NCAA Division I Athletic Directors: An Analysis of the Responsibilities, Qualifications and Characteristics

College athletics, perhaps even more so than professional sports, engender a high degree of affinity and attachment. Boosters and alumni are willing to give millions to further the cause of their alma mater. Several schools welcome over one hundred thousand spectators from all over the country to a single home football game on autumn Saturdays. College football’s 2014 (and last) Bowl Championship Series (“BCS”) National Championship game garnered some of the highest ratings in cable history. Every March economists estimate hundreds of millions of dollars in productivity is lost due to Madness. The position of Athletic Director is perhaps the most prestigious in all of college athletics. It is, in a sense, the general manager of a portfolio of sports teams that potentially represents the university in front of millions of spectators. However, the duties and responsibilities of an Athletic Director are very different from its professional counterpart. Instead of reporting to a team president or owner, the Athletic Director answers to the university president, chancellor, or board of directors (or governors). The teams do not belong to a professional sport league, but instead are part of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (“NCAA”). NCAA amateurism rules (for now) require that student-athletes are not paid, and therefore Athletic Directors primarily concern themselves with issues such as compliance, fundraising, and coaching contract decisions in lieu of salary caps, player contract negotiations, drafts and free agency. The purpose of this paper is to study how the constitution of Division I Football Bowl Subdivision (“FBS”) Athletic Directors has changed over the last twenty years. The revenues associated with college football and men’s basketball have increased as those sports have become more popular. Given the rising stakes and increasing pressure to perform, many industry professionals believe that there is a conscience movement away from the traditional exercise of hiring ex-coaches as Athletic Directors toward a preference for individuals with a strong business background or previous Athletic Director experience. In support, many cite that the compensation package for top Athletic Directors has become commensurate with business executives who deal with tens or hundreds of millions in revenue. For example, Vanderbilt AD David Williams was the highest paid Athletic Director in 2013, earning over $3.2 million. In all, nine Athletic Directors that year posted earnings over $1 million. To study whether this hypothesized tendency toward business experience is accurate, and to identify other trends in the data, we gathered as much information as possible on the Athletic Directors of the 120 FBS institutions during the 1989-90, 1999-2000, and 2011-12 school years. The information was gathered using a variety of sources, including colleges and universities, news articles and media guides. The article is comprised of four sections. The first section describes the environment in which Athletic Directors operate in order to better understand their job responsibilities. In so doing, we attempt to briefly elucidate the operation of the NCAA and the athletic departments of universities. The second section explains the numerous duties of a college Athletic Director framed in the context of the difficult legal issues covering those duties. The third section examines the data we collected and analyzed, giving particular attention to collegiate playing and coaching experience, past Athletic Director experience, business background, education, age, and gender and race. This data is then compared among the three samples taken over the twenty year window. The final section, termed “Career Tracks,” draws conclusions on what paths recent Athletic Directors have taken to reach their positions.