Mizzou officially announced Houston athletic director Mack Rhoades as its new AD on Monday morning.
MU's Board of Curators confirmed the hire in an executive session, ending a search that began when Mike Alden decided to step down on Jan. 29. He oversaw the athletics department for 19 years and will officially start a new job in the College of Education on Aug. 31.
Rhoades joined Houston in 2009 following an impressive four-year tenure at the University of Akron. The Zips won 20 team championships and saw the construction of a $61.6 million on-campus football stadium, all while Rhoades balanced the budget as it grew from $13.5 million to $19.2 million.
At Houston, he took over a strong athletics program that won three conference titles in his first year, including one for the nationally ranked football team. But when coach Kevin Sumlin left for Texas A&M, Rhoades hire Tony Levine failed to continue Houston's unprecedented success, leading the Cougars to fire him last December.
Rhoades turned heads when he hired Ohio State offensive coordinator Tom Herman a few weeks later, the second big name to go to Houston in 2014. Kelvin Sampson, a successful but scandal-ridden basketball coach who resigned from Indiana in 2008 after serious NCAA violations, took over at Houston and went 12-18 in his first regular season.
The American Athletic Conference named Rhoades the chair of its Athletic Directors Committee and he served as a member of the NCAA Division I Championships/Sports Management Cabinet while at Akron. The 49-year-old established a reputation as a strong fundraiser, breaking records at Houston during every year of his tenure.
He'll take over a department at Mizzou that has continued to thrive after moving from the Big 12 to the SEC and seen plenty of recent success, most notably with five football division titles in the last eight years. But the Tigers have also been in the news for the wrong reasons on several occasions, and basketball just finished its worst regular season in nearly 50 years under first-year coach Kim Anderson.
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