SMU athletic director Rick Hart will step down on the finish of the tutorial 12 months, he introduced on Friday, opening what is predicted to be a extremely sought-after job.
Hart, who has led the athletic division since 2012, leaves on high but additionally at a second of change. The Mustangs simply moved to the Atlantic Coast Convention in 2024, the soccer program reached the primary 12-team Faculty Soccer Playoff, the boys’s basketball program is 18-5 and on the NCAA Match bubble, and volleyball reached the second spherical of the NCAA Match.
Hart was a part of a four-pronged assault together with board chair David Miller, outgoing president R. Gerald Turner and guide Oliver Luck that helped achieve sufficient assist for an ACC invitation in 2023 after a Pac-12 plan fell aside.
However SMU has a brand new president coming in, as Texas president Jay Hartzell will exchange Turner on June 1, and it’s believed Hartzell desires to make some modifications.
“It’s with large pleasure, heartfelt love, and sure, combined feelings, that I share I’ve made the choice that this educational 12 months might be my final at SMU,” Hart mentioned in a press release. “After the consideration of main the Division of Athletics for 13 years, it’s time for a brand new problem for me and for a brand new voice to guide the Mustangs, permitting President-Elect Hartzell to maneuver ahead together with his personal imaginative and prescient and chief as SMU strikes ahead on this new panorama of collegiate athletics.”
Turner added in a press release, “With my upcoming transition to President Emeritus and the arrival of President-elect Jay Hartzell, Rick believes that now is an effective time for each him and SMU to maneuver ahead. His resolution permits President-elect Hartzell to pick out his personal Director of Athletics who aligns together with his imaginative and prescient for the post-antitrust settlement world of intercollegiate athletics.”
SMU and trade sources have lengthy felt that SMU is primed to achieve the brand new period of faculty sports activities the place gamers could be paid. Hart was a third-generation school administrator, however the feeling across the faculty is that the Mustangs might search for extra fundraising capacity from the AD place, as to not rely so closely on the pool of its largest donors. The Mustangs have been among the many Group of 5 leaders in identify, picture and likeness earlier than the transfer to the ACC, and it was partially the backing from massive boosters that satisfied the ACC to offer the invitation. SMU supplied to forgo 9 years of Tier 1 tv income from the convention, an estimated $24 million per 12 months. Inside per week of the ACC announcement, SMU athletics raised $100 million from its largest donors.
Athletic and educational success has adopted. The soccer program made the CFP, and functions to the college are up 40 p.c, Miller informed The Athletic in December. Miller performed a key function within the resolution to make a males’s basketball teaching change final 12 months and rent Andy Enfield from USC.
“It’s now not, ’In case you make this funding, right here’s what might occur,’” mentioned Miller, himself a billionaire. “What we hoped might occur is occurring proper now. It’s actual. You possibly can attain out and contact it, really feel it.”
All of that can make this a sought-after AD job. The college says it can start the seek for a brand new AD within the coming weeks.
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(Photograph: Icon Sportswire / Getty Pictures)
