Who makes a better Athletic Director: Former Coaches or "The Professional Class"?

Major college athletics is a business. Every program depends on finances to exist. Having an AD with major college coaching experience who can also generate the funding necessary for a program to thrive would be the best of both worlds, but those are rare birds. Given the choice between someone who could make sure my program is funded versus some who understands coaching, I will take the former every time.

Regardless of which side of this argument that you fall on, I genuinely believe that effective leaders need to surround themselves with assistants who complement their own skill sets (and listen to their guidance).

Nobody is an expert in everything in Athletics. Too many details that are easily or frequently missed of you are not experienced in a particular sport.

Short sighted post. It's a multi million dollar business, dealing with many complexities not only on the business side but the whole stratification of different people and other organizations. In many cases, a coach with a jockstrap for a degree is not going to be sophisticated or smart enough to deal with all of the varying elements effectively.

Not at the college level, but I’ve been a high school AD for the past year and a half. I’m not admin, rather a teacher on a release period.

I knew the jo be would be tough when I took it, but it’s easier than I expected in some ways and far harder than I thought in other ways. Not having come from the admin side of education, I have a number of advantages when working with our coaches, but I also lack procedural knowledge for the nuts and bolts of running a sports program.

The big “change” that I felt I was bringing to the job when compared to my predecessors was to put in place procedures which will make coaches lives easier and procedures that will make our coaches better. Some have worked, some have not. I’m really good at talking to coaches about things they can do with their teams to boost participation, esprit, work ethic..... our young coaches actually come and seek advice on these things. Where I fell down hard was in trying to be too “nice” about things like keeping up to date on coaching certificates. This is biting me in the a** big time now. All through the fall when we weren’t playing, a number of coaches on my staffs kept putting off updating things like their CPR, first aid, concussion protocols, etc.... then all of a sudden in January the state governing body more or less said, “go ahead and play, figure out what you’re going to play on what dates, and have fun” for the next mont and a half, I was so busy with a million other things, including teaching my classes and coaching my own teams, that the coaching certificates slipped under the radar.

Fast forward to last week and it got to the point where I’ve had to send messages to close to 1/4 of our staff letting them know that they had one week to get their crap in or to not coach with us any more. This has gone over like a fart in church. At our football game last Friday, I got more stink eye in one evening than I normally get in a whole year.

I’m not sure if comping from a coaching background made me too empathetic regarding what a pain in the butt it can be to keep all of your certificates current and if that being tougher earlier would have solved my problems.

Interesting comments so far. I am bumping it once to see if others have input too.