For athletic directors, it’s their hiring record that usually defines their tenure.
Sure, there are things like media deals and business with the conference that matter a lot, but most fans just make their judgments on who has been hired and how successful they’ve been.
Sandy Barbour made her fair share of hires at Penn State.
She never got to hire a football coach, with James Franklin already in place when Barbour took office in fall 2014, but she did get a chance to hire men’s basketball coach Micah Shrewsberry.
Those are the hires most people know about.