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An interview with:


PENN STATE

PRESIDENT BARRON: We have an
announcement related to a key position at Penn
State, but before I do I want to thank Dave Joyner
for his commitment to Penn State athletics. He
consistently focused on integrity, academics and
championships. He's out of town and unable to be
here, but I want to make sure I start off making
sure everyone understands how much we
appreciate his service.
Our university has had a long and
successful history in Intercollegiate Athletics, one
that has contributed to Penn State in many ways
over the years. Our successes have been noted
both on the field and in the classroom, and that is a
fundamental value at Penn State. It's a value that
in large part drove our decision in naming our next
athletic director. In searching for our next athletic
director, we looked for a person who could
continue to provide experienced leadership for our
31 varsity sports programs and our 800 plus
student-athletes. In addition to finding someone
with proven skills at the highest levels, someone
who is committed to academic excellence in our
student-athletes as well as success in our sports
program.

As well as a person that is experienced in
complex institutions and multi-million dollar
budgets, the smooth operation of facilities and also
creating an exciting fan experience. I must admit
that I also looked for an individual with a full set of
experiences; in some ways what I would describe
as an ideal candidate for athletic director. This is
an individual who was a student-athlete, who
sought higher degrees after completion of their
undergraduate degree, had experience as a
coach, climbed the ladder within athletic
administration at multiple universities, getting a
perspective on many different programs and how
they function and function well, and even gaining
experience in difficult situations that are inevitable.
I also wanted to make sure we had a person who
has gained a position of national leadership. This
is an institution that should be at the forefront of
athletic leadership.
So we asked a lot of our candidate, and I
believe our choice can deliver on all counts. We
found the right person to lead our program, and the
screening committee that weighed candidate
credentials found this person to be the clear
choice, the first choice of every single member of
the screening committee, a unanimous choice to
be the next AD at Penn State University. Allow me
to introduce Penn State's new Director of
Intercollegiate Athletics, Sandy Barbour.
[Applause]
Sandy was an athlete, field hockey and
basketball at Wake Forest. She gained a Masters
degree in Sports Management at UMass, where
she also began her career as field hockey
assistant coach. She also gained an MBA while at
Northwestern, where she was field hockey and
lacrosse coach and Assistant AD. That began a
remarkable set of administrative experiences.
Sandy has been one of the longest tenured athletic
directors in the Pac 12, until recently overseeing
athletics programs and operations at the University
of California since 2004, and during her tenure the
Golden Bears produced 19 national team titles and
built a state-of-the-art athletic performance center.
Sandy's career in Intercollegiate Athletics
spans more than three decades and has taken her
to Northwestern, Tulane, Notre Dame, as well as
the University of California, where she has served
in key athletics positions and held tremendous
responsibilities. More information on her
background can be found in the press packets at
your seats.
At the University of California Sandy
managed an annual budget of about $100 million,
a staff of 260, a 30-sport program and also helped
J uly 26, 2014


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attract more than $315 million in gifts toward
scholarships, operations and facilities. I anticipate
with that wealth of experience that her entry into
the Big 10 Conference will be a smooth one. I just
want you to know that I very much look forward to
working with her, and I want to take this moment to
thank each of the members of the screening
committee who gave considerable amount of time
and thought to this selection and made sure that
we not only had a great AD, but we have the
confidence of knowing that this was a clear choice,
a unanimous choice of our committee. Now I
would like to turn the program over to Sandy for a
few remarks.
SANDY BARBOUR: When you spend a
professional lifetime serving institutions and most
importantly students, you dream about coming to a
place like Penn State.
You dream about the opportunity to lead a
program like Penn State athletics. Why? Because
it represents the opportunity to have it all: Athletic
excellence, academic achievement, community
engagement and fiscal responsibility. So thank
you, Eric [Barron]. I am absolutely thrilled, over the
top excited about this opportunity and about being
the athletic director at Penn State. I want to lend
my thanks to Eric and the committee. It was an
arduous process, it always is, and I want to thank
them for their confidentiality and their confidence. I
want to thank Eric. I am here because of him,
because of his confidence and because of his
leadership and my belief in that.
I want to thank Cal [University]. It's been
my home for ten years, an incredible place with a
very, very bright future, and I appreciate the
opportunity that they gave me. Now I will thank my
family. We're a tight-knit group, as you will learn,
I'm an east coaster, I'm from Maryland, and this is
coming home. They've been very patient with me,
and they're an incredible group that I know you all
will get to know as well.
I love the "We Are Penn State." I
particularly love what it stands for. It stands for
family. It's a powerful message that we win
together and we lose together. When we stumble,
and we will stumble, when we stumble, we pick
each other up, we look ourselves in the mirror, we
make no excuses, we own up, and we make the
corrections necessary and we get back after it,
together.
We are Penn State. There is so much that
is remarkable about this university and the Penn
State family. Like any family, there have been
remarkable highs and devastating lows. Despite it
all, Penn State remained glued together by a
legacy of commitment to compete against all odds
and to excel at the highest level. I really admire
your recent record of taking a look at yourself in
the mirror, recognizing the need for more and
committing to be better, to be better at the very
core of this institution.
Growing up an east coaster, I have always
had a deep passion for this university, for its
athletic department, and most importantly, growing
up a football fan. I have had a passion and an
interest and an administration for Penn State
football. Yes, they were the beast of the east. I
have no doubt that we will return to that under
Coach Franklin, but I have much higher -- and I
know we have much higher aspirations than to
dominate the east and the conference. We aspire
to national championships in each and every one
of our 31 sports.
That's what we will work for every day.
National championships are the goal, and daily we
will set a course for our work with that end in mind.
I originally spoke with Dr. Barron because
of the prestige of Penn State, because of the
challenge of this position and because of the place
that Penn State holds in the legacy of college
athletics, but I am before you today, I sit here today
because of what I learned about the people, what
I've come to know about the Penn State family.
First, and you already know this, you have a rock
star president. He is as devoted to Penn State as
anyone. Secondly, I discovered that this is a
community that wants what I want. We want for
Intercollegiate Athletics to provide a positive point
of connection for alumni, students, faculty and
staff, to serve as a point of pride amongst the
many remarkable accomplishments of this
incredible university.
To do this we need to win, we need to
recruit and enroll diligent students, and we need to
uphold the highest standards of behavior and
ethics. It's no simple task. It's one that I value,
and I know is of paramount importance to the Penn
State Nation. So let me tell you this. I am all in.
What does that mean? What does that mean to
me?
First and foremost, it's to our student-
athletes. You are the "why!" You are the why I'm
here, you are the why athletic departments exist,
and I promise you, it will always be that way under
my leadership.

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To our coaches and our staff, you are the
key. You are the how. You're responsible for the
nurturing and the developing of the students and
creating an enriching experience. You're the how
it gets done, and I know you have maintained
during really, really uncertain and difficult times
and I'm grateful for your efforts.
To our alumni and fans and those who
support Penn State in a multitude of ways, I am all
in to lead a team that wins and wins the right way.
You can be proud of how our student-athletes, our
coaches and our staff represent you and wear
Penn State on their uniforms.
To President Barron and the Board of
Trustees, I appreciate your confidence and you
can count on me to uphold the mission, and values
of this great public university.
To the larger university faculty and staff,
our student-athletes will be students first. We will
be an athletic program within the context of a
university, and we will be integrated in every way
to the benefit of the university community. I am
proud to join the Penn State family and continue to
help build a better, stronger, even more
competitive Penn State in the classroom, in the
community, and on the field of play.
From uncommon seeds of Penn State
grow an uncommon harvest of excellence. I am
energized by the challenge and the opportunity to
help cultivate that legacy. I'm ready. Every
experience I've had in 33 years has led to this day.
Most of all, I'm humbled to say that I am a newly
minted Nittany Lion. I will give you my best, and I
expect the same in return from every aspect of our
community.
We only accomplish all that we are
capable of if we put aside narrow agendas and
focus on family and what is best for Penn State.
You deserve nothing less. Together we will stretch
ourselves to attain the degree of all-around
excellence that you have come to expect. That's
the excellence that drew me to Penn State; a
robust, diverse, eminently successful
intercollegiate athletics program that every
member of our community can be proud of. We
are Penn State. I'm all in. I'm ready to get going.
Thank you.
[Applause.]
THE MODERATOR: We will take
questions for the President and the Director of
Athletics.

Q. Sandy, you mentioned all of the
draws coming here and the lore. What are the
challenges you see?
SANDY BARBOUR: Well, certainly there
have been recent challenges that I referred to "the
family" in my remarks and I think that's so
important. Family together can get through
anything, and I think that actually is one of the
beauties of this job and this opportunity.

Q. First, Sandy, have you been able to
meet and talk to the coaches yet and
particularly James Franklin?
SANDY BARBOUR: As you can imagine
it's been a little bit of a whirlwind, but James
[Franklin] and I met this morning. We had a
conversation, and I think obviously you will have to
talk to James but I think we hit it off. I'm looking
forward to working with him and his staff and being
a part of our success in the future.
I have spoken with a couple of the
coaches on the phone, had an opportunity to meet
a number of the staff, and it's just starting.

Q. Dr. Barron, Dave Joyner is he going
to be part of the university as of August 1st and
what title or role will he have?
PRESIDENT BARRON: Sandy will start
August 18th, and Dave will continue as AD now to
the 17th, and then he will be employed by the
university in a consultation role to assist Sandy in
the transition and make sure that she gets off to a
fast start.

Q. Sandy, last fall the basketball team
and the football teams at Cal had graduation
rates of 38 and 44%. What is the AD's role in
precipitating a good academic environment?
And Eric [Barron], how did that play in the
decision process of the search committee?
PRESIDENT BARRON: Of course we
look at everything, and in that particular case, I
made a call to the current chancellor to discuss the
APR and what had been occurring at Cal. It was
an interesting conversation because basically he
suggested that Sandy was a champion for the
success of the students, and she was actually
putting considerable pressure to make sure that
the situation improved. That's one.
The other part about it is you watched a lot
of things occur at Cal that occurred because of
very significant budget cuts, that as we all know

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Document1 4
rippled through the whole California University
System and had a severe impact on athletics and
even the budget for student advising and
mentoring in athletics.
One of the things he mentioned to me was
that Sandy viewed this as unacceptable and
pushed hard for a report in the university that was
focused on the "student" part of the student-
athlete; the report that is going to come out earlier
this fall. I asked him if there was any issue in there
with respect to Sandy, he said quite the opposite,
and she is a champion for the student-athlete. The
university perhaps should have listened to her
more closely and they would have been more
successful. I don't know whether that last part is
fair --
SANDY BARBOUR: I'll take it! I don't
know that I could say it any better than Dr. Barron
just did, but unacceptable is the first piece, and I
will tell you I learned some things from that
situation that will benefit Penn State. We are
athletic programs again that are all part of a
university. Our student-athletes will be students
first, Penn State is incredibly proud of the
academic performance of their students and we
will continue to be.

Q. What did you learn that will benefit
Penn State?
SANDY BARBOUR: Well, again, I think all
of us in this room that we learn more from things
that go wrong probably than our successes, and I
think you will learn about what kinds of pressures,
if you will, what kind of autonomy you provide to
certain aspects of an operation as a leader. We're
a big department -- I ran a big department at Cal, I
run a big department here, and it's a fine balance
how much as the AD you're in the middle of it and
how much you leave to others. I think the
important part for me is to set the right vision and
the right message and I want to be very clear
about that, we are students first. We are about
students first. 85% graduation rate is going to go
to 90.

Q. President Barron said you were the
unanimous choice of the selection committee.
What are your qualities that you think made
you the first choice?
SANDY BARBOUR: I think if you look at
my background, which is probably the down side of
you not having known it was me before now, that
you don't have a whole lot of that, but I started in
the Big Ten [Conference]. I've been at
academically elite institutions. I've had a lot of
experience from coaching to internal management
if you will in a variety of different ways.
As I took on athletic director roles starting
in 1996 at Tulane, I moved to the external side,
fundraising, corporate sponsorship, a more
external role, so I've done most of the different
aspect of an athletic department. And I think finally
I have a reputation for having been involved in
leadership roles from an NCAA standpoint, from a
governance standpoint and a conference
standpoint, and I have a reputation around
integrity.
I've come to my role at two different
places, Tulane and Notre Dame, following issues
around compliance and to work through those, so I
have a reputation of coming in and having the
ability to really gather team and pull team toward a
common goal, and I think those are many of the
reasons that I'm a great fit.

Q. It's no secret that Penn State's
athletic department was in the red financially
last year. I'm curious, do you consider yourself
to be a business-oriented person? Do you have
any plans to improve the athletic department's
financial stability moving forward?
SANDY BARBOUR: Do I need to do that
this afternoon? [Chuckles] Somewhat along the
same lines of my background, while I was at
Northwestern, took the opportunity to get an MBA
because I saw that was in the late 80s, early 90s,
so I saw where Intercollegiate Athletics was
headed. I thought it was important that I have the
business piece.
So certainly I have enough of that to really
have the ability to look at revenue generating
opportunities to look at the business side of it from
both an accounting standpoint and a revenue
generation standpoint. We've done some really
kind of cutting-edge things, if you will, at Cal. We
retooled and moved from an internally oriented
department, we retooled with personnel and with
approach to a revenue-generating approach to
create resources for the student experience. Not
as be all's and end all's themselves.
We just acquired the -- secured the largest
field naming rights opportunity in the history of
college athletics, we did our own in-house
outbound sales effort. We were one of the first in
college athletics to do that, so I think that balance

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of having been a coach, having been internally
focused, as well as having the business side of it
benefits me.

Q. Sandy, your tenure at Cal only
ended about a month ago. Where were you at,
at that point in your professional career? Did
you think that an opportunity like this would
come about only a month later? Would you
have thought at that point that you might be in
this position a month ago?
SANDY BARBOUR: If I told you yes, you
would know I was lying to you. I was not looking to
leave Cal. I actually was very excited about the
opportunity to work and build a sport management
program, and teaching is always something I
wanted to do. But when this opportunity came up,
I mean, I've told you how I feel about Penn State.
I've told you the place that it holds for me having
grown up in Maryland and it was too much not to
look at. And then when Dr. Barron extended the
invitation to me, it was clearly an opportunity that I
jumped on because this is a very, very special
place.

Q. Sandy, you mentioned a little bit
about how you want everyone to be together
here at Penn State. Obviously there was -- I
don't know how much you paid attention to this
but there was criticism, if you will, at the past
athletic director, Dave Joyner, and his tenure.
How do you think you can deal with a
community that had a little bit of a problem
with the athletic department these last couple
of years? How do you think you can help
soothe those problems?
SANDY BARBOUR: Well, I would only be
speculating on things that have occurred in the
past, but I will tell you what I know about Dave
Joyner, and that is that he's a Penn State man who
stepped in at a time when his university needed
him desperately and did a great job and I'm
grateful for that because I will inherit a department
that has benefited from that.
For me it's about team and whether it's in
my role as a coach or administrator or certainly as
an athletic director, it's about building team and it's
about understanding what the goal is and with
where we're head and had it's about making
decisions, each and every one of us, about acting
every day and doing things that are in the best
interest of Penn State.
There are no individual agendas. We are
one and we are about what's best for Penn State.
Everything I hear is that that's what we have here
is people that love this place and want to do that,
and we have to create the vision or maybe tweak
the vision and get after it. We will do it as family.
We will do it together.

Q. Have you gotten a chance to get
around campus and look around? You don't
start until August 18th, but do you have a plan
of attack?
SANDY BARBOUR: I have not had a
chance today to tour campus. I have been here
three -- well, I coached here a number of times,
field hockey and lacrosse, when I was an assistant
coach at Northwestern, and it was a long, long time
ago. I started at 12. [Laughter]
We actually came to Penn State when we
did our benchmarking tool for our renovations for
California Memorial Stadium so we were here for a
day probably in 2006, maybe, and then I was also
here with our women's basketball program, I don't
remember the year now, but for a first and second
round game. So I've been here a number of times
but none in the last few years, that's for sure.
I won't wait until August 18th to think about
hitting the pavement running, James and I already
did a little bit of work this morning, and I will use
the next three weeks to go back to California and
get things ready to make my way home, and we
will look at personnel, we will take a look at -- I will
talk to a lot of people. I have something to learn
from everyone, and we will figure out what our
gaps are and what we need.

Q. Can you outline Ms. Barbour's
compensation package?
PRESIDENT BARRON: Sure. The
primary focus of the contract is to be competitive
within the Big Ten, so in terms of compensation
$700,000 as a salary and $100,000 as a retention
bonus. This places her fifth among Big Ten salary
and our belief in every single part of this university,
whether you're talking assistant professors, full
professors, administrative team, athletic personnel,
we intend to be competitive. So that's the focus.
There is also in there the opportunity to have
bonuses based on performance: A third that are
related to student academic success, and
two-thirds related to different aspects of success
on the field.

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Q. Dr. Barron, you called Ms. Barbour
the clear choice, the first choice, the
unanimous choice. There is public reaction
already that is critical of this choice, given the
things that we have discussed with regard to
Cal. Why was she such a clear choice for you
guys when a lot of initial reaction based on her
resume at Cal might lead others at least in the
general public to question the choice?
PRESIDENT BARRON: So first of all, I
described that breadth of experience, and
everything from being a student-athlete all the way
to being an AD and this is incredibly valuable, and
I know, as people who watch the landscape of
management know that every opportunity can be a
learning experience if you're the type of person
that does learn from those experiences. But I think
the other part of it is that through that due diligence
you have a lot more information than what is
written in a paper.
And I will tell you, hopefully you will
understand what I'm saying about the depth of
information, but let's look at it this way. I can't see
anyone who has gone through a severe budget
problem that's had to fix it that comes out the other
end with more friends than they started with. It's
always the opposite.
So when you have those types of stresses
you know you have a chancellor that says, "okay,
cut five sports" and you have an allegiance as a
university to those five sports, as we would here.
That doesn't put in you a particularly good position,
but yet you had the responsibility to the system
that in the California System went through severe
budget cuts, and everybody took it on the chin.
These are experiences where some individuals
might be unhappy, but that's not the story that is
significant there.
The story that is significant is it was
necessary, you take the steps to do it because it's
necessary to protect your entire program and to
protect your university, and in the case of Cal, it
actually became a fundraising opportunity that
helped save sports, a good story as an outcome.
I would challenge you to go find any
university that's gone through severe financial
stress and have somebody come out the other end
and not have a lot of people saying well why did
you pick that sport? You should have picked this
other sport and not ended up with detractors.

Q. Sandy, your position on some of the
big picture national NCAA issues confronting
right now, whether it be compensating student-
athletes or breaking off a Division IV,
unionization, the enforcement department,
upheaval there, what are your views?
SANDY BARBOUR: You said one
question. Actually it's easy for me to answer
those. Obviously these were things that Dr. Barron
and I talked about through the process, and we are
absolutely in sync and we're in sync with the Big
Ten with our position. I believe that student-
athletes ought to have access to cost of
attendance. I have been part of the governance
structure that pushed for that. I stood up at the
convention four years ago and advocated for it. I
do not believe that unionization has any place in
college athletics. Our student-athletes are
students; they're not professionals. We're going to
be about students and about students first.

Q. Ms. Barbour, you mentioned the
importance of unity within Penn State and in
your position. Given the diversity present in
the Penn State community and the range of
opinions on the way we should move forward
with our athletic programs, do you feel
maintaining or fostering that sense of unity will
present challenges and if so in what way?
SANDY BARBOUR: I think that diversity is
a huge part of unity and being respectful of that
diversity. Unity doesn't mean one opinion, and I
actually embrace that, embrace the diversity of
opinion, diversity in a variety of different ways, and
I actually think that will make us stronger in our
ability to move forward. As I said before, I have
something to learn from everybody, and I'll be
doing a lot of listening.
THE MODERATOR: Okay, thank you very
much.


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