Today, I had the pleasure of speaking with Jacob Gahart who is a former college athlete and current facilities manager at the University of Arizona. Speaking with Mr. Gahart shows just how important it is for a positive culture to be created not only in the locker room but among all staff members in order to maintain success amongst sports programs. He has a unique perspective as he has seen college athletics from the scope of an athlete and that of an employee.

Lots of Moving Parts

With many of the different programs being located on different parts of the campus and some even being off-campus, Jacob said that it is hard to create a collaborative and cohesive environment. The HR department within Arizona Athletics hosted various activities such as pickup sports games to bring together coaches and staff members from the different programs. Jacob said that these have been discontinued since the COVID-19 pandemic and hopes they are brought back to “try and get back to [the] togetherness” described above.

Jacob's main role within Arizona Athletics is setting and tearing down any of the home games or events on campus. On top of that, he stated that he also had to take care of all of the “handyman duties,” which he described as taking care of renovations to not only athletic facilities but also coaches and staff members' offices.

Related: Rate the University of Arizona

Jacob said that as of right now, there are two big projects taking place on the University of Arizona campus. The first being a new turf field for the Arizona football stadium. On top of that, Arizona football is getting a new locker room in their stadium. The other main improvements come for Arizona baseball where there will be major renovations to the athletic training room, the arm care room, the equipment manager's room, and to the video and film room.

Power Five Facilities

When asked how do the facilities at the University of Arizona compare to those at Ripon College, where Jacob previously worked, he answered by comparing the football field of Ripon College to that of a “high school field” and even went on to say that it was shared by the neighboring high school. Although Arizona is miles ahead of Ripon College, he said that there is a lot of work to be done before it comes close to the new Milwaukee multi-purpose arena where he was a part of the team to open that arena. Although there have been recent renovations, Jacob said that “updates need to continue to happen” so that Arizona's basketball arena can keep pace with the facilities of its PAC-12 counterparts.

There are plenty of changes within these programs, as the University of Arizona just hired both first year men's football and men's basketball coaches, which Jacob said is “pretty rare in Division I.” He added that the two coaches have pretty “stark” differences. Coach Jed Fisch of Arizona football is very active on social media compared to basketball coach Tommy Lloyd who has little to no social media presence. With Tommy Lloyd winning PAC-12 coach of the year, his tactics are obviously working and Jed Fisch is moving the football program in the right direction with a high caliber recruiting class.

Related: Top 10 Division l Athletic Facilities

NIL and Sports Business

Speaking on NIL, Jacob said that it is key for college athletes to understand sports business. A big part of this is “Understand[ing] your own value and how to maximize [it].” He said that he is hoping that college sports programs across the country will start to create resources for their student-athletes to help them understand the business side of the sports that they are playing. He said that the business aspect of a sports team is “one of the necessary evils” to maintain functionality and success.

Related: Rate your Coaches, Facilities, and Campus Visits

Overall, Jacob Gahart gave a holistic view of collegiate athletics and showed that every aspect of a sports team is important. There is always room for sports teams and programs to improve and with hard work and the promotion of a positive culture big strides will be made.

Image Credit: Resilience Developers

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* Originally published on September 28, 2022, by Royce Linder