Unique Deal Lets Miller Retire, Remain at SDSU : Aztecs: He takes ‘golden handshake’ but will remain athletic director and be paid by the SDSU Foundation.
San Diego State Athletic Director Fred Miller, saying he wants to leave the school while the athletic department is on an upswing, said Wednesday that he is accepting the state of California’s “golden handshake” early retirement program, effective immediately.
But Miller, 61, will continue as SDSU’s athletic director for an unspecified amount of time. The school has restructured the position, and Miller will be paid by the SDSU Foundation, a private fund-raising group, but still report to school President Tom Day.
“I serve at the pleasure of the president, and Tom and I talked about it and now is not the time to have any changes in the athletic directorship,” Miller said. “If it comes in a couple of years, fine. If it happens in a year, that’s OK with me, too.”
Miller, who makes a base salary of $110,000 a year and has a deal calling for two courtesy cars, said his deal with the SDSU Foundation is at a “reduced salary.” Terms were unavailable.
Including his time at Cal State Long Beach in the 1960s and 1970s, Miller has 19 years of service with the Cal State university system. By accepting the early retirement now, he will be credited with four service years--or, in other words, until he is 65.
If he were to retire on his own in two years without the golden handshake, he would only have 21 service years with the Cal State system.
“I looked at this thing real hard,” Miller said. “It is to the advantage of the (athletic) program, to the advantage of the university and to the advantage of me.
“I want to leave this thing on a real upper, and we are approaching that now. We are approaching some real positive breakthroughs.”
Miller was hired at SDSU on Dec. 3, 1985. It has been widely speculated that football Coach Al Luginbill will one day replace Miller as AD, although Luginbill has not confirmed his interest in the job.
Miller served as the athletic director at Cal State Long Beach from 1965 through 1971 and at the Arizona State from 1971 through the 1978-79 school season, when he was fired during the Frank Kush scandal. Kush, a former Sun Devil football coach, was fired for hitting a player during a game and then attempting to cover it up.
Since his arrival at SDSU, Miller has been responsible for the construction of the $3.5 million, 32,000-square-foot Aztec Athletic Center--commonly known as the football operations center. He also lobbied SDSU students to vote for an increase in yearly fees so that a new basketball arena could be funded.
Although the students approved a fee increase to build the 12,000-seat arena, the project has been hung up in court as a neighborhood group has bitterly opposed it. The building was originally supposed to have been opened last fall.
