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THE ATHLETIC DIRECTOR GOT BENCHED
UCLA Fired One. FSU Fired Another. BYU Let Theirs Keep the Jersey but Took Away the Ball.
Athletic Entrepreneur & GSIP
September 22, 2026
Three major programs just sent the same message. If you cannot run the money offense, somebody else is bringing the ball up the floor.
This article was inspired by the analysis of @jbowrenchsports on Instagram, an attorney with a passion for tracking, translating and reporting on the technical issues reshaping college sports.
The athletic director used to be the most comfortable person in the building.
Nice polo. Clean office. Reserved parking space. Shake a few booster hands. Hire a coach. Fire a coach. Sit courtside. Pretend to understand the student section. Hand somebody a trophy and disappear before the concession workers finish cleaning the popcorn.
That job is gone.
The modern athletic director is now expected to be Pat Riley, Adam Silver, a hedge fund manager, a television executive, a politician, a capologist and your rich uncle who always gets stuck paying for for floor seats.
All at the same time.
And three schools just put the entire profession on the big screen.
UCLA fired its athletic director.
Florida State fired its athletic director.
BYU kept its athletic director but moved football out from under him.
That is not a slump.
That is a position getting played off the floor.
UCLA THREW $241 MILLION WORTH OF BRICKS
UCLA fired Martin Jarmond on August 31 after six years as athletic director.
The Bruins had lost money every year since 2019. The cumulative athletics deficit reached approximately $241.1 million.
Two hundred forty-one million dollars.
That is not missing a few free throws.
That is standing at half court with the shot clock off, launching money into the third row and yelling, “I got one more!”
Seven straight years in the red.
At some point the university had to stop calling it a rebuilding season.
UCLA had already handed athletics a $30 million lifeline during the fiscal year ending in 2024. Then came the Big Ten move, the cross-country travel, the rising operating costs and the belief that a giant television check would pull up like LeBron and erase every bad possession.
It did not.
The department was still bleeding money, donations were struggling and the building needed energy.
So UCLA subbed Jarmond out and brought in Tim Harris, the former president of business operations for the Los Angeles Lakers.
They did not give Harris some cute ceremonial title either.
They called him Director of Athletics and CEO.
CEO.
UCLA looked at the traditional athletic director playbook, tore it in half and hired somebody from the Lakers’ business office.
That is the university equivalent of clearing the bench, firing the coach and asking the general manager to draw up the next possession.
Then Harris made student admission free for regular-season home football and men’s and women’s basketball games.
Some people will call that desperation.
I call it understanding the assignment.
An empty seat buys no hot dog. An empty seat creates no atmosphere. An empty seat posts no game-day content. An empty seat does not become a donor ten years from now.
If the building looks like detention, open the doors and put some bodies in it.
Free tickets are not charity.
They are customer acquisition wearing face paint.
Toney threw down a monster dunk and the internet exploded. Teammates celebrated. Friends went crazy. Then the clip reached a room full of brand executives.
Will new NIL offers come?
An Athletic Entrepreneur + GSIP 1-minute skit Production
FLORIDA STATE BUILT THE PALACE AND LOST THE POSSESSION
Two weeks after UCLA made its substitution, Florida State fired Michael Alford.
There was no scandal attached to it. Nobody found him in a back room exchanging duffel bags. FSU thanked him for his service and started talking about restructuring, modernization and competing in a new era.
That is university language for:
We spent a truckload of money and still cannot see the rim.
Florida State invested heavily in stadium renovations, facilities and football infrastructure. At the same time, the school reported approximately $437 million in athletics-related debt for fiscal 2025, according to Reuters.
They built the palace.
They polished the floors.
They upgraded the locker room.
They put mood lighting around the cold tubs.
Then the sport changed.
The marble cannot enter the transfer portal.
The recovery pool cannot sign a quarterback.
The new operations center cannot cover a receiver on third and eight.
Facilities still matter, but the old facilities arms race has been joined by a talent-capital arms race. Schools now need money for revenue sharing, NIL operations, player retention, roster management, coaching salaries, buyouts, travel, fundraising and whatever new invoice walks through the door next Tuesday.
FSU financed yesterday’s recruiting war and woke up inside tomorrow’s payroll fight.
That is how an athletic department gets trapped in the corner.
The football team struggles. Revenue starts wobbling. Fans get restless. The coach sits behind a guaranteed contract with a reported in-season buyout of roughly $51 million.
And the athletic director gets blamed for the entire box score.
Michael Alford helped approve the coach’s contract. Now Alford is gone while the contract remains in the building eating snacks and collecting direct deposit.
That is cold-blooded.
The AD got called for the foul, ejected from the game and left behind to pay for the scoreboard.
BYU DID NOT FIRE THE AD. IT TOOK AWAY HIS MINUTES.
Now we get to BYU, where the roast becomes almost too easy.
Brian Santiago is still the athletic director.
Technically.
He still has the office. He still has the title. He still oversees the other sports. His name is still printed in the program.
But football coach Kalani Sitake no longer reports directly to him.
Sitake now reports to Keith Vorkink, BYU’s advancement vice president. Santiago also reports to Vorkink.
Let me translate that out of university dialect.
The football coach now reports to the athletic director’s boss.
Santiago did not get cut.
They just took his starting spot, gave away his locker and told him to stay ready in case the Olympic sports need anything.
That is the most creative benching I have ever seen.
BYU allowed the AD to keep the jersey but took away the ball.
And where did football go?
Under advancement.
For anyone unfamiliar with higher education, advancement is the money side. Fundraising. Donors. Alumni. Institutional relationships. The people who smile at wealthy graduates and somehow leave the room with a new building.
BYU did not move football under another sports administrator.
It moved football closer to the checkbook.
That tells you exactly what college football has become.
It is not merely a sport inside the athletic department anymore. It is a separate economy wearing shoulder pads.
The move followed tension over resources. Sitake publicly said BYU football had been asked to do “the most with the least” and called for more support. This came after Penn State pursued him and BYU gave him a long-term extension following an 11 and 1 regular season in 2025.
Sitake looked at the defense, saw the mismatch and went straight at it.
Coach’s challenge.
Call overturned.
The coach stays. The reporting structure changes. The AD loses direct control of the biggest asset in the department.
Ball out on Santiago.
BYU keeps possession.
And this is where the story gets much bigger than one strained working relationship.
If football has its own fundraising operation, revenue strategy, NIL ecosystem, personnel department and direct route to senior university leadership, what exactly is left for the athletic director to direct?
Twenty other sports and the lost-and-found box?
This is the possible unbundling of the athletic department happening in real time.
Football is becoming powerful enough to reorganize the university around itself.
THE NEW AD HAS TO RUN A BILLION-DOLLAR FAST BREAK
The old AD managed sports.
The new AD manages an economy that occasionally schedules games.
Media rights. Donors. NIL. Revenue sharing. Ticketing. Licensing. Corporate partners. Coaching contracts. Buyouts. Conference politics. Government relations. Facility debt. Transfer-portal economics. Athlete retention. Direct-to-consumer media.
That is not a department.
That is a sports conglomerate hiding behind a marching band.
The AD has to be the point guard for the whole operation.
Read the defense. Control the pace. Feed the stars. Keep the boosters involved. Create shots for the non-revenue sports. Know when to call timeout. Know when to push the break. Know when the coach is trying to call plays around you.
Turn the ball over once and everybody notices.
Hire the wrong coach and you own it.
Lose the donors and you own it.
Empty stadium and you own it.
Broken NIL operation and you own it.
Football goes 5 and 7 while the coach is protected by enough guaranteed money to buy a small Caribbean island?
Congratulations. You own that too.
The balance sheet is pressing full court, the coach has a no-cut contract and the university president is waving for you to pass the ball.
Good luck.
THREE SCHOOLS. THREE PUBLIC HUMILIATIONS. ONE NEW JOB DESCRIPTION.
UCLA fired its AD and hired a Lakers business executive with CEO in his title.
Florida State fired its AD after investing heavily in infrastructure while football and the financial model struggled to keep pace.
BYU kept its AD but sent football upstairs to the fundraising boss.
Different schools. Different conferences. Same scouting report.
The traditional athletic director is getting cooked.
Schools no longer want somebody who merely administers games, hires coaches and keeps the department out of trouble.
They want a revenue architect.
They want a media strategist.
They want a fundraiser who understands the transfer portal.
They want a business operator who can walk into a locker room, a television negotiation, a donor dinner and a congressional hearing without asking where the bathroom is.
Most of all, they want someone who can invent the next business model before the current one fouls out.
The athletic director is not dead.
But the old version just got crossed over, spun around and sent sliding toward the concession stand.
No timeout left.
HEAD RUSH TAKEAWAY
College sports has stopped pretending the athletic department is only about athletics.
UCLA put CEO on the jersey.
FSU put its AD on waivers.
BYU let its AD stay in the team photo but handed the football to the money people.
The scoreboard still matters.
The balance sheet matters more.
And right now, the balance sheet is undefeated.
Sources