WILMINGTON, N.C. (WECT) – It would not be an understatement to say Mike Oblinger’s emotions were sky-high when he found out he would be offered the job as UNCW’s Athletic Director. Oblinger was, in fact, in the sky when he received a message that Chancellor Aswani Volety wanted to hire him away from the University of Connecticut, where he worked for six years and held the job as Deputy Director of Athletics – External Relations.

“I was on a flight from Connecticut to Florida, and as I was getting on the flight, they said, ‘Hey, heads up, you might be getting a call from the chancellor’,” said Oblinger, who was among 68 candidates for the job, according to the chancellor. “I said, ‘Well, the next, you know, two plus hours I’m going to be on an airplane, I’ll see if I have Wi-Fi connectivity’. So ultimately, I learned that they were going to offer me this job 30,000 feet in the air, via text. I probably looked a little crazy on the plane as I’m celebrating, you know what I mean? Then Aswani and I talked when I got on the ground.”

The 42-year-old married father of two took over for the retiring Jimmy Bass on April 1, 2023, and made an immediate impact on the athletic department. On April 13, Oblinger announced the hiring of Nicole Woods as the new Head Coach of the Women’s Basketball program. The next day, the school announced a contract extension for Takayo Siddle, which will keep Men’s Head Basketball Coach at the university through the 2027-28 season. Five months later, news came that UNCW had extended Head Baseball Coach Randy Hood’s contract through the 2028 campaign. Three of the school’s higher-profile sports had their leaders locked-in for several years.

“All the things that I have asked her to do in year one, she’s done,” Oblinger said about Woods, who is heading into her second season leading the Lady Seahawks. “We needed to stabilize the program. We needed to bring some values in there, some core beliefs. She could have been a head coach prior to me offering her the job. She was really picky and choosy to which job she was going to jump into. That resonated with me because I felt that way leaving UConn. I felt that way leaving LSU. We weren’t going to take the next job. We were going to pick and choose that right next opportunity. She’s done everything right.”

“Those two people are critical to what we’ve got going on here, Coach Siddle and Coach Hood,” he added. “Our successes in both of those programs are a direct result of their leadership. So, making sure they felt wanted, making sure they felt secure, making sure that they know what they do for us is valued, is very, very important.”

Oblinger took a close look at the UNCW experience even before he interviewed for the job. He came to Wilmington a day early for the interview, and without informing any university leaders, Oblinger went to a men’s basketball game at Trask Coliseum when the Seahawks hosted North Carolina A&T. The candidate’s initiative impressed Chancellor Volety.

“He had concrete ideas as to how to build on the excellence of athletics that we currently have, and how can we increase revenue in terms of concrete examples as to what we did,” Volety said at the news conference introducing Oblinger as the school’s new AD. “He [was] giving ideas about what we are doing well, and what could we do better, and how that will translate to bring more people on the campus.”

“I kind of had to dress as a civilian, had a hat on, kind of just incognito, kind of moving around a little bit through Trask,” Oblinger said. “One, I wanted to experience it. But two, I knew if I was going to get hired, I wouldn’t be able to have a game day experience until the following late October, early November. So again, I wanted to experience it, because if we were going to make some tweaks and some changes, I wanted to spend all summer doing that versus doing it on the fly when we were getting going. We were doing a lot of things right, that’s for sure.”

The college athletics landscape has changed since Oblinger played basketball at Monmouth College in Illinois. As he progressed through his professional career with jobs at Ohio State (Athletics Development Associate), Memphis (Director of Tiger Scholarship Fund), Nevada (Director of Annual Giving), Louisiana State University (Director of Major Gifts & Annual Fund) and UConn, major college conferences were realigning, student-athletes started to be paid through the Name, Image and Likeness rules, and the transfer portal gave players the chance to change colleges without losing eligibility.

“When I got into this business, we were talking about donations, people buying tickets, people sponsoring, and those are still much part of the equation for us,” Oblinger said. “But now, how do we provide even more benefits to student athletes? NIL, you talk about the transfer portal. I think for us, the transfer portal is an additive thing. For us, we’re highly attractive as it relates to recruiting, and so I think we’ve done very well in the portal. Our coaches that have leaned in are seeing success. You know traditional people, when they think about the amateur model, when they think about college sports and someone being here four to five years, unfortunately that’s not the case anymore. But ultimately for us we need to lean into it.”

A big accomplishment for Oblinger, Siddle and the men’s basketball program has a record 18 home games in the upcoming 2024-25 season. UNCW will also host a Thanksgiving holiday tournament that will bring Sam Houston State, Colgate and Appalachian State to Trask Coliseum. All four teams won more than 20 games last season and will provide local fans with high-quality basketball.

UNCW’s Board of Trustees recently approved the 2024 Master Plan, which includes more than 30 projects that will help guide the future of the university and the student experience. One of the larger projects included in the plan is a new arena on campus, which current plans have going up next to Trask Coliseum. While realizing there is a want to improve some of the athletic facilities on the campus, Oblinger and his team have worked on the planning and strategizing on what those improvements would look like, and how much it would cost.

“That is something that we’re working on every single day,” Oblinger says about planning for the future. “But in the meantime, we’re working on providing as much value as we possibly can. What I mean by that is, we’re not the most important thing here at UNCW. I know that. We are an academic institution. But we’re the front porch, and really a way for us to engage the community, to help recruit students, for people to understand what it’s like to be involved with UNCW from a branding standpoint, from an enrollment standpoint. We play a huge role in all that, and that’s something that I take a lot of pride in. We are the front porch. I certainly understand that. But we have a responsibility to make sure that the front porch is clean, the front porch is painted, the front porch is inviting. Those are all things that we take very, very seriously. Those are things that we talk about every single day.”

I hope you enjoy my conversation with Mike Oblinger as much as I did. You can find more information about tickets to UNCW athletic events by clicking here.

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