Maryland athletic director Damon Evans has emerged as the target in the SMU athletic director search, sources told ESPN.
While there are steps remaining to formalize the hire, sources told ESPN that Evans’ hire at SMU is expected to come together in the upcoming days.
Evans is a veteran athletic director at both Maryland, where he has been the athletic director since being named interim in 2017, and at Georgia from 2004-2010.
The hire comes at a compelling time for Maryland. The school’s men’s basketball program is a No. 4 seed in the NCAA tournament and plays No. 13 Grand Canyon in the NCAA tournament on Friday in Seattle.
The Terps also are in the process of attempting to secure men’s basketball coach Kevin Willard on a long-term deal. Willard has drawn interest from Villanova in that school’s search to replace Kyle Neptune.
“Obviously it’s difficult right now because I think we know (Evans’) situation,” Willard said Thursday. “He’s probably going to SMU, so it’s kind of tough to negotiate with somebody that’s maybe not here. But I need to make fundamental changes to the program. That’s what I’m focused on right now. That’s why probably a deal hasn’t got done because I want to see — I need to see fundamental changes done. I want this program to be great. I want it to be the best in the country, I want to win a national championship, but there’s things that need to change.
“When you’re at a place for three years and you put your heart and soul into it, you kind of sit there and say okay, wait a second for us to be really successful X, Y and Z needs to change and first and foremost, I need to make sure that we are where we are with NIL and rev share is not where we’ve been with NIL over the past two he years. We’ve been one of the worse, if not lowest, in the NIL in the last two years. So that’s first and foremost.”
Evans has been at Maryland since 2014, when he was hired as a senior associate athletic director after four years out of the business. He was named as the school’s interim athletic director in 2017 and later promoted to permanent athletic director the following year.
He’ll replace SMU athletic director Rick Hart, who will depart at the end of the year. The school announced that departure in February. Hart oversaw SMU’s move to the ACC and hired Rhett Lashlee as football coach, moves that paved the way for SMU’s unlikely appearance in the 12-team College Football Playoff this season.
The hire of a sitting Big Ten athletic director would continue SMU’s aggressive push into big-time college athletics. It comes at a time when a separation looms within college sports, perhaps in the next decade, between the schools that are the most invested and successful and those that aren’t.
SMU’s decision to go to the ACC includes a decision to essentially forgo television revenue for nearly a decade in order to secure admission to the league. That came thanks to deep-pocketed boosters, such a billionaire David Miller, who helped spearhead raising hundreds of millions to fund SMU’s move and assure a spot on the right side of the river in college athletics.
SMU hired Texas president Jay Hartzell in January, a move that raised eyebrows in education circles.
