It is often said that college head coaches are like CEOs, with their responsibilities reaching far beyond Xs and Os into all the daily operations of the programs they oversee. In early March, the NIU men’s basketball program gained a new CEO when Rashon Burno was named the 29th head coach of the Huskies.
Burno comes to NIU following six seasons at Arizona State while also spending time at Towson University, Manhattan College and University of Florida. A native of Jersey City, N.J., Burno played collegiately at DePaul University from 1998-2002 and made his start in coaching at Marmion Academy—a high school in Aurora, Illinois—leading the Cadets for three seasons from 2007-10. During his first couple of months on the job, he has already begun to see why head coaches are often compared to CEOs.
“You are executing your plan and that is a huge difference than before when, as an assistant, you are executing someone else’s,” Burno explained when asked about the difference in being a head coach. “You have to formulate your plan, you have to bring it to your staff and support staff, to go out and put it in play and execute at a high level. Obviously, there are similarities to being a CEO of a corporation, or president of anything, you have to go out and make sure that the plan that is set forth is being executed.”
Unlike many coaches who enter the profession immediately following their playing days, Burno’s post-playing career started out in the private sector where he worked as a financial planner before the pull of basketball brought him back into the game. That work experience has also been beneficial to how Burno approaches running a program for the first time.
“I think for me, it is just understanding that every day is going to be different,” Burno explained. “Expectations are going to go like the Dow Jones (Industrial Average). They are going to go up and down. Being able to be consistent is important and so is being able to manage expectations, especially when you are a start-up. I don’t want to build too fast because I have to make sure the infrastructure is able to ‘produce the orders’ that may come out. I don’t want to cut corners, because this thing is about sustainability and long-term growth versus ‘let’s hit it now’ and then we don’t have the infrastructure to start over the next year.”
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