Another area of sport management is in academia, where the top administrative job is usually athletic director. Traditionally the career path was through coaching. Athletic directorships were often awarded to popular, but aging coaches being replaced by younger ones.
However, as schools spend more on sports programs and expect more income from them, college presidents are looking for experienced managers to run athletic departments. Today's ADs must deal effectively with school administrators, coaches, the community, and boosters.
Said John Kasser, AD at the University of California-Berkeley, "You have to be available for athletes to see you, coaches to see you, alumni to see you." (1)
According to Paul Krebs, senior associate athletic director at Ohio State, "My impressions are that college athletics, in order to be successful nowadays, need to be run like a corporation.
"When I say that, clearly, first and foremost has to be the thought of the student-athlete.
"Having said that, the financial pressure and size of the organizations now require that they be run with particular emphasis on business and management decisions. So you are looking to people who have trained and have experience in dealing with large staffs, and managing people, with a financial background." (2)
Salaries for collegiate sport management jobs range from about $20,000 for assistants, to $40,000 a year for athletic directors at small schools, to over $100,000 for athletic directors at large universities with big sports programs. According to a U.S. General Accounting Office survey, in 1990-91 the average base salary for a Division I AD was $80,047.
High school athletic directors earn from $25,000 to $70,000, according to a 1994 National Interscholastic Athletic Administrator Association survey.
Here are examples of university athletic directors who have
come from a variety of backgrounds:
She attended East Carolina University for two years in the late 1960s until she flunked out. Eighteen months later, after working in fast food restaurants and realizing she wanted more out of life, she attended Elon College in North Carolina, where she majored in English and played basketball for her sister Kay, who had become the school's coach.
After graduating, she coached basketball at the high school level and then at the University of Kentucky (1976-80), Oral Roberts (1980-83), and the University of Florida (1983-85). (According to The Sporting News, she is the only Division I coach, male or female, who has taken three previously unranked teams to the Top 20.)
In 1985 she switched from coaching to administration. She served as the assistant director of the Florida Gator Boosters until 1987. At the same time she earned a master's degree in counseling from Liberty University. Then she became associate athletic director at the University of North Carolina-Greensboro, serving from 1987-90. In 1990 she became AD at St. Louis University.
"During her tenure at St. Louis ... she led the private Jesuit school into the new Great Midwest Conference, snagged high-profile coaches for men's basketball and women's volleyball, negotiated the move to the new Kiel Center, raised the graduation rate to 92 percent and tripled the number of scholarships in some sports. The Billiken Club formed at her instigation three years ago to channel private donations directly to athletics has more than 1,000 members.
"Perhaps most impressive, she lasted longer than the four previous A.D.s." (3)
While she was at St. Louis, Yow earned a Ph.D. from Baptist Christian University in 1993.
Yow was hired by Maryland in 1994 at age 42, receiving a base salary of $130,000. She was told that balancing the budget was a primary concern because the department was more than $6.8 million in debt.
Shortly after arriving there Yow said, "How did the university get so deep in the hole?
"I have pie charts to show where it all went. I brought my own accountant with me from Saint Louis [University] to figure all that out."(4)
Yow set a goal to eliminate the debt in seven years through cost-cutting, marketing, and creative fund-raising (such as allowing Maryland home football games to be relocated to other arenas in exchange for cash from independent promoters).
In high school he was a serious bowler (at 15 he bowled a 300 game). His father worked for Brunswick and Tharp spent summers building bowling alleys.
Being advised by his mother that pro bowling would not provide him with a living, Tharp attended DePauw University in Indiana where he played basketball. He went to St. Andrews University in Scotland for his junior year, and played basketball on Scottish and British university teams. He earned a British Blue award, the top sports award given to British college students.
He returned to DePauw for his senior year, rejoined the team, and was named the school's MVP and athlete of the year.
Tharp went on to the University of Colorado Law School, where he received his degree in 1973. He was offered a job as assistant university counsel while still in school and served in that capacity until 1976. He became acting university counsel from 1976-83 and then vice president and university counsel from 1989-94. From 1989-92 he also served as administration liaison in the Office of the President to the athletic department, overseeing the budget.
During 21 years as a CU lawyer, he represented the school in a number of sports-related cases including an NCAA investigation in 1980 and a dispute with the New England Patriots over the hiring of a CU football coach.
Tharp also oversaw the legal aspects of the school's NCAA relationships, television contracts, coach employment contracts (including four head football coaches, five men's basketball coaches, and one's women's basketball coach), and Title IX compliance.
In 1996 he became the interim AD when Bill Marolt left to become head of USA Skiing. During this time Tharp was responsible for negotiating a major deal between Nike and CU. In exchange for sponsorship, Nike is providing cash, equipment, and clothing for all 17 of the school's sports. "With Nike, we get stuff we never would have otherwise had. The kids on the track team have the same sweatsuits as the football team. It gives us the ability to have the equipment we need to compete, and it's equal across the board." (5)
"It is difficult to value the entire transaction, given price fluctuations in equipment. But I think it's fair to say the agreement is probably the best product supply agreement in the country." (6)
In 1997, at the age of 49, Tharp was officially was hired for the AD position. He receives $145,000 in base salary plus incentives. According to Jim Martin, head of the regents' athletic subcommittee which helped to select Tharp, "We considered three factors in assessing the candidates. Public relations and fund-raising, a knowledge of the internal workings of the university and of the issues affecting athletics.
"A lot of our growth in the future is going to be determined by what kind of facilities we're able to provide, and that will entail fund-raising around the state and nation. It will be pivotal to our success and something we need to move on immediately.
"We also felt that Dick had a vision of the future, an ability to deal with complex and uncertain budgetary issues, and in particular, the skills he developed as an attorney should benefit (Colorado), as well as the Big 12 Conference as a whole." (7)
Boone played football at the school from 1970 to 1972 and was selected the team's most dedicated player in 1972. He graduated with a degree in business administration, majoring in banking and finance.
He spent 22 years in banking. In 1974 he joined Sunburst Bank in Grenada, Mississippi. He rose to CEO and chairman of the board of Grenada Sunburst System Corporation by the time he applied for the Ole Miss job. He took a salary cut, going from $275,000 to $120,000 annually.
The school's chancellor, R, Gerald Turner, felt Boone had the necessary qualifications for the job. "I feel he can learn the nuances of NCAA rules and the nuances of intercollegiate athletics a lot better than we can give someone else 20 years of leadership in the business community." (8)
The school's athletic department runs an 18-sport program. By 1997, Boone had "overseen the hiring of five head coaches, started three women's sports programs, launched a $13 million expansion of Vaught-Hemingway Stadium, authorized a $4 million capital improvements program, increased the budget about $2 million all while the Rebels are serving a four-year NCAA probation in football." (9)
Noted Boone, "I thought the business end of the department might be the most challenging, but actually it's just not that complicated. It's not Einstein or rocket-science kind of thinking, just plain ol' business sense.
"... the biggest [business] challenge is the marketing of the department, and the greatest marketing plan in the world of college athletics is to win." (10)
More problematic, he found, is dealing with government bureaucracy.
Cross attended Northwestern University and studied health and physical education. He was football team captain in 1960 and track team captain in 1960 and 1961. He was drafted by the Philadelphia Eagles in 1961 where he stayed until 1965. He played with the LA Rams until 1968. He earned All-Pro with both teams. After retiring as a player, he served as an Eagles coach for awhile.
In 1971 Cross became a game analyst for CBS and then hosted "The NFL Today" for 17 years.
He became a member of the NCAA Foundation Board and also consulted for the American Running and Fitness Association, the Department of Agriculture, the Pop Warner Little Scholars, and the Canadian Football League.
After his tenure at CBS ended, Cross became a financial consultant for Smith Barney and was based in Virginia. When he saw an ad in an NCAA newsletter for the ISU job, he applied for it. He was hired in 1996 at the age of 56.
Griffin was a top high school football player who chose OSU over Northwestern, University of Michigan, and the Naval Academy so his family, who lived in Columbus, could see him play.
He graduated with a degree in industrial relations, and then played eight years for the Cincinnati Bengals. During the off season he worked for the Shoe Corp. of America to gain business experience. In 1981 he and his brother (another Bengals player) declared bankruptcy on a failed Athlete's Foot franchise. "Ray and I were playing football so we couldn't pay a lot of attention to the business. We needed to be there every day, and we weren't." (11)
After he was injured in 1983 and the Bengals dropped him, he was hired by OSU in 1984 as assistant director of staff employment. He took a leave of absence to play half a season in the United States Football League.
Once back at OSU, he moved over to the athletic department, serving as special assistant to the AD. Griffin was asked to help out in fundraising. After several years he was promoted to assistant director of external affairs, expanding his responsibilities to include marketing and promotions. He held the position for eight years.
When the AD job opened up in 1994, Griffin wanted to be considered for it. But he realized that, at 39, he was perhaps still too young. "It's a major leap for anybody who is not sitting in that seat. Being an athletic director, you have several issues you must deal with - compliance, gender equity, making sure the funding is available for the different sports, graduation rates ... there is a vast area you have to deal with.
"In that regard it's a little different from what I've been doing, which has been basically to see that the funds are there so that we can have a program that's always in the black." (12)
The person hired for the AD job, Andy Geiger (who was the AD at the University of Maryland before Debbie Yow), promoted Griffin to his current position. Griffin handles daily supervision of 17 sports including football. He's responsible for budgeting, event staffing, evaluating personnel, and planning sports schedules and transportation.
The next time the AD job opens up, Griffin intends to be ready for it.
He grew up in Massachusetts and briefly attended Northeastern University in Boston. He didn't feel comfortable at a large urban school and transferred to Merrimack College, a Division II school in North Andover, Massachusetts, where he earned a scholarship and became an All-American in basketball.
He graduated in 1978 and was drafted in the third round by the Celtics. But the team didn't need him and he ended up playing in the CBA for a season.
He moved into coaching, first at Southern Connecticut State University and then for a women's pro basketball team. That job only lasted 2 1/2 months before the league ran out of money.
From 1981 to 1984 Skinner coached high school basketball. Then he decided to go into sports administration and obtained a master's degree in sport management from St. Thomas College in Miami.
He knew the athletic director at Salem State College in Salem, Massachusetts; when a basketball job opened up, he was hired and stayed for two years.
When a position opened up at UMass-Lowell in 1987, he applied for the job. He was promoted to the AD position in 1996 at the age of 40. He oversees 22 intercollegiate and recreational sports and 400 student-athletes. He also serves on the city's Arena and Stadium Commission which makes decisions about a downtown arena and a baseball stadium. He often puts in 12 to 14 hour days.
- "What I hope to attain as athletic director is a pretty simple message. I think having had the experience of coaching and playing and being an administrator at almost every level in college and an affiliation with the pros as a player and coach I think I developed a mutual feeling with the student-athletes and the coaches." (13)