As written here last Friday, it was only a matter of days or weeks before Eric Kaler and Joel Maturi made a final decision on the Gophers athletic director job. Yesterday at a University of Minnesota news conference, President Kaler and Maturi announced that a new athletic director will soon be running the Gophers 25 sport program.
Maturi, 66, has been the athletic director since 2002 and is retiring. Kaler, who became president last July, has likely been thinking for some time about a new department leader. He will receive a lot of advice from the public and special interest groups including former Gopher athletes regarding who to hire.
Three qualities should top the list in searching for a new athletic director. The department needs a boss who is exceptional in identifying and hiring extraordinary coaches. Minnesota’s teams can compete with the best schools in the Big Ten in all sports if the coaches are high achievers.
The other qualities leading the list are fundraising and solid fiscal leadership. The athletic department has major financial challenges including whether to continue with 25 sports. The football and basketball programs (men’s and women’s) are under- achieving financially. A long term solution must be found for archaic Williams Arena. A dynamic individual who has the expertise to see the challenges and also the vision to find solutions will place the department in a much healthier fiscal position.
Kaler should first search for candidates who know this community and the culture of Gophers athletics. A local person with existing relationships will have a jump-start in fundraising and generating other support for Gophers athletics, plus an invaluable knowledge about the state and school.
Kaler must make the right hire, even it’s ultimately someone from outside Minnesota. The new A.D. needs to be a person who is extremely passionate in his or her commitment to win while operating within the ethics of modern day athletics. Nowhere is this more needed than in the “front porch” sports of football and men’s basketball. Those sports are annually a source of major frustration to Gophers fans.
The new A.D. might ideally be a person with experience in both business and athletics, and certainly needs to be someone who can as adroitly manage a coaching search as a student protest.
Kaler may have interest in the athletic director he knew while working at Stony Brook University. Jim Fiore is in his ninth year at the New York school where his teams have won numerous conference championships and he’s known as an effective fundraiser. He’s also consistently balanced the budget for his Division I school. Fiore’s name was rumored with the North Carolina athletic director opening last fall.
Other national names that could draw speculation include Iowa athletic director Gary Barta and Mountain West Conference commissioner Craig Thompson. Barta was born in Minneapolis and attended Burnsville High School. Thompson worked in the Gophers sports information office years ago.