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Bill Byrne Director of Athletics

In 1941, as he was preparing to be deployed to Gen. George S. Patton's Third Division, Clancy Byrne hitchhiked from a military base in West Texas to College Station so that he could watch the Texas A&M-Texas game on Thanksgiving Day.

The Aggies were outscored, but won an admirer in Clancy, who went on to serve with the 776th Tank Destroyer Battalion in the Allied Forces' World War II efforts. During that game, Texas A&M and its fans left a positive impression on Byrne that he never forgot.

A little more than 60 years later, Clancy Byrne's son, Bill, also made a voyage to Aggieland. Like his father, the younger Byrne was instantly captivated by Texas A&M, its traditions and its fans.

Unlike his father, however, the purpose of Bill Byrne's trip to College Station wasn't to take a peek at A&M, but rather to take the Aggies to the peak of college athletics.

Byrne arrived at Texas A&M as the Director of Athletics in January of 2003, sporting outstanding credentials and a proven track record of producing champions. In fact, during a distinguished and dynamic career that has spanned more than three decades in collegiate athletics, Byrne has collected enough hardware (championship rings, plaques, honors, etc.) to open his own home-improvement store. With 16 national championships and 122 conference titles under his direction, his teams have enjoyed success across the board.

Byrne came to College Station from Nebraska where his hard work put the Huskers' financial books in the black and tripled the annual athletic budget. Byrne's Nebraska teams also compiled an extremely impressive string of seven straight Top 25 finishes in the Directors' Cup Division I-A standings, making him one of the most admired and respected athletic directors in the country.

Since his arrival in Aggieland, A&M has earned four national championships and 23 Big 12 Conference titles with promises of more to come. Byrne's dedication to the mission of Building Champions has led the Aggies to its highest ranking ever in Directors' Cup Division I-A finishes.

But what Texas A&M fans, former students, student-athletes, employees and school officials quickly discovered about Byrne, upon his arrival in Aggieland, is that this former offensive lineman would rather toil in the trenches than rest on his laurels.

His success as an administrator is best defined by his unwavering work ethic, not the amount of gold he has placed in trophy cases throughout the years. Byrne's passion and professional trademark is his relentless pursuit of excellence, and in an extremely short amount of time at Texas A&M, he infused the athletic department with a new vision for the future.

Byrne is living up to his pioneering reputation on many different levels at Texas A&M. Here are a few of the examples:

• Smart hires. Byrne earned his reputation for outstanding hiring practices first at Oregon, where he became one of the youngest athletic directors in the nation in 1984. That reputation was further enhanced at Nebraska, where Byrne hired 15 head coaches during his tenure. Nine of those coaches reached NCAA postseason play during their first three years. That trend has continued at Texas A&M, where eight of his nine head-coaching hires have achieved postseason competition within their first two years. Byrne's ninth hire, Mike Sherman, has not yet completed his first season.



• Bill the Builder. The Portland Oregonian first referred to Byrne in those terms as a tribute to the major changes made to the landscape of Oregon's athletic facilities during Byrne's tenure. In Lincoln, Byrne oversaw numerous facility upgrades valued at more than $100 million. And at Texas A&M, Byrne has made major strides in transforming the Aggies' athletic facilities into some of the finest in the country.
  
  Byrne came to Aggieland in time to witness the Texas A&M football team move into the state-of-the-art, $27 million Bright Football Complex and Alice and Erle Nye Academic Center, which includes the football locker room, athletic training rooms, rehabilitation complex, meeting rooms, football coaches' offices, players' lounge and an academics center for all student-athletes under one roof. Not long after, he initiated design of a comprehensive master plan for Texas A&M's overall athletic facilities, and in conjunction with the 12th Man Foundation-A&M's athletic fundraising organization-he immediately helped secure several major gifts for the second phase of Texas A&M's Championship Vision Capital Campaign. Under Byrne's direction, the McFerrin Athletic Center was conceptualized and construction is almost complete. The center is a multi-sport indoor complex including a state-of-the-art hydraulic track capable of hosting National Indoor Track Championships, providing an indoor practice facility for soccer, football and all other sports. The facility boasts two full-size football fields, a Magic Carpet turf system and seating for 5,000 spectators. The Cox-McFerrin Center for Aggie Basketball is also nearing completion. This expansion to Reed Arena provides, practice and weight facilities, training rooms, team locker rooms, offices, study lounges as well as meeting rooms and other amenities.



• Marketing Machine. Since he took on leadership of the University of Oregon Athletic Department in 1984, Byrne has been known as one of the most innovative and influential leaders in terms of marketing his collegiate programs. At Oregon, he established a full-time marketing and promotions operation that formed the Oregon Sports Network for statewide, in-house production of Ducks games on radio and television. At Nebraska, Byrne's HuskerVision became the model for all collegiate programs in its ability to promote and market all of the NU athletic programs, while also improving fan enjoyment and atmosphere at games. Just as significantly, HuskerVision and the marketing department also generated significant sponsorship revenues for the athletic department.
  
  Not surprisingly, Byrne is making an equally impressive impact on the A&M marketing efforts. In January 2006, Texas A&M awarded the school's athletic multimedia marketing rights for 10 years to a joint venture of Learfield Communications, ISP Sports, and FSN Southwest known as Texas A&M Sports Properties. The agreement is one of the top multimedia rights contracts in the country and includes significant additional income for the athletic department throughout the length of the agreement. In fact, revenue generated from the multimedia rights agreement financed the athletic department's new video screen project including Kyle Field, Reed Arena and a portable screen for all sports.



• Commitment to excellence. From a professional standpoint, everything Byrne does-every initiative he undertakes, every coach or administrator he hires and every dollar he raises-is done with one ultimate goal in mind: Building Champions.
  
  That two-word phrase has become the mission statement of Texas A&M's athletic department under Byrne's guidance, and it encompasses both his short-term and long-term objectives. He expects excellence from those who work with him, and he also demands it from himself. Throughout his career, Byrne has been recognized with the highest awards that an athletics administrator can receive. Among other things, he was recognized by the U.S. Sports Academy with the 2007 Carl Maddox Sports Management Award, he was the 2002 winner of the John L. Toner Award; the 1999 Central Region National Association of Collegiate Directors of Athletics (NACDA) Director of the Year; president of NACDA in 1991-92; and the National Athletic Fundraisers Association Fundraiser of the Year in 1985.

Bill Byrne is a 1967 graduate of Idaho State, where he also earned an MBA in 1971. He began his collegiate career as the director of alumni relations at his alma mater and then served as the executive director of the New Mexico Lobo Club (1976-79). He was the assistant athletic director at San Diego State (1980-82) and was an associate athletic director at Oregon for 18 months before being named the Director of Athletics in May of 1984. Byrne's wife of forty years is Dr. Marilyn Kent Byrne, who has expertise in leadership development, team building, and executive coaching. The Byrnes have two sons-Bill Jr. and Greg. Bill is a vice president of Visa USA in San Francisco. Greg is athletic director at Mississippi State University. He and his wife Regina live in Starkville with their two sons, Nicholas and Davis.