COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY
Office of the President
Office of the President
Dear fellow members of the Columbia community:
I am pleased to announce that I have appointed Peter E. Pilling as Columbia’s new Director of Intercollegiate Athletics and Physical Education. Peter has spent his career working at several of the most respected college sports programs in the country. His wealth of knowledge, experience, and enthusiasm will help Columbia Athletics build on a recent record of historic achievement and reach the new levels of excellence that we expect in everything we do as a great university.
As will soon become clear to our community of students, faculty, alumni, and friends, Peter brings to this important assignment not only professional expertise in sports management, but a deep and abiding commitment to the academic, research, cultural, and civic mission of higher education. He impressed everyone who has met him with his vision of the role athletics, health, and wellness can play in enhancing the educational experience of all our students, as well as his respect for the unique values of the Ivy League in the larger landscape of intercollegiate athletics.
Peter comes to Columbia having held high level positions in the distinguished athletic departments of Brigham Young University, Villanova University, and other public and private colleges and universities. He is currently Vice President at IMG College, a collegiate sports marketing company, where he has had extensive experience in serving the athletics departments of Division I schools including Brigham Young, Texas Christian University, Baylor University, and the U.S. Air Force Academy.
At Columbia, Peter will build on the strong foundation of an athletics program that, under the leadership of Dr. M. Dianne Murphy, has produced its best years in Columbia’s modern history. Yet Peter knows that among his highest priorities in the months and years ahead is ensuring that the high standards of excellence and competitiveness we have achieved across our women’s and men’s teams extends to our football program, whose dedicated players and coaches deserve the full support of a university community committed to their success. Peter joins us at a moment when we also all appreciate the importance in a long-term investment in the health and wellness of our entire campus community.
While moving forward immediately on the football coaching search, Peter will join us on campus on February 23. We are delighted that in order to help ensure a smooth transition, Dianne will continue in her position until April 13.
I want to take one more opportunity to say how grateful we all are to Dianne for her decade of great service to Columbia. I also want to thank everyone involved in this search for the guidance and insight they provided throughout this process—and for their proud commitment to Columbia Athletics.
For the present, please join me in congratulating Peter Pilling on his appointment as our new Director of Intercollegiate Athletics and Physical Education and in welcoming him, his wife Deanna, and their family to Columbia University in the City of New York.
Sincerely,
Lee C. Bollinger
I am pleased to announce that I have appointed Peter E. Pilling as Columbia’s new Director of Intercollegiate Athletics and Physical Education. Peter has spent his career working at several of the most respected college sports programs in the country. His wealth of knowledge, experience, and enthusiasm will help Columbia Athletics build on a recent record of historic achievement and reach the new levels of excellence that we expect in everything we do as a great university.
As will soon become clear to our community of students, faculty, alumni, and friends, Peter brings to this important assignment not only professional expertise in sports management, but a deep and abiding commitment to the academic, research, cultural, and civic mission of higher education. He impressed everyone who has met him with his vision of the role athletics, health, and wellness can play in enhancing the educational experience of all our students, as well as his respect for the unique values of the Ivy League in the larger landscape of intercollegiate athletics.
Peter comes to Columbia having held high level positions in the distinguished athletic departments of Brigham Young University, Villanova University, and other public and private colleges and universities. He is currently Vice President at IMG College, a collegiate sports marketing company, where he has had extensive experience in serving the athletics departments of Division I schools including Brigham Young, Texas Christian University, Baylor University, and the U.S. Air Force Academy.
At Columbia, Peter will build on the strong foundation of an athletics program that, under the leadership of Dr. M. Dianne Murphy, has produced its best years in Columbia’s modern history. Yet Peter knows that among his highest priorities in the months and years ahead is ensuring that the high standards of excellence and competitiveness we have achieved across our women’s and men’s teams extends to our football program, whose dedicated players and coaches deserve the full support of a university community committed to their success. Peter joins us at a moment when we also all appreciate the importance in a long-term investment in the health and wellness of our entire campus community.
While moving forward immediately on the football coaching search, Peter will join us on campus on February 23. We are delighted that in order to help ensure a smooth transition, Dianne will continue in her position until April 13.
I want to take one more opportunity to say how grateful we all are to Dianne for her decade of great service to Columbia. I also want to thank everyone involved in this search for the guidance and insight they provided throughout this process—and for their proud commitment to Columbia Athletics.
For the present, please join me in congratulating Peter Pilling on his appointment as our new Director of Intercollegiate Athletics and Physical Education and in welcoming him, his wife Deanna, and their family to Columbia University in the City of New York.
Sincerely,
Lee C. Bollinger
32 comments:
the wheels on the bus go round and round, round and round. More of the same.
From the IMG web site:
Peter Pilling
Associate Regional Vice President, West Region
Peter Pilling is the Associate Regional Vice President for IMG College properties: Air Force, BYU, Gonzaga, UNLV, Washington State as well as the West Coast Conference. He came to IMG College, formerly ISP Sports, in September 2007 after serving as Senior Associate Athletics Director at Brigham Young University (BYU). His focus with ISP was the company's partnerships involving Mountain West and Big 12 partner schools as well as relations with both conference offices.
At BYU, he was the administrator responsible for men's and women's basketball and soccer. Pilling also oversaw finance, athletic communications, marketing and admissions.
Prior to joining BYU, he spent four years as associate athletic director for external operations at Villanova University.
A graduate of BYU with a B.S. in Accounting, Peter continued his education at Ohio University, where he earned a master's degree in Sports Administration.
Yes, have to say I am underwhelmed, at least at face value.
He could be a great hire for all I know. On one hand he was at Villanova and BYU, both good academic schools with successful football programs. On the other hand, Nova is basketball first and he was responsible for basketball not football at BYU.
I suppose time will tell.
Considering he is not coming from another school I am surprised with all the secrecy, too...
IMG is an incredible results oriented organization. The one administration insider who I truly trust has advised me that he is a fantastic choice. I like what Bollinger said in the press release about the need to fix football and the message that campus facilities need to be improved.
oldlion-perhaps he is, but the amount of secrecy and the fact that his past intersects with Campbell begs a lot of questions. All for profit companies are results oriented or they die. His resume is underwhelming. Maybe he will be the best thing since sliced bread, time will tell.
I was chatting with another former player he had an interesting take on the guy:
BYU, Baylor and even Nova are all much more conservative schools than CU. He is also a businessman.
Is there any concern that this might be a little too much "culture shock" or the guy and he is out the door in quick time?
Would like to hear the thoughts of former Columbia FB player John Robinson, who appears to have worked with him at Villanova
Seeunt, How/where did Pilling's past intersect with Campbell?
I know nothing about Pilling but I feel better about him than about Bollinger who is incapable of saying anything about sports without including his load of horse emissions about Murphy and how she has directed the most magnificent achievements in modern Columbia sports history.
SAY WHAT? Murphy directed an over-all disaster. and an absolute catastrophe in football. The Sphinx said and did more about CU football than Murphy did.
Whatever else Pilling is, I hope he's his own man who will brook no interference from Bollinger in
repairing football and the entire ailing body of CU athletics.
Bollinger's platitudes about Murphy are a small price to pay for easing her out to an early retirement. Let's celebrate what hopefully will be a new dawn in Columbia athletics in general and football in particular. If his first priority is hiring a new HC for football, his second and third priorities should be long term deals for Kyle Smith and Brett Boretti.
Sounds like Mr. Pilling has experiance in some areas in which we need help.
Does he have experience hiring head coaches in any sport? Exactly what responsibilities did he have at IMG? Is he media/fan friendly? Someone out there must know him and what IMG does.
Wingman, you seem to be the corporate expert, how about some insider info.
Another friend and former player mentioned to me that his IMG background might make him a good salesman, which could really help us and could really help him as he deals with the "this is how things have always worked here" crowd...
Plus, since he has sales/marketing in his background maybe he will understand that websites like this aren't necessarily cancer and they can be used to help the program, communicate, etc.
I read this in Spec:
"Before joining IMG, Pilling served as the associate athletic director at Villanova and more recently, as the senior associate athletic director at BYU, where he was a member of the two-person search committee that hired current BYU football coach Bronco Mendenhall, who has led BYU to two conference championships."
DId this guy ever work directly with any football program? Has he had experience working with financial aid and admissions for any football program?
In short, what is his football background?
WOF- fyi- Bronco was already on the staff at BYU when he was hired after a player revolt demanded BYU hire him.
Whatever else you make of Pilling, it's obvious that Columbia has hit the mother lode of "diversity with his hire. (Which may at least partly have been the point.)
He's worked at a Mormon school, a Catholic school, two schools affiliated with mainstream Protestantism and even a service academy. (The only things missing are some time spent at Yeshiva and a historically African=American school like Grambling.
Oddly, too, he seems to be coming in as Tim Pernetti replaces him in his former position at IMG.
Old Lion, surely you don't think that I object to
Bollinger's pathetic lies solely because of the irritation caused by such ridiculous BolShoi?
These are not merely "platitudes" as you call Bollinger's nonsense:
The athletics program under the leadership
of Dr. M. Dianne Murphy has produced its best
years in Columbia's modern history.
Also:
Peter Pilling knows his goal is to ensure that the excellence achieved (by (Bollinger and Murray)
across men's and women's teams is extended to our football programs.
The garbage above is intended, through repetition, to create a false impression. of great provement except for football during Bollinger's tenure.
In the most dishonorable way possible (maybe Bollinger is running for President to carry on Obama's legacy) Obama is using a slight a slight uptick in moribund secondary sports to deceive the uninformed. The previous CU sports results
were so inferior that a slight uptick is indeed "the best years recently" but in truth still miserable and completely unacceptable.
This is what alarms me and is significant because we can foresee Bollinger spouting the same lying sophistry a few years hence when our current football losing streak of 21 surpasses our record from the 1980s.
Bronco is a good coach. BYU is a different world but regardless, looks like a candidate landed who is up for the challenge. If a person came in with the exact credentials of rebuilding a moribund football program while also managing the demands of an entire athletic department, then that person likely would not want to do it again.
Seeking 77: National Football Foundation
At long last, we have a decision.
Frankly, none of us has any view into the future regarding results. What we all have is a moral responsibility to give the new AD every possible benefit and opportunity to succeed.
I will not second guess this. CU absolutely understands the requirements and the consequences. I look forward to wonderful results. I expect them. Not immediately, but I expect them.
Am I to believe that we could not get a sitting AD who has had experience actually sitting in the seat?
Come on, people act like this is the best we could get. We are one of the top schools in the world and we settle.
I have noting against the man hired, but give me a break. this is more tom foolery.
I see no concrete experience or nothing more than some people on the current staff. Sales and Marketing, great, when he invents the round football maybe he can sell it and then sell us all on why we are going to win in 4-5 years...wait that was Mangurian..sorry for the confusion.
Agree with Big Dawg!
Good luck to the new AD- certainly should get everyone's support-
His fate will be determined in the next few weeks on his football hire.
Let's hope the administration has given him the tools to work with- money, admissions, financial aid.
The new football coach will have the same questions.
Jake,
You remain strangely quiet.
At this point, I am trying to assemble advice rather than assessments and/or praise and criticism. As someone already said, Pilling's first big test is already in progress as we are now in the midst of the most crucial decision of his career: the football coaching hire.
I'm not going to judge him until a) we see who gets hired and b) we learn with decent certainty that it was Pilling's decision and not Bollinger's.
Check out the video posted on:
http://www.ivyleaguedigitalnetwork.com/columbia/video/columbia-peter-e-pilling-named-newly-appointed-ad
He's saying all the right things.......but in retrospect, so did PM when he was hired.
I agree with everyone--the critics, the skeptics and the hopeful. I certainly wish Pilling the best. He seems to have some varied experience although for the past decade, instead of being in an collegiate athletic dept. he's been with IMG. I still don't know what they do--Sell t-shirts for college teams? Design and sell scoreboards? That's easy with Columbia; the score for us is always zero and the other team's score is a big number.
Also interesting, I noticed as did Richard Szathmary above that Tim Pernetti, with real big-time AD experience, apparently took a similar job at IMG to the one that Pilling left. What happened?
Was Pernetti approached and figured I don't need
that Columbia headache but I know a guy here who probably would take it.
As for helping pick a good fb coach at BYU, "Coach" reported above that the guy was already on the staff as an asst., so no "search" was needed.
But Pilling may become the real deal, I hope.
The real trouble as always is Bollinger. What does he really intned? Does he plan to tell us soon? He hasn't yet. What is in Rick Taylor's report? Will that be shared soon? Or at least acted upon if worthwhile?
Again we are like NY pigeons waiting anxiously
for Prezbo to toss us a few crumbs of information.
He came here 13 years ago; I hope we don't have to wait that long again. I also hope the next coach's current job isn't with IMG. That would really blow this whole deal.
As far as the HC hire is concerned, there's a few boxes that would be nice to have checked off. I don't think extensive previous head coaching experience is necessary, as that would severely limit the pool and rule out some good coaches.
Ideally, someone who has experience recruiting at a difficult place to attract good athletes (academics or otherwise - service academies come to mind). Experience recruiting nationally would be a nice bonus. Also having been part of a turnaround effort and therefore has a clear blueprint to become competitive quickly.
Just my thoughts. Obviously not the entire package of what is needed.
Bollinger stated that Columbia would hire a football coach with a strong football background. I don't see that with this hire. Was he an associate AD in charge of football? Was not involved in football at Brigham Young. Maybe at Villanova?
We still have to remember that at Columbia certain "other sports, like rowing and fencing, are also going to require Pilling's attention. Even baseball, where we surely have to do our best to retain Boretti.
AD is a big job, in other words. I can only thus wish the new guy well in every aspect of his job. But, yes, especially re football.
Just watched the new AD's video. He stated that he spoke to a friend about the Ivy League saying that Columbia is a special place. I don't think this new AD knows anything about the Ivy League and has probably never set foot on the Columbia campus before his interviews. Unbelievable!
wheels on the bus go round and round...and nothing changes
Post a Comment