An athletic director has a very difficult job. He/she has to be on top of his/her game at all times. After reading this article written by Charles Kennedy, I grasped a better understanding of the seasonal conflicts that a person in an athletic directors position has to deal with. It's safe to say that I would never want to be responsible for either male or female athletes in an intercollegiate conference.In the 2005-2006 academic year, major college spending was expected to exceed estimates of $4 billion (Kennedy, 2007). This extremely large sum of money is a direct result of the "arms race" colleges and universities have amongst each other. Because athletics are so competitive, spending large chunks of a budget is inevitable. College sports have become cult-like in nature. Faithful fans expect their beloved teams to be the best in the conference and throughout the nation each season, despite the sport. Since the passing of Title IX, athletics have arguably become more proportional, giving females more opportunities than previous years. An athletic directors job is to oversee the coaching staff to maintain compliance with Title IX, hire successful coaches that will, in return, create successful programs. An athletic director is responsible for the technical details within intercollegiate athletics that often go unnoticed without any thought.
To comply with Title IX, athletic directors have to pay attention to the following key areas of their respective schools: participation, scholarship, operating expenses, recruitment budget and coaching salaries. Obviously, it is no easy task! Each year, athletic directors have administrators working underneath them to aide in the process of the daily tasks. An athletic department runs on team effort and precise, effective work. In many cases, the reputation of a program lies in the hands of the athletic department and it's various pieces of the puzzle.
Kennedy writes about each of the previously listed key areas of Title IX compliance and breaks down the top ten conferences in the nation based on the "Kennedy Index" (taken from The Chronicle of Higher Education). The index lists the conferences and how they comply with the 5 criterion of Title IX. Based on the index, the MAC was the #1 conference with a score of -21.34. The MAC has the highest mid-major teams with 16 (7M-9F). The WAC is the lowest with 14 teams (6M-8F) (Kennedy, 2007 p.38, 42).
An athletic director has an enormous amount of responsibility to both the school and the athletic program. Luckily, the athletic department hires experts who know how to follow the rules on paper and be successful on the court. Title IX has no doubt made an athletic director's job more tedious and particular.
A career of being an athletic director will never be seen in the crystal ball of my future. I agree with Dana, it is a very stressful job with a lot of responsibilities. Working within the high school athletic department it was crucial for our athletic director to raise money, oversee all the programs, and keep the parents happy. As a coach, I had my hands full with parents who felt like their kids were not being fed with a silver spoon. I cannot imagine doing that for all athletic sports. I then went to University of North Carolina Charlotte because I was interested how the athletic department of a division I college did operations. I spoke with one of the assistant athletic directors and she explained to me that the athletic directors job is to raise funds. Their athletic director was working round clock speaking to people, going to games trying to raise more money for the programs. And for the most part all of the assistant athletic directors took all of the other duties attempting to defer or alleviate situations before they get to the A.D. because she is way too busy to handle a lot of the jobs that you would see a high school athletic director doing. I do not think that I would care for the responsibility of raising money, not my niche. But I do respect the work that they do. They are the face of the athletic department and they put a lot of sweat into enhancing their programs for their athletes.
ReplyDeleteBoth of your observations are quite astute. I think the job of an Athletic Director has changed dramatically over the past 25-30 years, in large part because of the "arms race," and needing to raise money! Like both of you, it is not what I would envision doing either.
ReplyDelete