Q&A with Chris Grosse, Senior Associate AD, director external strategy
In addition to our coverage of UConn football and basketball, Storrs Central has grand visions of covering the athletic department as a whole. That means regular conversations with the department’s leadership to give our readers a better picture of how this whole thing works.
We couldn’t think of a better way to start this initiative than an interview with Chris Grosse (pronounced: Graw-see), UConn’s senior associate athletic director for external strategy!
Chris is a 2005 UConn graduate who began his sports marketing career as a student intern for the Huskies before going to Florida State University, where he pursued a master's degree after college. After FSU, he worked at New Mexico State, Navy, Georgetown, and Penn State, giving him a wide-ranging experience across many different college athletic departments, before coming to UConn.
In a conversation with Storrs Central, Grosse was kind enough to share the story of his career path and what he’s been up to since returning to Storrs.
So, what exactly does a “director of external strategy” do?
My job is overseeing our marketing, our communications office, sports information [or] sports media – it's called a whole bunch of different things at different places – strategic communications, video production, that includes, streaming of our games on UConn+ and for different TV providers, and then our video board shows at all of our games for our fans at the venue, and then also putting together video content for social media.
And then I oversee creative content, which is everything from graphic design to social media, photography, content, production, that kind of thing.
So, about four departments report up to me. It's the first time that we've had someone in this role that is an umbrella of those four departments.
What was it like to come back to UConn after nearly two decades away working all over the college sports world?
The way that the athletic department has been built, the resources and facilities are incredible, just unrecognizable from what they were when I was here. So that's been great, awesome to work with…the growth and success of the other sports [besides basketball] around the department has been awesome…[While working at Penn State], I was compelled to write David Benedict an email, just randomly in the AD email inbox [about how impressive UConn’s development has been]…the campus is unrecognizable in a lot of places and very recognizable in some. So that's been fun.
What has it been like to host so many special nights across the basketball season? From legends visiting to Jonathan retiring, and ESPN College GameDay, it’s been quite the year!
Well, speaking about basketball specifically, our first game was the banner unveiling. So right off the bat, we're like, ‘All right. This is a big one.’ A lot of times, your home opener is a non-conference opponent where it's kinda like a tune-up for the team.
It's also a tune-up for the game presentation folks and the fan experience folks. [But] right off the bat, we had a sold-out arena where we unveiled the banner for the National Championship, and we had some players back, and it was full speed ahead right from the start.
It was a surreal year for me. Because I was in school in 2004 when we won the dual National championships, and to have all those guys back, the women's team first and the [men were] the next day. I was like, ‘Oh, my, gosh, okay, I grew up like throwing T-shirts next to these guys and girls when they were out playing basketball,’ so it was cool.
And our fans are so connected to these former players, it's just great when we can have them back. They’re there with their families, they're taking photos and signing autographs. So it's just it's just one real big family. It's great to have those folks back.
We had Jason Sudeikis and Sue Bird come to that women’s game, which was kind of a surreal moment… Anytime we have a chance to get some of those folks back and showcase our history and our successes is something that is better than any type of thing we could do… Just to have Rudy Gay or Ray Allen or Diana Taurasi or Breanna Stewart walk out of the court, gets more of a reaction than really anything that we can try to manufacture ourselves.
What was ESPN GameDay experience like for you and your teams?
It's a lot of work on a lot of different groups, in the middle of a very, very busy time and everyone's calendar. But the payoff is completely worth it. I mean, it was a 2-hour commercial pretty much for everything great about UConn. The way it works is some of our operations folks get maybe an eight- or nine-day heads up that it might come. And then you hear the day before the announcements, so we have like seven days to prepare for them.
There's a lot of people in the staff that have been here and through it in past years. So there's kind of a blueprint… Our operations group was the one that took on the most responsibilities to work on the TV truck getting in and managing the schedule of court, working on the security and seating plan, stuff like that. Our communications group was involved, our marketing and creative folks. We [also] had a band and our spirit members there. It was a huge undertaking.
I think we opened the doors at like 8 am, people started lining up at like 5 am, and a whole bunch of students camped out the night before, too. The broadcast was able to talk about some good stuff that we had going on, not just on the court. They highlighted a partnership we have with Connecticut Children's Hospital. They went over to the Dairy Bar. So we were able to pitch them some good stories that they ran with and really did a good job.
And the students were amazing. They were engaged the whole time. Tons of great signs. It was our whiteout, so we asked everyone to wear white to that as well, it's a great visual and it was awesome to work with them.
What are some of your favorite places to eat in or around Storrs?
This is big for me, ‘cause I'm an amateur foodie, and being back in this area's been great cause it was a little bit of a food desert out in State College, Pennsylvania. So when we got back into town, we got super excited.
We love Camille's in Tolland, a great pizza spot, Trigo, great pizza spot in Willimantic. We go to Chuck's Margarita Grill and Steak House, great spot.
We've been testing out a lot of the spots in the area… [and] I'll take a trip down memory lane and grab a DP Dough calzone, or some wings from Wings Over every once in a while, just to get nostalgic and pretend I'm back in school…
That's been one of the really great things about being back: good food.