Category: AD Insights

There were plenty of clues about institutional alignment in the Rob Higgins hire at USF. I break down why I accurately predicted him getting the job months in advance as a case study in institutional fit and how boards/presidents operate. College athletics is a copycat industry. The Danny White AD tree branches continue with Utah…

View Post(opens in a new tab) Rutgers president called an audible to land Keli Zinn and Stanford’s president recruits their “unicorn candidate” in former Nike CEO John Donahoe. In this video, I share my thoughts and explain what both searches clearly had in common.

In this video I break down my thoughts and predictions for every D1 athletic director opening as of July 31st (and about 20 minutes before Stanford chose their AD). This is the best way to force myself to put in the effort to study institutional situations and see how I did after the AD hires…

Marshall reportedly brought 5 AD candidates to campus last week, including 4 sitting ADs and a P4 executive via CollegeAD. The Rutgers search nears 1 calendar year. Reaction to Ryan Alpert and President Cabrera’s press conference. Utah State is bringing in Sandy Barbour and, I think, Huron Consulting. Is this the next popular play call…

The AD Rundown is me sharing the thoughts and notes of what I studied in the last week. This is specifically athletic director news and interviews from various sources.

Marshall is searching for its next AD as the institution and Christian Spears agreed in April 2025 to not renew his contract that expires in March 2026. Marshall has once again tapped CarrSports to help with the search as they helped lead the search that led to Spears accepting the position in 2022. If you…

Georgia Tech is looking for its next athletic director after previous AD, J Batt, hired in 2022, left for the same position at Michigan State. If you are reading this because you are interested in the AD opening at Georgia Tech, then I invite you to read the HEA Briefing I completed. The purpose of the HEA…

For those that don’t know, I started Higher Ed Athletics to interview ADs in hopes of studying the position as a career one day in a research setting or at an industry search firm. I will be finishing my doctorate dissertation on athletic director hiring trends in 2025-2026 academic year, so I thought it was…