UM's Yow appears headed to N.C. State
She's expected to be named Wolfpack AD

By Jeff Barker, The Baltimore Sun

11:32 PM EDT, June 24, 2010

Maryland athletic director Debbie Yow, who has held the position since 1994, is expected to be named the next athletic director at N.C. State, two Maryland athletic officials said Thursday night.

Yow was scheduled to be on N.C. State's campus Friday.

"She's expected to be offered the job," said one Maryland official, who declined to be named because no public announcement has been made.

Earlier, Yow said in an e-mail to The Baltimore Sun that she "decided to visit on campus with the search committee at N.C. State. I am going to do that."

Yow did not address how far the process had gone or whether she had been offered -- or had accepted -- the post.

Asked whether she could confirm if she was offered the job, she replied in an e-mail: "Wish I could ... but I can't."

She also declined comment when told by The Sun that it planned to report that she was expected to become N.C. State's new athletic director.

Kathleen Worthington, a senior associate athletic director at Maryland, confirmed that Yow would meet with N.C. State officials Friday.

N.C. State said last month that Lee Fowler would depart after 10 years. A 13-member search committee was named to find his successor. Yow is from North Carolina. Her sister, Kay, who died in 2009, coached the Wolfpack women's basketball team for 34 years.

The Maryland officials said Yow had not signed a contract with N.C. State and that her hiring was expected but not finalized.

Officials who attended Thursday night's Terrapin Club meeting described Yow as particularly emotional during her talk to the club, which provides scholarships for athletes. One official at the meeting said the tone of Yow's comments had participants wondering if she were leaving.

Yow has overseen Maryland's 27 teams -- 15 for women and 12 for men. The average number of teams at the Atlantic Coast Conference's eight public universities is 22.

Maryland has balanced its athletic department budgets each year since 1994 and reduced its inherited $51 million debt since then to $6.8 million, according to an internal report last September.

The report said Maryland had won 18 national championships in the previous 15 years. That was before the women's lacrosse team won the national title last season.

Yow had strained relationships with men's basketball coach Gary Williams and football coach Ralph Friedgen, according to multiple sources.

She said in December that budget pressures and a losing record last season contributed to the strain with Friedgen. "This type of stress-related pressure and conversations were probably occurring across the nation at all other struggling football programs between ADs and head coaches this year, so I don't think it was unusual," Yow said.

Maryland is entering a period of uncertainty with the expected departure of Yow and the retirement of university President C.D. "Dan" Mote Jr.

jeff.barker@baltsun.com

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