Villanova faces tough search in replacing AD Nicastro

Villanova is deep into the hunt for a new athletic director to replace Vince Nicastro. The school has put together a search committee and hired a leading search firm. The usual stuff these days.

If they had hired a search firm 15 years ago, would it have recommended Nicastro?

It's an important question. Nicastro turned out to be the right hire to navigate the last 15 years, but would some search firm's turn-of-last-century database have coughed up the school's own former ticket manager who had taken on additional duties as associate athletic director?

Would the search firm have been willing to take Villanova's money and admit the firm didn't have a better external candidate?

And what of that database? Does the college sports world have any proof that search-firm databases aren't merely full of hungry strivers looking for the next move? Isn't that a pool that limits itself?

Maybe Villanova's search committee has a tougher job this time, making sure these best and brightest put before it really are what they seem to be in a PDF file.

Maybe Nicastro wouldn't have been a big deal as a candidate 15 years ago, but we can guarantee you any database worth its bandwidth now will spit him out as a candidate for any big-time AD opening. Not that he'll jump at it. We take it at face value that Nicastro is happy to become the new associate director of Villanova's center for sports law, that he doesn't want to leave town, that he just felt it was time to move on, not move out.

Some basic criteria for a successor:

At a place like Villanova, you need to predict the future, but not try to pretend you know it. That may have been Nicastro's most important contribution, even above hiring Jay Wright as men's basketball coach. He was AD during the Big East's realignment craziness. From many conversations over the years it was obvious Nicastro was fully ready to recommend jumping into a top-level football deal but had to make sure it was truly going to be the top level. As it turned out, going I-A wouldn't have put 'Nova into the highest level at all - what is now the Power Five - and may have instead deprived the school of its most natural basketball rivalries.

A lose-lose, and we're talking about real dollars lost. The next AD will have to show similar nimbleness if there are more realignment earthquakes ahead.

Finding revenue is always an important job for ADs and we're guessing that database will churn out all sorts of marketers and other candidates entrenched in the big business of college sports. There's no downplaying the importance of negotiating the right big-money contract with apparel companies and keeping the biggest donors happy, and identifying more. But if you hire a marketing guy who isn't a leader, you may be surprised by the consequences.

Guaranteed during the next AD's reign: There will be trouble, and the new AD had better know how to deal with it. Find a school around here that doesn't have issues that must be dealt with. Call it Fantasy U.

Obviously, Villanova had better not hire an AD who produces his or her own bad headlines. The University of Minnesota apparently thought it had hired a big-time up-and-comer from VCU. Except it is looking for a new AD now since the big-time up-and-comer, Norwood Teague, is out, accused of being a serial sexual harasser.

That brings us back to the search firms. One of the touted features of their services is a background check. An important task, obviously. But why did the search firm that helped Rutgers hire its current AD fail to point out that Julie Hermann had past problems with players when she was a coach? Maybe Rutgers still would have hired Hermann and maybe she'll end up having a successful run, but it shouldn't have taken the Newark Star-Ledger to produce the full dossier on her past within days.

Search firms aren't new in academia. For the last couple of decades, universities have used them to hire top administrators. Given the salaries for top coaches and administrators, it makes sense to utilize all resources to get a hire right.

If you're going to pay the usual fee of $75,000 to a $100,000 to a search firm such as Parker Executive Search, which is the one I'm told Villanova is using, the search committee obviously has to make sure the candidates are the right fit for Villanova's own culture and place in the college sports universe. (Parker is an industry heavyweight, the same firm Penn used when it hired Grace Calhoun as AD.)

More criteria: The new AD needs to know that Villanova doesn't have unlimited resources, that Drexel has a bigger endowment. The new AD also had better establish a decent relationship with Wright, given the massive importance of hoops at Villanova.

The real bottom line: That database had better quantify leadership and differentiate it from salesmanship. A miss on that count could cost Villanova far more than $100,000.