Congrats to everybody who picked John David Wicker in your SDSU athletic director search pool! Please tweet at @lemonverbena_ to claim your cash prizes. Pay no attention to his denials – he definitely has your money.
The tough thing about analyzing an administrative hire as a sports blogger man-infant is that there’s a bit of a knowledge gap that’s unavoidable. I haven’t watched any CBS Sports telecasts of Wicker meeting with major donors to get them to fund facilitates upgrades. I can’t watch highlights set to Drowning Pool’s “Let the Bodies Hit the Floor” of him lobbying the commissioner of a Power Five conference (though I would watch the SHIT out of that tbh).
All I can to is sift through some of the precious information that’s out there already. What follows is Kabeer Thirty’s due diligence on John David Wicker.
What do we know?
Wicker is a Jim Sterk disciple, following him here from Washington State in 2011. He served as Deputy AD on Montezuma Mesa (just gonna picture him walking around with a tin star badge) before becoming senior associate AD for operations at Georgia Tech last summer.
Why is this a good hire maybe?
Wicker provides continuity for a department on an upward trajectory. He knows SDSU’s coaches, facilities needs, budget, political landscape and Power Five pitch (such as it is). At this juncture, with the future of the Chargers and the Qualcomm site inching toward a conclusion of some kind and big decisions to be made, the continuity he brings seems rather valuable.
Why is this a bad hire maybe?
If you’re looking for a red flag in his past here, I guess there’s always the fact that Wicker won best supporting actor for his role in the costly Beth Burns firing situation. Indeed, the replies to this tweet are prett-ay, prett-ay interesting.
What other information lurks in the dark corners of the internet?
(cracks knuckles) Let’s fire up the old laptop and see what we can find …
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Everything seems to check out.
Welcome back, John David Wicker. Best of luck getting SDSU into a Power Five conference. Even though that’s largely out of your control, it’s the one thing we will all judge you on forever and ever.
KABEER THIRTY 