Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

Field pared for AD job

Arizona associate athletic director Chris Del Conte did not formally apply for the UNLV athletic director post, and no officials contacted him to gauge his interest in the job.

He did, however, offer an outside opinion about the stature of the position.

"I think that is probably one of the greatest jobs around," Del Conte said Thursday. "I'm not kidding. The potential there is so big. It's such a hot job, they might have had 200 people (apply) for it."

Fred Albrecht has served as UNLV's interim athletic director since football coach John Robinson resigned from those duties May 20.

Andy Fry, a longtime UNLV history professor and the chairman of a 16-member search committee that met for 4 1/2 hours in a closed-door session Thursday afternoon, declined to reveal any candidates.

UNLV hired the Kansas-based law firm of Bond, Schoeneck & King to sift through more than 60 applications, and it made its recommendations to the search committee Thursday.

The committee trimmed its wish list to 12, Fry said, and the group will reconvene July 23 to select as many as five finalists to present to Dr. Carol Harter, UNLV's president.

At that point, interviews will take place.

Del Conte, 35, and BS&K are familiar with each other, but Fry clarified that only applications received by a certain deadline, which were reviewed Thursday, were valid.

"We basically considered those people who had applied according to the guidelines of the objective that was circulated," Fry said. "We've followed the process that was laid out from the beginning.

"I think there is a priority on the quality of (athletic director) experience, but we have given appropriate consideration to all applicants."

So even though Del Conte has become well-known for his fund-raising skills -- Tulane, among others, has him on its radar -- he should not expect an 11th-hour call from UNLV.

Del Conte, however, offered insight about the tedious selection process with which he is familiar.

High-profile vacancies, he said, will be heavily researched and tightly scrutinized because of the mess that Notre Dame found itself in when it hired George O'Leary to coach its football team in December 2001.

O'Leary's tenure only lasted five days, after inaccuracies in his resume forced him to resign from perhaps the most vaunted job in college football.

"The outside search firm will look at and screens resumes to ensure there are no problems like Notre Dame," Del Conte said. "The university (UNLV) did the prudent thing, getting a firm to quantify the prospects and narrow them down."

Del Conte said he is very content working for Arizona athletic director Jim Livengood and that last-minute work on securing funds until the very end of the fiscal year, which was June 30, precluded him from considering another job.

A weary Fry said he and other search committee members were impressed with the semifinal field of a dozen candidates.

"We had, I think, quite productive discussions," he said. "We feel good about the outcome, and we're moving forward."

Fry admitted that he does not believe one of the current 12 candidates has an edge over the others.

"We're very pleased with the list," he said. "It's strong, and different people have different strengths ... one can never tell about these things, but I remain very optimistic that we'll identify and hire an athletic director by the end of the summer."

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