A year after he was fired as Kansas University’s athletic director, Al Bohl appears firmly committed to a career change.

“I spent 25 years in college athletics,” Bohl said by phone Thursday from his home in St. Augustine, Fla. “Maybe I’ll spend the next 25 years writing about it.”

Bohl, who turns 56 next month, says he is close to completing a novel about a high school athlete who wants to play college basketball.

“Hopefully, later this spring I’ll finish the book and take it to a publisher,” Bohl said. “Then I want to write one about football and one about a woman athlete.”

Bohl owns a bachelor’s degree in math from Bowling Green, a master’s in education from Southern Mississippi and a doctorate in physical education administration from Ohio State. Now, he perceives penning a novel as another intellectual challenge.

“Right now, I’m putting my time and energy into writing,” he said. “It’s been very rewarding, but it’s work. It is work. I try to write a couple of pages every day.”

Bohl has had time to write because he hasn’t had to find a job. Under terms of his severance

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package, he will be paid by KU until June 30. Bohl was earning $255,000 a year and was the highest-salaried employee on the Lawrence campus when he was dismissed by Chancellor Robert Hemenway exactly a year ago today.

Meanwhile, Bohl’s wife, Sherry, has been teaching first grade at Crookshank Elementary School in St. Augustine.

“We’re doing great,” Bohl said. “Sherry is really enjoying teaching, the weather is great here and it’s a beautiful city. There’s great golf here, too, and I usually play with some guys about once a week.”

Bohl and his wife decided to settle in St. Augustine after spending a week or so there last May in a condo owned by a friend from his days at Ohio State. Son Brett also had touted the country’s oldest city to his folks.

While in Florida, Bohl has followed KU’s sports programs — mainly football and men’s basketball — as best he can.

“I was happy for the basketball team going as far as they did,” Bohl said. “Wayne Simien, Keith Langford and Aaron Miles came in at the same time I did. And I was happy for Bill Whittemore, too, and coach (Mark) Mangino.”

Bohl hired Mangino nearly six months after taking over the KU athletic department in the summer of 2001.

Now living in Florida University territory, Bohl said he hasn’t had much interest in attending any sporting events down the road in Gainesville, or anywhere else in the area.

“This is definitely Gator Country,” he said. “But I’ve tried to stay away from athletics so I could sit back and reflect.”

Bohl can reflect on nine years as athletic director at Toledo U., five years as AD at Fresno State and the nearly two years he spent at Kansas. He also spent nearly a decade as an assistant AD at Ohio State.

Bohl never had been fired from a job in athletics until Hemenway pulled the rug on him a year ago, and Bohl reacted bitterly by lashing out at Roy Williams, saying the Jayhawks’ men’s basketball coach had “crushed him like a dove.”

Today, Bohl harbors no bitterness. Instead, he considers his dismissal an important turning point in his life.

“It’s a blessing in disguise,” he said.