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LOGAN — In the middle of winter 2013, Troy’s men’s basketball team was playing in the annual tradition of the Gossner Foods Classic at Utah State.
John Hartwell was only a year into his job as the Trojans’ athletic director, but he took his family — including two young girls — to Logan, and they planned to visit Beaver Mountain and get familiar with the snowy weather during their five-day trip.
The first few days, the family was greeted by a snow-less, 55-degree Cache Valley landscape. Disappointed by the lack of a winter wonderland just days before Christmas, the Hartwells tried to make the most of their trip — and ended up seeing as much as 13 inches of snowfall in their final two days.
As John Hartwell was driving his family back to Salt Lake International Airport, his wife Heather turned to him and commented, seemingly out of nowhere, “That’s a neat place; I think I could live there.”
Less than three years later, those words proved prophetic.
Utah State University introduced John Hartwell as the Aggies’ next vice president and director of athletics Wednesday morning at the Wayne Estes Center to a crowd of assembled coaches, staff, alumni and media members, becoming the 11th athletic director in Utah State history and succeeding the markedly successful Scott Barnes.
Hartwell will officially begin his tenure in mid-July, after Barnes took the same position at Pittsburgh. Jana Doggett, Utah State’s associate athletics director and senior woman’s administrator, was recently appointed interim athletics director.
1955-1963: H.B. Hunsaker
1964-1972: Frank Williams
1973-1982: Ladell Andersen
1983-1984: Dave Kragthorpe
1985-1992: Rod Tueller
1993-1997: Chuck Bell
1998: Bruce Van De Velde
1999-2003: Rance Pugmire
2004-2007: Randy Spetman
2008-2014: Scott Barnes
2015-Present: John Hartwell
“We weren’t looking to fix something,” Utah State President Stan Albrecht said. “We were looking for someone to come in and help take us to the next level.”
In the first 30 days, Hartwell, a 1987 graduate and former basketball player at The Citadel with a long-running business career beginning at Ernst & Young, plans to immediately complete a business-oriented analysis of the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats for every Aggie sports team to help it win a Mountain West Conference championship.
“We are not just going to be competitive in our league; we want to operate at the very top of our league,” Hartwell said. “If we operate at the top of the Mountain West, we are going to have success on a national level.”
Hartwell took a 50 percent pay cut when he left private business in Charleston, South Carolina, to become the assistant athletic director at Georgia State in 1997. But the path has paid off, and nowhere more than in his nearly three-year tenure at Troy.
He spearheaded several facility upgrades to the South Alabama school with an enrollment of 7,000 students in the shadow of SEC powers Auburn and Alabama. His tenure was marked by the addition of a $2.1 million renovation of the football stadium, a $3 million upgrade of the softball complex and the addition of a new practice facility that paved the way to a Sun Belt women’s golf championship in 2014-15.
Hartwell knows the advantages that upgraded and well-run facilities can bring to a university’s athletics program — in recruiting, coaching and overall campus demeanor. He also knows that those upgrades take money, and part of his job includes finding new ways to acquire the resources for those facilities.
“Big-time college athletics is an arms race,” he said. “But we have to be smart about that arms race. We have to have a long-term vision to stay on the cutting edge from a recruiting standpoint … and make sure that our facilities have the ‘wow’ factor.”
Facility improvements are just part of the big-time college sports arms race, though. Recruits also want to play for winning programs and in meaningful games — Hartwell also knows that “winning puts butts in seats,” and is the best key for ticket-sale success as well. During Hartwell’s time at Troy, he brokered home-and-home scheduling agreements with Duke and North Carolina State of the Atlantic Coast Conference.
We are not just going to be competitive in our league; we want to operate at the very top of our league. If we operate at the top of the Mountain West, we are going to have success on a national level.
–John Hartwell, new Utah State athletic director
“John is obviously a veteran leader in college athletics, and he will bring a tremendous passion and dedication to the Utah State and the Logan communities,” said Duke football coach David Cutcliffe, who also worked with Hartwell at Ole Miss. “I’m certain John will embrace the challenges ahead with a level of commitment that Aggie fans will be proud of, and we wish him all the best in his new endeavor.”
Even in Hartwell’s time within the Ole Miss athletic department, the Rebels operated in the bottom half of SEC budgets. Still, his nine-season term in Oxford, Mississippi, saw him grow the annual athletic budget from $26 million in 2003 to $47 million in 2012. He pulled in additional revenue by increasing contracts with Nike, LIDS, Centerplate concessions, C Spire wireless and Daktronics — and he also chaired the search committee that hired men’s basketball coach Andy Kennedy.
The job led to his first full-time athletic director role when he moved to Troy, bringing winning programs back to the small South Alabama campus. Sun Belt Commissioner Karl Benson, who formerly led the Western Athletic Conference before Utah State left for the MWC, said Hartwell is “a very similar person” to outgoing athletic director Barnes.
“When Scott walked into a room he commanded a presence and when John walks into a room, he commands that same presence,” Benson said in a statement. “John is an excellent administrator and fundraiser and is a perfect fit for Utah State.”
Looking back at that December 2013 drive from Logan to Salt Lake City, Hartwell couldn’t help but glance at his wife and two daughters, both adorned in Utah State replica cheerleading outfits. His wife’s words in the car that winter day led to a previously unimaginable road that will take him from the heat and humidity of the South to the mountains of the Intermountain West.
And he couldn’t be more eager to get to work.
“She was excited about the opportunity, and so is our entire family,” Hartwell said. “We’re certainly excited to be here.”
