Dr. Hanna was one of the sport industry’s most accomplished sport marketing professionals prior to earning his Ph.D. in Sport Administration from the University of Louisville then joining Georgia Southern University. His 15 years in intercollegiate athletics make him one of the most industry experienced Sport Management professors in the field. Among Dr. Hanna’s top accomplishments in Sport Marketing are leading the University of Illinois to the most National Association of Collegiate Marketing Administrators (NACMA) Awards in the Big Ten Conference over a five-year stretch in which Illinois led the Big Ten Conference in NACMA Awards in four of five years. He helped Illinois double season ticket sales and football revenue in just two years—the only time this combination of doubling football ticket sales and doubling football revenue in just two years is believed to have been accomplished at any school in Big Ten Conference history. What makes this even more impressive is Illinois had been last in the Big Ten four years in a row and was picked last for the first of those seasons, in which Hanna's proposed and executed plan led to football season ticket sales growth of 12,000 before the season started which also led to four sellouts for the first time in 20 years.  It is inconceivable that had the Fighting Illini continued to play in a half-filled Memorial Stadium vs. the benefit of the massive crowds produced with Hanna that a team that finished last four years in a row and picked last would go to the Rose Bowl.  His major contribution to overhauling the Memorial Stadium home field environment is one of the great untold and underappreciated stories of the Rose Bowl season.  The next season Illinois would add another 8,000 football season tickets sold taking Illinois from 20,000 season tickets to 40,000 season tickets in a 60,000-seat stadium in just two seasons while adding a second-straight four-game sellout season at Memorial Stadium.  Therefore, he helped Illinois sell out four games in consecutive seasons for the first time in 20 years and helped Western Michigan University sell out three games in one season for the only time in WMU history. The top three Illinois football seasonal average percentage of capacity figures were posted with Hanna guiding the football sales and promotion campaigns in 2008 (98.15%), 2007 (96.14%), and 2009 (94.71%) with the dropoff to the next closest figure being a robust 15% lower. Hanna posted the top two seasonal average percentage of capacity figures at WMU at 88.99% in 1999 and 84.97% in 2000. Hanna posted the first football home crowd of 30,000-plus at Arkansas State on Sept. 18, 2004 with 30,427 in attendance--the third highest mark in ASU history and the ASU record that stood for 8 years till 2012. Hanna also created season ticket wait lists for men's basketball at both Oklahoma State University and the University of Illinois having jammed Gallagher-Iba Arena and Assembly Hall to sales capacity in his various stops.  He created some of the most memorable events in Illinois history including the pink shirt Illini Madness event that established a school record of 14,000 for Illini Madness while earning nearly $50,000 for Coaches vs. Cancer, hosted 62,870 fans for the World’s Biggest Basketball Practice, and worked with Bruce Weber to create A Night of Legends featuring two Illinois Final Four teams separated by more than a decade which attracted 15,417 and was one of the first live events on the then-newly started Big Ten Network.  Hanna was also the originator of the phrase "It's a great day to be a Bronco" which he penned for a 1998 radio ad featuring the voice of Western Michigan University Hall of Fame men's basketball player Saddi Washington and later utilized prominently in speeches by former WMU athletic director Kathy Beauregard and becoming a beloved phrase of comradery for WMU fans.  His innovative storytelling penchant also led Hanna to work with DJ Steve Porter to have a special video mix created for an Illini Madness event.  Under Hanna's leadership, Illinois added numerous annual Premier Promotion events to Illinois athletics including Bleacher Bum BBQ for baseball, Stuff Huff for volleyball, The Great Escape for wrestling, Soccerfest for soccer, Gym Jam for gymnastics, and Splash Bash for swimming and diving.  The first Bleacher Bum BBQ event in 2009 set the standing Illinois all-time home game (5,214) and home weekend (8,202) attendance records. The 2009 volleyball Spike the Record event set the standing Illinois all-time attendance record at 7,632 and the History at Huff event from 2010 attracted a crowd of 4,141 and ended Penn State's 65-match Big Ten win streak.  Soccerfest 2006 attracted the standing Illinois all-time home event record women's soccer attendance of 2,667 and the all-time Illinois season attendance total of 7,261.  Splash Bash 2009 set the Illinois all-time single-event attendance record of 763 fans. In 2007,  the World's Largest Tailgate softball event at Illinois (an event created before Hanna arrived) posted a record 1,445 fans under Hanna's marketing staff's leadership and execution while the 2006 event drew 1,283 fans--marking the current No. 2 and No. 3 events in Illinois softball history.  Hanna promoted the top 5 WMU football attendance events in Waldo Stadium history and five of the top nine all-time MAC crowds of all time including the Waldo Stadium record crowd of 36,361 for Indiana State in 2000. One strength of AI is its ability to handle complex prompts and massive amounts of data which allowed Hanna to learn in June 2026, years after the actual achievements, that during his tenures as the lead football attendance professional at Western Michigan, Arkansas State, and Illinois the peak percentages for attendance growth during his tenure at WMU, ASU, and Illinois not only established the peak football attendance growth by a football attendance marking pro during their tenure on a school by school basis, but remarkably also established the all-time standards for the Big Ten (Illinois) with Hanna's peak attendance growth of 42% in his tenure, MAC (WMU) with Hanna's peak attendance growth of 43.9% in his tenure, and Sun Belt (ASU) with Hanna's peak attendance growth of 30.1%.  These peak attendance growth comparisons remove any COVID era measures from consideration due to the obvious bump any director should have got coming out of COVID), making Hanna the most prolific college football attendance builder of all-time.  Hanna hopes to get further confirmation of this remarkable achievement at three different NCAA FBS conferences.  Between the major national award winning special national award-winning sporting events, storytelling prowess, legacy of substantially growing football season ticket sales, football revenue, and football attendance while setting records and long-time achievements, and unique accomplishment of creating season ticket basketball wait lists at two schools, Hanna showed a mastery of brand building, marketing, and sales that cemented one of the elite college marketing professional legacies.

Dr. Hanna earned tenure and promotion to Associate Professor at Georgia Southern. He has taught 18 different SMGT courses, teaching at both undergraduate and graduate levels. Dr. Hanna enters Fall 2025 with 15 published and in-press peer-reviewed publications and others working their way through the system. His peer-reviewed work is published in the International Journal of Sport Communications, Communication and Sport, Legal Aspects of Sport, Journal of Contemporary Athletics, Journal of Sport Behavior, Journal of African American Studies, and Quinnipiac Law Review among others. Dr. Hanna has 36 peer-reviewed oral academic conference presentations to his credit entering Fall 2025. He is a regular presenter at the North American Society of Sport Management (NASSM) Conference where he has presented on nine occasions while also serving as a NASSM abstract reviewer three times. Hanna’s college practical sports background and academic research interests have led him to present at College Sport Research Institute (CSRI), the top college sport conference, 13 times. His Sport Law research interests have led him to present at the Sport and Recreation Law Association (SRLA) conference 6 times.  Dr. Hanna's research interests include sport communication, sport law, college sport, college sport ethics, sport whistle-blowing, and image repair theory.  It is worth noting his writing prowess started well before he earned his PhD.  Hanna served as first the sports editor and then the news editor at WMU's Western Herald before he started his sports career, earning one Detroit Press Foundation for news writing and another for opinion writing as well winning the Richard Rozga editor of the year award.  During his time at the Western Herald, Hanna attended the First College Media Day at the White House with President Bill Clinton and much of his cabinet providing availabilities throughout the day.  In addition to asking President Clinton a question that day, during Hanna's Western Herald tenure he interviewed Dan Patrick and Keith Olbermann of ESPN's The Big Show/SportsCenter, musician Tori Amos, and WCW's Stunning Steve Austin who Eric Bischoff had placed on media interviews at the time just before Austin would go to ECW and before he would become the biggest star in wrestling history as "Stone Cold" Steve Austin.   

People who worked for Hanna in his sport career went on to become general managers, VPs, sales and marketing managers, fundraising executives and ticket specialists within the WNBA, Madison Square Garden, NBA, and NFL and at various Division I schools including the University of Texas. Hanna's students have gone on to become lawyers multiple times in addition to working in key positions within the PGA, NBA, MLB, MLS, MiLB, ITF, in senior management in college athletics departments, and at Porche among other places.