Athletics: Stewart added to sharpen UL’s athletic masterplan

Tim Buckley, The Advertiser, July 2, 2014

Rob Stewart

A recent spate of on-field success has UL hoping to replace one ex-employee with two new ones off the field.

The Ragin’ Cajuns recently hired Rob Stewart to serve as senior director of athletics for external affairs.

According to athletic director Scott Farmer, Stewart’s duties will include overseeing the program’s marketing and promotions office, working with corporate sales and corporate sponsorships, and acting as a ticket-office liaison.

He also will oversee UL’s sports information office, which is run by recently named sports information director Matt Sullivan.

Sullivan previously was Southeastern Louisiana’s longtime SID, and was promoted by UL after a short stint as assistant SID for the Cajuns.

Stewart assumes the post previously held by senior associate athletic director Ken Winstead, who left UL last year for a job as associate athletic director and senior fundraiser at Seattle University.

Fundraising was one of Winstead’s primary charges at UL.

Farmer said the Cajuns also hope to make a new-position hire of someone "who will do nothing but fundraising," while Stewart’s position involves doing "everything else."

"It’s just such a big position, and we’re doing so much externally now, and there’s so much more that we want do," Farmer said, "(so) we’re gonna do our best to just to bring in two people to try to fill (Winstead’s) shoes."

Stewart comes from the University of Houston, where he spent four years as associate athletics director for marketing and promotions.

At UH, he helped to position the department for conference realignment and transition strategy as it moved from Conference USA to the American Athletic Conference (AAC), planned and implemented a campaign strategy that raised about $48 million for new football and basketball facilities, and developed internal and external style guides to strengthen the department’s brand identity.

The Houston native and married father of one also led an award-winning promotional campaign of the 2010 football season that increased Cougars ticket sales by a nation-leading 82 percent, including five sellouts.

"It seems like a very good fit for us," said Farmer, whose Cajuns are in the early stages of a $115 million athletic facilities masterplan that the school hopes will help make it worthy of consideration from higher-profile and more financially lucrative conferences than the Sun Belt Conference to which it currently belongs.

Prior to Houston, Stewart – a 1997 Texas A&M graduate – worked at his alma mater as promotions and game operations coordinator (1999-2004), director of in-game marketing (2004-2008) and director of marketing (2008-10).

He also earned a master’s degree in kinesiology with a sport management specialization from Texas A&M in 2010.

Stewart arrived at UL at a time its then No. 1-ranked baseball team was preparing to host an NCAA Tournament Regional and Super Regional, and its softball team was making a run to the Women’s College World Series.

Earlier in the school year, the Cajuns’ basketball team played in the NCAA Tournament and its football team won a third straight New Orleans Bowl.