Peterson names AD search committee

SPIDER for AD

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…is a ’steal’ – and as I said last week this is a no-brainer, if he will come…

Jim Murphy was introduced as Davidson College’s Director of Athletics in November of 1995, returning to his alma mater to lead the Wildcats on the eve of their 100th anniversary of intercollegiate athletics and into the next century.

Prior to his appointment at Davidson, Murphy, 55, spent 10 years as executive associate athletic director and chief financial officer for the Georgia Tech Athletic Association.

An Atlanta native, Murphy played football and baseball during his freshman year at Davidson. His experience has been invaluable as he guides a program which is unique in its desire for excellence in both athletics and academics and has one of the smallest enrollments among NCAA Division I schools.

Reflecting his support of academics, Davidson’s NCAA graduation rate of 91 percent was the highest in Division I in 2001-02, second in 2002-03 with a rate of 97 percent and continues to be above 90 percent each year.

Davidson has claimed the Southern Conference Graduation Rate Award for the last 10 years, sharing the honor with Wofford in 1999-2000. In addition, Davidson has won the SoCon’s Barrett-Bonner Award, given to the school that places the highest percentage of its student-athletes on the league’s academic honor roll, 17 times in the award’s 19-year history.

“I firmly believe Davidson represents the ideal in college athletics and think the success of Davidson’s students, both in competition and after graduation proves that,” said Murphy. “It’s true that Davidson needs intercollegiate athletics, but intercollegiate athletics need Davidson even more.”

Since Murphy’s return to Davidson, the Wildcats have pursued several major capital projects, including the creation of the highly-innovative $10 million Davidson Scholars Program, and major improvements have been completed in Belk Arena and at Smith Field at Richardson Stadium.

The construction of the Belk Artificial Surface Field for field hockey, the new Alumni Stadium for soccer, Wilson Baseball Park and practice facility and the football stadium expansion project, which included a state-of-the-art weight room, a new press box and additional permanent seating, all have come during Murphy’s tenure. Davidson also replaced Richardson Stadium’s natural grass with FieldTurf, which allows the Wildcats to practice in their home stadium on a daily basis and frees up space for intramural use.

The 2004 NACDA Division I-AA/I-AAA Southeast Region Athletic Director of the Year, Murphy served two terms on the prestigious NCAA Division I Management Council, a policy-making body within the NCAA governance structure. He chaired the Division I-AA Governance Committee and formerly served on the NCAA Division I Business and Finance Cabinet, the Division I Governance Committee and the Division I Finance Committee.

From 2002-04, Murphy chaired the Athletic Directors Association of the Southern Conference. He was part of Charlotte’s successful bid to host the NCAA Division I Men’s Soccer Championships in 1999 and 2000 and also served as Tournament Director of the first and second-round games of the 2005 NCAA Men’s Basketball Championship in Charlotte.

Murphy is a past member of the Division I Football Issues Committee and Past-President of the Football Championship Subdivision Athletic Directors Association. He was also a member of the NCAA Task Force on Recruiting, an 18-member panel charged with changing the culture of recruiting in intercollegiate athletics, and currently serves on the NCAA’s Fiscal Responsibility Oversight Group.

A licensed Certified Public Accountant and 1978 graduate of Davidson with a degree in economics, he earned a Master of Science degree in management from Georgia Tech in 1979. He worked from 1979-85 as an audit manager with the international public accounting firm of KPMG Peat Marwick in Atlanta with responsibility for financial statement audits of public and private companies with up to $1 billion in assets.

But, his wife is a tenured professor at Davidson, plus living 20 miles outside Charlotte on Lake Norman, 10 minutes from the Davidson campus, is a tough gig to leave…

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Curry will come sniffing around, you can bet on it. All talk and no substance: a quitter. I don’t know the chair of the committee or anyone else on it, but if the McKenna guy is anything like Coach McKenna who was associate AD in the sixties and seventies, he will be alright. All the eggheads freak me out and I hope that Roddy Jones doesn’t fall for their bullsh_t.
Keeping Paul Johnson should be a priority and you know littles who keep complaining about the guy are genuine idiots.
George O’Leary is a total ass who makes CPJ look like Norman Vincent Peale. Tech needs a business man to run the AA, not some empty jock feminist, politically correct nazi.

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hey ole dwag – you guys have had your own red pantie problems…tend to yer own mees and we’ll tend to ours.

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Great news, Mitt Romney is available. And he does have prior experience with sports administration when he worked with the Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City

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Zelnak is a great GT man and a good choice to head the committee (IMHO, Roddy is good for an advisory role, he’s smart, loyal, fair, and loves GT. But, sine he is so recently removed from active playing, and may be too close to the current football program, his input should be tempered a bit. Few more years and he will be a great GT leader.)

It may be out of reach, but, Dr. Rice should be involved. You say he was not a “Tech man”, well, I say he cerainly became a “great Tech man” and wlll be forever. We appreciate what he did and will support with great thank yous all that he continues to do and will be doing.

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Thanks for offering the link for input. I wish a link had been offered when Buzz was born in ‘82. That decision to switch to Buzz was forced upon Tech. I would have voted against Buzz. I preferred the yj from the BD years, the one that was there when I went to Tech as a ‘73 grad. The new Tech wants BD stadium but not the BD years yj, and that creates a subtraction from BD, as if calculators were not available now with a minus button. Calculators didn’t even exist when I went to Tech, only slide rules did. Adding a new statue of BD does not negate the subtraction since it retains jerk Buzz on all Tech merchandise. Now a statue of Heisman needs to be made.

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Maybe hire Rock Perdoni as AD.

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