For context, Bobby Wilder’s viewpoint carries with it a lens spanning three decades.
OK, more than three decades: 34 years to be precise.
For perspective, consider Tennessee Tech football is amidst a new calendar year on the heels of a winning season for the first time in 4,749 days. Thirteen years.
Yet Wilder, proven program-builder – his work to launch Old Dominion’s NCAA football program more than 15 years ago still resonates for its blistering, 38-win four-season opening run – does not recall anything quite like this in all his years’ experience.
Not, he says, where Tennessee Tech now sits positioned to find its next athletics director with what Wilder considers considerable campus-wide momentum and a visionary president, Phil Oldham, bent on elevating TTU – in all facets, athletics, academics, aesthetics – to heights with which the school has no prior experience.
Tennessee Tech needs a new athletics director; the school earlier this month parting with long-time leader Mark Wilson in a move emanating from top leadership believing the timing and synergy, particularly with capital projects and Wilder’s blossoming program, make this an ideal time to aggressively seek more.
“We just won in football, first winning season since the president got here, and women’s soccer won, and we’ve got a lot of sports that are winning because the president funds this at, I believe, the highest or near-highest level in the OVC (Ohio Valley Conference),” Wilder tells FootballScoop. “I told President Oldham that we’re chasing North Dakota State, and he’s trying to fund me like North Dakota State.
“There’s a chance for real synergy with the president and our next A.D. I believe the right A.D. can turn this opportunity into a Power Four or Group of Five (conferences) A.D. [job].”
Bobby Wilder is 17 months into a program with precisely 100 new players on roster since his arrival; 60 college transfers and 40 from the high school ranks. He’s still fine-tuning a couple pieces for a 2025 team he believes, adamantly with no hyperbole, is positioned to be among the most talented in the 103-year history of the program.
So, amidst planning some elite talent camps in the coming weeks and still hosting recruits per the NCAA calendar, he is pausing an interview to close his office door and placing a do-not-disturb sign.
The former University of Maine quarterback and owner of seven seasons of seven or more wins in his 11 as a head coach wants to drive home a point about what he sees is a gilded crossroads for Tennessee Tech athletics.
“I’ve been doing this for 34 years, I’ve never worked for a president that sees the entire chess board,” says Wilder, fresh off leading the Golden Eagles to a share of the OVC/Big South title – only the program’s 10th in its century-old existence. “And what I mean by that, he recognizes what needs to happen for the university, he recognizes growth for the university, he’s been here 12 years, he’s done $750 million in projects on campus in that time.
“This is one of the most beautiful campuses I’ve ever been on it, and everything has a plan here. As far as football and athletics, he looks at athletics as the front porch to the mansion.”
And …
“I got fired from my last job because the commitment no longer met the expectation,” Wilder says of his unceremonious exit from Old Dominion. “There’s tremendous commitment at Tennessee Tech to go along with high expectations.”
Wilder’s football program is origin point of noteworthy – and, aberrational – athletics successes for Tech across the 2024-25 year. Football, women’s basketball with a 26-win campaign and baseball now with 35 wins are an impressive trio it’s what been a barren desert for consistent athletics success in Cookeville, Tennessee.
Consider this staggering consistency of sub-.500 results since Oldham’s arrival in 2012:
Tech football is 43-88 in that time, with Wilder’s 7-5 campaign the only winning season; Golden Eagles football is 78-140 in its last 21 years.
Baseball, men’s basketball, women’s basketball, softball, volleyball, soccer and tennis each has an overall losing record in that same timeframe.
But, there is momentum.
Sources tell FootballScoop that athletics donations this month are up six figures in anticipation of new leadership atop Tech’s programs. Additionally, the more-than-$50-million project to venerable Tucker Stadium is set for completion before the 2026 campaign; Tech’s general student enrollment is at 10,500 students, the university’s highest mark in a decade and being boosted by its fourth-largest freshman class in school history with more 2,000 first-year college students.
Football, again see Wilder’s and Oldham’s hand-in-hand alignment at work, is poised for more success.
The Golden Eagles open with three consecutive home games, part of a seven-game home slate with Oldham’s fingerprints on its corners, and don’t play a dreaded “money game” until a mid-November trip to Mark Stoops’s slumping Kentucky program.
Too, the Golden Eagle Collective – Tech’s NIL fundraising arm online since January – is yielding dividends. Wilder’s second-year roster features NCAA Transfer Portal additions from Power Conference programs Kansas, Virginia Tech and Wake Forest, among other FBS residents; it also includes quarterback Kekoa Visperas – FCS football’s 2024 completion-percentage leader after connecting on 202 of 272 passes with just three interceptions and 26 total touchdowns.
“I anticipated we would lose potentially 12 elite players in the portal, and we lost three,” Wilder reveals. “We were able to keep 75% of our top players that were approached about their interest in getting into the Portal.”
Collegiate Sports Associates is handling Tech’s search for its next athletics director. Potential candidates with ties to the ACC, SEC and Big 12, among others, already are doing homework on the top Tech A.D. post, FootballScoop has learned.
Candidate lists are being assembled now, interviews could begin by month’s end and on-campus visits for finalists could be unfolding in early June. A late-June to early-July hiring timeline makes sense on many levels.
Whatever the case, Wilder has a parting message about the position and where Tennessee Tech is headed.
Especially with those tangible financial commitments at hand, from the near-future Tucker Stadium renovation's culmination, the ongoing football operations center facility that’s going to be an eight-figure venture to increasing operating budgets (Tennessee state data shows Tech athletics at $7.150 million budget in summer 2023 and rising since that time) to Oldham’s decision to extend Wilder’s contract through 2029 following that stellar debut season.
“Our president is committed to Alston Full Cost of Attendance and to NIL,” Wilder says. “I believe we’re already in the top-10 (athletics operating budgets in FCS) now.
“The goal is that by the 2026 season that we’re top 5 in the country in every category. We want to be a top-5 FCS-funded program and President Oldham shares that vision.”