WRAL Sports spoke with Duke athletic director Nina King ahead of the Blue Devils’ Sweet 16 game against the St. John’s Red Storm.
King, 47, was named the Duke athletic director in May 2021.
WRAL Sports: NIL goes into effect July 2021, so I just want to check on you. How are you doing? Do you need a nap? It’s been a crazy few years.
King: Coach K [announced his retirement around the same time] and then we hired Jon Scheyer two weeks after that. I’m doing fine. We’re having fun.
NIL has been an interesting challenge, but I think we’ve been navigating it really well at Duke and taking advantage of really the opportunity that it presents.
WRAL Sports: It’s been kind of an unprecedented time, right? And Duke is thriving and at kind of a make-or-break time for college sports. So what has been your guiding principle through all this?
King: I mean to keep the Duke experience what it’s always been: An opportunity for student-athletes to come to Duke and really be able to compete academically
and athletically.
They get to play their sport, the sport that they’ve been training for for so long at a high, elite athletic level, and coming into academics at a really high level as well, and not be shy about wanting to do both really well.
And then be prepared to be global citizens, changemakers of the world after they finish Duke. And so, that’s always been the mission of Duke athletics to provide a holistic experience for our student-athletes to prepare them for life after Duke.
I think none of that has changed, even though kind of the landscape of college athletics and how we operate all of that is becoming more modern, I think in a good way, a little bit of a chaotic way.
So, we’re navigating just a lot of change, but to your question, staying true to what our guiding principle is.
WRAL Sports: That all sounds great on paper, and I know it’s a lot more work than that. What does your process look like?
King: Yeah, I do have to say it looks good on paper, but we’re actually living it, too. And I think we’re seeing competitive success, obviously, amongst our teams, but our student-athletes are graduating. They’re going out and getting jobs. Some of them are going pro in the sport that they love. So we’re seeing real results.
So, we know we’re on the right track in terms of the experience that we’re providing in terms of process. We kind of buckle up and wait for the next thing, but try not to be too reactive to what the next thing is. We want to prepare and be ready, and I think we were ready for NIL. We approached it in a pretty conservative way in terms of
collectives and how we operated, making sure that our student-athletes had opportunities outside of Duke to profit off of their name, image, and likeness.
But [revenue-share] came, we prepared for it. We jumped in with both feet. We are providing our student-athletes [with] revenue-sharing dollars. Now w’re we’re navigating just kind of everything else that this new era is, and we’ve got incredible coaches, an incredible leadership team, [and] a very supportive university from our president, our board of trustees. Everybody’s really supported, engaged, and so we’re doing things in a very Duke-like way, which is the right way, but we want to stay elite … We can’t fall behind in terms of our athletic brand, who we are and how we compete.
WRAL Sports: Duke became the first ACC school to win a conference championship football, men’s basketball and women’s basketball. What does that accomplishment mean to you?
King: It means everything. It’s so exciting … as well as ACC men’s fencing. So we’ve got four ACC titles right now.
Spring sports are just getting started, and so we’re ready to collect some more hardware … I mean, it’s a true testament to our student-athletes and our coaches.
We hone in on kind of the broad-based athletic programming that we offer. We’re really proud that we have 27 sports and opportunities for all of our student-athletes to go out and compete and win championships.
And so, we’re seeing that this year … it’s really been exciting.
WRAL Sports: One of the most public things an athletic director can do is hire and fire coaches. And you’ve hired some pretty good ones. You and your predecessor helped hire Jon Scheyer. Since you’ve taken over, we have Mike Elko, Manny Diaz [and] Corey Muscara in baseball. How have you managed to make such a hard thing look easy?
Knig: Well, I don’t know if it’s easy, but I’m glad it looks that way.
I do enjoy it. I mean, it’s one of the parts of the job. Hiring coaches, identifying talent, finding the right fit for our university, and providing people with an opportunity to come here and be successful, really is something I enjoy.
Now, just kind of the process and the nitty-gritty of it, it can be a little stressful, especially in some of those searches that you named. You have to get them done quickly. We’re working against calendars in terms of [the] transfer portal and academic calendars and recruiting calendars and all of that.
And, you need a coach to come in and maintain the culture, re-recruit our current student-athletes and really build a program that’s theirs. So, we’ve been really fortunate. I mean, we’ve got great coaches that are that are first and foremost really great people. That’s what we’re in, really, the people business.
WRAL Sports Navigating life after Coach K was always going to be a huge challenge, and it’s we don’t have a national championship yet, but that might be coming. I feel like that was such a hard thing to do, and … it has worked out. What do you think the secret to success has been for the basketball program?
King: Yeah, I mean there’s no playbook for replacing an icon, an absolute legend, right? We were fortunate that we had the year to prepare. Announcing Coach K’s retirement and and Jon Scheyer’s hire, and then having that year for Coach Scheyer really to prepare and build his vision for the program and hit the ground running as soon as Coach K’s last season was over, what really stood out to me in the interview process with Jon Scheyer was how he had studied succession and not just success succession in terms of coaching, but in a lot of different areas. In the military, in corporate America and he really had spent a lot of time studying what had worked, what didn’t work and came in and really, I mean, has executed the plan masterfully. But, he is really … he’s so smart, he is so strategic, he’s got a great vision and has really been able to make the program his own while honoring tradition.
I mean, nobody wants to lose sight of how we got here, what Coach K built and what our tradition has been, but Jon’s done a great job making it his own.
WRAL Sports: Football is, in a way, trying to build its own traditio and it’s happening. How good do you think football can be? And is Duke willing to make the necessary financial investment? Are they able to make the financial investment to get it there?
King: Yeah, I mean I think you’re seeing it, right? How good we can we be? There is no ceiling right now. Being the disruptors in the ACC was a fun challenge that we got to the ACC championship this year and won the championship, and Manny Diaz is absolutely the right person to take us to that next level. And, we absolutely believe we can be in the College Football Playoff. [We] probably should have been this past season, but it’s OK. We get there.
We can do this, and again, we’ve got an incredibly supportive administration and board. We’re putting what we need to put into this program to make sure that we can compete at a really high level.
I like to tell people the more I learn about NIL, the less I know.
WRAL Sports: How do you feel about the current landscape, which is going to change tomorrow or the time this interview airs, but how do you feel about where we are currently?
King: Yeah, I mean, we’re going to sit here for about four more hours, so we can talk about how I feel, right? It’s complicated and it’s confusing, but we’ve got, again, incredible people who want to do things the right way, and that’s everybody from our coaches, our student-athletes, our administrators, our boosters, our collectives. I mean, we’re all really working together to make sure that we’re doing things the right way, but providing the opportunities for our student-athletes that they deserve.
I mean, I think NIL is a good thing, right? Allowing our student-athletes to go out and profit off of their own name, image and likeness, just like a non- student athlete on our campus could do. So, I think just kind of the concept of NIL, that’s the right thing. Now we just have to make sure that it’s an even playing field and we’re all playing under the same rules, and I think that’s what’s been a little bit chaotic these past few years.
So hopefully, we can get some stability, the House settlement. We’re in the first year of revenue sharing and everything else that’s come with the House settlement and we’re pushing for Congress to help [put] federal legislation possibly on the horizon in the form of the Score Act. And, that really will kind of get us all again [on a] level playing field so we can all go out compete against each other, win games against each other, but not worry about ifif people are playing under different rules relative to NIL.
WRAL Sports: Do you think collective bargaining is potentially where this ends? I know there’s talk of [that there] could there be an antitrust exemption. Do any of those paths seem feasible to you?
King: Sure, there’s got to be a path because the path that we’re on right now isn’t sustainable. I mean, what we’re doing and and the cost of what we’re doing really isn’t sustainable.
So, I think you know a lot of smart people are talking about possible avenues to really ensure that we get this stability, and that we don’t break college athletics.
I think looking far out, college athletics isn’t going anywhere. Especially at Duke, we’re not changing college athletics. Just kind of how we operate is becoming a bit more modern. And again, I don’t think that’s a bad thing, but just everything is shifting and happening so fast that it’s really, really chaotic.
So hopefully, again, some stability the House settlement, and hopefully, a few more things to get us all on the right path. We’ll see if Congress steps in and helps, but that’s the hope.
WRAL Sports: One thing I love about you, I know how busy you are, how much this job takes, but you always seem to find time for family. I see you with your sons at the game [and] your husband. How do you do that? How do you balance being a mom and having such a high-profile, challenging job?
King: Well, we’re all busy, just [in] different ways and sometimes people see it differently. I’ve got an incredible support system at home. And, my kids that enjoy coming to do this with me. It’s nice for my kids to be able to be around. So, they see sometimes why mom isn’t home.
But also, how lucky am I that I get to raise them in this environment, right? To be around these incredible student-athletes. Sometimes in the locker room after games, so they hear the coaches’ postgame speeches and sometimes it sounds a little better coming from them than from mom.
I mean, it’s really an incredible, incredible thing for my family to be able to do this as a family endeavor in this environment.
WRAL Sports: I know you do a lot of work in the community as well, and I’m sure it’s not lost on you just being a role model as a woman in sports in a position like yours. Do you feel that? Do you carry that with you every day?
Yeah, I do. I mean, it’s a great opportunity. I keep saying opportunity, but it’s true. I mean, it’s not a burden at all and if I get to be somebody that somebody could look up to and say, ‘I want to do that one day because I look like her.’ Then, absolutely. I carry it around as a point of pride.
I want to be able to create pathways for people to come along on this journey with me, not necessarily after me, because I think I’m going to work for … a lot longer, hopefully.
But, for people to come and do this with me, young girls, women [who] look like me, let’s go.