New FGCU athletic director Colin Hargis ready to build on department’s success

Florida Gulf Coast University athletic director Colin Hargis recalled the moment when he got the call that he got the opportunity.

“It was pretty special for me,” Hargis said. “I got a text ahead of time saying you’re going to get a call from a 239 number. You better answer it. And I was sitting in a meeting with my athletic director Boo Corrigan and I just looked up at him and said hey I’m about to get a call and be offered the FGCU opportunity. And I’ll be transparent with you I stood up hugged him cried a little bit.”

Hargis comes to FGCU from North Carolina State University, where he was the Senior Associate Athletic Director for External Relations. Part of his responsibilities included Name, Image and Likeness, or NIL.

“When it’s done the right way, I’m a huge advocate for it,” Hargis explained. “The way I view the NIL you know our student athletes have the opportunity to be their own LLC. We can enable and empower our 18-22 year old student athletes to truly understand branding and marketing and what it means to position yourself from a business practice while they’re in college.”

Hargis said NIL will be a major player for the department.

“It definitely is a focus,” Hargis said. “It has to be a focus. It’s becoming more and more a part of our daily operations as an athletics department and as a university. So that’ll be a key priority for myself as well as our staff and department is to truly understand how can we maximize NIL here.”

When asked about his early impressions of the overall state of the athletic department, Hargis responded, “there’s great people here. I mean to me I think that’s what I’m most excited about.”

He went on to add, “It’s energizing for me and understanding what’s taken place here. There’s a rich history. A short but rich history. There’s been success so I’m excited to learn about that. Understand what’s going well and what can we build on and continue to grow and expand that success.”

Hargis was also the supervisor for the men’s basketball program at NC State that made it to the Final Four.

When asked about what he wants to see from the program at FGCU, Hargis answered, “I think it has to do again you talk about the people. Right? Are we bringing in the right student athletes. I’ve had the opportunity to talk with Coach Chambers a couple times. I haven’t had a lot of time yet. Right? It’s been 48 hours of being down here. I’m excited to work with him and our coaching staff. Again, when you talk about that short but rich history of FGCU athletics and programs that can win here. There’s the ability. There’s a blueprint to winning at FGCU athletics and our basketball teams to be successful here. I think moving forward it’s just a different age of college athletics and it’s understanding the transfer portal. And understanding you may not have a student athlete for four years anymore.”

Hargis also addressed the future of the department in the Atlantic Sun.

“We’re proud members of the ASUN,” Hargis said. “When I look at our conference and I look at the opportunities our programs have here to compete for championships, to position ourselves as champions and to be in that top tier, that’s a great place to be. Because when you win the ASUN, you have the opportunities to go on the national stage and compete in the postseason in those NCAA Tournaments. That’s a huge opportunity. That’s what we get to do to amplify that brand. That’s how we grow FGCU athletics.”

Now, Hargis was also asked about the possibility of adding football to FGCU.

He answered, “I think there’s a huge opportunity to being a non football D-1 institution right? When you look at the landscape of division one college athletics right now, two thirds of the membership is non-FBS. And to me that’s a huge opportunity because there’s 200 schools that aren’t chasing that CFP model right. And I think that’s going to be really hard for a lot of programs out there who do have football. Because as the CFP continues to evolve and the national championship structure changes for FBS, it’s going to become more and more challenging to keep up with that. That’s where I look at our department here and I look at FGCU athletics and say there’s a huge opportunity. Because right now we don’t have that care. We’re not trying to chase that football you know care. We get to focus on all 300 student athletes right. We get to focus on our basketballs, our baseball softballs right all 15 of our sports here. And that to me is a huge opportunity.”

Watch the full interview with Hargis below: