James Feeney grew up in Northern California and walked on the track team at Azusa-Pacific University as a triple-jumper. From an early age, he knew he wanted to enter the world of athletic administration, and that dream has come true. For the last two years, he’s served as Vanderbilt Athletics’ associate director of compliance. He says he loves the opportunity to interact with coaches and student-athletes every day.
Modesto, California was a cool place to grow up. It’s an hour-and-a-half from the Bay Area, from the mountains, from Sacramento and from Fresno.
You could go fish in the mountains in the morning, come back and go into Oakland for an A’s game in the evening.
We used to have an Oakland A’s affiliate known as the Modesto A’s. They couldn’t keep that name when they became a Rockies affiliate. There was a fan vote, and now they’re the Modesto Nuts.
Blue Diamond almonds, all the almonds you eat in your trail mix, come from the area. Growing up, a lot of my friends had orchards.
In high school, I played football and basketball and ran track. In college, I was a triple-jumper at Azusa Pacific.
I walked on the team, and it was one of the best decisions I’ve made in my life because of the friendships and the structure it brought.
I’m one of those people who needed the structure of athletics to help drive me through undergrad. I got to see what having athletics can do for a student-athlete who didn’t necessarily care as much about the academic side at first. Having standards to keep me competing eventually led to a degree.
I was an English Lit major and parlayed that into a master’s program in coaching and athletic administration. I’m currently working on an Ed.D in Higher Education Administration.
Ever since I was a kid, I wanted to get into athletic administration. By 8th or 9th grade, I would be watching a college football or basketball game and I knew there were people who worked behind the scenes, and I wanted to do that.
I went from living in the Bay Area to Abilene Christian University, which is in the middle of nowhere in west Texas. Honestly, it wasn’t that big of a culture shock because it reminded me of Modesto.
Absolutely everybody in Abilene drove a truck, and they parked it wherever they wanted to. There were no parking spots. If there was a patch of grass, you’d park there.
If you were going to have fun, you had to go out and make it. It wasn’t like just driving down Broadway in Nashville. So, just about every day, a group of six of us would go fishing. That and sand volleyball. Or we’d gather up pallets of wood from local businesses and have a bonfire down by the lake.
I was the assistant athletic director for compliance and it was a one-person shop. I ended up coming to Vanderbilt after about a year because I had met former Vanderbilt compliance director Erin Adkins at a conference in California and we had mutual friends in the business.
What I love about working in compliance is that you get to be a part of just about everything. No two days are ever the same. We get to help people figure out how to work within the complex NCAA rules.
A big part of the appeal about coming to Vanderbilt was working at such a prestigious academic institution. I know the value of education because it finally clicked for me after not getting it for so long.
A piece of my job that gets overlooked is that we’re involved with these student-athletes from before they’re even here on campus all the way through graduation. We’re looking at their high school transcripts and passing them along to admissions before they even know we exist.
This is a relationship business first and foremost. We have a solid culture of compliance here, and that starts at the top. David Williams has really set that standard. I feel like I have a great relationship with our coaches.
If a young person is trying to break into this business, I’d recommend they get an internship and just grind. Do what’s asked of you and do it very well, and then ask what more can you do. Get with people who have been doing this for a while and pick their brains.
This is probably a guilty pleasure for compliance people, but I like to watch Last Chance U. I’ve listened to Solid Verbal, a college football podcast with Dan Rubenstein and Ty Hildenbrandt, from Day One.
I’d like to go to Ireland at some point, just because of my family roots. My last name is Feeney, so I’ve got to get over there. I’d like to take a couple of weeks and go explore the country with no idea where to go or what to do. I just want to be there.
I also want to take a kayak trip down the Devil’s River in Texas. Fish all day and camp on the banks. I just watched a couple of documentaries about it. It looks dangerous but fun.
Interviewed by Andrew Maraniss.