UC Irvine Athletic Director Quits, Takes Job With Coaches’ Group

UC Irvine Athletic Director Tom Ford, frustrated by an ongoing budget crisis and repeatedly at odds with some members of the university administration, announced Monday that he is resigning to take another job after little more than two years at Irvine.

“I think the frustrations and the projections of what we’re going to have to do in the future just were really hard to deal with,” said Ford, who in May announced plans to drop baseball, men’s track and men’s cross-country because of financial problems. “For me to consider going to a brand new job with a lot of potential for success--it didn’t take much consideration.”

Ford will become assistant executive director of the National Assn. of Basketball Coaches, an organization headed by former Big West Conference commissioner Jim Haney, who was named to the position in June.

Though Ford has repeatedly had disagreements with his direct supervisor, vice chancellor for student affairs Horace Mitchell, Mitchell said Ford was not pressured to leave. “He was not forced to resign, I can say that unequivocally,” Mitchell said.

Mitchell said an interim director will be named to take over after Ford’s departure Aug. 1, and that a committee will be appointed to oversee a national search for a placement. Ford, who resigned suddenly as athletic director at the University of Houston in 1986, had seen Irvine go from providing financial support for 17 sports when he arrived in May of 1990 to funding 12.