After nearly two decades at the University of South Alabama, Dr. Daniel McCarthy is stepping into the top job at Jaguar Athletics with a simple message for Mobile: This is your team, too.

You don’t have to be a University of South Alabama graduate to be a Jag.

Mobile Chamber President and CEO Bradley Byrne made that point pretty plainly as he welcomed University leaders to a recent Mobile Chamber Board of Advisors After Hours.

Byrne told the crowd, “If you live in this area, you are a Jag.”

That set the stage for the introduction of South Alabama’s new director of athletics, Dr. Daniel McCarthy and for an evening that was about much more than football schedules, ticket sales or wins and losses.

It was about what Jaguar Athletics can mean to Mobile.

He’s the new AD. He’s not the new guy.

McCarthy was named South Alabama’s fifth director of athletics in July, but he has been part of the program since 2008.

He arrived in Mobile before the Jaguars ever played a football game.

Since then, he has had a front-row seat, and often a behind-the-scenes role, in South’s evolution from a relatively young athletics program into one that now fields 17 Division I sports, competes for championships and plays football on campus at Hancock Whitney Stadium.

McCarthy stepped into the role of deputy athletics director in 2017 and has worked across nearly every area of the department. During his tenure, South has won 19 Sun Belt Conference championships, earned 14 NCAA postseason appearances and completed more than $90 million in athletics capital projects.

So when longtime Athletic Director Dr. Joel Erdmann retired, USA President Jo Bonner said the University did its homework, including considering interest from outside candidates.

The answer, ultimately, was already at South.

“When we looked at the future of Jaguar Athletics, it became abundantly clear that the best person to lead us forward was already a member of the University of South Alabama family,” Bonner said when McCarthy’s appointment was announced.

Finding a Home in Mobile

McCarthy knew he wanted a career that combined two things he had grown up around: education and sports.

That career took him from an internship at Auburn to Mercer University and the University of Richmond before an opportunity at South Alabama brought him back closer to family in 2008.

“What was supposed to be a couple of years for me … turned into an 18-year career,” he told the group.

Along the way, Mobile became home. He and his wife, Amanda, raised their three children here. Two of them, Drew and Ella, are now students at South Alabama themselves.

That history is part of what makes McCarthy’s perspective on the future of Jaguar Athletics different. He didn’t arrive to inherit what exists today.

He watched it being built.

Mobile may be the Jags’ biggest advantage

Ask McCarthy what gives South Alabama an edge over its competition, and his answer isn’t a facility, a coach or even a recruiting class.

It’s Mobile.

“Our biggest advantage, in my opinion … is the city,” McCarthy told Chamber members.

He pointed to South’s ability to recruit student-athletes, coaches and employees to a community where they can build a life, not simply attend a university or take a job.

But McCarthy also believes that relationship works both ways.

He wants the University’s familiar #OurCity message to mean more than where the Jaguars happen to play.

“This is yours. This is ours,” McCarthy told the crowd. “When people go around this community and see our success and their success, we’re trying to build together.”

Byrne agreed, noting that “Athletics play a real part in that success. A strong football program draws visitors downtown and to the campus, fills hotel rooms and restaurants and gives our community a shared reason to come together on a Saturday. It also raises the University’s profile nationally, which helps with recruiting students, faculty and the kind of partnerships that strengthen our local economy.”

That’s where Mobile’s business community comes in.

For McCarthy, supporting the Jags doesn’t have to look the same for every person or every company.

It could mean buying season tickets. Bringing employees to a game. Entertaining clients at Hancock Whitney Stadium. Becoming a corporate partner. Supporting student-athletes. Or simply showing up with a few friends in tow.

“Come to a game,” McCarthy said. “Bring your friend. Bring your client. Bring your customer.”

And he wants that relationship to extend beyond what businesses can do for South.

McCarthy invited local companies to talk with the athletics department about their own goals and explore ways Jaguar Athletics’ audiences, events and platforms could help them reach customers, employees and the community.

In other words, he doesn’t see the business community and Jaguar Athletics as two separate groups.

He sees partners.

First up: Football

There won’t be much time to wait before Jag Nation gets its first chance to answer McCarthy’s call.

South Alabama kicks off the 2026 football season Saturday, September 5, at Hancock Whitney Stadium against Southeastern Louisiana. Kickoff is at 6 p.m.

The Jags have six home games on the schedule, including Ohio on Sept. 19, Homecoming against ULM on Oct. 3, a Halloween matchup with Louisiana Tech and the return of the Battle for the Belt against Troy on Saturday, Nov. 14.

Six Saturdays. Six chances to fill Hancock Whitney Stadium, and six chances for Mobile’s hotels and restaurants to feel it, too.

McCarthy believes South Alabama has the university, the facilities and the city. What it needs now is the crowd.

For Mobile’s business community, there may be no easier place to start than showing up.

Buy the tickets. Bring the employees. Invite the client. Put your J up.

Go Jags.