The most difficult part of the day for Mike Thomas has nothing to do with athletics, but his 16-year-old daughter.

“Most of the stress I incur is getting her out of bed and to school in the morning,” Illinois’ new athletics director said. “By 7 o’clock, it’s pretty much a stress-free day.”

Despite his busy schedule as the head of Illinois’ athletic department, Thomas said he makes an effort to spend time with his wife, Jenifer, with whom he’s been married since his final year as an undergraduate at Colorado State, and four children.

“I think at the end of the day most of my discretionary time is spent with my family because the hours I put in here keeps me away from them a lot,” he said. “I don’t want to be an absent father or husband. I certainly want to spend time with my family as much as I can.”

Thomas was named “Ron Guenther’s replacement”:https://www.dailyillini.com/index.php/article/2011/08/guenther_finishes_off_illinois_legacy_0816 in August after serving as the athletics director for the University of Cincinnati from 2005-11.

Jenifer Thomas said she and her husband jumped at the opportunity for him to take the job at Illinois.

“Mike gets a lot of calls about jobs,” she said. “This one we were really all over right from the beginning.”

Part of the reason they ended up at Illinois was “University President Michael Hogan”:https://www.dailyillini.com/index.php/article/2011/09/not_just_another_face_in_the_crowd, who played a major role in his recruitment and hiring as the school’s 18th director of athletics.

“I felt really good about him at the time and I feel really good about him now,” Hogan said. “He’s proven where he was before in the Big East that he can put together championship teams and compete at the highest level. His academic record of his teams is outstanding.”

Throughout his time at Cincinnati, Thomas emphasized academics for the Bearcats’ athletes, leaving the school with a 70 percent graduation rate among student-athletes, something he hopes to build on at Illinois.

“We want to graduate 100 percent of our student-athletes,” he said. “People might say that’s unrealistic, well I would sit there and say, ‘Then who are we gonna leave behind?’”

Jenifer said both she and her husband grew up around athletics but that her husband’s personality and demeanor is more suited to managing a major university’s athletic department.

“Mike’s more even-keeled about things,” she said. “I love winning and I hate losing. I think if you’re the one with the job, you have to be a little more measured. You can’t have the emotional swing with winning and losing.”

She added that her husband is very lucky to have a job he loves.

“Every job has its bumps, but generally, the guy loves going to work every day,” she said.

Thomas said what he loves most about his job is watching the student-athletes develop from the moment they arrive as freshmen to the day they leave.

“It’s exciting,” he said. “I like going to the events. I like watching them participate. I like them coming my office to tell me how their day is going.”

Prior to arriving at Illinois and his six years at Cincinnati, Thomas served as the athletics director at the University of Akron and associate athletics director at the University of Virginia.

Despite moving around the country for various athletic administrative positions, Thomas said his approach doesn’t differ much from job to job.

“I think it’s the same template everywhere I’ve been,” he said. “The resources might be greater, but the challenges and the things you deal with day to day really don’t change much. I think that when you come into these jobs, the priorities, at least those you inherit, might be different from school to school, but how you go about doing the job on a daily basis doesn’t change much.”

One major difference Thomas has come across in his move to Illinois is the shift from working in a professional sports city in Cincinnati to a college town in Champaign-Urbana.

“In a pro city, you’re one of the many options from an attention standpoint of those you’re trying to get to come to events and also where you end up on the sports page each day,” he said.

Now located in central Illinois rather than a major metropolitan area, Thomas said one his main priorities is expanding the Illini brand north to Chicago.

“If we want to be viewed as a national brand, we certainly need to be a brand in Chicago,” he said.

Thomas is in the process of learning the history of Illinois’ presence in Chicago and looking at what’s been successful or unsuccessful in the past.

Hogan shares Thomas’ priority of going after the Chicago market.

“When I go to Chicago, I’m there about 35 percent of the time, I’ll walk around the lake if I’ve got a minute,” Hogan said.

“You hardly ever see an Illini T-shirt. You just don’t … you see Wisconsin, you see Indiana, you see Michigan. I’ll see two or three of each of those for every one Illini I see.”

Hogan said he wants have at least one Illini football game and at least two or three basketball games played in the city each year.

“We used to dominate Chicago,” he said. “We have to recapture the Chicago market, not just for athletics, but for academics as well. I feel very strongly about that and so I’m glad to hear him saying that, echoing those words.”

Thomas said successful sports teams can certainly help expand the Illini market, but that the school needs to be a brand in the city regardless of where they end up in the standings.

“At the end of the day, you need to start planting those seeds and build that foundation not only for growth, but so you can sustain (during) not as successful seasons. I think that’s important. I don’t think some of our programs are there yet.”

During Thomas’ time at Cincinnati, the school won five Big East titles, one NCAA individual championship and fielded 12 All-Americans. The Bearcats’ football team finished third in the BCS rankings and won the Sugar Bowl as recently as 2010.

For the time being, Thomas plans to strive for similar success with the coaching staffs already in place. He said it would be unfair for him to judge any coaches’ performance when he’s been here for such a short amount of time; however, he plans to look at each program in its entirety from the coaching staff to academic performance to the resources they have at their disposal.

“That’s all part of it when you kind of do an audit of a program,” he said. “Where are the gaps? Where are we coming up short?”

For now, Thomas is just enjoying his new life as an Illini.

“If I go home and have the TV on and I’m watching college sports, it’s easy for me to say it’s part of my job,” he said.

“I’m just scouting the competition. So I can get away with that. I’m not sure every dad or husband can do that, but because of my job description, I can.”