Sunday Column: Challenges Familiar and New Await Enthusiastic Penn State AD

David Joyner had to deal with unprecedented NCAA sanctions.

Sandy Barbour guided the athletic department through a pandemic.

Patrick Kraft has a tougher job than either of them.

Penn State introduced its new athletic director on Friday, and it was pretty much what you’d expect to see at these sorts of things. Kraft, sitting next to incoming university president Neeli Bendapudi, hit on the big points – winning, and doing things the right way, and … well, you’ve heard it all before. Kraft perhaps delivered his opening salvo with more enthusiasm than any of his recent predecessors – a relatively low bar set in that regard by Barbour, Joyner and Tim Curley – but it was essentially the same old intro, a combination of praise for the new program and promise to build on its reputation, success with honor and so on.

Kraft will need that enthusiasm as he takes over at a pivotal moment for the university, plus confidence, trust in the people around him, and the vision and creativity to see that Penn State stands out from its peers.

The primary responsibilities of an athletic director are to hire coaches who can win games and to keep the lights on. The second part sounds easy, and maybe it is when your football program is bringing in right around $100 million in annual revenue, but Penn State is one of only a handful of schools that fields 30-plus varsity sports (Kraft’s previous stop, Boston College, is another), and every one of their 31 teams, regardless of what they bring in, has been dealing with rising expenses. Think gas prices are high right now? What about the cost of jet fuel? Rising tuition is taking a toll on college students everywhere, and that means the cost of scholarships is rising, too.

Penn State’s financial reserves were basically wiped out by the pandemic, and though a packed Beaver Stadium will ease much of that financial burden, the day could be coming when Kraft is forced to make hard choices about which sports will receive reduced resources – or be outright eliminated – as facility upgrades and rising coaches’ salaries (isn’t it about time for a Cael Sanderson extension?) chew into profits and things like parking fees and those aforementioned gas prices make some fans think hard about season ticket renewals.

As far as the hiring part, Kraft should have some time. James Franklin just signed a massive extension, Micah Shrewsberry will enter the second year of his contract, and there are enough wealthy wrestling boosters around to assure that Sanderson should want for nothing. Coaching hires in other college sports simply don’t move the needle.

The biggest challenges ahead are those Kraft’s predecessors never had to tackle – namely, the NIL-ephant in the room and all of its trappings. The good news is athletes are finally – legally – permitted to receive compensation for the acclaim and popularity (and money, let’s not forget the money) they bring to their universities. The bad news is, as with many things, the system was put into place before anyone knew how to govern it, to account for the loopholes or the weak spots, and it’s currently cracking already, with athletes – and their agents – using the transfer portal as a threat to demand what they believe is their fair share of NIL compensation. It’s threatening to turn the recruiting wars, in the big revenue sports at least, from a scenario where the best teams keep getting first crack at the buffet table to a scenario where the teams that can offer the most money – who typically wind up being … wait for it … the best teams – get the first crack at the buffet table. If you didn’t like a lack of parity before, you probably won’t like the lack of parity fueled by six-figure endorsement deals for athletes who might play one season at a school very much either.

The job of a modern-day college athletic director, then, becomes a job of not just hiring good coaches and making sound financial decisions but helping to ensure that the branding – of the university, of the facilities, of the coaches, and of the athletes – is on-point, that elite athletes and even their not-so-elite teammates are all star athletes in the truest sense of the word. Anything else is conceding the wins and the trophies and the revenue streams to the group of half-dozen or so teams that wind up in the College Football Playoff every year or the 10 college basketball teams that land the top recruiting classes every year.

And this, perhaps, is where Kraft can make the greatest impact, even more than in the fundraising arena, where he carries an impressive resume. The former Indiana football player picked up three degrees in Bloomington in sport marketing/sport management. He’s taught sport management courses. At Boston College, he made apparel deals with Adidas and New Balance. The guy understands branding, and at a place that is still trying to decide whether it wants to be the old-school, traditional behemoth or a more modern, cooler, destination for athletes who reside in places other than the tri-state area, that’s important.

So, to recap, Kraft must continue to balance the budget in an economy that is rendering most budgets obsolete; figure out ways to best position Penn State’s athletes to take advantage of NIL opportunities while ensuring that they, you know, remain Penn State’s athletes; tap the nation’s largest alumni network for fundraising dollars to drive capital projects and keep the athletic department competitive with its peers; and find ways to make Penn State’s teams stand out in positive and sustainable ways.

Kraft described Penn State as “the mountaintop” on Friday. He’ll need all of the skills and all the enthusiasm that got him to the summit to achieve all of those tasks and deliver the kinds of wins that he and his new constituents would love to see.