UAPB head coach Logan Stout addresses his team this fall (Photo courtesy of UAPB)
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Much of the X (formerly known as Twitter) bio of Arkansas-Pine Bluff head coach Logan Stout contains information you would expect it to contain, like that he was an MLB scout for 22 years and that he’s the founder of the Dallas Patriots travel ball organization.
But it also contains some things you wouldn’t expect, like that he’s an entrepreneur, a speaker and a best-selling author.
When you read the “About Logan” section on his website, an entity that is in and of itself a rare thing among college baseball coaches, you don’t see references to the legendary baseball coaches he’s rubbed elbows with or the standout players he has coached. Instead, you see references to John C. Maxwell and Zig Ziglar, names that are more familiar to the C-suite executives of Fortune 500 companies than the coaches who roam the halls of the ABCA convention.
And that’s precisely why he’s the most interesting hire of the 2024 coaching carousel.
Stout has options at this point in his career. He could have continued a lucrative career in the business world. As a keynote speaker and author, he could have leaned more heavily into that space and used it as a means to meet more interesting people and travel the world giving talks on topics he’s passionate about.
And if he wanted to get back in college baseball, surely there would be a ton of interest in someone who was on staff as Dan Heefner was turning DBU into the machine of a program that it is now, who has worked as a scout for more than two decades and who founded a travel ball organization that can say it produced big leaguers like Josh Bell, Trevor Story and AJ Minter.
So then, with all due respect to all parties, how did he end up as the head coach at Arkansas-Pine Bluff, a program that has never been to the NCAA Tournament and hasn’t even been to the SWAC Tournament since 2019?
As it turns out, there are multiple answers here.
One is that he had felt a pull to get back into college coaching to begin with as the game crept more and more into his life while he was grinding away in the business world.
“I would sit in these boardrooms with business icons and I’m sitting there checking my phone for the latest D1Baseball Twitter post. It’s like ‘man, there’s a Friday game starting at two on ESPN+, I’ve got to get out of this boardroom,’” Stout said. “I’m sitting there and I’m like ‘I’m in the wrong place.’”
The second sign for Stout that it was time to get back into the game was a conversation with his two sons.
“They came to me one night and said ‘Dad, didn’t you used to coach college baseball?’ I said ‘yeah, I did.’ They said ‘at Dallas Baptist University, right?’ I said ‘yeah.’ And they said ‘we really think it would be awesome if you’d go back to college coaching,” Stout said.
And then, once Stout knew he was going back in, a conversation with former big leaguer Torii Hunter helped nudge him in the direction of UAPB. Though Hunter is not an alum of the school, he grew up in Pine Bluff, has made major donations to the baseball program and has his name on the program’s baseball complex.
“Torii Hunter is a dear friend. Of course, a legend of the game in Major League Baseball, and Torii and I have owned a few companies together, still do, actually, but he called and said ‘hey, I’m from Pine Bluff, Arkansas. I’m a huge supporter. We need a new baseball coach. Can I connect you with the athletic director? I think you’d do really special things if they just listen to you, and I think really special things could happen there. It’s a baseball town, a baseball state. I think you could do wonderful things and make an impact, not only on the players’ lives, but an impact on the university, an impact in the community at a time where it needs to be done.’ I think that’s what really resonated with me,” Stout recalled.
Stout is clear-eyed about what he’s taking on. UAPB isn’t a turnkey operation, and in fact, it’s closer to being whatever the opposite of a turnkey operation is.
There’s very little history to be found compared to conference mates like Southern, Jackson State and Bethune-Cookman, and while Hunter’s donations have put the Lions in a position where their facility compares positively with most of the rest of the SWAC, there’s not a lot of additional investment to be found.
It’s not from a lack of care about the program—Stout actually raves about the UAPB administration—but the financial realities are what they are.
“I grew up dirt poor. My mom raised me and my little brother. A lot of people don’t know that part of my story. I have worked full time since the age of 12, and so I just have a heart for the underdog,” Stout said. “I have a huge heart for programs that are underfunded. It’s public knowledge so I’ll say this, this isn’t a secret, our baseball program is the most underfunded program I think in college baseball at the Division I level. Anything that could be a roadblock, we’ve got it, and to me, that’s why I believe, at least in this season of my life, UAPB is where I was supposed to be.”
It’s a harsh reality that UAPB can’t expect to win by doing what everyone else does and trying to do it better. Even if executed perfectly, heading out to all corners of the country to find undervalued recruits and then coaching them up better than everyone else still might not be enough to win big with the headwinds that face the Lions.
His experience in scouting gives him a keen eye for talent that can be developed into a fully-formed player, but there are lots of coaches who have that kind of experience. Similar things can be said about him having worked closely with a number of big leaguers.
But what every other college coach in the country doesn’t have going for it is a connection to the reality TV show Shark Tank. And that’s precisely where Stout might be able to provide some additional value.
“I think these college athletes are looking for more than just a college baseball experience,” Stout said. “I’ve helped mentor some folks for the show called Shark Tank. (The sharks) endorsed the books I wrote, most recently Grit Factor, okay well (the players) love that show. So I think it’s cool that I get to mentor these kids on how to start their own business. We had a kid commit to us last night and the mom just told me ‘he had Power Four offers, but he wants to be able to spend every day with you, learning from you about entrepreneurship and business.’ Another kid wants to write a book. He wants to learn how to do that. So I think for me, one of the fulfilling aspects of how my life prepared me for college coaching is I get to kind of bring stuff from off the field to add value for these kids.”
Will Stout’s connections give the coaching staff the ability to recruit and retain a level of player that UAPB hasn’t previously had access to? Maybe. Or maybe not. But the hope is that the edge they gain from those connections, combined with Stout’s scouting and coaching acumen, plus that of assistants Mark Moyer and RJ Pearson, will be enough to move the program forward.
It helps that Stout has very little to lose in taking on this challenge. You won’t hear him say it, but he’s made his money from his time in the business world and those avenues will remain open to him no matter how things go at UAPB.
So to put it bluntly, he doesn’t need this. He’s not doing this for the paycheck or to climb the coaching ladder, and that point of view can help a coach make decisions and take a long-term view that one might not be able to take in the typically pressurized environments of college sports.
Stout already made one such decision since taking the job over the summer by not cutting any players from the group that returned to Pine Bluff after last season. In a world where there’s the expectation that the roster will almost completely turn over any time there’s a coaching change, that’s pretty rare.
“I didn’t cut any players,” Stout said. “Could I have found better players? Yep, I could have. I think the players know that. They’re not dumb; they’re smart. But it was the middle of the summer, end of the summer (and) I have two boys, Miles and Cooper, and I’m a dad, and I treat every one of these players as if they’re my own son. And if my son were at a university and it were late in the summer and I got a phone call and all of the sudden, I’m canned, I’m dumped, I’m no longer there, and with very little time, if enough time at all, to find a new place to go, I would not be okay if my son was treated that way. I get it. It’s a business. I get it. I’m not throwing shade on anybody, I’m not being disrespectful to other people’s mode of operation at all. I get it (but) for me personally, I just believe the right thing is always the right thing to do, and these are human beings at the end of the day. This is someone’s son. This is a person with a heartbeat. So I didn’t turn the roster over.”
Ultimately, Stout knows that the end result for his UAPB teams is going to primarily come down to the level of talent he’s able to get to Pine Bluff. All of the connections and experience and impressive resume line items won’t matter if the Lions don’t end up having better players than other teams in the SWAC.
With so much working against him and his staff, that won’t be easy, but that’s the point of doing this at all.
“I love being here, and as with anything, there’s going to be hurdles,” Stout said. “There’s going to be walls to climb, but there’s no such thing as a smooth mountain. If there were, how in the world would you climb it?”
