STARKVILLE, Miss. - Most kids want to be firefighters or pitchers. Greg Byrne can't remember ever wanting to be anything other than an athletic director.
Mississippi State's incoming leader became the youngest major college athletic director in the nation Friday when he moved into his new office. The 36-year-old has been focused on this goal since he first learned what a fundraiser was at age 5.
``I think we got the first hint when he was in the third grade and his teacher asked the class to do a story on what they wanted to be when they grew up,'' said Bill Byrne, Greg's father. ``And Greg wrote a story about being an athletic director.''
There's no need to look far for the younger Byrne's inspiration. Bill Byrne also was likely the youngest athletic director in the nation when he took over at Oregon at age 38 a quarter century ago.
``Greg never fails to remind me that he was only 36,'' Bill Byrne joked in a phone interview from his office in College Station, where he is Texas A&M's athletic director.
Bill Byrne raised his sons, Bill and Greg, around college athletics. He was an associate at Idaho State in Pocatello where Greg was born and at San Diego State where his sons played little league baseball. At Oregon, they became an unofficial part of the staff.
Bill Byrne said most athletic directors work 70 hours a week and he needed a way to spend time with his sons.
Little Greg sat on his dad's shoulders during a jog-a-thon fundraiser and stood on street corners, soliciting signatures on a referendum for a sin tax to benefit the state's cash-strapped athletic departments. He carried sod when it was time to resurface the softball field and rolled fresh paint onto the tennis courts.
And nothing was better than game day.
``Growing up around that environment on a daily basis, it's such a special thing to grow up around,'' Greg Byrne said. ``The passion and the enthusiasm and how much interest people have for college athletics, it just makes it fun to go to work each day.''
Byrne, who was born Nov. 29, 1971, and is 10 days younger than Miami's Kirby Hocutt, got his first taste of that passion and enthusiasm in his first hire as Mississippi State's athletic director. Bringing in John Cohen from Kentucky to replace retiring Ron Polk as baseball coach should've been a simple move. The former Kentucky coach was an all-Southeastern Conference outfielder for the Bulldogs and thought of Starkville as home.
But the hiring ended up being a trial by live fire, one he likely won't encounter again. First he had to tell his best friend and mentor, Kentucky athletic director Mitch Barnhart, that he wanted to hire away Cohen. And once he did, he had to endure a very public and personal attack by Polk, who backed another candidate.
Polk threatened to ``hurt'' Byrne by taking his name off the stadium, the school out of his will and disbanding all the programs he'd help to build until Byrne left or was fired.
The former coach's words could have driven a wedge between Byrne and the donor base he was inheriting. Byrne got the job when Larry Templeton was forced out after 20 years by President Robert ``Doc'' Foglesong. Weeks after Byrne's hiring, though, Foglesong abruptly resigned and many thought Templeton might make a play to get his job back.
Polk called Byrne, an associate athletic director at Mississippi State for two years before being promoted, ``a young guy who's never been an athletic director, never been at Mississippi State who gets hired by a president who's now long gone, who gets hired over other people who are more qualified, who doesn't listen to a coach who's been around for 40 years.''
It was a difficult 72 hours for Byrne. He served as a pallbearer at the funeral of one close friend and upset another. But if Byrne was concerned fans might side with the popular Polk, he didn't show it. He was greeted with jangling cow bells, thunderous applause and fists thumping on furniture as he introduced Cohen to the Mississippi State faithful.
Even Templeton was supportive after the hire.
``As I said the day they named him, he's now my athletic director,'' Templeton said. ``He's got my full support.''
Like his father, Greg Byrne believes athletic director is a job that requires the help and commitment of your family. His wife, Regina, helped convince Nelle Cohen that Starkville was the right destination.
And while Polk sees his age as a disadvantage, Bill Byrne believes his youthful energy will be one of Greg Byrne's strengths.
``These are jobs that are not 9-to-5 jobs,'' Bill Byrne said. ``These are jobs that are 24 hours a day. When you're in the grocery store and you're checking out to purchase your groceries, someone will likely talk to you about what's going on with the basketball program. You all the sudden have a very high profile.''
Byrne must increase that profile if he's going to succeed. Mississippi State has won a bowl in football, back-to-back division titles in basketball and appeared in the College World Series in baseball in the last year. And the Bulldogs did it with the Southeastern Conferences smallest budget.
The gap between Mississippi State and its rivals is millions, a chasm Byrne feels he has to close. To do that, he needs to build more enthusiasm for the program.
``It's what comes first, the chicken or the egg?'' Byrne asked. ``To win you need the resources. To generate resources you need to win. What you need to do is create a vision and a plan and make everybody part of that.''
Thursday
October 24th, 2024
8:19PM
