Gil Swalls Brings Fresh Ideas, Sparticus, to UT Athletics

If you’ve seen the Athletic Marketing golf cart driving around drawing attention to upcoming athletic events, attended Jersey Shore night at the basketball game versus USF or you are familiar with the University of Tampa’s mascot, Spartacus, then you have seen some of the things that Gil Swalls oversees.

Swalls is the Associate Athletic Director/Marketing. He has two main responsibilities: generating revenue and attendance. Regarding revenue generation, Swalls works to secure sponsorships and cut costs for the Athletics Department.

As for attendance, Swalls and his team of 24 students work to promote the games and provide in-game entertainment to add to the game experience. “The thing about sports as a product is it’s real unpredictable and you can’t always promise a successful day,” Swalls said. “You don’t know if the team’s going to win or if the team’s going to play an exciting game from day-to-day. We try to keep people interested.”

Swalls’ crew of students enjoy their role in athletic marketing. For them, it’s not just a job, but a chance to learn from Swalls’ vast experience. “Gil is one of the best bosses I have ever encountered,” said Melissa Heaton. “He teaches us many different things day in and day out, and I am really proud to be one of his staff members. He is a great role model.”

While Swalls has recruited many sports management and marketing students to gain hands-on experience, he’s also recruited some students that volunteer for fun, but are still learning valuable skills.
“Gil is so passionate about his job and about students getting involved with athletics,” Kelsea Roccapriore added. “As a pre-nursing student I knew very little about sports or marketing. In a little more than a semester, I have transformed from a shy girl who kept her thoughts to herself to a confident and loud all-around UT sports fan.”

“I’m not even a sports major, but Gil has been my teacher for four years now and I’ve learned so much from him about marketing, sports and even life,” said Amber Molidor, president of Athletic Marketing.
Molidor also elaborated on a side of Swalls that maybe not everyone sees, since he’s generally in business mode. “Gil is our Michael Scott from ‘The Office’- he’s a laugh on those chaotic Mondays, he’s the worst Pictionary player ever, he’s got the best candy in his office (Werthers Caramels) and he’s the most genuine, kind-hearted person I know.”

Despite the passionate crew whose mission is attracting students to sporting events, one complaint that Swalls still often hears is that the sporting events attract poor attendance. Swalls has a lot of answers to that.  “The nature of Division II is we’re not out there trying to make big money off our teams, so we don’t position ourselves in a situation where we’re playing games that draw a lot of fans,” Swalls said. “We do that on purpose. This school does not want sports dominating the image of the school. It’s not like we’re in the SEC, where pretty much every alumnus is thinking about their sports team. We don’t have that philosophy here.”

Plus, as he points out, every team in the Tampa area has their share of attendance woes. “Look at USF; they have access to 35,000 students and x number of alumni and yet their football team doesn’t sell out Raymond James Stadium—it’s not even half full,” Swalls said. “If you look at all the other entities, the Bucs lead the NFL in blacked out games because they can’t sell out. The Rays keep threatening to move. The Lightning spent $40 million renovating their building to try to get more tickets sold. USF, they work as hard as anybody and yet they don’t even know where the Big East Conference is going to be next year because they keep losing all their marquee teams. We’re all struggling for attendance.”

Another competition that athletics has is classes.
“Because of our population and the number of classrooms we have available, 75 percent of our students go to at least one full night class a week. “If you come to a game at a 7 start time, sometimes it looks almost empty. By 8:30, I got a pretty nice crowd because they all come in after class.”

While there are many obstacles to attracting a full house, Swalls believes that when you consider all those aspects, the attendance is actually not too shabby. However, they can always do better and he has a message to students.
“I’d like students to look at it from another perspective. They’re looking at it from I either want it to be a lot of fun or I don’t want to go. But I’d like them to look at it as those are my classmates or my friends or people I care about, so I’m going to go support them. I want to encourage people to come to more things and then we’ll have school spirit.”

April Weiner can be reached at april.weiner@spartans.ut.edu.