You avoid crapshoot with leadership in the athletic director's position, who should be a shrewd businessman in today's big business college sports environments, has an uncanny ability to put the right people into the right situations, yes you need success within the football program to drive revenue for the non revenue sports and to meet the title 9 obligations that go with the operation of any programs at a university, arrogance, ego and a business mind stuck in the 1970s won't get it in today's ultra competitive college sports environment.
I attribute a lot of the success at all programs at Florida to Jeremy Foley, recently retired, but their programs have excelled nationally and in conference quite regularly, also, until the Adidas pay to play mess cost everybody at Louisville their jobs, Tom Jurich assembled competitive programs across all sports and carefully navigated the school's journey from the old Metro Conference to the All American Conference to the Big East and into the ACC, quite a feat for an urban university which was historically men's basketball. Not every school can be a founding member of the SEC before games were broadcast on radio and light years before most of the games were streamed live across your smartphone.
The consensus best AD in the country currently is Joe Castiglione at Oklahoma, then probably the guy at Ohio State who hired Luke Fickell as the interim, before Urban Meyer and then Ryan Day, you need a business man, not an old football coach, although Barry Alvarez has done well at Wisconsin, nor an inexperienced bean counter, nor a wash out has-been like Handsome Dave Hart, you will not find Fulmer on any lists of the top ADs in the country and many of the university's flailings in sports are directly attributable to the lazy and inept leadership in the athletic department and the sooner we put excellence in that role, the sooner we will see excellence on the field and across all sports at Tennessee.
It all starts at the top.
