The Search, Part 5: The basketball background

Part 5 of a 7-part series on the UAB athletic director search. Read Part 1: The job | Part 2: The profile | Part 3: The obvious names | Part 4: The Birmingham connections | The Ingram departure | The fan reaction | Bill Clark interest

Through the first four installments of this series, we have profiled athletic directors from conference rivals, Group of 6 peers and proven executives at Power 4 schools. We have looked at candidates with Birmingham roots and UAB connections. Every profile has been framed the same way: real people, real resumes, illustrating the kind of talent pool a search committee evaluates. We are not identifying candidates. We do not know who has or will apply. The point is to show fans how a search works.

Today, a different angle.

There is a tier of athletic directors in college sports who run programs that do not play FBS football — and in many cases, do not play football at all. They lead at Big East schools, Atlantic 10 schools, West Coast Conference schools, Missouri Valley schools. They are at institutions with proud basketball traditions, strong academic profiles and passionate fan bases. Many of them are winning — conference championships, national awards, record fundraising.

And for every one of them, the same question sits on the resume: What happens when you add football?

That matters because the FBS athletic director jobs, by definition, require football oversight. Revenue, facilities, coaching hires, NIL, compliance, game-day operations — football is the financial engine and the operational center of gravity at almost every FBS school. An athletic director who has never managed a football program has a gap on the resume that no amount of basketball success can fill. The only way to close it is to take a job that has football.

UAB has football. UAB also has one of the stronger basketball programs in the Group of 6 — a program led by Andy Kennedy, a coach with a 411-win career record who has built something worth protecting. For an athletic director coming from a basketball-centric school, that combination is rare. The basketball side of the house is in good hands. The football side is the challenge — a program with a proven ceiling under Bill Clark, a young coach in Alex Mortensen and a fan base that showed up when football came back. The opportunity is to take everything these executives have built at basketball schools and apply it to a program that adds the one dimension they have never had.

For some of the people profiled below, that football gap is the draw. For others, they have worked at schools with football earlier in their careers but have never led their own FBS program — UAB would be that chance. And for others, the situation is simpler: they have built something where they are, they may be approaching a ceiling and the American Conference represents a step up in platform and, in many cases, salary.

Here is the talent pool.

Jamie Boggs

Boggs built Grand Canyon's Division I program from the ground up. Compliance structures, governance frameworks, coaching hires, facility infrastructure — she constructed it during GCU's transition from Division II, then led the Lopes into the Mountain West in 2025. She was named a NACDA Athletic Director of the Year winner in 2025-26.

She is the vice president of athletics at Grand Canyon and the first woman to hold the position. Under her leadership, GCU has won 50 conference championships and five consecutive WAC Commissioner's Cups. In 2023-24, Grand Canyon was one of four schools in the country — alongside Tennessee, Oregon and Texas A&M — to win an NCAA Tournament game while also advancing to regionals in baseball and softball. The Lopes have reached NCAA postseason competition in 18 of 21 sports. Student-athletes have posted a 94 percent Graduation Success Rate.

Any UAB fan who has watched Grand Canyon's packed arena on late-night ESPN knows the kind of environment Boggs has cultivated — the energy that makes fans want to be in the building. That is a problem UAB needs to solve, and Boggs has already solved it once.

Boggs is a Phoenix native, and there is no guarantee she has interest in leaving. But her career has taken her to Duke, where she worked in compliance, and to Georgia State, where as COO she led the transition to FBS. Southern experience at a strong basketball school with an urban, growing football program. The Mountain West may be a lateral move from the American, but GCU does not play football. UAB does.

Chris Reynolds

Reynolds played basketball at Indiana. Four-year letterman. Team captain. Big Ten championship teams in 1991 and 1993. The 1992 Final Four.

That pedigree matters — not because playing basketball qualifies someone to run an athletic department, but because it shapes how Reynolds sees the world. He is a basketball man leading a basketball school, and he has parlayed that identity into one of the most distinguished non-football AD careers in college sports.

He has been the vice president for intercollegiate athletics at Bradley since 2015 — 11 years in the chair. He chaired the NCAA Division I Men's Basketball Committee during the 2022-23 season, the first and only Missouri Valley Conference athletic director ever to hold that role. He has been named NACDA Athletic Director of the Year twice — 2021 and 2024. He served as president of the Division I-AAA Athletic Director's Association. Bradley has won 19 MVC championships under his watch — the most for the school in any 11-year span.

His administrative career before Bradley included senior positions at Northwestern, Indiana, Notre Dame, Western Michigan and Michigan State. He holds a law degree and a Ph.D. from Indiana.

Eleven years is a long time in the Missouri Valley. Reynolds has a national profile that far exceeds his conference. The American is a step up from the MVC. UAB would put FBS football on a resume that has almost everything else — and it would give Reynolds a basketball program he would understand from the inside. The question for someone in his position and stage of career: does he want a new challenge? Sometimes the answer is yes.

Steve Watson

Watson played professional basketball for seven years — France, Portugal, Taiwan. He came into athletics administration at Georgia and Dayton, then spent six years at Eastern Michigan before taking his first AD chair at St. Bonaventure. He has been running Loyola Chicago since 2014.

Neither St. Bonaventure nor Loyola plays football. That is nearly two decades leading two athletic departments — two basketball-first programs — without a football team on the ledger.

The results at Loyola have been remarkable. An NCAA championship in men's volleyball. An NCAA Final Four in men's basketball — the 2018 run that captivated the country. Another Final Four in men's volleyball. Twenty-one NCAA Tournament berths across all sports. Twenty conference championships. Loyola has ranked No. 1 in the nation in Graduation Success Rate.

Watson's coaching eye is proven. His first hire at St. Bonaventure — men's basketball coach Mark Schmidt — won the program's first Atlantic 10 championship in 2012 and led the Bonnies back to the NCAA Tournament for the first time in 12 years. In 2022-23, he managed Loyola's conference transition from the Missouri Valley to the Atlantic 10.

Watson has done everything an athletic director can do except oversee football. He is 58 years old. He has a legacy at Loyola — an NCAA championship, a Final Four, a conference transition, a department rebuilt from the foundation up. Maybe that makes him a lifer. Or maybe he is looking for one more mountain. The American is a step up from the A-10. Birmingham is a market that cares about football and basketball equally — an environment built for an executive who understands how to lead a basketball program and could now put his stamp on a football program.

Marvin Lewis

Five Atlantic 10 championships in a single season. Men's soccer, men's basketball, women's basketball, women's indoor track, men's outdoor track. That was George Mason in 2024-25 — the most conference titles in a single season since Mason joined the A-10 and the program's best overall performance since 1994-95.

Lewis did that in his second year.

He arrived at George Mason in July 2023 and just signed a contract extension through 2029-30. The financial turnaround has been as notable as the competitive results — balanced operating budgets for two consecutive years after he walked in the door. Record fundraising with more than $3 million in annual donations. Sponsorship revenue up 20 percent. Ticket sales hit $900,000, including a 68 percent increase in women's basketball. He is driving a $30 million Basketball and Academic Performance Center, with groundbreaking planned for late 2025.

Lewis was a two-time captain on the Georgia Tech basketball team that reached the NCAA championship game in 2004 — and his career has been on a fast track since. Before George Mason, he held senior roles at Georgia Tech, Maryland, Brown and Georgia State — Power 4 operational experience at two of those stops. He is a 2020 graduate of the NCAA Pathway Program, the league's pipeline for future athletic directors, and has been recognized as CABMA's Manager of the Year and a CollegeAD "Next Up" honoree. He was recently appointed to the NCAA Division I Women's Basketball Committee — a first for George Mason.

George Mason is a large public university in the Washington, D.C., market — an institutional profile that has more in common with UAB than most of the schools in this series. A public commuter school in a major metro, competing for attention against bigger brands. Lewis has made it work in two years. The American is a step up from the A-10.

Craig Pintens

Loyola Marymount was the first school in the country to establish a NIL agency of record. That was Pintens.

He personally created LMU's institutional NIL agreement from scratch, negotiating directly with student-athlete agents. He appointed a dedicated general manager for NIL. After the House settlement, he launched Roar LMU to align donor resources with the revenue-sharing model. Most athletic directors spent 2021 and 2022 scrambling to figure out what NIL even meant for their programs. Pintens did not wait for it to keep him up at night — he took it on from the start. That is proactivity in action, and it is exactly the kind of innovation a search committee notices when evaluating what a program like UAB needs in its next leader.

He has been the director of athletics at LMU since June 2018. Under his leadership, LMU achieved its best-ever Directors' Cup finish — seventh in Division I-AAA, 94th overall, a top-100 national finish. The Lions have earned 19 NCAA postseason berths across nine sports and 18 regular season or conference championships. He more than doubled corporate sponsorship revenue by bringing multimedia rights in-house — a move most schools that size would never attempt. The department's overall budget has grown more than 40 percent. Peak fundraising: $5.82 million.

Before LMU, Pintens spent seven years at Oregon, where the Ducks produced 17 national championships. He previously held roles at LSU, Marquette and UT-Pan American. He is a member of the Wisconsin Bar with a J.D. from Marquette Law School — coursework that covered media and television agreements, antitrust, athlete representation, licensing, Title IX and governance.

The AD job in 2026 is a legal and business job as much as it is a sports job. House settlement compliance, revenue sharing, NIL regulation — and Pintens is a lawyer. In this era, that is an edge that cannot be overstated. He understands the legal issues driving change in college athletics, and because he understands them, he is not fighting them. Fighting change just delays it and leaves programs in a reactive state. Pintens is doing, not delaying. Innovating, not clinging to convention. The first NIL collective in the country was not an accident — it was the product of an AD who could see where the industry was headed and built for it before anyone else did. The WCC is not a step down from the American, but LMU does not play football. UAB would add the one thing his resume does not have.

Josh Berlo

Denver has finished as the top non-football athletic department in the Directors' Cup for 12 consecutive years. Sixteen of the last 17. The Pioneers finished 62nd overall in 2024-25, fourth among all schools outside the FBS.

Berlo has been the vice chancellor for athletics since July 2022. Denver does not play football. What it does is win at nearly everything else — 37 national championships, more than 130 individual national titles. The hockey program alone has reached the Frozen Four three of the last four years, winning the 2024 national championship for the program's 10th title. Ticketing revenue set a record at $5.1 million. Fundraising hit $9 million — a 60 percent increase over the prior year.

Before Denver, Berlo spent nine years as the athletic director at Minnesota Duluth, where the Bulldogs won back-to-back men's hockey national championships in 2018 and 2019. He was named the NACDA Division II Athletic Director of the Year in 2018. He led a $10 million renovation of Romano Gymnasium and major facility upgrades across the department. Before UMD, he spent 13 years at Notre Dame in guest relations and event marketing — experience at an elite institution, but not football oversight.

Berlo has an MBA in finance and communications from Notre Dame and serves on the Executive Committee of the Sports Management Institute. He is in his late 40s — and here is the career math. He has built and run winning programs at every level: Division II, Division I non-football. Denver is among the best non-football departments in the country. But will a Power 4 president hand a football program to someone who has never run one? Berlo is the prototype of an AD who could leverage success at a Group of 6 program like UAB into a Power 4 role. If he is going to make that move, the window is now.

Rachelle Paul

Saint Peter's. The 15-seed Peacocks. Jersey City versus the world.

The 2022 NCAA Tournament run that beat Kentucky, Murray State and Purdue to reach the Elite Eight — the first 15-seed to ever get that far — is one of the greatest stories in the history of the tournament. Paul was the athletic director who oversaw that program. She was named the 2022 Nike Executive of the Year.

She left Saint Peter's for Miami to add ACC operational experience to a resume that already included the AD chair. That is the classic pipeline move for a next-level hire — a previous AD at a smaller school who goes to a bigger program as a deputy to learn the operational scale, then takes the chair again at a bigger job. Paul is now the interim co-athletics director and senior woman administrator at Miami after Dan Radakovich's departure in June 2026.

Saint Peter's is a MAAC school with no football. Miami is an ACC school with football. Paul has now seen both sides. UAB — a school where basketball is the historic leader and football is the operational challenge — is the kind of job that sits squarely in the middle of those two worlds.

Taylor Stapleton

Stapleton spent nearly eight years at Kentucky — Kroger Field and Rupp Arena, ticketing, analytics, pricing, digital marketing. That tenure overlapped with DeWayne Peevy, the current DePaul AD profiled in Part 4 of this series. When Peevy left Kentucky for DePaul in 2020, Stapleton followed.

He is now the associate vice president and deputy athletic director at DePaul — the No. 2 in the building. He has driven $60 million in capital projects and an 88 percent increase in merchandise royalties since the return of the vintage Billy Blue Demon logo in 2021. DePaul has set ticket sales records across every ticketed sport, including the first-ever sellout at Wintrust Arena. He chairs the NCAA Division I Men's and Women's Tennis Committee and serves on the NAATSO Board of Directors.

The Kentucky-to-DePaul pipeline tells you something about Stapleton: he chose to follow a leader he believed in from a Power 4 school to a rebuilding Big East program. He bet on the project. The Big East is a stronger basketball conference than the American, but Stapleton has built his career at basketball-only schools. UAB would offer the AD chair at an FBS school — a different kind of bet.

Zach Dayton

Seventy million dollars in facility investments at a MAAC school.

That is the number that jumps off Dayton's resume. He has been at Fairfield since 2014, elevated to associate vice president and deputy athletic director in 2021. The headline project: the $52 million Leo D. Mahoney Arena. Fairfield has set ticket sales, licensing and sponsorship records for four consecutive years. He launched the Stags Sports Network — nearly 150 contests and more than 80 ESPN+ productions in 2025-26. He brought the Premier Lacrosse League to Rafferty Stadium and produced four consecutive sellouts with ABC and ESPN broadcasts.

Dayton is the current president of NACMA — the National Association of Collegiate Marketing Administrators. That national profile exceeds what most MAAC administrators carry.

The MAAC to the American is a massive step up. Dayton has built at a small school and produced results that would be impressive at a program three times Fairfield's size. UAB would be the opportunity to do it at a bigger table — with football on it.

Devon Thomas

Thomas is a football man at a basketball school.

A former football player at Louisville, he is now the senior associate athletic director for external operations at Gonzaga — the premier program on the West Coast now officially a member of the Pac-12.

His career has touched multiple levels. He was the deputy athletic director at Eastern Washington, where he helped secure the largest individual gift in school history — $5 million. He led WSU Athletics' development efforts in the Spokane region, overseeing more than 900 donors and $1.47 million in annual contributions. He has worked at Louisville, UCF, Idaho and Gonzaga across two stints. His sons have played college sports — one basketball at Eastern Washington, one football at Eastern Washington. He understands the athlete experience from the inside and from the parent's side of it.

He also serves as the Athletics Diversity and Inclusion Designee — the primary point of contact for the NCAA and the conference on inclusion initiatives.

Thomas also holds a unique distinction on this list: He actually played against the Blazers. He was 3-0 against UAB in his playing career, including making 5 tackles in a 41-21 win over them Blazers in his senior season of 2002.

Next: Part 6 — The builders. Athletic directors who have built programs from smaller platforms — FCS, Division II, emerging FBS — and would see UAB as the place to prove it at scale.