He also wouldn’t elaborate on the baseball program’s situation surrounding suspended assistant Jimmy Goins and any relationship with the now-closed Biogenesis, a former “anti-aging” clinic in Coral Gables that reportedly dispensed performance-enhancing drugs for several major-league players.

James, overwhelmingly popular with fans and coaches, is known for being open and friendly with UM followers — especially those in the South Florida community. His Twitter handle: @CanesAllAccess.

“For us to be in communication with the fans is something that I feel as a program we need to do,” he said. “It’s a situation where when you look at [UM], we don’t have the ability to just go out and raise dollars by saying, ‘Hey, send your ticket invoice in along with your donation, and thank you.’ We have to get very aggressive. You hear people use the Canes Family [CanesFam] slogan quite a bit and in many ways that’s true.

“We’re a small, private school. We’re a family in many ways.”

This is James’ third stint at UM. He started working there in 1995 in ticket sales, corporate sales and athletics development. He also served as athletic director at Maine from July 2005 to September 2010.

Spring football

UM announced Friday that the Canes will begin spring football March 2 and culminate the spring session with the April 13 Spring Game at 3 p.m. at Sun Life Stadium.

The first scrimmage is at 10 a.m. on March 23 at Traz Powell Stadium, and the second one is 7 p.m. on April 5 in Naples. Scrimmages are open to the public, as is the March 26 practice at Greentree Field. All other practices are closed.