Bear Down Wildcats

61 is currently an open roster spot, so I am going to look at the person outside the program who is most important to the football team.



Byrne is a 6'6", 240?, 6th year athletic director from Mississippi State and Pocatello, ID. Byrne hired Coach Rich Rodriguez, spearheaded the funding and construction of the new Lowell-Stevens addition to the north endzone including new football offices and player facilities, built the new practice facility and is in the middle of making more improvements to the football stadium as well as adding a student-athlete academic facility. That is a career for many ADs and it is just a start for Byrne. More than any other person, Byrne is responsible for modernizing our football facilities and making us competitive for recruiting both players and staff.

When Byrne was hired by Mississippi State in 2008 he was the youngest AD in the country. Now he is just one of the best! If you are not holding your breath when a major program loses an AD you don't understand how well Byrne is thought of nationally. If he has a weakness in his job I haven't spotted it yet. Byrne has already proven to be great at hiring new coaches, managing coach searches, improving facilities, handling student discipline, social media outreach, and brand management. Frankly, I believe it would be easier to hire a new football, basketball, or baseball coach than to replace Greg Byrne. He may not be the highest paid member of the athletic department, but in my opinion he is the most important.

Thankfully, Byrne and his family seem to truly enjoy Tucson, the University of Arizona, the coaches he has working for him, and the challenges still ahead of him. Arizona would be lucky if Byrne stays in Tucson long enough to be our 2nd longest serving AD (it is hard to imagine anyone every passing Pop McKale's 43 years as AD).

What don't you know about Byrne? All I discovered reading multiple articles is that you might find him ahead of you in line at Dairy Queen picking up a Blizzard and his fantasy job is being the PGA Commissioner.



61 is the number of PATs attempted by Casey Skowron last year. He made 59.


No. 61 Most Passing Yards by Freshman: 3,793, Anu Solomon, 2014

Didn't realize the AD was a VP level position.

What a great hire by the UA to snag him. Like CSM and RR, sure hopes GB stays around.

Outside of his gimmicky -outs and awful uniforms anyway, but those are trivial.

I think that Byrnes greatest opportunity at the moment is leveraging Nike for more money.

We are criminally underpaid by Nike and have awful branding at the moment. Look at what asu has accomplished, new uniforms and branding and then leveraged adidas into a massive deal. It shouldn't be that difficult for Byrne to pitch Nike to improve our branding, uniforms, and market to compete with their main rival, adidas, and attempt to take away from their profitability in Arizona.

Salty wrote:I think that Byrnes greatest opportunity at the moment is leveraging Nike for more money.

We are criminally underpaid by Nike and have awful branding at the moment. Look at what asu has accomplished, new uniforms and branding and then leveraged adidas into a massive deal. It shouldn't be that difficult for Byrne to pitch Nike to improve our branding, uniforms, and market to compete with their main rival, adidas, and attempt to take away from their profitability in Arizona.

When he recently signed an extension for 10 years only a few years ago, it is.

The only screw up of his tenure here.