Mike Thomas, Cleveland State athletic director.Elton Alexander, The Plain Dealer
CLEVELAND, Ohio — Cleveland State’s new athletic director, Mike Thomas, is ready for a fresh start as head man for the Vikings.
He returns to familiar Northeast Ohio territory where his AD career began with the Akron Zips in 2000. He then was AD at Cincinnati (2005-2011) and Illinois (2011-2015).
Thomas is comfortable and has been successful in an urban setting with past AD jobs with Akron and Cincinnati, before a troubled tenure at Illinois. He inherits a CSU program with 17 sports, including the flagship program of college basketball.
“I’m excited about coming back to Northeast Ohio,” Thomas said during an afternoon telephone interview about his first order of business on March 1 when he officially gets on board.
“I think the general answer at this point is, we need to continue to build the program. For me it’s a listening and learning tour. Get in here and get my arms around a number of things, and get grounded.”
It’s pretty clear CSU President Ronald Berkman is locked in on downsizing the flagship sport, basketball, in terms of getting rid of the 13,600-seat Wolstein Center for something smaller to make room for more dorms or classrooms. But Thomas said time will tell what his first real challenge as the next CSU AD will be.
“If you ask me this question a few months down the road I’ll have a better answer for you,” Thomas said. “But as you know the things that get a lot of play are the Wolstein Center and what’s going to happen there. I know they’re going through a process, and talking to outside firms about what some of those options might look like.
“So that’s important, not just for basketball, but the university and the community. I think for me, it’s always important to get your bearings on the different sport programs and different units to see how they function. But at the end of the day, it’s about winning championships.”
CSU basketball has generally been a success under coach Gary Waters, going to the NCAA Tournament and being a consistent Horizon League contender. But a string of transfer defections two seasons ago gutted what was expected to be another strong Horizon League title contender.
New NCAA rules allow rising seniors who have already graduated the opportunity to transfer to other programs. That happened to CSU when senior guard Trey Lewis and senior center Anton Grady departed following the 2015 season. The Vikings, currently 7-17, 3-9, have been trying to recover the last 15 months ever since.
Transition, historically has been one of Thomas’ proven strengths. At Illinois, he raised $165 million in donations over four years, doubling the previous five-year average and achieving the highest annual total in school history.
Thomas also launched and completed a $170 million arena renovation of the State Farm Center and negotiated multi-year rights deals with Nike and Learfield Sports.
Thomas was AD at Cincinnati, 2005-2011, where he transitioned the program into the Big East Conference and Bowl Championship Series competition.
When it comes to hiring coaches, where many fans truly judge the success or failure of an AD, Thomas has had somewhat of a mixed bag.
He has had several high profile coaches over the years beginning with Keith Dambrot (basketball) and JD Brookhart (football) while the AD at Akron; Brian Kelly (football) and Mick Cronin (basketball) at Cincinnati then Beckman (football) and John Groce (basketball) at Illinois.
The most prominent of those have been Dambrot and Cronin who remain successful and winning head coaches at their same posts today. The most troubled were Brookhart, coming behind the successful Lee Owens, and Beckman.
Both Brookhart and Beckman were aligned with off-the-field issues by numerous players in their programs and were ultimately fired. Kelly was a success at Cincinnati but has moved on to Notre Dame where he has struggled, and Groce is currently under fire at Illinois.
Our editors found this article on this site using Google and regenerated it for our readers.
