Miami To Hire Wisconsin Deputy A.D. Eichorst As New A.D.

Eichorst was the No. 2 official in Wisconsin’s athletic department behind athletic director Barry Alvarez, who served as football coach when University of Miami president Donna Shalala was at Wisconsin.

Before that, Eichorst served as a senior associate athletic director at South Carolina.

Eichorst was interviewed in Miami earlier in this week. He would replace Kirby Hocutt, who left to become athletic director at Texas Tech.

UM also strongly considered Virginia Commonweath athletic director Norwood Teague and ACC associate commissioner Michael Kelly, who both interviewed Sunday. California athletic director Sandy Barbour said she spoke to UM but was not interested in the job. Acting athletic director Tony Hernandez also was considered.

The athletic director search was conducted by Paul DiMare, chairman of the Board of Trustees’ athletic advisory committee.

UM has been concurrently searching for an athletic director and men’s basketball coach, with Hernandez and Paul DiMare heading up that search. UM officials have met with Harvard coach Tommy Amaker and at least one other candidate.

The new athletic director will have input on the search.

At Wisconsin, Eichorst’s responsibilities include oversight of the department’s day to day operations, men’s basketball, legal affairs, risk management, strategic planning, government relations, trademark and licensing and merchandising.

He also serves on the executive committee of the Sports Management Institute.

He is a past member of the NCAA Division I student athlete reinstatement committee and State Bar of the Wisconsin Board of Governors, and also taught sports law classes at Marquette.

At South Carolina, he facilitated and supervised multimillion dollar facility projects, including state of the art football training facilities. The UW-Whitewater athletic program raised its performance under his leadership, according to the Wisconsin web site.