Huskies name Scott Woodward as new athletic director

After searching far and wide for a new athletic director, the Washington Huskies ultimately ended up finding one right at home.

The school ended a nine-month search Wednesday by promoting acting AD Scott Woodward to the permanent role. He will begin immediately, with UW president Mark Emmert saying Woodward will likely receive a five-year contract, though details have yet to be finalized.

"At the end, I concluded that the person best suited for the job is the one who had it right now," Emmert said.

Woodward, 45, had been UW's vice president of external relations since the spring of 2004, coming to UW after Emmert was named president. The two had worked together at LSU, where Emmert was chancellor from 1999-2004.

Woodward had been fulfilling both acting AD and vice president of external relations roles since Todd Turner resigned under pressure last December.

Woodward said in May that he would not be a candidate for the job at the behest of Emmert, who preferred to keep him in his upper-campus role.

However, Woodward said the longer he was in the AD's job, the more it grew on him.

"I went through a lot of emotional wranglings of whether I wanted to do this or not do this," Woodward said. "And in the end, I wanted to do this. I really wanted to."

Emmert and Woodward said they agreed "a handful of days ago" that Woodward would take over as the acting AD.

Emmert said he ultimately concluded he couldn't find an AD elsewhere better than Woodward.

"What changed for me [since May] was looking at the cross-section of candidates that were out there," Emmert said. "I didn't find one that I could place anywhere near the level of confidence in that I could with Scott."

Emmert said the search for a new AD was "much more thorough than was generally recognized" and that he forwarded "about a half-dozen" names of candidates to a 14-person search committee. He said he personally interviewed "a dozen or more."

Emmert said he also grew more comfortable with the move when he was able to lure Randy Hodgins into the interim VP for external relations job. Hodgins has been director of state relations for UW since 2004.

The school hired Parker Executive Search of Atlanta to help in the process of finding a new AD, paying the firm $75,000.

Emmert defended that expense, as well as the length of the search, saying that it all helped lead him to the right decision.

"I know there's a sense out there that his has been a long, drawn-out, and even speculation this has been a troubled search," he said. "In all candor, that is sort of nonsense. A nine-month timeline is not unusual in our business. I hoped we could have gotten it done in the spring. We looked at a bunch of candidates early in that spring quarter and I didn't find anybody I felt really good about. We got into summer, summer time at the university is a slow time, to say the least, so it just drug on longer than I would have liked to.

"I looked at as many candidates as I needed to to know what the market had, and I knew I had the right guy in the job."

Woodward's most immediate task will be to evaluate the football program, which continues to struggle in the fourth year under coach Tyrone Willingham. The Huskies are 11-28 under Willingham and lost at home to Oklahoma on Saturday, 55-14. Woodward called fixing the football program one of his "top priorities."

Asked about the current state of the program, Woodward said: "No, I'm not happy. Nor is coach Willingham. Nor are the student-athletes who participate in football. No one is happy. I go out to practice every single day, and in the training room every single day, and in the study hall and the training table, and I see these kids and look in their eyes. They are not happy. But they working hard. They are nowhere near quitting and they are going to give it their best. This is early in the season and it's premature to talk about anything but supporting them as best as we can."

In a private session with a few reporters after the news conference, Woodward said the two likely scenarios for the end of the season are either making a change or giving Willingham an extension. Willingham is in the fourth year of a five-year contract and an unlikely scenario is simply letting Willingham serve out his fifth year, Woodward indicated.

Woodward also all but ruled out an in-season coaching change, contrasting it to a firing that LSU made with one game left in 1999 when Emmert had just taken over there. Woodward said the program at LSU was not only losing but beset by off-field issues, calling it an "extraordinary" circumstance, a situation he hinted he isn't seeing here.

Woodward will also continue to take the lead with the UW's efforts to renovate Husky Stadium. The school will ask the Legislature in January for $150 million from the King County tax on rental cars, hotels and restaurants that funded Safeco Field. The school has pledged to raise another $150 million on its own.

UW officials won't discuss other candidates it interviewed.

But among those Emmert is believed to have spoken with are Georgia Tech's Dan Radakovich, Utah's Chris Hill, San Jose State's Tom Bowen and possibly former Oregon AD Bill Moos.

Woodward grew up in Baton Rouge, La., and received a political science degree from LSU in 1985. He worked in the political and public-relations fields until joining Emmert at LSU in 2000. One of his jobs there was to oversee the athletic department, and he said it was then that the athletic bug "kind of bit me."

Woodward said he thinks sports is taken almost too seriously down south, however, and likes that it is kept in better perspective at UW.

"You can do things the right way and it can benefit the overall university," he said. "I come into this job in that vein."

The hire of Woodward received the blessing from one of the school's most prominent boosters, Ron Crockett, who is the head of Emerald Downs racetrack and also has been enlisted by the school to help with the Legislature and King County with the funding of the Husky Stadium renovation.

Crockett said the hire was "very well received by my contemporaries. At a time when the performance of the football program is in question and the renovation of Husky Stadium is an issue, I feel very confident Scott will rise to the occasion and perform very well."

Bob Condotta: 206-515-5699 or bcondotta@seattletimes.com.