Purdue's next athletic director must be revenue generator, Mike Bobinski says
· Yahoo Sports
WEST LAFAYETTE -- Mike Bobinski wants his successor as Purdue athletic director to know what sort of place they are walking into.
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“A sane environment in a relatively insane time in this world,” Bobinski called Purdue during a media roundtable on Monday. The Boilermakers’ AD for the past 10 years sat for his first interview since announcing June 3 he will retire on Dec. 31.
The decision put the wheels in motion to find only the third person to occupy that role in the past 33 years. The Purdue Board of Trustees hired executive search firm DHR Global to assist the process. Interviews are imminent. This accelerated timeline would allow Bobinski’s successor to settle in alongside the outgoing AD for a transitional period.
Bobinski’s decade in charge spanned a transformative, and at times tumultuous, period in college sports. The Big Ten emerged from the COVID-19 pandemic and expanded to the west coast. Then came name, image and likeness compensation, followed by paying athletes directly through revenue share.
The economic structure under which Bobinski began his tenure -- or even the one under which Purdue football went to the Big Ten championship game in 2022 -- bears almost no resemblance to the one under which he exits.
Bobinski said he has little involvement in the search process. Yet no one knows the opportunities and challenges the job presents. That gives him a useful perspective on the attributes and background most crucial for Purdue’s next athletic director.
Someone who embraces Purdue’s culture, its adherence to compliance, its educational mission – those are given.
But another critical non-negotiable? That person also needs to come in ready to generate new streams of revenue.
“Whatever the world’s going to look like going forward here, it’s not going to be less expensive,” Bobinski said. “That is for sure. It’s going to be more expensive.
“So finding ways to turn over every opportunity and turn those into actual real resources that can be used to support what we need to do going forward. Someone that’s got a knowledge, an expertise, or maybe even some hands-on experience doing those kinds of things to me would be really important.”
Bobinski convinced Purdue can win with level playing field
Since the beginning of the player-pay era, Purdue has generally worked from the middle to lower-middle of the Big Ten Conference, depending on the sport. Bobinski expected the onset of revenue sharing to level the playing field.
It has not, in part, because the continued tolerance for third-party NIL deals above the rev share cap -- $21.3 million for the coming academic year, covering all sports. The Athletic recently conducted an anonymous survey in reporting Big Ten basketball payrolls average $14.3 million. Coaches at SEC media days were throwing around estimates of $30 million-$40 million for football rosters.
Bobinski supports the Protect College Sports Act, a proposed federal law which has risen from the apparent dead in the past few days. It would unify college sports under one set of rules, eliminating the constant pivots to the latest court rulings scattered across the country.
For Purdue, it would also mean knowing from Day 1 what dollar amount it and all of its Big Ten and power conference opponents were working with.
“Let’s just figure out a system that has adequate resources in it, and then task our departments with managing to those resources,” Bobinski said. “And then you’ll figure out who’s got a working strategy, who’s got the ability to identify talent and make sound, strategic resource allocation decisions.
“That to me would be a much better solution than trying to play let’s make a deal day-in, day-out, and every day it’s all emotion driven.”
One concept which came up in the past week was the idea of a retention pool. This additional $20 million-$30 million on top of the $20-plus million in the revenue share pool would be used for teams to keep players already in their programs.
Bobinski confirmed player compensation obligations in the past couple of years forced Purdue to put off some planned facility upgrades. He believes stabilizing the payroll question – even at a higher price – would allow his successor to better manage those sometimes conflicting financial needs.
“We’ll find a way,” Bobinski said. “That kind of a model, to me, is where we need to get to. Then the challenge will be here at Purdue for us to go out and generate the resources to make sure we can compete at the highest possible level.”
Bobinski made clear revenue generation cannot be the new athletic director’s job alone. That individual has too many other things on their plate. But they will need to lead the administrative team which finds and capitalizes on new streams.
Understanding Purdue’s culture will also mean pushing people out of their comfort zone at times. It’s why the job calls for more than “financial astuteness,” as Bobinski put it. He recalled some of his conversations from possible benefactors a couple of years ago, when the radical shift to paying players was thrust upon Purdue and its more traditional preferences.
“A little too often the answer was, ‘That’s a good idea. Someone ought to do that,’” Bobinski said.
Congress may help Bobinski’s successor close the gap with the deepest wallets in the Big Ten. No matter how much that person respects Boilermaker values, they’ll need to walk through the door with an action plan for a different kind of value.
This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Purdue's next athletic director must be revenue generator, Mike Bobinski says