditorium) in its third decade, he has a long-range dream of building a recreational center with adequate seating capability (the existing Sports Center seats up to 2,500 on bleacher-like benches).

“It will come,” he says, “The question is when.”

He says that budget and personnel improvements have either already been made or been planned.

Sound exhausting? “There’s never really a boring day,” he says. “Especially if you’re trying to make things happen. My biggest enemy is time. I need more hours, and I know where they are--they’re in the evenings and weekends.

“There are always unexpected things that occur. That’s when you have to put in the extra time. But every once in a while when you set one of those long-range goals and achieve it, it’s exciting.

“I work real hard and expect a lot of myself. I expect people to have a strong work ethic, to be loyal to the university, to be good representatives and to be good character people. If I could run the department on 4 hours a day, I’d be at the beach or playing golf.

“I do whatever it takes. I look for little things I can do to help a coach in his job.”

As in the men’s basketball team’s victory over New Mexico on Nov. 27. In “The Pit” at New Mexico, where it is custom for the home fans to stand and cheer until the other team scores, USD went scoreless for 4 1/2 minutes. All the while, New Mexico’s band was joining in the ritual; that is against NCAA rules. It was Iannacone who pointed that out to court officials, who promptly made it stop.

USD was trailing, 13-0, but rebounded for a 64-53 upset of the highly favored Lobos.

It is the daily association with the students that Iannacone misses. “I meet with the teams at least once a year and try to get to as many of their games as possible,” Iannacone said. “That’s the fun part of the job. But I tell them, ‘If you don’t see me around, it’s because what I’m supposed to be doing is being behind my desk.’

“I miss the day-to-day contact with the students. But I have the satisfaction of knowing that most of what I do is the basis for their being out there.”

According to John Cunningham, who has been at USD for 27 years, Iannacone is the school’s first businessman/athletic director since it opened its doors in 1949.

Others--Fon Johnson, Bob Sexton, Phil Woolpert, Cunningham, John Kramer and Thomas Burke--have performed the duties, but they did so because somebody had to, and they did it with limited experience.

In its infant stage, USD was a small Diocesan university with separate colleges for men and women. It competed in just five NCAA men’s sports--football, basketball, baseball, golf and tennis. Sailing and surfing were offered as club sports.

As USD grew in numbers and size and assumed its place in the community, so did the athletic department. Title IX of the Higher Education Acts of 1972 gave women’s athletics an equal place.

Today, the university is a private Catholic institution with highly regarded business and law schools. It has a comprehensive athletic department with 14 teams (seven men’s and seven women’s) competing in the West Coast Athletic Conference, plus a football team that plays an independent schedule.

The early ADs were coaches who served in dual roles. In 1973, Burke headed the department from the main campus.

Soon the job became too big, and Cahill was brought in to take the program into Division I.

Cahill served the position well for 9 years but stepped down during the summer to accept an associate pastorship at Guardian Angel Cathedral in Las Vegas.

A nationwide search for his successor yielded Iannacone, who had held the same position at St. Francis College in Loretto, Pa.

From 80 applicants, USD invited four to the campus.

“It was pretty much a unanimous choice,” Burke said. “First, he was the most seasoned. He had already been an AD at a university similar to USD. Secondly, he had all the other things you look for when you fill any position: integrity, knowledge, organizational skills, and so on.

“He has a vision about what athletics is and can become at USD. When you’re an institution like we are, athletics is one part of the whole university. It is not the part. Sometimes people think athletics is the university. It is vital, but its role is secondary to academics.

“Someone who would come to USD with that attitude would be quickly frustrated.”

Hired as an experienced athletic director, Iannacone will work and work as such. He will put in the extra hours. He will go the extra mile. And he will succeed in the eyes of others because he expects so much of himself.

Whether he succeeds in his own mind, only Iannacone will know, because he doesn’t pat himself on the back. But he is keen to a job well done, even his own.

At St. Francis, “Tom left a very big legacy,” said Kevin Southard, the school’s sports information director for the past 5 years.

“When he came here, we were the smallest Division I program in the nation with 1,100 students. We were on very shaky ground just coming off NCAA probation for not having enough sports competing in Division I. Tom came in and not only strengthened the existing sports but added three others.”

Southard said Iannacone was responsible for adding softball and men’s and woman’s soccer, building new soccer facilities, renovating the basketball facilities, increasing budgets and personnel and, most important, giving the athletic department stability and a future.

“He really put this place on a real solid foundation. He drew up a master plan that is still in use at the university.”

Iannacone found ways to make things work within budget and personnel constraints. He looked at the way other successful schools were doing things, researched every possible avenue and then sold his programs to university officials.

When he got to St. Francis, the football team had a part-time coach and no trainer. He convinced the university that a full-time coach with a trainer and better facilities would attract more awareness to the program, and more students--at $11,000 per student per year.

“He was the best budget manager I’ve had here,” said Jeffrey Quin, the vice president for student affairs and Iannacone’s immediate boss at St. Francis.

“He spends every penny you give him but not one more. He fights for everything and usually gets it. The amount of detail he put into his budgets made them very easy to work with.”

In addition, Southard said, “He pushed for the conference to get a full-time commissioner and commissioner’s office. At the time, the Eastern College Athletic Conference (now the Northeast Conference) was known as primarily a basketball conference. It was through Tom that the conference became a fully competitive athletic conference.”

On what San Diegans can expect, Southard replied: “He’s the most organized person I’ve ever met. No matter where he goes, whether it’s UCLA or Anchorage, Alaska, he’ll add a lot to any program.

“We were sorry to see him go, but we can’t compete with the sunshine.”

Having arrived in San Diego on Aug. 26, with his wife, Cynthia, and sons, Tom Jr. (20) and Eric (16) and daughter, Jennifer (17), he is just now getting “his feet on the ground.”

Last Saturday, the Iannacone family moved into their new house in Sabre Springs, a newly developed area between Interstate 15 and Poway, after renting in nearby Rancho Bernardo. Iannacone’s personal transition soon will be complete. His occupational transition, as promising as the first 4 months have been, may take longer.

He likes to look at the big picture--the long-range plans for USD sports. He knows what he wants, and believes he knows how to get there. Yet he knows he doesn’t know everything.

He says, “I’m a firm believer in: Before you know where you’re going, you have to know where you’ve been.”

Iannacone was born and raised in Norwalk, Conn.

As far as sports are concerned, he said, “I did everything. I always knew my life would be in athletics in some form or other. Eventually, I knew I would be on the administrative end of it.”

After high school, he earned a degree in physical education from the University of Connecticut in 1964. For 11 years, he taught high school physical education and coached football and track in Connecticut.

In 1974, he earned a master of science degree in physical education from Southern Connecticut State University, where he also served as the football team’s offensive backfield coach.

The following year, he became the offensive coordinator and coached the offensive backfield at Fordham, a private Jesuit school (approximately 14,000 students) in the Bronx borough of New York City.

The 1977 team set an existing school record by averaging 34 points a game. From 1977 to ‘84, Iannacone doubled as a coach and assistant athletic director.

In 1984, he had been married to Cynthia for 16 years and had three teen-agers in the household when he took the job at St. Francis. The move to central Pennsylvania was his first outside the extended metropolitan area around New York City. Four years later, the family was moving to San Diego.

“As I look back over things, I’m happy with the way things have progressed,” he said. “I had only been to San Diego once before for a convention. But I researched San Diego and USD. The people that make up the university are quality people. People are really the most important thing.

“There’s a strong interest in athletics and a commitment to athletics. Everything fit. I had some professional and personal goals. I thought it was a good move professionally and for the family.”