This is an exciting week as our basketball programs head to the Conference USA Tournament, and we hope to see a lot of red in Huntsville! Coach Lutz and men's basketball are the 3-seed and play New Mexico State on Thursday night at 8 PM. Coach Collins and the Lady Tops are the 7-seed and play Liberty on Wednesday at 2 PM. Be sure to get your tickets now – your attendance and energy will definitely impact our teams!
This letter is the first installment of what will become a new monthly newsletter sharing all of the latest updates from WKU Athletics with you.
As you might have already seen this morning, we announced a partnership with Athlete Advantage to help manage and grow our NIL program. Athlete Advantage provides a multitude of services and will work closely with our in-house NIL staff to assist and provide protection to our student-athletes when signing deals with brands and partners.
Athlete Advantage will seamlessly be incorporated into our NIL program alongside our Official NIL Collective, the Red Towel Trust, with whom we announced an official partnership a few weeks ago. The Red Towel Trust, along with new Executive Director, Nick Uhlenhopp, is doing great work with our student-athletes and helping their outreach in the Bowling Green community.
Our NIL offerings to our student-athletes now include Athlete Advantage, Red Towel Trust, Hilltopper Local Exchange, – which has enabled close to 50 local business to partner directly with our athletes – Campus Ink, INFLCR and our CLIMB program. Each of these are vital components in continuing to help our student-athletes capitalize on their opportunities to monetize in this new permissible space and help us accomplish our goals and stay on the forefront of this space moving forward.
I truly believe our comprehensive NIL program is the best in Conference USA and rivals many Power Five institutions. We look forward to continuing to grow it!
I continue to be incredibly proud of the success our student-athletes have in competition, the classroom and in our community. They currently carry a cumulative GPA of 3.18 and 10 of our 14 sport programs have a team cumulative GPA of 3.0 or higher. Our student-athletes will also exceed our annual department-wide goal of 3,000 community service hours!
I would be remiss if I didn't mention some of our athletic success from the Fall. Coach Hudson and our volleyball program finished 30-5 and ranked No. 22 in the AVCA's Final Top 25 poll. They won both the Conference USA regular season and tournament titles before defeating Sun Belt Champion Coastal Carolina in the NCAA Tournament. Our volleyball program is one of just 12 nationally to win an NCAA Tournament match and finish the season ranked in the final Top 25 poll in each of the last five seasons!
After overcoming an early 28-0 deficit to defeat Old Dominion 38-35 in overtime in the Famous Toastery Bowl, the fourth largest bowl game comeback in college football history, our football program is now one of only seven in the nation to win a bowl game in each of the last three seasons. Our soccer team finished the season with a third-place conference finish.
WKU Athletics provides tremendous value to both our university and local economy. As the front porch of the university, many people's viewpoint of Western Kentucky University are shaped by our athletics department and programs. This past fall, a Nielsen study revealed WKU received $34.29 million in media exposure value for the 2023 football season alone. Our football program played eight games on national television – invaluable exposure to our university and community. Additionally, a study conducted by the Bowling Green Convention and Visitors Bureau determined our football, volleyball and soccer programs had a $3.5 million economic impact on Bowling Green in Fall 2023.
In September, we had a ribbon cutting to officially open our new $5 million soccer/softball complex. In November, we broke ground on two more significant capital projects – a new press box in Houchens-Smith Stadium and the Hilltopper Fieldhouse. Since 2014, we have invested nearly $15 million in our facilities and will have made nearly $60 million in total upgrades, improvements and additions by the time the Hilltopper Fieldhouse is complete in 2025. At that point, we will be in the best position from an athletics facilities standpoint in the history of our university.
Over the last five years, we have invested more into student-athlete specific areas than ever before, greatly enhancing the areas of sports medicine, mental health, strength/conditioning, nutrition, academic advising, career development, NIL and cost of attendance.
There has never been a better time to be a student-athlete at Western Kentucky University and there has never been a more exciting time to support our student-athletes than right now.
Go Tops!
Todd Stewart
Director of Athletics
