COLUMBIA, Mo. — Now what?
After nine weeks of asking who, from where and when, Missouri has closed in on its next athletics director: Memphis’ Laird Veatch, who is set to make a return to the athletics department that tasked him with running its fundraising arm more than two decades ago.
Laird Veatch could be officially introduced in Columbia as soon as Friday. His start date will be May 1, though his starting salary is unclear.
With him comes a fresh slate of questions for Mizzou athletics. The coming months will mark a vital transition for an athletics department that has maintained considerable momentum over the past two months despite losing its leader in a surprise exit. Here are three questions that will be answered as that process plays out:
Can Veatch maintain momentum?
How do you add your fingerprints to a ball that’s already rolling downhill without pausing its progress? That metaphorical balancing act is what faces Veatch right off the bat.
People are also reading…
Just five days ago, Mizzou athletics unveiled renderings for a flashy $250 million renovation of Memorial Stadium’s north concourse. The planning and groundwork for that project came together under Desiree Reed-Francois, Veatch’s predecessor, and continued on schedule after her sudden departure.
The Tigers’ annual offseason caravan to various Missouri metro areas has rolled out. Games have been won and lost, spring football came and went. All without an athletics director.
That progress, of course, is something Mizzou will want to continue. But how much will Veatch play a role in that?
From a fundraising standpoint, he’ll have to play a hefty one. The athletics department needs to finance $125 million for that project through fundraising. The $50 million anonymous contribution secured by Reed-Francois helps, but there’s still some $75 million yet to come — a steep and immediate challenge for Veatch’s revenue-generation skills.
But the design portion of the project is done. Working Veatch into the process midway through will be a key bit of integration.
What will happen to the oversight committee?
What will the UM System Board of Curators do with its MU athletics oversight committee?
The creation of the Mizzou Intercollegiate Athletics Committee came two weeks before Reed-Francois left for Arizona. It stemmed from the board’s perceived need to learn more about what was happening in the Missouri athletics department to be sure it was operating in a financially responsible way as well as streamline some reporting to the curators.
Because all four members of the oversight committee represented the curators on the athletics director search committee, their views were heavily represented in the hiring process that led to Veatch.
Will that assuage their concerns over Mizzou athletics’ operations and remove the need for an oversight committee? Or will its scope and target of accountability shift to being more of a bureaucratic mechanism for bringing MU sports matters to the board?
How the curators handle the future of the oversight committee will indicate plenty about their view of Reed-Francois’ tenure and the expectations of Veatch.
What will Veatch's 1st priorities be?
What's it like to be a brand-new employee at a place you last worked nearly two decades ago? Veatch is about to find out.
He worked in fundraising for Mizzou athletics from 1997 to 2002 and later as the general manager of Mizzou Sports Properties for Learfield from 2003 to 2006. But a lot has changed since then.
The Tigers are in a whole new league, having migrated from the Big 12 to the Southeastern Conference several years after Veatch was last working in Columbia. Missouri has a new name, image and likeness rights law that puts MU at an advantage compared with a school such as Memphis, located in Tennessee. And the Mizzou football program looks as if it could make a run to the College Football Playoff next fall.
That, plus so many names and faces, can be a lot for someone to wrap their head around. So where will Veatch start?
He could start with football and coach Eli Drinkwitz. Supporting his budding team was one of the priorities for the athletics director search committee, which sought someone capable of sustaining success on the gridiron.
Veatch also could start with the donor and NIL base. Three prominent donors — Mike Kampeter, Richard Miller and Don Walsworth — were on the search committee. Keeping the NIL checks flowing will be key to keeping the football team competitive and guiding the men’s basketball program through a turnaround. And more revenue flowing inward ought to help Veatch keep the athletics department in the black by more than the single dollar surplus of last fiscal year.
He'll also have plenty of staff with which to familiarize himself. One high-ranking athletics administrator, Associate AD for Administration Morgan Domenick, recently followed Reed-Francois to Arizona. Keeping momentum likely will mean keeping staff in place throughout the Mizzou Arena offices. But Veatch might want to bring a familiar face with him: Brad Loos, a former Missouri men’s basketball assistant whose daughter’s fight against cancer prompted the "Rally for Rhyan" fundraiser, joined Veatch’s Memphis staff in August as chief revenue officer.
One key Missouri staff member to watch, too, will be Marcy Girton, who served as the interim AD. She has been widely praised for her role in keeping the ship steady through Reed-Francois’ departure and the ensuing search — so much so that she began to generate some external buzz as a possible candidate for the permanent position. Keeping her on board could prove to be a key asset for Veatch’s transition to MU's big chair.