Search for KU athletic director on schedule
Interim AD Jennings confident Kansas will have permanent replacement for Bohl by self-imposed July 1 deadline
Kansas University should have a permanent athletic director by July 1.
“That’s the date the chancellor mentioned,” KU interim AD Drue Jennings said Wednesday, “and there’s no reason to adjust that.”
Jennings and Chancellor Robert Hemenway have been acting as a committee of two in the pursuit of a replacement for Al Bohl, who was fired from the highest-paying job on the Lawrence campus April 9 after only 20 months on the job.
Hemenway and Jennings put their search into overdrive after the school year ended with commencement May 18.
“We are on schedule,” Jennings said. “We’ve been very pleased with the response.”
Jennings said they had had “preliminary visits with a number of people by telephone,” but he didn’t say when they would begin face-to-face interviews.
Hemenway is chair of the NCAA Division One Board of Directors, and the chancellor said he planned to use contacts he had made serving in that post to identify potential candidates.
Eschewing the traditional 15- or 20-member search committee, Hemenway stressed the necessity of secrecy in the search, noting that many potential candidates would not want their names to surface in connection with the post.
Still, several names have surfaced as possibilities, including three in-house candidates — associate ADs Richard Konzem and John Hadl and Williams Fund director Jay Hinrichs. Others are listed on the Web at www.kusports.com, including the odds on their chances of landing the job.
Bohl was earning $255,000 a year to oversee the $27 million budget of the KU athletic department.
Bohl and his wife Sherry put their house in southwest Lawrence on the market, but plan to remain in town at least through June while she completes work on a master’s thesis in education.
A couple of weeks ago, the Bohls took time off for a week’s vacation in St. Augustine, Fla. Later this summer, Bohl said, they planned to visit their children and grandchildren in Ohio. Bohl will be paid until June 30, 2004.