Summer, 2016. I’m playing golf with Arizona athletic director Greg Byrne, who asks if I plan to retire soon.
“I’ll be here longer than you,” I said.
Byrne disagreed. “I can see myself staying here until retirement,” he said. “We love it here.”
Byrne, then 44, had been at Arizona six years. His work was admired locally and nationally. If he wasn’t the most effective athletic director in college sports, he was in an elite group at the top.
The 2014 Wildcats had won the Pac-12 South football championship. Sean Miller’s basketball team had been ranked No. 1 in 2014 and No. 2 in 2015. Byrne had just returned from the College World Series, where Arizona’s baseball team reached the national championship game.
Four months removed from hiring Adia Barnes as Arizona’s women’s basketball coach, Byrne was being paid $700,000 by the UA. He beamed when asked about the $75 million Lowell-Stevens Football Facility, which was his creation, the most ambitious financial investment in UA sports history.
Byrne is a connector, a public figure who enjoyed walking through the grandstands to meet the average guy paying $18 for an end-zone seat. It was just a matter of time before Byrne would leave Tucson the way esteemed Arizona AD Cedric Dempsey did in 1993, when Dempsey was hired as the executive director of the NCAA.
A few months later, Byrne was contacted by the Turnkey search firm. Would he be interested in the Alabama job? Who wouldn’t be?
Byrne met with Alabama officials five years ago this week, in Tampa, ahead of the Alabama-Clemson national championship football game. He subsequently met with Crimson Tide football coach Nick Saban, dining at Saban’s home on a Saturday evening. If Saban was OK with Byrne, he would be the Tide’s new athletic director.
Predictably, Saban and Byrne hit it off almost immediately, but it was Byrne who hit it big.
Byrne is now paid $1.7 million a year at Alabama. He oversees an athletic department whose revenues for the 2019-20 fiscal year were $189 million, a period in which Arizona’s revenues were $93 million.
I was thinking about Byrne’s career ascent during the lead-up to Monday’s Alabama-Georgia national championship game, which was Byrne’s fourth title game in five Tuscaloosa football seasons. At no time did I ever hear him say, publicly or otherwise, that Arizona was a destination job. That was the difference between Byrne and most of his Pac-12 contemporaries, who rightfully view an AD’s job in the Pac-12 as a career landing spot.
In Arizona’s 44 years in the Pac-12, only seven athletic directors have left the league for positions clearly perceived as better destinations.
ASU’s Gene Smith and Oregon’s Rick Bay went to Ohio State; Stanford’s Bob Bowlsby became commissioner of the Big 12; WSU’s Sam Jankovich went to Miami; and Dempsey went to the NCAA. Among the first to leave was Bill Byrne, Greg’s father, who left the pre-Nike enriched Oregon athletic program in 1992 to be the AD at then-football giant Nebraska.
Bill Byrne, who had been hired as Oregon’s AD when he was just 38, taught his son well. One thing Byrne told me several times was that an AD’s “shelf life” is limited. “If you get more than 10 years, you are an exception,” he said. “You encounter so many unexpected obstacles and different opinions, no matter how well you do.”
Shelf life?
The current average tenure for Pac-12 athletic directors is 5½ years. The “dean’’ of the group is Oregon’s Rob Mullens, who is in his 11th season. Next is Stanford’s Bernard Muir, who is working on his 10th year.
Ultimately, Byrne’s shelf life at Alabama will spin on who he hires someday to replace the 70-year-old Saban. Get that one wrong and it’s adios.
What’s amazing is that Nebraska won three football national championships during Bill Byrne’s tenure (1992-2002) as Cornhuskers AD. Now his son, who was something of an AD prodigy (if there is such a thing), is in the same historic league.
Both Byrnes, father and son, went from a “have not” to “have” schools, as defined by Alabama and Nebraska-level budgets and the ability to recruit Top 100 football prospects. It’s not a revelation that Alabama is ranked No. 3 in Rivals.com’s current 2022 football signing class rankings.
According to Rivals.com, since Byrne has been at Alabama, the Tide’s football recruiting classes have been ranked, in order, No. 7, No. 2, No. 3, No. 1 and No. 3.
Being Alabama’s AD has limitations, although none are related to finances. For example, Byrne’s payroll includes three full-time airplane pilots, a full-time airplane maintenance technician and a full-time flight operations manager.
But Byrne worked his way into that position by excelling at Arizona. His UA successor, Dave Heeke, who will complete his fifth Arizona season this spring, operates a football program whose 2019-20 fiscal year football revenue was $39 million compared to Alabama’s $110 million.
But in every sport except football (and maybe gymnastics), Arizona’s athletic department holds its own against the Crimson Tide.
What about Heeke’s shelf life? His past year has been by far his most productive. He hired six head coaches, unprecedented in the 44 years of Pac-12 sports.
Heeke distinguished himself by hiring basketball coach Tommy Lloyd, baseball coach Chip Hale, softball coach Caitlin Lowe, cross country coach Bernard Lagat and football coach Jedd Fisch, among others.
Heeke probably made more critical personnel and financial decisions over a two-year period than any of his UA predecessors dating to the 1920s. Heeke’s contract expires next year. Would you renew it?
Even though it was the high-profile Greg Byrne sitting in the luxury suites at Alabama’s national championship game Monday night, it was Heeke who had the better year.
