At long last, there is finally a permanent face to the UMass Athletic Department. With yesterday’s hiring of Athletic Director John McCutcheon, the department has finally regained some of the stability that went out the window when former AD Ian McCaw took off for greener pastures at Baylor University in Waco, Texas.

What McCutcheon’s hiring has also brought is something that has been lacking in UMass Athletics for a while – a clearer future. After an ad hoc committee’s findings that there wouldn’t be sufficient funding for the football team’s proposed promotion to Division I-A, as well as former gridiron coach Mark Whipple’s decision to leave UMass to become the quarterbacks’ coach with the Pittsburgh Steelers, not to mention a fairly bleak showing by UMass’ revenue sports over the winter session, Minutemaniacs had reason to be unsure about the future of the athletic program.

Now, there is a permanent name at the helm – no disrespect intended towards Thorr Bjorn, who has done an admirable job as interim AD since McCaw’s departure – and that might just be what the program needs to truly turn things around, and move in the right direction.

“I think this University has the potential and the charge to be a leader in New England and the East,” McCutcheon said after yesterday’s press conference. “We want to be one of the premier programs, a comprehensive program that represents the university and the state in the right way.”

McCutcheon comes to Amherst after 13 years at California Polytechnic in San Luis Obispo, Calif. Among the highlights of his tenure there, is a successful program-wide transition from Division II to Division I, with the football team entering Division I-AA. While that experience could aid the UMass football team’s possible future jump to I-A, McCutcheon is more focused on the present for the Minutemen.

“The focus is on I-AA football,” he said. “Whether the climate defines itself in three years, or five years, I really can’t say right now. But it’s true, the interest is out there, and that’s a positive thing. I think we need to embrace the fact that there are people out there that look at us, and feel we have that kind of potential and are willing to keep bringing that issue up.”

“I’m not going to sweep that issue under the rug, but it needs to be done when our eyes are open and the time is appropriate.”

Among McCutcheon’s highest priorities is the hiring of a new football head coach, something he’d like to get done before he travels back to California to finalize his departure from Cal Poly.

All this points to better direction for the department, and although he wasn’t ready to rule on the possibilities, McCutcheon did have some clear feelings about the proposal to make the athletic department a 501c3 nonprofit organization, which would effectively make it a privatized offshoot of the university.

“The thing you have to remember about 501c3 is that it’s just a tool,” he said. “It doesn’t dictate that you can get these types of monies, or you can’t get those types of monies, it’s really something that we will look at. If it makes sense for us, if it gives us an ability to clarify the budgeting process, then it might be something that we would pursue. That might be two years from now, that might be three years from now, but it’s really a tool that can facilitate our account.”

“It’s something we’re going to continue to look at, and if there are advantages to going in that direction, then we would pursue that. If we think we’re better off staying the way we are now, then we’ll do that.”

Among his general goals for UMass athletics are to “raise the competitiveness of the teams.” While it might be easier said than done, UMass sports certainly got a shot in the arm yesterday, when there was at last a singular, identifiable face to match up to the rhetoric.

Andrew Merritt is a Collegian columnist. He can be reached at [email protected].

Photo bendee: Andrew Merritt