When the athletic director position opened at the University of Toledo, Bryan Blair’s boss at Washington State encouraged him to check it out.
Pat Chun, the AD at Washington State, told Blair, then his deputy AD and COO, that Toledo was one of the best jobs in the Mid-American Conference. The school of 21,000 students sits in a hearty midsized Midwestern city with a low cost of living, and retiring AD Mike O’Brien was leaving the athletic department in good shape.
Blair
Blair already had developed a strong reputation nationally, running the day-to-day business at Washington State while also becoming a leading voice for diversity and inclusion.
He was a finalist at Boise State and, at 37, he was poised to become the youngest AD in the 10 FBS conferences. He just needed to find the right fit. Toledo consulted with Collegiate Sports Associates on Blair’s hiring.
“This was not one of those deals where you’re running into a burning building, unlike a lot of jobs,” said Blair, who won the Toledo AD job earlier this year and started officially on May 1. “This is a job where we can be successful. It’s that unique combination of being successful athletically while also having a ton of potential.”
But before Blair could get serious about pursuing the job, he had a lot of homework to do.
During early morning workouts on the treadmill in his garage, Blair would type “Toledo” into the search bar on YouTube and Google.
Bryan Blair
Education
Law degree, South Carolina, 2010
Bachelor’s degree in history, Wofford College, 2007
Administrative Experience
2018-22: Deputy Athletic Director/COO, Washington State University
2014-18: Senior Associate Athletic Director for Compliance, Rice University
2012-14: Assistant Director of Compliance Services, University of South Carolina
2011-12: Compliance Coordinator, Rice University
2010-11: Academic and Membership Affairs Postgraduate Intern, NCAA
College Football Playing Experience
2003-06: Wofford College
Family
Wife Jenna; daughter Brielle (3); son Beau (1)
The more Blair learned about Toledo — the school and the city — the more curious he became. Businesses like health care giant ProMedica were investing in downtown and young professionals were following, Blair said, to take part in a revitalization of the region in Northwest Ohio.
Toledo sits in the middle of the MAC’s footprint, so the Rockets’ conference brethren are mostly drivable. That was important to Blair because he’ll be able to see the Rockets compete, contrary to the spread-out Pac-12.
“I was just in Kalamazoo watching our track team compete,” said Blair, whose mother and grandmother were educators in the small South Carolina town of Bennettsville. “Most people don’t know that we’re centrally located in the MAC. We spend less time traveling than just about anybody.”
Blair, a former defensive lineman at Wofford who went on to graduate from law school at South Carolina, spent his first week on the job meeting with head coaches and getting to know some of the school’s athletes.
Blair found himself asking them the same question he asked himself during his research: Why Toledo?
“What I hear from our student athletes is that they love the feel of being on campus, yet having that feel of being in a big city,” Blair said. “It’s all here.”
