Having spent his entire career in athletics administration, Erick Harper is keenly aware that stability in his industry is like a unicorn: neat in concept, but doesn’t actually exist.

Student-athletes, coaches, university presidents, donors, fans, television partners, conference members — they all come and go.

So when he took over as UNLV’s athletics director nearly four years ago, Harper knew he’d have to deal with a steady stream of curveballs. But on a seemingly daily basis? That wasn’t something Harper saw coming.

“For years in our industry, we worried about change once — maybe twice — a year. Now change is constant,” says Harper, who spent nine years as UNLV’s senior associate athletics director for development prior to his official promotion to AD on Jan. 1, 2022. “That’s the biggest difference from when I first started in the industry to now.

“So you just have to be more fluid, more on your toes, and try to anticipate. That last part is difficult, though. Because just when you think something is this way, it goes that way.”

Indeed, the goal posts that govern college athletics appear to be in a constant state of unpredictable movement. 

For instance, for decades it was verboten to pay student-athletes. Then it was permitted, but only through an outside party. Now players not only can earn income from name-image-likeness (NIL) deals, but they can add to that income via revenue sharing with athletic departments.

Then there’s the never-ending game of musical chairs played by college conferences; the player loyalty issue created by the transfer portal (a clearinghouse of sorts that allows student-athletes to switch schools annually without penalty); and an NCAA rulebook that is in a near-constant state of revision (as is the NCAA itself).

All of this is a long way of saying that the job of running a university’s athletics department has never been more onerous (not to mention time-consuming).

The good news for UNLV and its fan base: Harper is up to the challenge.

Amid all the surrounding chaos, Harper has the Rebels’ 17 Division I athletic programs — which are guided by 14 head coaches — positioned for sustained success both on the field and in the community. This includes two marquee programs that drive the bulk of the athletic department’s revenue: football and men’s basketball.

Interestingly, both are being led by new head coaches with proven track records  — Dan Mullen (football) and Josh Pastner (men’s basketball) — who were handpicked by Harper.

With the new academic year dawning — and the 2025 Rebel football season set to kick off Aug. 23 against Idaho State at Allegiant Stadium — we sat down with Harper to discuss his recent high-profile hires, as well as the new era of college athletics, UNLV’s place in it, and the overall state of his department.

There has been so much upheaval in college athletics that it seems like the most important character trait for an athletics director these days is the ability to adjust on the fly. Is that something that suits your personality?

Yeah. When I got in this business, my mentors encouraged me to be diverse in your thoughts and be diverse in your skill set. So I take that to mean having the ability to adapt to change.

Now, are you always going to be able to change, to adapt at the same speed that the industry changes? In some cases, no, because there’s usually [bureaucratic] red tape that you have to go through. Not that red tape is a bad thing. It’s just that sometimes it delays how and when you adjust on your end. 

The speed at which business is being done definitely has changed over time. So it can be difficult to adapt and keep pace with the speed of business, especially with regard to frequent rules changes. Sometimes, the speed limit might be 55 mph but you’re only able to go 35 mph.

How much more difficult is an athletic director’s job today than it was, say, five years ago? For example, in this era of paying student-athletes, how do you manage the expectations of your coaches who are competing for players with schools whose budgets are more robust?

Well, first of all, there’s a lot of false information out there. For instance, coaches always hear what the other school is doing but don’t necessarily know — none of us know — how true the information they’re hearing really is due to inaccuracies on social media.

Take this world of NIL: A mid-major school says their budget for paying student-athletes is $10 million. Where is that $10 million coming from? When you look at their financial reports from previous years, the numbers don’t match up — unless there’s some wealthy donor who comes out of nowhere. And even then, is that money sustainable?

That’s the part we all consistently forget: We might have $10 million today, but will that $10 million be there five years from now? Is it perpetual? It’s hard to say that it is, unless there’s an endowment.

As an athletic director, I have to rely on the passion, love, and generosity of our fan base. Because the majority of our budget’s revenue is through self-supporting revenues.

And the whims of the economy can affect those contributions, adding another layer of budget uncertainty, right?

Correct. But people also always forget that a big part of the job is managing expenses. You can’t just always focus on generating revenue; you have to manage your expenses, too. Which means some days you have to eat a hamburger when you really want to eat a steak. Improving fiscal responsibility in all areas is important.

Speaking of expenses: The football program is coming off its most successful two-year run in modern history. The downside to that was head coach Barry Odom became a hot commodity nationally, with Purdue ultimately making him a lucrative offer you couldn’t match. So in this new era of constant change, how challenging is it to retain coaches who have success?

A lot of it is about thinking ahead, trying to anticipate. “OK, we’re halfway through the season, and Coach has only lost one game. What schools might be interested in our coach? And will the coach be interested in the school? If so, how do I get in between?”

That’s why it's important to be proactive with coaches' contracts.

One thing I tell all of my coaches is that my door is always open. I’m approachable, and I’m open to listening to any challenge you’re experiencing. But if you don’t tell me what that challenge is, I can’t help you.

How much has UNLV’s brand, coupled with the fact that Las Vegas has become a burgeoning sports town in the last decade, helped when it comes time to hire a new coach?

The four letters — UNLV — are as strong as ever. And honestly, we have the early Tark [Jerry Tarkanian] days to thank for that. It’s still the main reason why UNLV is a brand that everybody knows and understands. Now, it’s been hotter in the last few years because of [our resurgence in] football and because of Allegiant Stadium. But those four letters mean a lot to Rebel followers.

One of the very neat things about UNLV are those last two letters: Las Vegas. Obviously, we have 40-million-plus tourists a year coming through here, but in general, there are always a lot of eyeballs on this city. And let’s face it, most people want to go where there’s energy, vibrancy and passion, and we have that here. 

When you’re at a UNLV soccer or baseball game and you can look out and see the Sphere and see the High Roller — or from the Thomas & Mack Center, you can look out and see Luxor, Mandalay Bay, Allegiant Stadium — these backdrops are as impressive as any college campus can offer in the entire country.

Plus, this is a pretty doggone good place to live.

Your recent hirings of new football coach Dan Mullen and new men’s basketball coach Josh Pastner received rave reviews. Were both your primary targets?

Every athletics director is going to have coaching short lists for their programs, but particularly football and men’s and women’s basketball. And I can tell you that Dan and Josh were on those short lists.

Now, do you put all your eggs in one basket? You can’t. You have to have multiple conversations going simultaneously.

It was a plus that I knew Dan a little bit; I’d met him a couple of years ago. And I’ve known Josh since 2004. So having already had some familiarity with them, it was an easier phone call to both guys.

With Dan, the first thing to figure out was if he was ready to get back into coaching [after sitting out three seasons]. Once we started talking football, it was evident that he was excited about getting back into coaching again.

Did that mean it was going to be at UNLV? I didn’t know. But the more we talked, the more he understood our vision and mission to build on the foundation from the previous two years. Playing home games in a $2 billion stadium provides potential recruiting advantages that distinguishes UNLV from others, and he’d be taking over a program that has momentum and energy behind it. The fact this wasn’t going to be a rebuilding situation was exciting for him.

As for Josh, I hosted an assistant coach’s radio show with him when he was a young assistant at the University of Arizona and I was an associate AD there. Through that, I got to know who he was as a person and possible future head coach. The energy, emotion, and passion that you see in Josh today is the same as it was at UA. It was just channeled differently back then because he was working for a college basketball icon [Hall of Fame coach Lute Olson].

Since getting his first head coach job, Josh has proven that his coaching style works — the evidence is in his record. Which is why he was at the top of our wish list.

Speaking just to football, after the program’s remarkable turnaround under Coach Odom, is it safe to say there were more than a few coaches interested in the job?

I received no less than 50 to 75 calls or text messages, including from a lot of people I didn’t even know. And many of those [inquiries] came before Coach Odom officially stepped down, as they were anticipating he would leave. So for sure, there was no shortage of people interested.

In fact, it’s funny — and I’ll never out the guy — but one coach actually called me in August, saying “Hey, if Barry leaves, I’d like to be considered.” I’m like, “Dude, it’s August!”

But the fact there was so much exterior interest has to tell you that a program that had struggled for decades to find solid footing finally reached a long-sought level of credibility.

No doubt. Everybody’s paying attention now. But the job is attractive not just because we’re winning. Our day-to-day facility, the Fertitta Football Complex, is a $35 million facility. And our game-day facility is a $2 billion stadium. No other college football team in the country can say that they play every single home game in a $2 billion stadium. We can.

Our crowds continue to grow and we soon hope to be averaging 50,000 per game, including 10,000 students. When we get there, we will be ecstatic.

Shifting gears to the topic of NIL and this new world of paying student-athletes: How does an athletic department with a limited budget navigate that hurdle, and how have Olympic sports been impacted?

For us, NIL still operates on the outside. Those dollars are not part of the revenue we have to generate on a daily basis. So we’re still able to fund our non-revenue/Olympic sports at a competitive level.

The money that we use to pay players is driven by external donors that we go out and specifically solicit. We’ve come to find out that there’s a population of donors interested in [their donations] being used to pay players and a population that doesn’t believe in NIL but is willing to support in other ways, which could include nutrition, academics, and enhanced facilities. 

You yourself were a student-athlete at Kansas State, where you played football. Now that you’re on the other side of the fence as an athletics director, what’s your stance on paying student-athletes?

By all means, they deserve to get something — especially those who are involved in sports that generate revenue through television deals. Have I arrived at a specific number yet? No, I haven’t.

There’s also the old-school part of me that still says, “What about your scholarship — doesn’t that count [as payment]?”

Also, if they weren’t on scholarship at UNLV, would they be on scholarship somewhere else — in other words, were we the only offer they had? And if we didn’t offer that scholarship, would they have gone to college? Where would they be four, five years after high school? Would they be on a path to a well-paying job and a successful career?

So the old-school in me wonders, “How much is too much?”

At the same time, if we’re going to pay our student-athletes, we have a very, very strong responsibility to teach them financial literacy. Because you can’t just give an 18- or 20-year-old, say, $100,000 and expect them to know how to manage it. The reality is most don’t understand that taxes come out and that an agent is going to take a cut. So that $100,000 dwindles quickly. 

Another thing that isn’t often talked about: What happens when a student-athlete doesn’t make it professionally in their respective sport, and it’s time to go out and get a real job and the take-home income is far lower than when they were in college as a student-athlete?

I’ve already heard stories about former college athletes saying, “I can’t take that job — I’m not used to only making $60,000 a year.” But you just graduated. And the job market and your experience does not warrant six figures.

These are some of the realities that this generation of student-athletes are going to have to understand.

In addition to NIL, the transfer portal has dominated the college athletics conversation recently, with student-athletes signing scholarships and bolting for another school after as little as one season. What advice can you give your coaches about retaining top-tier student-athletes?

I wouldn’t say it’s simple, but coaches who build strong relationships with their players and treat them with respect have the best chance to convince those players to play, not for the dollar, but for their coach, their teammate, their institution. 

Of course, there are going to be some student-athletes whose socioeconomic platform is tenuous, so they have to chase the dollar. Heck, there are many that chase the dollar and make mistakes by doing so.

Now, if a player is leaving because they’re third on the depth chart and it looks like they’re never going to get meaningful playing time, that’s understandable. But these days, it’s more important than ever for coaches to build those solid relationships with their players if they want to hang onto them.

Another hot-button issue is conference realignment. In the past year, UNLV has turned down overtures to leave the Mountain West Conference for the revamped Pac-12. Was it tempting to bolt, and what went into the decision to say “no”?

When it comes to conference realignment, I’m someone who looks at and considers everything — short term and long term — before ultimately determining what’s best for us. And based on the current landscape, we felt the best decision for us was to stay in the Mountain West. 

For one thing, the Pac-12 is not what the Pac-12 once was. It’s the same logo but without USC, UCLA, Oregon, Washington, Utah, it’s not the same conference. And that’s no disrespect to those schools that are in the Pac-12 right now.

Also, there’s going to be another conference realignment — everybody knows that. What that’s going to look like, who knows? If anyone tells you they know exactly how everything is going to shake out, they’re absolutely full of it. The only certainty is that those programs that have a strong history of success, reside in strong media markets and are consistently ranked at seasons end are not changing conferences. However, there can be surprises as we have seen in recent years.

The good news for us is that we no longer have to worry about paying an exit fee if we receive an offer to join a power conference.

For now — and as I’ve said many times when the topic of conference realignment comes up — we simply have to continue being the best possible UNLV that we can be. And wherever things fall, they fall.

Lastly, as the 2025-26 seasons approach, what’s your message to Rebel fans and alumni about the overall state of UNLV athletics?

Come support our amazing student-athletes who represent UNLV and compete with pride while wearing the scarlet and gray.

We are in a very strong position with great coaches and great student-athletes. And they are excited to provide our fan base with one of the most exciting years in UNLV athletics history.

Our hope is that our alumni continue to be passionate about promoting the UNLV brand and the positive impact it has made on their lives. There is strength in numbers, so the more great Rebels joining in and promoting this vibrant university, the better we can recruit the best student-athletes to UNLV. We have to double-down on building our fan base now.