Three of a Kind on CSUN’s Athletic Director Short List

The three finalists for the job as Cal State Northridge’s athletic director have a common thread: Each knows what it’s like to be at a school in the shadows.

Bobby Thompson, athletic director at Texas San Antonio, has to compete for the entertainment dollar with the San Antonio Spurs and the Southwest Conference.

Joe O’Donnell, formerly at American University in Washington, D.C., had to battle Georgetown, George Washington and four major professional teams within 50 miles.

And Paul Bubb, Northridge’s interim athletic director, has obvious problems with Northridge’s place in the Los Angeles sports scene.

“There are a lot of similarities,” Thompson said. “You have to find your niche.”

Drawing fans and athletes away from USC, UCLA and the Southland’s pro teams will be among the many difficult tasks facing the person hired to fill the position.

Thompson will be interviewed Thursday at Northridge, followed by Bubb on Tuesday and O’Donnell next Wednesday.

Blenda J. Wilson, Northridge’s president, and Ron Kopita, the vice president in charge of student affairs, are expected to make their choice in the next few weeks.

A brief look the candidates, in order of their interviews:

* Thompson, 57, has been at Texas San Antonio for eight years, where he supervised the Roadrunners’ rise in the Southland Conference and the addition of baseball and softball programs.

San Antonio, with an enrollment of 17,500, is a Division I school with 14 sports. The men’s basketball team made the NCAA tournament in 1988. The baseball team qualified for the NCAA playoffs in 1994, its third season.

Before Thompson became an administrator, he was a high school football coach and then an assistant at Oklahoma State, Idaho, West Texas State and Kansas State. Idaho was in the Big Sky Conference during Thompson’s four seasons there.

* Bubb, 39, primarily worked as a fund-raiser before taking over the Northridge athletic program when Bob Hiegert was fired last summer.

At Southern Illinois in the mid-1980s, Bubb increased the school’s athletic funding by 70%. He served in similar fund-raising capacities at Monmouth and Drake before arriving at Northridge in 1990.

Since taking over at Northridge, Bubb has helped guide the Matadors into the Big Sky Conference. He also has helped mold a plan he says will allow the school to add two sports without overextending the budget or disrupting the department’s gender-equity requirements.

* O’Donnell, 52, was athletic director at American for more than eight years before he resigned last summer amid a campus-wide housecleaning by a new school president. Since June, he has been consulting and applying for jobs, he said.

During O’Donnell’s tenure at American, a school of 12,000 students, he oversaw the construction of a 5,000-seat on-campus arena. The Eagle basketball teams previously played in a ceremonial hall that was part of Arlington National Cemetery and was noted for its inadequacies.

“You had to call them the day of the game and make sure they turned the heat on,” O’Donnell said.

O’Donnell managed the athletic facilities for three years at Wichita State. He oversaw operation of a 35,000-seat football stadium, a 10,700-seat basketball arena and a 5,000-seat baseball stadium.

Before working at Wichita State, O’Donnell was at La Salle for 12 years as associate athletic director.