RESOLVING THE LEDGER
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See the full story · 1 sourcesBrad Chandler has earned a few headlines in recent weeks as the new athletic director at Wright State.
Twenty-two years ago, the Livingston County Daily Press and Argus in Howell, Michigan, gave him attention for a different reason.
“Howell’s scouting report had every indication that Novi’s Brad Chandler was a good player,” sports writer Andy Karl wrote in February 2004, “but the Highlanders didn’t know about his shooting ability until Friday night.
“‘He is one of the better guards in the league, and he was always in our scouting reports that he could drive well,” Howell senior Eddie Chodkowski said. “He never showed that he can shoot in the games that we watched.’ ”
“Chandler sunk five 3-pointers en route to a 21-point effort, as Novi edged Howell in the closing seconds, 42-39.”
Chandler, now 39, was a senior that season at Novi High School, which is located 31 miles northwest of Detroit. He enrolled at Michigan State University later that year and then attended the University of Toledo College of Law. His path to a career in college athletics began there with a graduate assistant job in NCAA compliance at Toledo.
Sports have always been a part of Chandler’s life.
“I had an older brother and a younger brother,” Chandler said. “It was always just something we did. It was basketball, baseball, football. I was the point guard, the pitcher, shortstop and quarterback. I think that’s kind of where I developed my leadership skills.
“Having brothers, it was just all we did. It was just sports. It was backyard baseball. It was pickup basketball. We had a little court in our basement. It wasn’t video games. It wasn’t Legos or computers or anything like that. It was just all sports with my brothers.”
That’s been Chandler’s life ever since, through stops at Ohio State, Arizona State and most recently Bradley, where he spent the last five years, rising to the position of deputy athletics director.
Chandler started his new job on July 20 after being introduced at a press conference on June 26. His first priority was meeting with as many people as possible
“People ask, ‘What’s your vision?’ ” Chandler said, “and I don’t have that yet because I want to see where we’re at and talk to stakeholders, talk to donors.”
Chandler’s athletic department made news in his first week by announcing it was searching for a jersey patch sponsorship. This is the first year the NCAA is allowing that.
“Everyone had kind of been clamoring for jersey patches because of the sponsorship dollars that are attached to that,” Chandler said. “When I got here, it was like, ‘Hey, we need to get this out to the masses instead of trying to have single conversations with Joe from Joe’s Taco Shop.’ Let’s put that out to the world. This is available as an opportunity to really partner with a big brand in the area, with a really, really good basketball program, and then also you get your jersey patch on baseball, which is playing on national television and ESPN, and hopefully volleyball is playing in the NCAA tournament. There’s some good branding opportunities for local businesses.”
Jersey patch sponsorships are only the latest change for college athletics, which has experienced a major transformation in Chandler’s career.
“It’s funny because starting my career in compliance at Ohio State, we were dealing with a major infraction over benefits and dollar amounts,” Chandler said, “and then I’m at Bradley and negotiating with 18-to-22-year-olds and their agents.”
Chandler has the knowledge to handle these changes. He majored in finance at Michigan State, a school he picked in part because his mom and dad met there while they were students.
Two Michigan State basketball players — Maurice Joseph, the former head coach at George Washington who’s now an assistant at Richmond, and Travis Walton, who’s now a trainer — were his suite mates. Chandler hoped to join Tom Izzo’s program as a student manager, but it never worked out.
Chandler said his dad was an accountant and his brother and sister are accountants.
“I was a little bit of a black sheep,” Chandler said. “I went to law school, thinking I’ll be a tax attorney or something, and got involved in the athletics department.”
At Toledo, Chandler was a graduate assistant in his second and third years of law school. He looked at Toledo’s AD, Mike O’Brien, and said, “I want to be that guy, instead of doing what my other buddies are doing, going out to the courthouse or working at a law firm.”
Chandler had several job offers after graduating from law school and decided not to even take the bar exam because he was so focused on getting into college athletics. That law degree continues to pay off, however, because of the complexities of the jobs he has held over the years.
“Especially with the landscape of college athletics and everything that’s been going on with the lawsuits and the NCAA’s kind of got a target on its back, I think it’s helped more recently,” Chandler said. “But going through law school, the way that we’re trained and taught to analyze and write and speak, I think was just really helpful in my career as well.”
In his early days at Wright State, Chandler has gotten to know men’s basketball coach Clint Sargent better. Sargent, who guided Wright State to an NCAA tournament berth in his second season, was a part of the search committee that hired Chandler.
“It’s no secret the men’s basketball coach is very important,” Chandler said, “and we have a really good one here. That also kind of made the job attractive. We’ve got a really good program built, and we have a really good guy in that seat. He’s passionate in the way he runs his program. I’ve been able to watch practices and hear him speak to his guys and speak to his staff. He’s impressive.”
Wright State’s baseball and volleyball programs are two other standouts. Chandler wants Wright State to do a better job of selling the baseball program.
“Unless you know college baseball, you don’t know that Wright Stat...
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