According to ESPN’s Pete Thamel, the Purdue Boilermakers have their next man to lead the Athletic Department locked and loaded with an announcement coming soon. News began emerging yesterday, after what had amounted to complete silence during the search, that not only had Purdue identified their candidate but that a deal was almost in place and was to be finalized by the end of the week. The epitome of going from 0-60. So, who is this mystery man? I’ll let Thamel share it with you.
Purdue has finalized
a deal to hire Rice athletic director Tommy McClelland as athletic director, sources told ESPN on Tuesday.
McClelland, 44, is a veteran in the space, as he has been a sitting athletic director for nearly two decades. That includes his nearly three years at Rice and stints at both McNeese (2008-13) and Louisiana Tech (2013-20).
But the stint that has the most relevance for McClelland’s hire was a recent stop as Vanderbilt’s deputy athletic director, where he was the football sport administrator and ran external affairs and revenue generation.
You might remember that back on June 5th we did a staff roundtable about the open AD position and what we wanted to see in Bobinski’s replacement. Here’s what I said I was looking for:
The second job is basically a fundraising job (did I mention I worked with big donors, including former Minnesota Vikings players when I was working for Special Olympics Minnesota?). With NIL and other new forms of compensation implemented over the last decade or so the need for money is more important than ever. Teams are gobbling up money and if you want to stay competitive you’ve got to have the money to back it up. Purdue is struggling on the football field but if there’s one thing we learned from IU it’s that with the right amount of money and the right head coach anything is possible.
If the stories about McClelland are true, Purdue really focused on the second part of the job by looking to hire a guy who has been known as a prolific fundraiser at both Rice and Vanderbilt. At Vandy he spearheaded a $300 million capital improvement campaign. That’s quite a chunk of change for any athletic department. At Rice he announced a $120 million stadium renovation but it’s unclear to me based on what I’ve read how much of that money has actually been raised so far. This is not to say that fundraising at Vandy and Rice is the same as fundraising at Purdue, both Rice and Vandy are private schools while Purdue is very obviously a public university. Also, Rice is in Houston, Texas and Vandy is located in Nashville, Tennessee. These are clearly much bigger cities with much more going on than in West Lafayette. What I AM saying though is that fundraising is a skill. It’s not something I can do, but it’s something that I know some people are built for. There’s obviously a great hope that his fundraising skills carry over into this new world of NIL and paying players while building expensive and ever changing rosters especially for football. And speaking of football…
You might think to yourself that Purdue’s number one priority is going to be fixing the football program. But, does it need fixed? As Ryan and I said on the podcast a month or so ago, we will have a much better answer to that question by the end of 2026. By that time Barry Odom will have finished his second season with the Boilermakers and we will know the direction of the program. Has Odom pushed the program back toward relevancy no matter how small the push was? Or, has the program continued to be stuck in the basement of the Big Ten, and mired in the muck? Well, let’s look at what he did during his time at Vandy and at Rice.
At Vandy he served from 2020-2023. If you’re just looking at football results, you’re going to be disappointed.
- Vandy 2020- 0-9
- Vandy 2021- 2-10
- Vandy 2022 – 5-7
- Vandy 2023 – 2-10 (McClelland left for Rice in August 2023 so football season had not actually begun but he was there to lay the groundwork so I’m including it.)
At Rice he took the chair on August 14, 2023. Here are the results from the football program starting in the 2023 season which, to be fair, he would have had little control over since he had just arrived to Rice.
- Rice 2023 – 6-7
- Rice 2024 – 4-8
- Rice 2025 – 5-8
Some quick math tells me that over the seven most recent seasons of college football McClelland’s teams were a combined 24-59. That is…not good. Now, how much credit and or fault do you give him for what happened at Vandy? Well, he wasn’t the AD, he was deputy AD but he was the guy in charge of football. So he has to get some credit for those results. Then at Rice he was THE MAN IN CHARGE for these past three years. From 2020 to now there’s not been a single winning record amongst the football teams. That’s a problem. Is it a problem that can be overcome? Of course. Neither Rice or Vandy are historic football powers nor are they particularly focused on the sports of football and men’s basketball.
The biggest reason to hire McClelland is obviously his ability to fundraise which is what he’s done throughout his entire career. The guy is a wunderkind being hired as an athletic director at the age of 26 when McNeese gave him the job. It’s an incredible thing to have that job at that age, but he’s consistently risen to higher profile jobs since his career began in 2008. Now, almost 20 years after his AD career began he seems very likely to be headed to West Lafayette in the coming days. Purdue needs money, well everyone in college sports needs money, and with a large alumni base and an even larger fanbase there needs to be someone who can tap into them, turn them upside down, and shake out all the dollars necessary to build a dominant department. Is McClelland that someone? We all hope so.
We will have more on this hire when it becomes official.
