By James Crepea
With interviews underway with candidates to be Oregon State’s next athletic director, several of the school’s coaches shared the traits they desire in their new boss.
Five OSU coaches are on the 13-member advisory committee: JaMarcus Shephard (football), Justin Joyner (men’s basketball), Scott Rueck (women’s basketball), Mitch Canham (baseball) and Tonya Chaplin (gymnastics).
Elevate Talent is administering the search process, which is chaired by Carla Ho’ā, Oregon State’s vice president for finance and administration and chief financial officer, with OSU president Jayathi Murthy ultimately making the hire, which is expected as soon as the end of the month.
Rueck and Joyner each expressed how the complexities of being an athletic director amid an era of such drastic changes in college sports are both daunting and, in many ways, energizing.
Joyner stressed the need to be adaptable, forward-thinking and “being able to see where this thing is going, because it’s going somewhere, and being able to be ready to pounce” when opportunities arise.
“In part you need somebody that is an old-school mentality and administrator mentality, but I think you also need somebody who is kind of of the business world and understands that portion of it,” Joyner said. “How do you put together a team of two or three people that can check every box. It’s going to be hard to find one person that can check all of those boxes.”
Rueck, who is entering his 17th year at OSU, strongly believes that college athletics is still in the “people business” even with the additions of revenue sharing and name, image and likeness compensation for players. An athletic director being empathetic towards their coaches is among the top traits Rueck is seeking.
“Creating systems in this new world that we’re existing in with rev share that will help us take care of the people, that’s a challenge,” Rueck said. “You’ve got to communicate with campus. You’ve got to communicate with donors. You’ve got to educate us as coaches and communicate with us as how we can be successful within this system that this person is bringing.
“Finding support and giving us staff that can steward us each day is part of the method. I think somebody who deeply cares about the people and is willing to sacrifice to set us all up for success in every way and loves a challenge. I love energy, but I think a deep passion for people gets you to the creative place you need to be, gets you into the rooms you need to be in. You therefore have the conviction to get maybe more than people think.”
Canham is looking for an AD with many of the same characteristics he seeks in coaches on his staff: a role model who can inform, guide, advocate and also hold others accountable.
“You also put together a strong team,” Canham said. “Someone who’s well-connected, knows their strengths, knows their areas of growth and surrounds themselves with great people.”
All coaches want more resources, whether it be from revenue sharing and NIL, assistant coaches’ salaries, travel budgets or facilities. They each also want to be prioritized within the athletic department, which has new hires in Shephard and Joyner over the last six months.
Shephard said the new AD “should have an extreme understanding” of what’s coming next in college football and how OSU can grow the program.
The new AD inherits the recently announced Valley Challenge for Student-Athletes — a three-year fundraising initiative designed to raise $48 million for athletics.
As a former OSU athlete, Canham wants the next AD to be “someone who is going to love this place with everything they got.”
Rueck leads one of the school’s most consistent and successful teams, which is still funded at a higher level than many in Power Four women’s basketball. He does not want OSU to lose that edge as it enters the new Pac-12.
“There’s a narrative that we want to be the premier program in the new Pac-12 and I push back on that, because that’s obvious,” Rueck said. “How can we continue to be a national athletic department and compete nationally in all sports — not just the ones that were able to go independent — all sports.
“Yeah, I want to beat Gonzaga. But I still want to be UConn. I still want to beat South Carolina. I still want to compete against them for recruits. Maybe I’m crazy, but I believe that we can. I believe the product is still here. It’s still viable. I want to partner with someone who has that same vision.”
