Pros And Cons Of Being An Athletic Director

One position in sport that has always caught my attention is being an athletic director. The reason why is that ever since high school, I have known that being an athletic director means that you are in charge of the athletic department. I will introduce four articles that will talk about not only the responsibilities of being an athletic director, but will show you some problems you may face being an athletic director. I will briefly introduce each article then in the analysis section I will discuss each one. I want to provide the research and knowledge necessary to give an understanding of what it takes to be an athletic director.

In the first article “Distributive Justice in Intercollegiate Athletics: Perceptions of Athletic Directors and Athletic Board Chairs”, Harold Reimer, Daniel Mahony and Mary Hums, discusses how people think of an athletic director. The second article “Systemic

Barriers in Athletic Administration: An Analysis of Job Descriptions for Interscholastic Athletic Directors”, John Miller and Paul Pederson discuss the responsibilities of an athletic director along with the challenges they may face. “Job Satisfaction on NCAA Division III Athletic Directors: Impact on Job Design and Time on Task”, Richard Carpenter is looking to collect data among college athletic directors to see how they are satisfied with their job and job stress. In the last article, “Leadership Styles and Occupational Stress Among College Athletic Directors: The Moderating Effect of Program Goals”, by Todd Ryska wants to find out the interaction between an individual’s abilities and perceived demand that relates to the stress on athletic directors. What I will gain from providing information from these articles will be that it will give a better understanding of the activities an athletic director will participate in. It will give you the knowledge of the stress that this position is under as they want to not only satisfying the athletic department but also the parents involved.

Analysis
The first article I will analyze is “Distributive Justice in Intercollegiate Athletics: Perceptions of Athletic Directors and Athletic Board Chairs”, in this article they talk about how much resources athletic directors should give different sport programs. “Over the years, coaches have argued that their sports should get more of the resources for a variety of reasons, including their team was more successful, they have to work more hours, and their current share of the resources are insufficient to meet some of the needs of the program” (Hums, Mahony, Riemer, 2002). You should give more resources to the group or groups that are producing the most and take fewer resources away. Such as, if you have a sport that is producing the most money for the school you should give them more resources so they can become more successful. If you have a group that is not trying or producing in any way for your school you should give them the resources that correlate with their output. The problem with this is that it is not equally as ever group should be given the same resources regardless of the output. The struggle for every athletic director is that they want to find what is even. In the article they discuss how this causes stress because athletic directors want to provide the most resources to the best group. This brings us back to the main topic should you be equal with every group or organization or should you provide resources based on output.
“Systemic Barriers in Athletic Administration: An Analysis of Job Descriptions for Interscholastic Athletic Directors”, this article wants you to understand the job description of an athletic director. To be an athletic director a big majority has a master’s degree and a only twenty percent have a bachelor’s degree. “The most frequent skills or knowledge identi- fied in the job descriptions were knowledge of overall operations of an athletic program (83%) and knowledge of state policies that govern athletics (82.1%)”(Whisenant,Miller,Pederson,2005). Another big thing for athletic directors is being able to manage budgets and personnel. Being able to have communication is huge as you will have to address parents and student athletes. What you should have gained from this article is the skills and resources you need in order to be an athletic director.
“Job Satisfaction on NCAA Division III Athletic Directors: Impact on Job Design and Time on Task”, this article is looking at job satisfaction with athletic directors based on how much time they spend at work. A survey was given to three hundred and seventy one athletic directors. This survey consisted of questions that you either answered yes or no. If you answered thirty two questions with yes, you had job satisfaction if you answered more than twenty two questions with no you had dissatisfaction. What they found from this study was that eighty percent of athletic directors had satisfaction with their pay, work, and promotion. The reason for job satisfaction comes down to not having enough resources, the amount of paperwork, and budget problems you may face. When wanting to provide more satisfaction to an athletic director more resources and administrative support will be needed. This article showed you how it can be easy to become stressed when being an athletic director. It also helped show some ways that could help take the pressure off of athletic directors.
In “Leadership Styles and Occupational Stress Among College Athletic Directors: The Moderating Effect of Program Goals”, the goal was to assesses stress among athletic directors.

“In the present study, the author evaluated this contention among 245 male intercollegiate athletic directors by assessing the combined influence of leadership style and program goals on occupational stress”(Ryska,2000). The psychological demands for the athletic director position have increased by a big margin over the past twenty years. People in these positions often see symptoms such as burnout, fatigue, aggression, low productivity, and physical withdraws. In the article the study they did had two hundred fifty male participants. Each got a questionnaire packet that they filled out. The results from the study were that they found directive style administrators low stress in job situations. The conclusion from the article was that if stress is there it tends to cause blockage to the goals these administrators try to achieve. From this article you go to see how stress affects athletic

directors.
For my interview I interviewed Brad Graf, he currently works for Ottawa high school as the athletic director. I asked eight questions, they included things such as; where did you go to college to get your degree, what degree did you achieve, and what are the responsibilities of an athletic director. He received his bachelor’s degree from Fort Hays State, got his Master of Science degree, Building Leadership and Building Administrator at Emporia State. As an athletic director his tasks involve developing schedules for all 14 sports, planning and managing all home events both athletic and non-athletic. You also have to manage all facility requests both internal and external. Scheduling all transportation for all sports and activities, including class field trips and teacher in-services, anything that would use a district vehicle is scheduled through his office. As far as working with your faculty you need certification of coaches and sponsors. You must assign all extra duty workers for each event at Ottawa High School. As you can see with this position comes many responsibilities with long hours.
Conclusion
In conclusion, from all the information I have gathered you get to see the steps that are needed to be taken in order be an athletic director. The thing that really interested me was being able to see the type of education I need to get in ordered to be qualified for an athletic director. Being an athletic director will obviously come with some stress, but the job satisfaction is top notch as there are not many people that are unhappy with their situation. As I am currently working on my degree I know that in order to have a good chance at being in my desired position I will need a bachelor’s degree and maybe even a master’s degree. If I do get to be an athletic director when I get older I will need to learn how to deal with stress as I have seen the symptoms that too much stress has caused. Overall, in the future, I hope that I will be able to obtain this position as it could be very rewarding.