Amid all of the hype surrounding these three new head coaches for Eastern athletics, one aspect of the overhaul has been forgotten – the pressure on the athletic director.

There are several positive things these coaches have brought to their programs since stepping foot on campus, but nobody has played a game yet.

Dino Babers promised an up-tempo offense and a defense that flies sideline to sideline, oozing with energy. At first glance, he’s delivered with freshmen like running back Bobby Huey and defensive end Tyler Paulsen – both from Texas. 

Jay Spoonhour is trying to erase the frustration fans felt with former head coach Mike Miller. He’s brought in some talent, including Reggie Smith from Nevada-Las Vegas (also, formerly of Marquette). However, let’s not ignore the fact that the program lost an asset in Darius Smith, a talented guard who transferred into Miller’s program from Connecticut. 

Lee Buchanan walks into the most familiar territory. He’s kept the same team, after former head coach Brady Sallee made the leap to Ball State in a bigger conference. 

Athletic director Barbara Burke hired all three of these coaches in a matter of months – Babers in December, Spoonhour in April and Buchanan in May. 

Now, Burke has placed her stake on the athletic program by hiring three coaches from arguably the three biggest sports on campus.

The pressure is on whether the athletic department wants to recognize the elephant in the room or not. Athletic directors have always been and will always be judged on the coaches they hire to run their top programs and those coaches’ results. 

As unfair as that sounds, it’s true – Burke understands that. It’s the same as those three coaches being judged on how 18 to 22-year-olds perform, which will happen. 

Some will say a successful athletic department is one that has successful coaches and in turn can retain those coaches. There is no reason why that statement wouldn’t be true, but the majority of Eastern’s head coaches certainly aren’t Burke’s, so to speak. 

They are, say, former athletic director Richard McDuffie’s because he hired some of them. Like Sallee, for example, he was McDuffie’s guy because McDuffie hired him. McDuffie struck gold with that hire, but hires don’t work out all the time.

Burke may not have hired Bob Spoo, but he wasn’t shy in his final few years as a football coach saying Burke was the best athletic director he every worked for. 

This column might be four months late, but the idea hasn’t changed. Burke will have to live and die by the success of the coaches she hired for three of her top programs. 

She’ll have to prove that, even in his old age, Spoo wasn’t wrong, and that she is the best athletic director Spoo and many other coaches have ever had. 

Alex McNamee can be 

reached at 581-2812 

or admcnamee@eiu.edu