Kevin Rome sat in his office Wednesday afternoon sporting a suit, a bow tie and a grin from ear to ear. The walls that surrounded the president of Lincoln University were nearly bare. Boxes were being moved out of the Young Hall offices.
The boxes were headed for next-door Memorial Hall, temporary home of the office of the president while Young Hall gets a facelift.
Despite the change occurring around him, Rome was relaxed and excited to discuss the future of Lincoln athletics.
Few would envy his task of reviving a depleted athletic department. But Rome has been the president of Lincoln since January 2013, and he has embraced the challenge.
His end goal is clear: success within the athletic department across the board.
"I want to win," Rome said. "But I want to win the right way. More than anything, we want to see our student-athletes win."
How quick can that happen? Only time will tell. But the university is implementing certain things to make progress.
Take the Blue Tiger Athletics Club, for example. The restructured club - formerly known as the Blue Tigers Quarterbacks Club - was designed to create a means for alumni, community leaders and corporate sponsors to contribute to all Lincoln sports programs.
"You have to invest in a program," Rome said. "Any program out there that's winning is because people are investing in the program. It's financial, it's emotional, it's fan base, it's all those things that creates a winning program."
Willie Jude II, executive directory of philanthropy, said the program has seen 100 members sign up to contribute to the athletics department. The club hopes to reach 250 prior to the end of the fiscal year.
Another step was the university's partnership with the Boys and Girls Club to create a facility at the location of the current softball field. Rome said the lower level will have new locker rooms for the Lincoln football, men's and women's track teams. He added the construction final bids will be reviewed this week, as they plan to begin moving dirt in December. The construction forces the softball team to play at Duensing Field in the spring before its new field opens northeast of the baseball field.
Rome called this step "paramount" for football and track and field, as attracting recruits is on thing Lincoln has struggled with in the past.
"Those two program have definitely lacked in facilities," Rome said. "What you expose the recruit to when they come to the campus is critical, so when you don't have a nice facility to expose them to, and then they go somewhere else in the MIAA and see really nice facilities that may influence their decision. ... If we want to be competitive, we have to compete for the best athletes."
The Lincoln athletics department currently has a vacancy to fill: director of athletics.
"We haven't started a search. We wanted to solidify certain things internally and decide what we wanted to do," Rome said. "We haven't not considered remaining with (basketball coach John Moseley) in the position."
This past summer Betty Kemna resigned from the directory of athletics position after six seasons in role, and is now the senior women's administrator. The new role focuses mainly on compliance and gameday operations, which she worked on for four years prior to becoming the director of athletics.
Moseley, in his second year as men's basketball coach, is currently in an interim position. Rome wouldn't offer a specific timetable of when they'd hire a director of athletics, or if Moseley was being considered, but the university may be leaning toward someone who can do the role full time.
"To me it's about getting the job done," Rome said. "I don't know that there's an ideal, but I know the outcome that we want to see, and the outcome is extremely engaged in the community, someone who can garner the support, someone who can motivate the coaches and players, and someone who can hold them accountable, and someone with a winning attitude."
At the forefront of the Lincoln athletic department's struggles is the football program. The Blue Tigers finished this season with a 1-10 overall record. The football program hasn't posted a winning season since 1972. The Blue Tigers have posted one season with three wins in 12 seasons.
Lincoln head football coach Mike Jones now has five seasons under his belt, amounting to a 8-47 record. Jones, a former Missouri Tiger and 1999 Super Bowl champion with the St. Louis Rams, coached Hazelwood East High School to a Missouri state title in 2008.
Rome wouldn't comment on the status of Jones, due to personnel reasons.
"Ideally we want to win with who we have now, but the goal is to win," Rome said. "We're going to have some conversations during the offseason. We're going to talk about what's going to be different next year, because you can't have too many seasons like that."
Rome doesn't doubt the effort given by the coaching staff and players.
"I think they have the pieces, but they aren't working quite well together," Rome said. "We're going to have to figure out what it is going to take to bring it all together. ... At the end of the day, we want to see football win."
Rome struggled to hide his excitement for the basketball programs' fast starts. At the time, the men's and women's teams had began the season 2-0. Later that night, the two teams had both won their first three games for the first time in Lincoln history. Saturday, they each lost for the first time.
Moseley said after 2-0 starts students and community members are "peaking through the blinds" and trying to figure out what kind of teams will show up this season.
"We focus on the positives," Rome said. "Basketball winning will help the institution and bring some excitement."
Another positive is the women's track team, which captured a NCAA Division II national championship in 2014. Rome hopes teams can piggyback that success.
"If you talk to coaches and athletes across the country, they know our program," Rome said. "So we get recognition for it. It would be nice if it created revenue because that's the ideal for any program. But that's something we have to work on. We have to take the winning tradition and turn it into some type of financial support in the community or corporate world."
But Rome and his colleagues want more.
"We don't just want to win in one sport, we want to win in all of our sports," he said. "So we have to garner the resources it's going to take to be competitive and win."
There's always a starting place. And Rome believes he's well on his way.
"We want all of them to leave here with a championship ring like our women's track team," Rome said. "That's the ultimate success."