Scott Stricklin meets UF football players Martez Ivey, right, and Fred Johnson on Tuesday afternoon. (Photo: Tim Casey/UAA Communications)
A Magnolia State View on Scott Stricklin To UF
Tuesday, September 27, 2016 | General
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Longtime Jackson (Miss.) Clarion-Ledger columnist Rick Cleveland weighs in on Stricklin's move from Mississippi State to UF.
By: Rick Cleveland, Special to FloridaGators.com
Rick Cleveland is a 10-time Mississippi Sportswriter of the Year and just recently learned that he will join his father, longtime Southern Miss sports information director Ace Cleveland, in the Mississippi Sports Hall of Fame. Cleveland was a writer and columnist for the Jackson Clarion-Ledger for more than four decades before retiring from the newspaper business four years ago. He recently came out of retirement to write full-time for Mississippi Today. FloridaGators.com asked him to write about UF's new athletic director, someone he knows very well.
JACKSON, Miss. — This is one column I never expected to write. Where Mississippi State is concerned, I thought Scott Stricklin was a lifer. I thought he eventually would retire, successfully, right there in Starkville.
Stricklin grew up an avid State fan here in Jackson. He worked his way through Dear Ol' State as a student assistant in the sports information department. That's where we met in the late 1980s when I would cover the Bulldogs in my then-job as sports editor and columnist of The Clarion-Ledger, the state's largest newspaper that circulated statewide back then.
I can't tell you that 25 years ago I had an inkling Stricklin would someday be the athletic director at Mississippi State, much less Florida. But I knew he would be successful at whatever he chose. He was intelligent, personable, thoughtful and worked his tail off at whatever his given task. Rick Cleveland
Bob Hartley, the late sports information director at State, was retired by then but still kept an office in the athletic department and was a fixture at athletic events. Once, Hartley and I were shooting the bull in the press box when Stricklin walked by.
"That boy has a lot on the ball," Hartley said. "He's headed for bigger and better things."
As usual, Hartley was correct.
Back then, Stricklin was 18 years old, going on 30, but could have passed for 14 or 15. Indeed, he still looks far younger than his 46 years.
Besides his sports information work, Stricklin also spent his first semester at State as a basketball manager for Richard Williams, who later, in 1996, guided the Bulldogs to the Final Four.
Said Williams, "I told Scott there wasn't much future in being a basketball manager. There was a future in that other job he had. He was too smart to do what I needed him to do. You could tell he was going places."
Williams could never have guessed how many places Stricklin would go. His career included stops in New Orleans and Tulane, Waco and Baylor, Auburn, Lexington and Kentucky before his return to State.
I asked Stricklin about all the moving when he was announced as Mississippi State's 15th athletic director on May 7, 2010, when he took over for Greg Byrne, who had moved on to Arizona.
At all those places, Stricklin said, "Everything I picked up and learned I always looked at through the prism of how can I one day go back to Mississippi State and use this information."
And that's why I never thought he would leave — that plus, he married the daughter of Bailey Howell, Mississippi State's all-time sports hero.
I figured Stricklin would have chances to leave, especially considering the remarkable job he has done. I just didn't think he would.
The accomplishments, including being selected as the Under Armour National Athletic Director of the Year, are unprecedented at State. Successes have come both on and off the field, in major sports and minor sports, and in men's sports and women's sports, in fundraising, in the classroom, in markedly improved facilities.
Start with 30-plus consecutive sellouts in a football stadium that has been enlarged and renovated under his watch. Add in five consecutive bowl games. The football success has dovetailed with a College World Series runner-up finish and now national prominence for the women's basketball program. Don't look now, but State's men's basketball will be much improved quickly under three-time NCAA Final Four coach Ben Howland, whom Stricklin hired in March of 2015.
And that brings us to the one question I had about Stricklin before he became athletic director at State. Would he be tough enough to make the hard decisions that come with the job, the hiring and the firing and the standing up to coaches who make decidedly more money than the athletic director? Stricklin is such a nice, personable guy, you just naturally questioned whether he possessed the backbone to fire a coach, his staff and (by extension) their families should the situation arise.
So I asked former State AD Greg Byrne that question before he left for the same position at Arizona.
"Scott isn't afraid to take a stand," Byrne answered. "I've depended on him for a lot of important decisions."
In March of 2015, before hiring Howland, Stricklin had to fire the personable Rick Ray, a man he had badly wanted to succeed, in order to hire Howland.
"You have to remember what your job is," Stricklin said. "You have to do what is best for the school."
That's what Stricklin always has done at State. That's what I expect he will do at Florida.
