It’s not certain if the athletic director at Wagner College ever felt pressured to fire the football coach. Probably not, since the AD and the football coach were one and the same for the last 34 years.
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Walt Hameline resigned as football coach this past season and can now concentrate solely on his role as AD.
Photo by: Wagner College |
Walt Hameline resigned as football coach this past season, but the 63-year-old carries on as AD, making him the longest-tenured athletic director at one school in the country.
Judging by the retirement party Wagner threw for Hameline (the football coach) on June 4, Hameline is a beloved
figure on the Staten Island, N.Y., campus. But now his sole responsibility will be leading the athletic department in the Northeast Conference school.
The coach-turned-AD used to be the norm when Hameline began at Wagner in 1982. It’s less so now, with many lead administrators coming from varied backgrounds such as marketing, fundraising and some from the private sector.
But there’s still a case to be made for coaches turning into lead administrators. Of the 300-plus current ADs, more than a third of them coached a sport at the college level, although few as long as Hameline.
Hameline apparently navigated the dual roles with
201 ADs played one of the listed college sports, and of them 30 played two or more sports:
| Football |
34% |
| Basketball |
25% |
| Baseball |
13% |
| Track and field |
6% |
| Tennis |
4% |
| Other sport |
19% |
122 ADs coached one of the listed college sports and 15 coached two or more sports:
| Basketball |
31% |
| Football |
28% |
| Baseball |
9% |
| Track and field |
6% |
| Volleyball |
5% |
| Other sports |
21% |
aplomb, although there was one time when the AD and coaching worlds collided. Hameline’s daughter had her heart set on a fall wedding in 2014 and the date she set was a Saturday during football season when Wagner was scheduled to play Monmouth. It was the only date available for the site of the wedding. So Hameline the AD worked with the opponent to reschedule the game.
“Sometimes it pays to be your own boss,” Hameline said in an Associated Press account of the scene.
— Michael Smith
