Sources: Stanford hiring former Nike CEO John Donahoe as AD

Stanford is ready to rent former Nike CEO John Donahoe as the varsity’s new athletic director, sources informed ESPN on Thursday.

Donahoe, 65, will arrive within the collegiate athletic director house with an unlimited swath of enterprise expertise, as Stanford officers considered him as a “unicorn candidate” due to each his enterprise ties and historical past on the college. Stanford coveted a nontraditional candidate for the function, and Donahoe’s rent delivers a seasoned CEO with stints at Nike, Bain & Firm and eBay. He additionally served because the board chair of PayPal.

Donahoe additionally brings sturdy Stanford ties, as he is a 1986 MBA graduate. He has additionally had two stints on the Stanford enterprise college’s advisory board, together with at present serving in that function.

Donahoe replaces Bernard Muir, who introduced in February he was stepping down from the varsity after serving in that function since 2012. Alden Mitchell has been working as the varsity’s interim athletic director.

The rent is a head-turning one for Stanford, bringing in somebody with Donahoe’s high-level enterprise expertise. And it comes at a time when the athletic division has struggled in its highest profile sports activities, as soccer is amid 4 consecutive 3-9 seasons and the lads’s basketball group hasn’t reached the NCAA event since 2014.

In hiring Donahoe, they’re aiming for somebody who can discover an progressive approach to help basic supervisor Andrew Luck and the Stanford soccer program whereas additionally determining a sustainable mannequin for the way forward for Stanford’s Olympic sports activities.

Stanford’s Olympic sports activities stay the very best within the nation, as Stanford athletes or former athletes accounted for 39 medals within the 2024 Paris Olympics. If Stanford have been a rustic, they’d have tied with Canada for the eleventh most medals. (Stanford has additionally received 26 of the potential 31 director’s cups for total athletic success in school, together with a 25-year streak from 1995 to 2019.)

Stanford officers approached Donahoe in current weeks in regards to the place, with each President Jonathan Levin and former girls’s basketball coach Tara VanDerveer among the many chief recruiters. Donahoe has a long-standing relationship with each, as he maintained sturdy ties to the varsity all through his profession.

Per ESPN sources, Luck will report back to Donahoe on this function. Luck frolicked with him within the interview course of and is happy to work with him, per sources. (That is a change from the prior construction, as upon Luck’s hiring he had been slated to report back to Levin.)

Stanford is ready to start a soccer season by which it’s picked final within the 17-team ACC. Former NFL coach Frank Reich is the interim coach, and either side have made clear it is a definitive interim state of affairs and he will not return after the 2025 season.