Survey Results: DI Collegiate Athletic Director Coaching Recruitment

Click to view the Survey Results

Snodgrass Partners recently conducted a survey of Division 1 Athletic Directors. The results were sent to all Division I Athletic Directors in the NACDA database. They were also shared via today’s D1 Ticker update.

A couple of interesting items of note from the survey:

• 40% responded that, as a general rule, Olympic sports hires do not get as closely examined as sports like football and basketball and that almost half of these searches are conducted by other staff members (nearly 47%) — Deputy AD, Senior Associate AD, etc.
• Over 67% felt they were able to uncover issues coaching candidates may have had at other schools. However, of this 67%, 75% indicated that an informal personal connection(s) was how they obtained this information.
• The results were overwhelmingly supportive of the need to find qualified female coaches to lead women’s teams (nearly 90%) and to find more qualified minority coaches (over 90%).  With this in mind, almost 30% were unsure of whether or not their school has signed the NCAA

Tom Jacobs – who co-founded Snodgrass Partners’ Sports Recruiting and Consulting practice – authored the survey. Tom was recently hired as Senior Associate Commissioner/Chief Operating Officer for the Atlantic 10 Conference, but will continue to serve as an advisor to our firm.

The objective of the survey was to determine how athletic departments go about surfacing, vetting, and hiring candidates for their Olympic or non-revenue sports programs and some of the issues involved in conducting these types of searches. We received a solid response rate of 14 percent.

These results come on the heels of conducting the search for Lafayette Women’s Basketball Head Coach, which resulted in the successful hire of Kia Damon, and a D1 Men’s Tennis Coach.

Contact us with comments or questions! Happy July 4th!