At a Monday meeting earlier this week a representative of Parker Executive Search described what the Atlanta-based company will look for in the next University of Minnesota athletic director.
The University search advisory and search committees were told that Parker will seek candidates who it believes can foster a program that successfully graduates student-athletes, wins championships, and operates within the rules and ethics of the school and NCAA.
The two committees will help generate candidates to fill the vacancy created by departing athletic director Joel Maturi, but much of the searching will be done by Parker. Grassroots searching will be aided by a series of listening meetings with University supporters that will be held on campus next week.
Parker will conduct a national search that ultimately will help generate a few finalists to be reviewed by the four-person search committee and one or more names are expected to be forwarded to school president Eric Kaler. The Parker firm—also retained in 2010 to identify head coaching candidates for Gophers football—has been involved with many searches for athletic directors across the country.
Those searches have typically—although not always—resulted in the hiring of a person with previous administrative experience in an athletic department, often athletic directors willing to become directors at other schools. Also, with a significant representation of University employees on the search advisory and search committees, it seems likely the next Gophers athletic director will have an academic-athletic background rather than a business or legal resume.
Non-traditional candidates can be attractive, though, if it’s the right person. Many will argue Paul Giel, who came to campus from WCCO Radio, was the best Gophers athletic director since World War II. Pat Richter, who once was an executive with Oscar Mayer, received a lot of praise for his work as Wisconsin’s athletic director in the 1990s. Like Giel and Richter, Pat Haden is another former college football hero, and he returned to his alma mater (USC) in 2010 to become athletic director, giving up a law career and broadcast duties to re-energize a sagging athletic department.
A smart search at Minnesota won’t deal in any stereotypes involving gender, race, age—or heaven forbid—a non-academic background.