Wesley Mallette Named Deputy AD/CMO for Gamecock Athletics – University of South Carolina Athletics

Wesley Mallette has been named Deputy Athletics Director/Chief Marketing Officer for Gamecock Athletics, University of South Carolina Athletics Director Jeremiah Donati announced today. Mallette comes to South Carolina from the University of California, Riverside, where he has most recently been serving as the school’s athletics director.

“On behalf of our entire athletics department we are thrilled to welcome Wes and his family to South Carolina,” said Donati. “We identified a tremendous pool of traditional and non-traditional candidates for this position and he quickly rose to the top of the list. Wes brings a wealth of energy and experience, having touched every aspect of an athletics program. Particularly, his experience in external relations from marketing, branding, content creation, communications and the NIL space will be critical as we continue to embrace a new landscape across college athletics. He will be a great addition to our leadership team, our athletics department, to our university and to the city of Columbia, and we look forward to the positive impact he will have with Gamecock student-athletes,” added Donati.

Mallette has been part of the UC Riverside staff since 2018 and has served as the Highlanders athletics director since 2021. Under his leadership, UCR Athletics survived its biggest crisis in the school’s 25-year history at the Division I level, as the entire 17-sport department was saved from being eliminated during the COVID-19 pandemic in his first year at the helm. Since that time, Mallette witnessed several of the Highlander teams perform at historically high levels on both the fields of competition and in the classroom.

Highlighting his time as AD, Mallette helped elevate the UCR Athletics brand by securing a new shoe and apparel deal with Nike/BSN SPORTS. During his tenure, UCR Athletics experienced its best fundraising year ever in 2024-25 and tallied four of its top five fundraising years in more than a decade. His leadership with the men’s basketball program earned him distinction as one of the nation’s top 100 most influential people in men’s college basketball by Silver Waves Media in both 2023 and 2024

Prior to being named AD, Mallette held the role of Chief of Staff and Senior Associate AD for External Affairs for UCR Athletics, where he was responsible for managing and changing the brand’s narrative. He served as the primary liaison between the Athletics Director and all fundraising…