This summer, UTSA Athletics will be profiling its numerous areas to provide an inside look into how each unit serves Roadrunners’ student-athletes.
In this edition, we sat down with Jim Campbell, Senior Associate Athletics Director for Compliance, to discuss the Compliance unit."
Q: How does your department service UTSA student-athletes?
Jim Campbell: “We educate them on all things related to the NCAA. We help them maintain their eligibility so they’re allowed to play every single season that they can. And we protect them from any outside noise or pressures.”
Q: How many members do you have on your team and what roles do they serve?
Jim Campbell: “We have three members total. The majority of my work is more of the big-picture things like waivers and organizational pieces of the department. We have Sailor Sinclair, our Director of Compliance, who is my right-hand man. He takes care of all of our initial eligibility evaluations for incoming students. He has created a lot of forms and processes since he’s gotten here to help things move a lot smoother. He is great at getting rule interpretations to our coaches whenever they have any questions. Katie Fleming is our Compliance Coordinator. She assists with a lot of the day-to-day things. She helps me with processing scholarship agreements, processing all of our eligibility rosters and our squad lists. All of the boxes we need to check and have things signed off on, Katie is a big part of that.”
Q: What makes UTSA a leader in your area?
Jim Campbell: “I haven’t yet been here for a year, but we are working towards making everything move smoothly within the department. One of my big goals is to make sure that coaches aren’t worried about the ticky-tacky things outside of their sport. I want them to be able to focus on recruiting and coaching. I don’t know that we’re a leader quite yet, but I think that after a full year where we have things organizationally where I want them to be and where processes are streamlined, I think that we’ll be on the forefront of serving our coaches and serving our students, and making sure that they can focus on their day-to-day and not have to worry about, for example, a scholarship payment. My goal is to make sure that they don’t have to worry about those things.”
Q: Why did you decide to come to UTSA?
Jim Campbell: “I was at a point in my career where it’s been a while since I had been in an athletics department that was this big with this many student-athletes, as well as football. I was ready to take that jump up to the next level of athletics department with football and having about 150 more student-athletes than I had at my previous school, as well as probably twice as many coaches and support staff that I can help educate. I want to help build a program in compliance that can support all those entities.”
Q: What are the most rewarding aspects of your role?
Jim Campbell: “In our role in compliance, I think a lot of people like to look at us as the fun police. I like breaking that stigma and making people bring their guard down, trust compliance and see us as a resource. One of the really rewarding parts is whenever you’re working with a student on a waiver to get a season back or to extend their clock so they can play another year, working with students and seeing their happiness and thankfulness when you’re doing that type of work for them is super rewarding. In our field, we get to walk out and see those students be able to participate after we get to work with them. That’s a lot of fun for me.”
Q: What is something about your department that people may not know?
Jim Campbell: “We do a lot more good than we do bad. I think a lot of people highlight the rejected waivers or the violations that are submitted when that’s probably 15 percent of our job. The other 85 percent is being extremely helpful, solving problems for coaches and making sure everything moves smoothly. I think a lot of people get lost in the waiver and violation part of our job and forget all of the other things that we can do.”
Q: What type of educational background is required for your role?
Jim Campbell: “It depends. In our field, there’s two different types of people that it seems to be. You either have a sport management master’s degree or you’ve gone to law school. That seems to be the two paths in the field. Our office has a bit of both, which I think brings different experiences and different perspectives and is extremely helpful. I think a combination of the two is really helpful for a compliance department.”
Q: Why did you decide to follow a career path in athletics compliance?
Jim Campbell: “When I was finishing my senior year at Alabama, I almost went to a different school for graduate school, but my sport management professor, who was overseeing the graduate program told me that he could get me whatever internship I wanted. He sent me the athletics staff directory, told me to study it, figure out what these departments do and make my decision from there. I dwindled it down to compliance and development. Those are two completely different fields. I grew up loving college athletics and the amateur aspect and the integrity of the sport. I saw compliance as a way that I could work with that and continue adding to that in my field. I learned a lot about the behind-the-scenes things. When I was a kid and they would say somebody got a medical waiver, I would have no idea what that was. I got to learn a lot about the things they talk about on TV that I didn’t know and that was exciting to me when I was a grad assistant. It’s been a fun career so far.”
Q: What advice do you have for students or student-athletes who may be interested in going into your profession?
Jim Campbell: “Get experience as soon as you possibly can. Do not be afraid to email people and call people and get informational interviews to figure out if this is something that you want to do. Not just in my field, but in athletics in general, it takes a lot to be in this world. Coaches and student-athletes are demanding. You’re going to work on weekends, you’re going to work nights. You’re going to have some fires you need to put out in the middle of a Saturday. Just doing a lot of informational interviews is beneficial to understand what you’re getting yourself into, as well as experience. Before I got my first job, I emailed every single NCAA Division I compliance office and maybe got a 15 percent response rate, but got a lot of information from that and that’s how I got my first job.”