Look, I worked in college sports. I get it.
I know colleges and conferences love to spend money on professional organizations to lead searches. Gotta cross all those t's and dot those i's. If nothing else, there's someone to blame if they hire the wrong person.
The Patriot League presidents don't have to bring in a search firm this time because the best candidate is staring them in the face, and at least a few of them already know him, or know of him. If they are smart they will bring him in for an interview, do everything in their power to convince him to take the job, and then use the money they were going to pay a search firm to hold a league-wide party and celebrate their good fortune.
The Patriot League's next executive director should be Tom Odjakjian, senior associate commissioner (broadcasting and digital content) of the the American Athletic Conference.
(In the interest of full disclosure, Tom and I grew up together. He's one of my oldest and dearest friends and someone I had hoped the Ivy League would consider when Jeff Orleans stepped down.)
OJ – people in college sports from coast to coast know him by that nickname – is a proud Patriot League product. He graduated from Lafayette College with a degree in economics and business.He has close ties with the Ivy League and around the east, having served as assistant sports information director at Princeton and then as an associate commissioner of the Eastern Collegiate Athletic Conference (ECAC).
And he's a huge figure in the history of college sports broadcasting.
From the ECAC he moved on to the fledgling ESPN and was instrumental in helping the network become "the Worldwide Leader" as its director of college sports. Read that again. At a time when every college and conference is jockeying for air time, the Patriot League can pitch the former director of college sports for ESPN.
In 1994 he was named “The Most Influential Person in College Sports” by College Sports Magazine. The Sporting News named him one of the four most influential people in college basketball in 1990.
In 1995 OJ joined the Big East as associate commissioner. From his Big East bio:
"His primary responsibilities include television negotiations for all sports (including TV deals with CBS, ABC, ESPN, ESPNU, ESPN Regional, CBS Sports Network, and local and regional outlets), football TV scheduling, and men’s basketball scheduling. From 1995-2006, he was also the manager of the Big East Men’s Basketball Tournament at Madison Square Garden and oversaw all men’s basketball game operations and policies."When the old Big East morphed into the American Athletic, OJ went along.
You know that tournament you are going to watch again tonight? Consider this from the book ESPN: The Uncensored History . . .
Because of Odjakjian, who deftly orchestrated the coverage from his producer's chair, ESPN defined college basketball and turned the month of March into a maddening national hoops obsession.Remember that famed Georgetown-Princeton tournament thriller that Time Magazine last year referred to as "The Game That Saved March Madness?" Wanna guess why it was on live TV? From that Time story:
The Georgetown-Princeton game might not have attracted much attention if Tom Odjakjian, then a programming executive at ESPN, hadn’t lobbied his bosses to put it in prime time. The talent gap was huge, but the plotlines, Odjakjian reasoned, were too tempting. “There’s a compelling Princeton-vs.-Georgetown, David-and-Goliath thing here,” he says.If the Patriot League wants to build a national profile, there simply isn't a better choice than OJ, who is nationally known and universally respected. And here's the kicker. He's an even better person than he is a professional, and folks, that's saying something.
This is from author Michael Freeman's acknowledgments in his book on ESPN:
Tom Odjakjian, a most important man in ESPN's history, who held a variety of jobs, lived up to his reputation as one of the kinder people on the planet.I don't have it in front of me by I think it was in one of his books that Dickie V said pretty much the same thing. And having known him forever I can tell you the next person who doesn't like him will be the first.
So save your money, Patriot League and give OJ a call. I ask only one thing in return.
Invite me to that party after you hire him. It's going to be a special one.
