Phillip Brown came to Vanderbilt Athletics as an assistant business manager and is now the Associate Athletic Director/Chief Business Officer. A former high school athlete from a small town in Louisiana, Brown is a first-generation college graduate with sights set on becoming an athletic director someday.
I grew up in South Louisiana, Cajun country, in a little town called Pine Prairie. My graduating class was 32 people, and I was in the same buildings with all 32 of them from kindergarten to graduation.
The people down there embrace the "have a good time" attitude. Laissez bon temps rouler. It’s very open and friendly. People genuinely want you to come over and have a good time. I enjoyed growing up in that environment.
I love jambalaya so we cook it all the time at home. It’s hard here without the appropriate smoked sausage. A lot of people confuse andouille with the good smoked meats you can get in the part of Louisiana I’m from. When we go home, we import as much as we can back here.
In my graduating class of 32 people, I played all three varsity sports we offered. Basketball, baseball and I threw the discus in track and field.
The guidance counselors at my school weren’t pushing you to college. They were pushing you to oil field jobs or tech school. But that was never my mission. My sister and I are first-generation college grads. I knew about college because she went to LSU. I started at LSU and finished at the University of Houston.
I discovered the possibility of working in athletics when I got to college, but I took the weirdest path available. I wanted to be really great at what I did, so I went into public accounting first and made sure I was sharp on the debits and credits so I’d be really valuable to whoever would eventually hire me in athletics.
I wasn’t always into numbers and math. History and civics and social sciences were my strong suit in high school. I love to read about historical things. I did accounting because it seemed like the hardest thing out there that would pay me well.
In business school one day I was reading a magazine, and it profiled the CFO of the Houston Astros. It talked about how she got into sports because she had a CPA license. And I thought to myself, I could do that. I sat in business college and decided accounting was the right path, even though it was hard and I wasn’t very good at it in my mind. But once it clicked, I just kept going. I enjoy what I do now.
My first very first job in college was to work super late nights at the Pete Maravich Assembly Center at LSU, either picking up or putting down the basketball floor so they could convert the arena for other things. I lifted heavy pieces of floor and put them down. If the first one wasn’t right on the mark, you’d have to pick them all back up and put them all back down. It was the worst puzzle in America.
My first job in sports after college was at a little Division II school in south Texas called Texas A&M Kingsville. I had a great mentor in the athletic director there. One day he asked me what I’d like to do. I said I like to have high goals, so maybe one day I could be the AD somewhere. His question was, "Where? Have you ever thought about that?" He started rattling off things: public, private, FBS, FCS … And not long after that, this job at Vanderbilt popped up on one of the national message boards and it kind of ticked a lot of the boxes. I talked to my mentor and he said, "I encourage you to apply, and if they offer it to you, you better take it. Vanderbilt is a special place."
In the business office here at Vanderbilt, we’re just like any other business. It’s accounting, it’s finance, it’s all those things. What makes us different is that every decision we make is student-related. When somebody brings us a request to do something that’s not normal, the question is how it impacts the students.
Our product is the kids. If I was at some company turning out laptops or widgets or staplers, I don’t know that I would have the joy I have when spring rolls around and I’m looking at all the kids who are graduating. That’s our product. People like to think we’re in the business of entertainment and sports, but no, we’re college athletics. We’re in the business of producing student-athletes. I enjoy reading the graduation rates more than reading the savings or return-on-investment statements.
For me, I have the greatest job in the world because I have the greatest products. I’m putting out highly trained young people who are following their dreams.
We’re always called support staff. We support the kids and the coaches, the real talent. I have the greatest support myself. My wife is a pharmacist in town and we have three kids. They are the ones who allow me to do this. We aren’t native to here but we’re making the most of it. My daughter and I play golf together, she’s 7, because there’s a golf course on every corner. I have two boys, both preschool age. We love to hike in nature.
Becoming an AD someday is still the big career goal. There are lots of things to learn, always. I’m working toward that, learning every step of the way.
Interviewed by Andrew Maraniss
