Final story - tracking the AD search

I spent a few weeks researching and conducting interviews. No anonymous sources, no hearsay.

Bob “Kayo” Marcum’s tenure as athletic director at Marshall University came to an end recently, opening the door for a new athletic director to lead Thundering Herd athletics in to the future. Hiring a replacement, however, is not an overnight process and takes weeks, even months.

In the case of hiring a new athletic director at Marshall, the process is expected to take six-to-eight weeks from start to finish. The university created a search committee made up of 10 people, including members of the university faculty, student body, Board of Governors and members of the Huntington community. In addition to the local search committee, Marshall also sought the services of Eastman & Beaudine, an executive search firm based in Dallas.

Eastman and Beaudine has an excellent record of placing athletic directors at schools such as Virginia Tech, the University of Louisville, Oklahoma University, Texas Christian University and at Marshall’s fellow Conference USA schools the University of Houston and Southern Methodist University, just to name a few.

Bill Bissett, chief of staff for Marshall president Stephen J. Kopp and Senior Vice President of Communications, said the first step in the process of finding a new athletic director was hiring a firm that had the means to do a great job.

“The first step is to hire a search firm that has a good national reputation, and we’ve done that,” Bissett said. “By hiring Bob Beaudine’s search firm, we got someone who has national contacts, national credibility and as is the case with most personnel actions, this is not something that’s done in front page news everyday.”

Bissett said keeping the names of the applicants confidential is a key part of the search because it allows the applicants to continue at their current jobs, whatever that may be, without fear of retribution for their employers because they were looking at another job.

“Whether that person currently serves as an A.D. or an assistant A.D., you want to keep that search confidential for it to be effective, but also to protect those potential applicants,” Bissett said. “You don’t want someone not to apply for the job because they might jeopardize their current position.”

A lot has been said, both in print and broadcast media, about the search for an athletic director. Bissett said that comes with any high profile hiring, but that special attention gets paid to sports.

“There is no section in the newspaper called academics, but we all know there is one called sports,” Bissett said.

The sports section has been ground zero for discussion on the Marshall athletic director position. Jack Bogaczyk, sports editor of the Charleston Daily Mail, has penned several columns on the subject. Bogaczyk said Marshall needs to hire someone with experience as an athletic director and can’t afford to let the new person take their time getting acclimated to how things work.

“Marshall needs to hire someone who has already been an A.D. at a school similar to Marshall,” Bogaczyk said. “A good example would be the hire (the University of) Houston just made. They got a guy, Mack Rhodes, who had been the A.D at Akron. He would have been a great candidate for the Marshall job.”

Football is big business for colleges, especially at the Division I level. It’s been no secret that Marshall’s football program has suffered in the latter half of this decade. Marcum was always quick to point out the fact that the program was put on probation and had the number of scholarships available reduced, making it difficult for Thundering Herd head coach Mark Snyder to be successful on the field in his first few seasons in Huntington. Bogaczyk said whomever is hired will need to be football savvy in order to do a good job.

“(Marshall) has to hire someone from a program that has had football,” Bogaczyk said. “Football is the animal that drives the cart at Marshall. They have to get someone that has experience dealing with football and knows what kind of money that takes.”

The most important trait the new A.D. will need, Bogaczyk said, is the ability to fundraise at a level that will help Marshall athletics keep up with its fellow C-USA universities.

“They need someone with the personality and ability to go out and raise money,” Bogaczyk said. “The Big Green (Scholarship Fund, MU’s athletic fundraising organization) has had so many people in charge or passing through and working there that there has been no stability.

Bogaczyk spelled out, in his opinion, what characteristics the new athletic director will need.

“Marshall doesn’t need another 64-year old athletic director,” Bogaczyk said. “They need, for lack of a better phrase, a young guy that is dynamic that will come in there with some ideas on how to make money because that is what Marshall needs more than anything. If you’ve got money you can spend more on recruiting, hiring coaches and facilities.”

Diversity has been a hot-button topic in collegiate athletic administration in recent years. There are more than enough qualified people for athletics jobs of different gender’s and racial backgrounds than just white males.

Dr. Shari Williams-Clarke is the vice president for Multicultural Affairs at Marshall and also is a member of the ten-person athletic director search committee.

Williams-Clarke said keeping an eye on diversity as the search goes on is very important to the hiring process.

“You want to be a microcosm of what society looks like,” Williams-Clarke said. “If you don’t at least have a majority of society’s people in the process then you are not going to get a true representation of what society is like.”

Williams-Clarke said the members of the search committee were asked to submit questions they would have for the potential athletic director candidates.

“I submitted questions in regard to the hiring of athletic administrators and coaches of diverse backgrounds,” Williams-Clarke said. “I wanted to know how involved these individuals are with issues on diversity and if they can demonstrate a commitment to diversity. It’s easy to talk about how committed they are to diversity, but we want to see what they have actually done.”

On July 1, almost exactly 24 hours after Marcum’s retirement, David Steele was named as the interim athletic director at Marshall until a full-time replacement could be found. Steele previously served in the athletic department as associate director of athletics for business and administration. Most universities have felt the pinch of the poor economy, and Bissett said that part of what made Steele an attractive candidate for the short-term position was the fact that he knew the athletic department’s finances so well.

“It’s good that he as knowledge of the books and finances,” Bissett said. “From pro teams to colleges, this is a difficult time for everybody if you’re living off sponsorships, and I don’ think our athletic department is any different. With Steele, it goes beyond just his knowledge of the finances. It’s his leadership ability and the level of respect he engenders in that athletic department.”

Steele said in a phone interview that his time in office would be business as usual in regard to getting the athletic department ready for the upcoming school year.

“It’s our job to handle all the things we can, because whoever comes in and takes over is going to have plenty things to do,” Steele said. “We can’t get too caught up on the future, we just have to focus on the task at hand.”

When asked if he was a candidate for the full-time athletic director position, Steele said he was not and that he viewed his time as the interim athletic director as a caretaker’s role.

“They wanted someone who was not going to be a candidate for the full-time job to fill this role,” Steele said. “I’m just trying to do the best I can for the period I am going to be in this roll.”

Still, the question remains as to when exactly a full-time athletic director will be named. Bissett said the goal of the university was to have a person in place by the start of the upcoming football season.