Alumni Magazine - Summer 2008 - (Page 41) INTERVIEW Dan Radakovich: Tech’s Goaltender By Kimberly Link-Wills What question were you asked most frequently by alumni during the Coaches Caravan stops? Beating Georgia in football was a big question. They asked how you’re going to beat Georgia? Since taking the job of director of athletics in the spring of 2006, Dan Radakovich has quarterbacked a program designed to help players and fans achieve their goals of winning seasons and success on and off the playing fields and courts. He came to Tech from Louisiana State University, where he was the senior associate athletics director for five years. He also served sports office stints at American University in Washington, D.C., the University of South Carolina, Long Beach State and the University of Miami, where he received an MBA. He was a football letterman at Indiana University of Pennsylvania, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in finance. He and his wife, Marcie, have two sons, Christian, who will be a Tech freshman this fall, and Grant, a high school freshman. This spring Radakovich led a five-stop Coaches Caravan with head football coach Paul Johnson, men’s basketball coach Paul Hewitt and women’s basketball coach MaChelle Joseph to meet with fans and alumni throughout Georgia. No, they asked when. What was your answer? You didn’t promise to beat Georgia this season? We can’t do that. The ball bounces in funny ways, but we certainly feel very, very good about Coach Johnson. able for the things that are necessary to have a winning football program. I think he’s done a lot to pull together a good base that will allow us to be successful. Soon. How have alumni responded to the hiring of Paul Johnson as head football coach? There were a lot of folks who had followed his career for a long time because he had been here in the state at Georgia Southern. He was very well known and I think he’s gotten a tremendous reception from all of the people we have put him in contact with. He’s a very down-toearth guy. He’s asked our team and our staff to become very account- How do you deal with all the “advice” you get from Tech fans? I’m sure you get a lot. Oh, we do, absolutely. We get a lot of advice. It’s not my program, it’s not their program, it’s our program. We want to make sure we’re listening to the things that are important to our fans. It’s good to be able to understand what they’re thinking and sometimes it gives you a different perspective as you go about making certain decisions. We want to be able to respond to the things that our fans find are important, whether it’s in the football stadium, parking issues, customer service issues. We have to always remember that we’re here for the student athletes, the people who are competing right now are very important and how we can get others to come here and cast their lot with Georgia Tech. The environment in which we compete for student athletes is incredibly competitive because there are a lot of good schools out there and student athletes make their decisions about where they go to school for a myriad of different reasons. We want to make sure we put ourselves in the best light so we can get the >>> Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine • Summer 2008 41
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