Purdue Hires AD From Dozens of Candidates
Bobinski has also worked at Xavier University and the University of Akron.
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As a subscriber you can listen to articles at work, in the car, or while you work out. Subscribe NowPurdue University President Mitch Daniels says the search that landed Mike Bobinski as the next director of athletics attracted a nearly unlimited pool of contenders for the job, saying "there was no one who wasn’t interested in talking with us." Bobinski will leave his current AD position at Georgia Tech and reach Purdue at a key time for the department. The most high-profile challenge involves helping to return a football program that was once a contender for Big Ten Conference Championships, but has only recorded six wins in last three seasons under Head Coach Darrell Hazell.
During his introduction Tuesday morning at the West Lafayette campus, Bobinski said he has work to do from day one.
Though details of Bobinski’s salary have not completely been ironed out, Daniels said he will be paid "somewhere at or in the top quartile of their peers nationally. That’s a moving target, but we will hit it as we finalize this contract. It’ll have performance incentives in it tied to winning, but also to success in the ways this program has been so successful already." Daniels says Purdue had its pick of "top people essentially from every conference." He concluded his remarks by saying "we are committed to excellence in everything we do: in teaching, in research and in athletic competition and we went looking for the most competitive, determined, proven winner we could find, but someone who shares our values of academics and standards of conduct. Someone, who like everybody at Purdue, wants to win in the right way."
Purdue had been searching for months for the successor to Morgan Burke, who has been on the job since 1993, a tenure that surpasses any other AD in Purdue history. In February, Burke announced plans to retire at the end of the 2016-2017 school year. Purdue has been working with a national firm to assist in the hunt for the next leader of Boilermaker sports teams. In May, a job posting went live on several high-profile college athletics industry web sites.
Bobinski’s previous experience includes AD stints at Xavier University and the University of Akron. He said "being successful at this level requires an all-in commitment. There are no pretenders in the Big Ten, at this level and at the Power Five level. You’ve got to have a top-to-bottom, side-by-side, all-in commitment. So as we look ahead, I certainly feel that from the leadership of Purdue. But I would ask the extended Purdue family to stay together, to stay involved and stay supportive. We’ll need everybody. We can’t do this just by ourselves in athletics. We need everybody with us."
During his introduction Tuesday morning at the West Lafayette campus, Bobinski said he has work to do from day one.