Marquette’s AD since 2014 will step down after a national search to hire a replacement.
On Tuesday, Marquette University announced a notable change in the administration. University Vice President and Director of Athletics Bill Scholl will be retiring. A national search for his replacement will begin immediately, and Scholl will leave his post once his replacement is on board.
First, Scholl on his retirement:
“It has been an honor to work at such a special place surrounded by remarkable people,” Scholl said. “I am most proud of our student-athletes, who have excelled not only in competition but in the classroom and the community as women and men for others. My family and I deeply appreciate how this community has welcomed us from the start. Marquette will always have a special place in our hearts.”
University President Dr. Michael Lovell on Scholl’s retirement:
“I have valued Bill’s leadership and wisdom over the past decade. He cares deeply about our student-athletes, their well-being, and the people they become after graduating from Marquette,” President Michael R. Lovell said. “Bill is unique in his commitment to and success in integrating athletics with the university. Over the past 10 years, Bill has led with integrity and loyalty to Marquette and to our students.”
“Bill had two goals when he arrived at Marquette – to convey excellence and responsibility within the athletics department, and to provide for, nurture and develop student-athletes,” President Lovell said. “He achieved those goals and contributed to the legacy of our athletics program in countless ways that have benefited our student-athletes, coaches and athletics staff, and for that, our Marquette community will always be grateful. I appreciate all he has done for our athletics program and for Marquette University. Amy and I will miss him and his wife Julie greatly.”
You can go read the Marquette press release for all of the things that the university wants to highlight as accomplishments by the athletic department under his guidance. All of that’s important to note, but the context for it is also important.
Scholl was hired in September 2014. This was about 10 months after Larry Williams left the post as athletic director, an act that itself followed the resignation of University President Scott Pilarz, S.J., in September 2013. All of that happened after the 16 team Big East collapsed in the wake of various departures for other leagues and the Catholic 7 made the move to restart the conference on their own in February 2013.
In short, both for internal and external reasons, Bill Scholl walked into a pretty complicated job. He was taking over as athletic director at a school where 1) the university president had been on the job for less than six months, 2) the university president was the first non-Jesuit president in university history, 3) the athletic conference had just sprouted up out of thin air 18 months earlier and was very much not on stable ground, and 4) the athletic department’s flagship program, men’s basketball, had just hired a new coach six months ago and was about to undergo their first losing season since the turn of the century.
To say that Marquette Athletics has been remade in Bill Scholl’s image and likeness is probably overstating it. But if you click over to the press release and read off the list of accomplishments over the past 10 school years — and that doesn’t include dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic — it is very clear, given his starting point, that Scholl has done a hell of a job governing the sum total of this department.
It hasn’t all been perfect. You can look no further than the fact that there is an active head coach search going on right now for men’s lacrosse, which is the fifth head coaching search of this school year alone, and only one was caused by the coach in question leaving for a new coaching job. In January 2023, Marquette and Scholl announced the end of scholarship aid for both men’s and women’s tennis and men’s and women’s track & field. The tennis scholarship question may have been solved this past November, when the university received a $1 million commitment to establish an endowment for said scholarships, which is maybe a net zero item on Scholl’s ledger.
Still, with all that in mind, and perhaps because of some of those coaching searches, Bill Scholl is leaving Marquette athletics in a better state than how he found it. You can’t ask for much more from an athletic director. Now it’s time for someone new to pick up the baton from him and lead Marquette into the future. Personally, I advocate for a new face, someone from outside the university and without ties to the university. The world of college athletics is a different one in 2024 than it was in 2014 when Bill Scholl was hired, and I think Marquette in 2034 is best served by hiring someone now who has no inclination towards “well, that’s how we’ve always done it at Marquette.”