Geaux ... Rutgers?
The university announced on Monday that it has hired William F. Tate IV as its president, plucking the longtime educator from the same job at Louisiana State. The hire will provide a new direction for the university as a whole at a pivotal moment when higher education is facing threats from multiple fronts.
But, for a struggling athletics department, the move could be just as impactful. Tate spent four years running a university that boasts one of the most successful college sports juggernauts in the country, with LSU winning national championships in women’s basketball, gymnastics and baseball under his watch.
That, of course, doesn’t mean instant success in Piscataway — the Tigers were a powerhouse before Tate took charge and will remain one as he departs. Tate can’t bring the tradition, commitment and resources with him from Baton Rouge.
He can bring a deep understanding of how college sports work in this new pay-for-play era — and, perhaps, a colleague to run the Rutgers athletics department — as he has an important say in setting the short- and long-term course for the Scarlet Knights.
Here are the four major implications of his hire from an athletics perspective:
Rutgers can (finally) choose an AD. If Rutgers needed a reminder of just how long it has taken to replace Patrick Hobbs with a permanent athletic director, it got one last week when rival Maryland hired Atlanta Braves executive Jim Smith as its new AD. Smith replaces Damon Evans, who left for SMU on March 25.
That entire process took just 55 days.
Rutgers didn’t even retain a search firm to replace Hobbs until April 29, a full seven months after he resigned in scandal. The reason was the leadership vacuum that formed when Jonathan Holloway announced that he would step down as president, and the desire to let his successor pick the athletics boss.
Well, that excuse is gone with Tate‘s official introduction on Monday. Rutgers should move swiftly now to make sure the new athletic director has plenty of time to get settled before the start of next football season.
Tate might be a package deal. Rutgers officials waited to hire a new athletic director because they understood that the best candidates would want to know their boss before taking the job. It also stands to reason that the new president will have an opinion — perhaps a strong one — about who fills this important, high-profile job.
Rutgers retained search firm TurnkeyZRG and appointed a 10-person advisory committee last month, and several candidates already have been interviewed. It is possible that the university will land on someone like former Pittsburgh AD Heather Lyke or Northern Illinois’ Sean Frazier in the coming weeks, or that it will follow the national trend and hire a non-traditional candidate for the job like Maryland.
It is also possible that Rutgers will allow Tate steer the process. If that‘s the case, a strong candidate from the LSU staff could be Keli Zinn, who has served as Executive Deputy Director of Athletics and Chief Operating Officer for LSU since 2022 after a stint at West Virginia.
Greg Schiano has a strong ally in Old Queens. It would be a stretch to say that the football coach picked his new boss, but it also would be naive to think that Schiano didn’t have influence on this process. If you doubt that, well, look at who got hired.
Schiano spent much of his first 11-year stint as head coach fighting for support from an administration that was slow to understand the commitment required to truly compete in big-time college football. The opposite has been true in his second go-around, with outgoing president Jonathan Holloway and a friendly Board of Governors giving him carte blanche to rebuild his program.
That doesn’t figure to change under Tate, who wouldn’t have survived at LSU without having a good working relationship with its many high-profile coaches. You wonder: Did Schiano place a call to football coach Brian Kelly during the process?
Expect Tate to have a visible presence at games. Rutgers just hired a president who was comfortable talking shop with Paul Finebaum, the SEC agenda setter, on live television. Tate was a regular at LSU football and basketball events — which, of course, is part of the job. But a quick scroll through his social media feeds show that he saw it as a major part, with a passion that is very difficult to fake.
Tate no doubt will turn in his purple ties for a few red ones before officially taking over in July. But it will be more important for Tate to have a seat at the table when the future of college sports is mapped out.
The next five years figure to be as turbulent for this industry as the previous five. Will Tate have the kind of national juice that can make sure Rutgers remains on the right side of the growing chasm between the haves and haves nots? That could end up being a major part of his legacy in Piscataway.
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Steve Politi may be reached at spoliti@njadvancemedia.com.