Sandy Barbour will retire this summer after eight years at the helm of Penn State’s Athletic Department, she and the university announced on Wednesday.
Barbour came to Penn State in 2014 as the university’s ninth athletic director and took on the title of vice president for intercollegiate athletics in 2019. During her tenure, she oversaw a department that won national titles in wrestling, women’s volleyball and women’s soccer, embarked on construction and renovation of athletic facilities, developed new academic resources, faced the unprecedented challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic and entered the new era of name, image and likeness rights for student-athletes.
“These last eight years have been the most incredible and satisfying of my career,” Barbour said in a statement. “The passion, the commitment and the purpose with which the Penn State community pursues excellence is like nothing I’ve ever experienced, and I am honored and privileged to have had the opportunity to serve Penn State students, coaches, faculty, staff and our incredible community.”
The university plans to conduct a national search for her replacement and did not specify a date for her retirement.
Barbour’s retirement comes during a period of change for Penn State leadership, with President-elect Neeli Bendapudi set to succeed the retiring Eric Barron this spring.
“We are incredibly grateful for Sandy’s leadership and dedication to Penn State’s athletics program, student-athletes, coaches and staff, and fans across the commonwealth and beyond. It’s been an honor to work with her,” Barron said. “Through her forward thinking, competitive spirit, and passion for people and sports, Sandy has built a collegiate model to aspire to and has helped the Nittany Lions thrive as one of the nation’s most successful athletics departments. Above all, her commitment to supporting our student-athletes is commendable and will have a lasting impact on their lives both on and off the field.”
Barbour, Barron and Nittany Lion football coach James Franklin have been the longest tenured trio of their kind in the Big Ten, but now only Franklin, who recently received a new 10-year contract, will remain.
Barbour leaves Penn State without completing most the Facilities Master Plan developed under her watch, which laid out more than two decades’ worth of refurbishments and construction for Penn State’s athletic facilities. Some projects, including renovations to the Lasch Football Building, the construction of Penn State lacrosse’s Panzer Stadium and conversion of Greenberg Ice Pavilion to an academic support center, are in the works or already finished.
During her tenure, Penn State teams won NCAA national titles and 39 conference championships, including 31 in the Big Ten, and finished in the top 20 of the Learfield Directors Cup five times, peaking at No. 8 twice.
Penn State Athletics also tied or set school records for graduation success rate and GPA, and graduated 1,098 varsity student-athletes in the last eight years.
Last summer, Barbour said she would be open to adding a 16th women’s varsity sport to match the men’s total at Penn State, which ranks in the middle to bottom of Big Ten schools in most Title IX metrics and is the only conference school with more men’s teams than women’s.
Under her last contract, which was negotiated in 2019 and was to run through August 2023, Barbour earned a base of $1.219 million and $240,000 a year from Penn State for a benefit or tax-favored plan, for a total of $1.459 million. Her original contract in 2014-15 was for $800,000.
She was named National Association of Collegiate Directors of Athletics AD of the Year in 2017 and this week was named one of five finalists for the Sports Business Journal’s Athletic Director of the Year for the third time in her career.
Barbour began her career in 1981 as an assistant field hockey coach and lacrosse administrative assistant at the University of Massachusetts and later had high-ranking administrative stops at Northwestern, Tulane and Notre Dame.
Prior to her time at Penn State, she was athletic director at the University of California for 10 years, during which Golden Bears teams won 20 national titles and the department set fundraising and ticket sales records, but where she was also largely criticized after the school took on $445 million in debt to finance facility upgrades.
Matt DiSanto and Mike Poorman contributed to this story.
