Lee De Leon joined the Middle Tennessee athletic department in November as Deputy Athletic Director for External Operations. With stops at Houston, New Mexico, Arizona, Abilene Christian, Purdue, and Louisiana-Lafeyette, De Leon brings experience and fundraising firepower to the Middle Tennessee athletic department.

In his new role at Middle Tennessee, Lee De Leon will be tasked with raising money for the Build Blue Now campaign and growing the Blue Raider community.

GoMiddle recently spoke with Lee about his work in college athletics and his work at Middle Tennessee. Here's what he had to say!

It was a great time to be a Rajun Cajun and we had lots of success, but I felt a little limited in my scope. I was the deputy athletic director for fundraising there and all I did all day, every day was try to raise money for the Rajun Cajuns. While I enjoy it, it’s a passion of mine, and I think I’m okay at it, I felt like I could add a little more value and I was hoping to make a broader impact on the athletic department outside of just raising money.

When Chris and I connected about this position, it was definitely leading the fundraising efforts, but also marketing, ticket sales, sponsorships, licensing, merchandise, and all the revenue generating opportunities that an athletic department has. This was extremely appealing to me in that regard.

At Louisiana, I oversaw men’s golf program. Here (at Middle Tennessee), I get to oversee baseball, men’s golf, women’s golf, men’s tennis, and women’s tennis. Getting to add more supervision and have a broader impact were appealing to me.

I don’t want to be the AD right now. I was blessed to be the AD when I was 33 years old and I had no idea I was doing. I was flying by the seat of my pants and figuring out as I went. I made a lot of mistakes and had a lot of fun. When I left that job for Purdue, it was because I wanted to go someplace to be mentored and learn more.

Chris Massaro has a wealth of knowledge and information. He has been athletic director for a long time, and he knows our industry inside and out. Just being with him here with him the last 6 weeks, I have grown tremendously and learned a huge amount. That’s a big part of why I wanted this job is to be able to be mentored by a guy like Chris who would take me under his wing who would expose me to what it’s like to be in the chair at this level.

To answer your question Austin, would I love to be an AD. Absolutely. Just not right now. I felt called to this role. I really wanted to be in a support role under a someone I could learn from, that I could grow under, and be mentored by. This is exactly what I was hoping for.

I sat in a meeting for 2 hours yesterday (Thursday) with the architects working on the Student Athlete Performance Center and it brought back all kinds of memories from my time at ACU. The Build Blue campaign was a huge part of the reason I wanted to do this job and I neglected to mention that earlier. Knowing we are about to do $100 million dollars’ worth in facility upgrades is extremely exciting and enticing for a guy like me.

A ton of opportunity ahead of us. The next few years are going to be transformative years and we have the opportunity to take things to a different level.

There are a lot of people who I’ve met that are frustrated and disengaged.

Staffing is going to improve. Staying in CUSA is going to be very financially beneficially for us and invest it in the athletic department (ticket sales, marketing).

There is an opportunity to move the needle in a lot of different ways.

I just think we have a ton of opportunity ahead of us. The next few years are going to be transformative years. We have an opportunity to take things to a completely differently level.

I think there are a lot of people that I have met that are frustrated. They’re disenfranchised. They feel like we are an athletic department that is okay with mediocrity and that is stale. This could not be further from the truth. People here (at MTSU) care. They want to win. They are competitive. They want to dominate this conference. They want to be the best. I think we are going to be, but we haven’t had the resources or the facilities to do that. Now those facilities are coming, and the infrastructure and staffing is going to improve.

One thing that I don’t think people realize that staying in C-USA and not going to MAC was very financially beneficial for us. We’re going to be able to take that money we were going to be able to receive from exit fees and conference distributions. Now we are going to be able to invest that money strategically in staffing, in providing more resources that we need to improve in certain ways, mainly in external areas. We don’t have a big marketing department. We don’t have a big ticket sales office. We don’t have a lot of things that a lot of our peers do and so for us to generate more money, we have to invest in those areas. You have to spend money to make money.

What I’m most excited is the opportunity to move the needle in a lot of different ways, to make a big impact, and better position us moving forward so its going to be a no-brainer to pick up Middle Tennessee in the future because of the way we’ll have things rolling in a few years.

I love to build relationships. I love to talk to people. I love to hear their stories and hear who they are and what they are passionate about. I think people are starved for relationships, attention, and personal connections to MT athletics.

I hear all the time about Kermit Davis. I’ve never met Kermit Davis, but what Kermit was so good at was building relationships and being in the community, knowing their spouses’ names, and what sports their kids played.

If you go to Stones River Country Club and you talk to those people, they say they haven’t had anyone come around since Kermit..

I’m in here to do what I was hired to do which is to be out in the public in the community building relationships. I just want people to know that I’m here. I want to meet them. I want to talk to them. I’m going love them. I’m going to serve them. I’m going to respond to their phone calls, texts, and emails. I’m going to help them in any way I can.

Middle Tennessee is at the highest level of FBS, but it feels like small program in that we have a lot of staff members that do a lot different things. We have a compliance guy that helps with operations. We have equipment guy that helps with facilities. We have a sports medicine guy that helps with fundraising. There are a lot of staff members who wear multiple hats and serve the organization in various ways.

That’s very similar to my time at Abilene Christian. At Louisiana-Lafayette the athletic department was basically the same size, the budget was right about the same, and the staff size was right about the same.

I have worked at Purdue and Arizona. I loved those places, but you get siloed. You get pigeon-holed. You’re the equipment guy and that’s all you do. You’re the academics person and that’s all you do. You’re the sports information guy and that’s all you do. There’s not a lot of crossover and you don’t know people in the other departments. I like this size of a school. I like this size of a program.

I think I can bring some ideas and things that worked at bigger schools. I think I can bring ideas that worked at the smaller schools. This is kind of my sweet spot. This doesn’t mean I didn’t enjoy being at the Power 5 or I didn’t enjoy being at the FCS level because I did. I learned a tremendous amount all those places.

They have all positioned me well to translate that information and knowledge to this level at MTSU. There are some things we are going to do like Power 5 programs. And we’ll have some things that we do like FCS programs. What’s important is that it’s gotta work here in Murfreesboro. It’s gotta work at MTSU. You have to learn the culture of that school. Just because something worked at Louisiana-Lafayette doesn’t mean it would work at Middle Tennessee.

I’ve got ideas. I’ve got perspective. What matters most is learning this place, understanding what makes MTSU tick, what makes the Blue Raiders, and knowing what would work and won’t work here.

That’s a fair question. To me the value is that we have have to support our local school. We have to get behind the university that has such major impact in this economy and plays such a major role in the community.

Whether you like our coaches or not, whether you like our administration or not, this is the hometown team, and we have to get behind it. We aren’t going anywhere.

If we are going to take MT to the next level, it’s going to take everybody. It’s going to take the people who have been here forever. It’s going take new people who have never come to games. It’s going to take people who are just now moving to the Murfreesboro area. It’s going to take the people who grew up here. We all have to be pulling the rope in the same direction. For us to get MTSU athletics where we need it to be, we need the old and we need the new.

A huge part of my job is not just engaging the new people and try to grow our brand and grow our market. We want to reengage with the people like the man you’ve mentioned who have been here forever and we need to make them all feel important. We need to make them feel special. We need to make them feel like we can’t do this without them.

Diane Turnham who has been here for 39 years and knows this place backwards and forward and has been such a great friend and mentor in my short time here. One thing she says about Rick Insell is that he makes people feel like they can’t win a game without their support. He makes the people feel like the program would fall apart if they didn’t show up for games or buy tickets. He has a real gift for making people feel important and making them feel essential to his success.

That’s what I want to do, not just for women’s basketball, but for all of our sports. I want people to feel like we cannot win without you. We cannot do this without the old, longtime supporters who have been true blue for fifty years. We can’t do it without broadening our scope and going and finding new people either. We gotta do both at the same time.

I’d like to say that help is on the way. We are building out a BRAA and we are hiring 3-4 people in the next few weeks. Their job is to help me do this, to get in the community, and build relationships. I just ask the Blue Raider Nation to welcome me and the new staff with open arms. Give us a chance and allow us the opportunity to earn your business, to rebuild relationships and mend fences. No matter how people are feeling about the past, give a chance to show them what the future is going to be like. Give us an opportunity to win them over and bring them back and show them why they are extremely important to our success going forward.

Not just with me, but with the team. Give us an opportunity to meet you, to build a relationship with you, and show you how you can make an impact.