TCU’s next athletic director has a high bar to meet, one that Jeremiah Donati elevated
Jeremiah Donati’s TCU tenure will be remembered for one decision that was an earthquake felt all over college athletics: He enlisted enough support among significant TCU people to move on from football coach Gary Patterson.
It was a career-altering call that had the potential to launch Donati’s resume to the top of a Google search.
Asking Patterson to step down in late October of 2021 created a Category Five storm within the TCU community. It could have leveled the place. Replacing a coach who is viewed as the face of the school’s transformation with Sonny Dykes was greeted with, at best, a keg of skepticism.
TCU essentially fired Patterson, and Donati’s name was on it. The decision was hard, awkward, and painful. It was a decision met with anger, hurt, and a few threats, too.
It also worked.
As Donati accepted the athletic director position at South Carolina, he can look back at his time at TCU and say he advanced the ball. He left for the same reason as most ADs do: A new challenge, a bigger stage. More money.
His move is a reminder of the invisible lines that exist in college sports, specifically the power model. The destination schools are now only in the Big 10 and the SEC.
When TCU named Donati AD in December of 2017, the announcement didn’t exactly cause a celebration. His mentor, Texas AD Chris Del Conte, hired Donati to be an assistant in 2011 at TCU, and groomed him to be an athletic director.
There was concern that a man who had never previously served as an AD was handed a great job because he knew the right guy; Donati’s dad gave Del Conte his first shot in college sports, at Washington State, and Del Conte assured Donati’s father he would look after JD.
Although the two are lifelong friends, succeeding Del Conte at TCU was a task that could have easily crushed most candidates into chum. Operating in Del Conte’s 800-mile shadow, even if it is cast from Austin, could be hard.
The people who didn’t like Del Conte still loved him. It took Donati time to grow in the role, and to create his own identity. In his tenure TCU’s athletic department enjoyed some of its greatest achievements, and proved beyond any measure whether it could compete on the highest levels of college athletics.
In 2022-’23, TCU joined Alabama and Oregon as the only schools to ever win a college football playoff game, an NCAA men’s basketball tournament game, and reach the college baseball tournament in the same scholastic year. The baseball team reached the College World Series that summer.
Dykes received every major Coach of the Year award, and no one questioned whether the decision to move on from Patterson in favor of a new coach was the right call.
The football team became the first from Texas, and the Big 12, to win a playoff game, when it defeated Michigan in the Fiesta Bowl. Every TCU team that year but its women’s basketball program enjoyed a season loaded with superlatives, and postseason appearances.
His choices to select new head coaches for the women’s volleyball and women’s basketball program have also worked; volleyball coach Jason Williams was hired in 2021, and the program is currently ranked 20th and in the NCAA tournament for a third straight year.
Donati hired Mark Campbell to replace Raegan Pebley in March of 2023 as the women’s basketball coach, and that team is currently 8-0, ranked ninth nationally, and will play No. 3 South Carolina on Sunday at Dickies Arena.
Donati successfully led a campaign to add to its football facilities, and under his watch the department became a destination in major college athletics.
The downsides to his tenure were the dismissals of a few non-revenue sport coaches, starting with Sam Busch, the swimming and diving coach who “resigned” in Feb. of 2018 amid a load of allegations of unprofessional behavior.
Donati also effectively ended the tenure of long-time men’s golf coach Bill Montigel, amid some other changes to non-revenue sports. Montigel sued the school over age discrimination; that suit, which includes unflattering allegations against Donati and the university, remains both unsettled and mostly unaddressed. That program has struggled since Montigel left.
In October, when TCU hosted a reunion of the football teams that reached the 1984 Bluebonnet Bowl, the 1994 Independence Bowl, and 2014 Peach Bowl, the players were not invited to participate in any on-field ceremony.
Donati was on the receiving end of dozens of angry emails and messages from former players, many of whom said they would never come back to TCU, nor donate another dime to the school. (Note that former players are historically the last creatures on any planet to be significant contributors to their alma mater).
Some of Donati’s contract extensions granted to current head coaches could end up biting TCU, but these are standard practice in major college sports.
In all, JD’s tenure at TCU was a success, which is why he’s now at South Carolina.
This story was originally published December 6, 2024 at 5:00 AM.
