Our Listeners' Strongest Takes About their Schools' Athletic Directors

This week at Split Zone Duo, we talked about ADs. Now you can, too.

© Junfu Han / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

Welcome to the College Football Newsletter, where we have calculated our 40 times and verticals for the combine. It turns out that Alex has a vertical like Spud Webb.

What makes a good athletic director? That all depends on the hierarchy of the school’s athletics, its location, what it wants to achieve in the future, and, of course, the effectiveness of the AD itself.

If you’re in the Power 4, chances are that you want an AD with a good read on where college sports are going, who can help you get into whatever the “superleague” of the future looks like while navigating issues like NIL at the largest scale. Maybe you want someone who can politic their way into state legislatures to ensure that you’re ahead of the game in whatever new frontier the industry is about to embrace. If you’re a MAC school, you might just be looking for an AD who can keep your budget above water while everyone figures out what’s next.

But one constant for all athletic directors is the desire to keep the university president and the fans happy. So we asked you on our various social media accounts: Do you like your school’s athletic director? Here’s what you said. (You can also peruse our Bluesky replies here, if you want to see where many of the below responses came from. We’ll embed a few later on.)

Here are some schools whose fans gave us really interesting responses.

• Oregon State fans gave absolutely scathing responses about AD Scott Barnes. One Beaver fan called him an “unmitigated disaster” and said: “Doesn’t fundraise. Totally fucked up our NIL program and then lied about it. Hired a GM in August, fired him in Oct, said we didn’t need one, then hired a new one in Dec. Our rev sports are tanking. He isn’t funding them like he promised, either. Another fan just said “no” and pointed to this tough local radio segment on Barnes.

• Ohio State fans have their issues with Ross Bjork. Asked if they like him, one of our followers merely replied, “no, because he’s ross bjork.” But how about this person finding a silver lining? “Ross Bjork is way too private equity-curious for me But I love that Warde Manuel is Michigan’s AD.” Manuel has had big problems at Michigan, ones that we’ve covered on the podcast in the past. In fact, Alex and Matt Brown bring up the latest scandal tangentially related to Michigan to Richard in one of this week’s episodes.

• Iowa fans are the real window into how strongly fans can feel about an AD, though. Current Hawkeyes athletic director Beth Goetz gets mostly positive reviews from fans, in our admittedly small sample. She is relatively new to the job, starting in January 2024. But much of the goodwill is not for the things she has accomplished in her short time there. Instead, she gets a thumbs up because she is not former AD Gary Barta, whom Alex talked about (negatively) on the show this week. Just a sample:

Not all that scientific, but we’re proud to be a podcast whose listeners have strong takes on athletic administrators. We’ll never take it for granted!

Here’s what Alex and Richard dropped into your podcast feeds this week:

• Matt Brown of Extra Points joined the gang for the Sports Business Hour. They talk about what it takes to be a good athletic director. We already covered bad ADs here, but they also list a few examples of good ADs throughout the years. There’s also a great segment towards the end about how Mississisppi’s no-tax NIL bill is mostly loud and unhelpful for everyone involved.

• Godfrey joined Richard on Thursday to talk about a specific type of coaching carousel: the coordinator one. Which assistants are head coaches-in-waiting and which ones will intentionally not make a move right now to reap the benefits later.

Some recommended reading:

• Alex talks about the fallout of the State of the Union and USA men’s hockey over at Slate.

• Arkansas came to an agreement with Tyson Foods (a Razorback alum company, of course) for a new on-field jersey sponsorship. It’s one of the first of these announcements since the NCAA approved the patches back in January. According to CBS Sports’ Brandon Marcello, 90 percent of the money from that deal will go to the players.

• Grace Raynor at The Athletic wrote about Washington State tight end Nathaniel Salmon, who is 22 years old and has never played football. But he’s athletic enough that the Los Angeles Chargers were interested in him prior to him joining Wazzu. Salmon might be the perfect subject for a Pac-12 After Dark performance.

We are so close to March Madness that I can almost picture myself skipping my work obligations to head to a bar with the fellas to watch two teams I didn’t care about until five minutes ago like I have been a lifelong fan. Be on the lookout for some football-centric college basketball podcasting from us next week.

No word yet on whether Alex is picking Gonzaga to win itallthisyear. I have watched Zags games with him before and, reader, I still cannot tell if it is a bit or not. But I respect his tenacity. Thanks for reading, and we’ll see you here next week.