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Saturday, 21 February 2009 |
By AARON SEIDLITZ
Starkville Daily News
Bill Byrne ended the conversation with a fair warning: “You just got done talking to a proud papa.”
From his office in College Station, Texas, Bill is one of two Byrnes to be a current Division I athletic director; the other, his son Greg, was named to the prestigious position one year ago to this day at Mississippi State.
In a year, Greg has addressed two major coaching changes, completed a $6 million dollar project – that resulted in the High Definition video screen built on the south end of Scott Field – and started to reshape the athletic department to suit his vision.
Greg has done all of this starting at the age of 36, which was two years younger than Bill when he was first named athletic director at San Diego State.
So how did Greg Byrne get to the point he is at now so quickly?
Naturally, said his father.
“It’s funny that you ask me that question,” Bill started. “I was recently emptying baskets of stuff that we have brought with us through moves from Albuquerque to Eugene (Oregon) and now to College Station.
“I found a bunch of pictures and several of them are at a jog-a-thon held at New Mexico. Greg was four-years old helping raise money for the Lobos.”
That was the start of a long history in fundraising for the still relatively young athletic administrator. Greg admittedly got his start learning about college athletics in his household.
With a father as an athletic director, Bill was regularly working 60-70 hour weeks, and family time for the Byrnes was spent at athletic events.
Greg was a ball boy at football games, and Bill can remember his son catching an errant pass from then Stanford quarterback John Elway.
He can remember Greg aiding him at Oregon as that program started to build itself from the ground up. Bill started as an associate athletic director in Eugene from 1983-84 and then was the athletic director from 1984-92.
When Bill was starting there, Greg helped out by rebuilding the baseball field after a tractor had been donated to the program. Father and son tore up the old surface and helped install a new one.
From those experiences, Bill believes his son grew to understand how the business worked and how fundraising worked. He thought Greg developed a knowledge of sports administration while never losing his love for athletics.
To this day Greg says that what he does is a business, but he calls it “a business with a heart.”
Greg then started to impress others, such as current Kentucky athletic director Mitch Barnhart, who worked with Bill as an intern at San Diego State in the early 1980’s.
Barnhart has helped fast track Greg’s career, and he should know how considering he was an athletic director at the age of 38 – in an interesting parallel, the same age that Bill was when he was named AD at San Diego State.
Barnhart said that he knew Greg since the younger Byrne was 11-years old. Barnhart was an intern at San Diego State, and from then on the two have had a career tied together.
The two worked closely together rebuilding the Oregon State athletic department after Barnhart was named the AD there in 1998. Greg was his associate athletic director in charge of fundraising, which was a nonexistent entity at that point in time at Corvallis.
“It was a really difficult set of circumstances there at that time,” Barnhart said. “The financial infrastructure wasn’t working, we were $12 million in debt and the system hadn’t been touched in many, many years.
“There was no fundraising and no base for season ticket holders.”
As Barnhart described it, he and Greg started a “grassroots operation” that reached out to season ticket holders and would-be donors.
“We inherited a lot of things that needed fixing, and we felt fortunate after a five-year span to leave it basically debt free,” Barnhart said.
So in 2002 Barnhart brought Greg with him to Lexington in a similar capacity when he was hired at Kentucky to be the athletic director.
From there, Greg came to Mississippi State as an associate athletic director in charge of the Bulldog Club in 2006 and was named athletic director in 2008.
The basis for Greg’s career was set; he had built a reputation in fundraising and had risen to the top spot in the business.
And now as his first year as State’s athletic director has “flown by,” he can look back and sound just like his father.
“It’s easy to lose balance in your life if you’re not careful,” Greg said. “The thing I’m fortunate for is Regina (his wife). She has been so supportive and our boys – Nick and Davis – enjoy being around it.
“That’s how we spend our family together.”
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Last Updated ( Sunday, 22 February 2009 )
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