NKU Pres. Dr. Cady Short-Thompson prides herself on this one special skill: “Hiring well,” she was saying Thursday afternoon at Truist Arena for the introduction of the University’s new VP/Director of Athletics. “It’s my super-power.”
Mike Odom, the new guy in charge of Norse athletics, was a bit stunned by Short-Thompson’s effusive introduction. “A communicator, a revenue generator and a strategic thinker,” the President said of Odom’s record-breaking 24-year career in college athletics at North Carolina State, Wake Forest, Creighton and the American Baseball Coaches Association.
“Record-breaking” in terms that should play well at NKU, where the commuter students all seem to have jobs and plenty of other things to do off campus besides going to games. And the fans here have the Bengals and the Reds and the Bearcats and the Musketeers to root for.
Odom, in charge of external operations at Jesuit school Creighton in Omaha, produced the school’s first season ticket sellouts in men’s basketball and volleyball and a ranking in the national top 10 in men’s basketball and men’s and women’s soccer.
For an NKU program where men’s basketball averaged just 2,099 a game and the women 1,481 in 9,000-seat Truist this past season, no wonder they were giddy about the new hire. The comparable numbers at Creighton were 17,366 for the men and nearly 2,500 for the women.
“It feels great to have others so excited about me,” Odom said of the welcoming. As a kid growing up a college fan in Raleigh, N.C., all he ever wanted to do was what his neighbor down the street did: be an assistant AD at Odom’s NC State alma mater. Odom would start that journey as basketball manager for the Wolfpack.
“College basketball is in my blood,” he says of the kid “growing up in the days of Jimmy Valvano at NC State with Dean Smith at North Carolina and Coach K just getting started at Duke.”
The key corollary for Odom’s communication skills, the NKU president said was this: his ability “to build connections to the broader community.”
That’s something that simply hasn’t happened here recently. NKU has just not been connected – to the fans or the high school community that produces startlingly few athletes for the Norse.
“One conversation at a time,” Odom says. That’s how you do it. “It isn’t built through speeches but through everything we do every day . . . when everyone feels connected to Norse athletics, we all win.”
“And we want to win,” Odom makes clear. There is that.
His 1-2-3 goals in order: Win championships, be great in the classroom (every athlete with a degree) and be a part of the community.”
But can Odom accomplish his “Dream big” mantra the way they did it in his 14 years at Wake Forest, the smallest Power 4 school in the nation with baseball and golf programs among the very best in the nation and football and basketball programs that punch way above their weight as the most overachieving programs in the nation.
“At Wake Forest, our students were more likely to be in the library than at the basketball game,” Odom says of the challenge there. “It takes time. And I’ll have to go into my bag of tricks.”
Membership in the Horizon League, a collection of mid-major big city schools not exactly natural rivals, makes that even more of a challenge for an NKU program that ranks 177th out of the 232 programs surveyed in the USA Today study of athletic revenues and expenditures with a budget of $16,467,014 for the 2024 year. Only 24 programs receive budget allotments higher than the 82.14 percent NKU athletics gets from the school with relatively little community support in terms of ticket sales, sponsorships and gifts.
“We want people to look at NKU as the benchmark in the Horizon League,” Odom says, although first, NKU will have to catch up with at least six Horizon members who get more financial support from their communities than NKU does.
As for the thought that talented people come to mid-level NKU to prepare for the next step up in their careers, Odom says that moving his family – wife Kasey and sons Max (8) and Tate (6) and daughter Remi (4) is a big enough deal to do just this once. Max will be coming with him to NKU games, Odom says, while Tate is a rising left-handed pitcher and Remi simply “the princess.”
Odom said he liked the look of Northern Kentucky – the school and the community – on a rain day during the Big East baseball tournament in Mason, Ohio, when he came down for a drive around to take a look.
As a place to live and a school he can help move up with the president’s leadership, “Northern Kentucky screams that,” Odom says when asked “Why NKU?”.
Which is why the folks were smiling Thursday in Highland Heights.
Contact Dan Weber at dweber3440@aol.com. Follow him on X @dweber3440.