The Mailbag continues after last week’s major announcement
Hello TOC,
We did not get to all of the questions from Izzo4POTUS in last week’s mailbag but we promise to do our best to tackle those in the coming weeks. We also encourage you to send your questions to: theonlycolorseditors@gmail.com.
Due to the news that came out late last week regarding a change of leadership in the MSU athletic department, we thought we’d pose a couple questions of our own this week:
Who will be MSU’s next athletic director?
Some speculation has naturally speculated on North Carolina Athletic Director Bubba Cunningham, who worked under MSU President Kevin Guskiewicz when Guskiewicz was the Chancellor at UNC from 2019 until early 2024.
Cunningham has been the AD at North Carolina since 2011 and was named AD of the year in 2020. He was born in Flint and attended Notre Dame, earning both a bachelor’s and master’s degree in South Bend.
Cunningham was in the news following the 2024 football season when former UNC coach Mack Brown was let go and eventually replaced by former New England Patriots head coach and six-time Super Bowl winner Bill Belichick. However, the amount of support Cunningham himself had for Belichick’s hire may be unclear.
CBS Sports reported that Cunningham was initially targeting Matt Campbell from Iowa State and John Sumrall from Tulane before at least one member of the UNC Board of Trustees began to push hard for Belichick.
If Cunningham wasn’t allowed to run the search he wanted, could he be looking for a way out at UNC and would reuniting with Guskiewicz at MSU appeal to him?
If Guskiewicz is determined to bring in one of “his people” but can’t lure Cunningham, who else could it be? His tenure at UNC was Guskiewicz’s first experience leading as a university chancellor or president so we should probably look to Chapel Hill for anyone who Guskiewicz is familiar with.
Dwight Hollier has been the Senior Associate Athletic Director at UNC since 2018 so his time in Chapel Hill would overlap with Guskiewicz. Hollier, however, oversees strength & conditioning, sports medicine & nutrition, and student-athlete development at UNC so his experience has not been in the fundraising and donor relations areas Guskiewicz is prioritizing at MSU.
Other Senior Associate AD’s at UNC are Vince Ille and Robbi Pickeral Evans . Ille has been at North Carolina since 2012 and oversees student-athlete academic services while Pickeral Evans handles strategic communications and external affairs and has been at UNC since 2017. Again, neither may have the background Guskiewicz is looking for.
Rick Barakat is North Carolina’s Deputy AD and Chief Revenue Officer but he just started at UNC this year, after Guskiewicz moved to MSU.
It may be Cunningham or bust if Guskiewicz is determined to bring in someone he’s worked with as a Chancellor or President.
Since 1979, there have been nine athletic directors at Michigan State. Seven had ties to MSU prior to serving as AD. There was a seven year stretch from 1992-1999 when Merrily Dean Baker and Merritt Norvell led the athletic department without first serving MSU in other capacities. Other than that stretch, however, Doug Weaver and George Perles were the two AD’s prior to Baker while Clarence Underwood, Ron Mason, Mark Hollis, Bill Beekman, and Haller have led Spartan Athletics since Norvell’s tenure ended in 1999.
Despite MSU’s tendency to stick with their own, an internal hire here seems unlikely. Jennifer Smith and Tom Izzo have been named co-interim athletic directors while the search process plays out. Smith has been at MSU for 28 years, including the last 23 as Compliance Director. Her duties seem wide-ranging but her bio does not mention fundraising.
Izzo, obviously, needs no introduction and seems determined to continue leading the basketball program after a rejuvenating run to the Elite Eight this year. It would be unheard of in today’s era for a Division 1 basketball coach to also serve as their school’s athletic director. A brief internet search did not produce a single person doing this.
This brings us back to Cunningham at North Carolina. If Guskiewicz isn’t targeting him, or can’t bring him to East Lansing, he may be forced to hire someone he hasn’t previously worked with. Partnering with national search firm TurnkeyZRG might indicate that Guskiewicz is willing to do that, or at least wants a qualified talent pool if Cunningham isn’t going to make the move.
What do you think, TOC? Who will be MSU’s next AD:
What might this mean for Jonathan Smith?
As some of our readers have pointed out, there is a stipulation in Smith’s contract that states if Smith wants to leave and Alan Haller is no longer serving as athletic director, Smith’s buyout is reduced by 50%. So, if Smith’s buyout – the amount he would owe MSU if he leaves now – is currently $6 million, that drops to $3 million after Haller officially exits on May 11. This is a relatively low amount for a power conference coach with seven years of experience. Smith’s buyout will fall again to $2 million on December 2.
Smith came to East Lansing from Oregon State amidst a rapidly changing Pac 12 conference. Schools were leaving the Pac 12 for either the Big Ten or Big 12, leaving only Oregon State and Washington State left to fend for themselves. Those two schools are in the process of rebuilding the Pac 12, but it won’t be the same power conference it was before.
Haller offered Smith the chance to lead a program in the Big Ten – one of two conferences controlling most of what goes on in collegiate athletics. At least to the extent it can be controlled in this day and age. The program was in rough shape after the brief Mel Tucker era but had seen tremendous success under Mark Dantonio in the mid-2010’s. In the rapidly evolving landscape of college athletics, Smith must have seen MSU as a more stable opportunity with a higher ceiling than Oregon State.
But now it might be fair to wonder what Smith is thinking. The Spartans failed to make a bowl game in his first year, getting blown out by Rutgers in the snow in front of a nearly empty Spartan Stadium to end the season. Going into year 2, MSU is having a hard time getting power conference transfers or top high school recruits to come to East Lansing. And the AD that brought Smith here will be gone at the end of the week.
The next AD will be expected to dramatically improve fundraising, donor relations, and fan engagement and the product on the football field needs to follow suit. If the new AD follows through, there won’t be many excuses left for the type of season we’ve endured for the last few years. So, even though the search for the new AD is still in the early stages, the heat has probably already been turned up a bit on Smith.