Maryland Names New AD
On the eve (ok 2 eve’s) of the Maryland football opener, according to the Baltimore Sun, The University of Maryland will name Kevin Anderson the new athletic director. Anderson comes to the Terps from Army. On the surface, the move does not thrill me. I heard Army and it didn’t exactly excite me. I knew nothing of Anderson. My thought was Army? Really a Service Academy where let’s be honest, athletics are not priority one or maybe even two. Those kids are there for much greater reasons.
According to the Sun, Jeff Hathaway from Connecticut was also a finalist. And I believe I can find a post in here from a little bit ago, where I said I wanted no part of an AD had a basketball program getting themselves into NCAA troubles. Not only that, but UCONN’s recruiting hasn’t exactly been an example of integrity. Also mentioned as a finalist was Buffalo AD, Warde Manuel. Again I know nothing of him, but Buffalo doesn’t exactly excite me.
What exactly does Anderson bring to the table? He has worked for Army, Oregon State, Cal, and Stanford, in some capacity in their respective athletic departments. His strengths are listed as marketing after his time with the Xerox Corporation, and in balancing budgets. All of these things are important, and who knows, he may be great, my initial reaction is still, meh. I hope my gut is wrong, and Anderson can be really good for the school. Only time will tell, and as I said, I have nothing to base my feelings on other than I kind of expected someone from a BCS conference to wind up working for the Terps. All in all it seems like a safe hire, with a focus on fund raising, and ensuring the athletic department still cares about academics.
This entry was posted
on Saturday, September 4th, 2010 at 9:46 pm and is filed under Uncategorized.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
September 7th, 2010 at 11:25 am
I saw in the article the search committee was impressed with his marketing experience. I like that too cause one of my biggest gripes with MD football is that it is so poorly marketed in DC. College Park is closer to DC than any of the Virginia schools but with the exception of the Greene Turtle in Chinatown, you really have a hard time finding any excitement surrounding MD football. I feel like VA Tech and even UVA get so much more football attention/coverage/hype.