J-School alum named UM athletic director

photo by Ryan Brennecke

J-School alum Jim O'Day practices new skills in his job as UM's athletic director.

By ANNE E. PETTINGER
J-School Web Reporter

A Journalism School alumnus who has been named athletic director at the University of Montana says that even as head of the athletic department, his journalism skills continue to serve him well.

“It’s a communications business,” Jim O’Day said. “And like in journalism, you’re never caught up.”

O’Day, who was named UM’s new athletic director in July after a nationwide search, replaces Don Read, who led the athletic department during the past year.

Prior to being named athletic director, O’Day’s career in the UM athletics department included stints as assistant director of the Grizzly Athletic Association and as director of development, a position that he held for about five years.

But O’Day’s ties to the University of Montana date back even further, to his own days as a student. A native of Cut Bank, O’Day enrolled at UM in 1975 and took a journalism course early in his college career. While he credits his interest in journalism to his parents, who owned a newspaper in Cut Bank, it was his professors in the School of Journalism who taught him the skills he needed to succeed in the profession. 

Good oral and written communication skills and the value of hard work were lessons drilled into the students over and over again, O’Day said.

Charlie Hood, Warren Brier, Jerry Holloron, Nathaniel Blumberg and Bob McGiffert were professors who pushed O’Day and others to succeed. “They were all so influential,” he said.

McGiffert, for example, was energetic and demanded precision.

“When class started at 8:10, it started at 8:10,” O’Day said of McGiffert’s classes. “If people came in at 8:12, he’d say, ‘Why are you late?’ ”

Holloron never gave A's because he said no one was perfect, O’Day recalled. And he would use lots of red ink grading papers. “To this day, whenever I see red ink I think of him,” O’Day said.

O’Day, who worked as sports editor at the Montana Kaimin, graduated in 1980 and then began his journalism career as a special assignment sports reporter at the Daily Interlake in Kalispell. After about three months, he was named sports editor. “I loved it,” he said.

He moved on to become owner and publisher of The Western Breeze in Cut Bank, his family’s newspaper, after his father died of cancer.

But O’Day wanted to return to Missoula. “My dream job was to be able to get back to the University,” he said. 

In 1998, O’Day sold the twice-weekly newspaper to his employees and moved back to Missoula to work for the Grizzly Scholarship Association. “I had been in journalism for almost 20 years, and I was ready to do something different,” he said.

He’s been with UM ever since, and in every job since leaving the newspaper business, he said, his journalism skills have served him well. Knowing how to communicate and understanding deadlines are essential in any job, he said.

UM President George Dennison, who selected O’Day for the position from a pool of five finalists, also points to O’Day’s personality as a reason for his success and called him outgoing, full of energy and willing to take on a task.

“On balance, he brought the most of what we needed to the University at this point,” Dennison said in an interview with the Montana Kaimin.

Upcoming projects O’Day will tackle include a new permanent basketball floor and a master plan for Washington-Grizzly Stadium. He also faces a continuing debt in the athletic department, although the department is ahead of schedule in its repayment plan.

While the job will be challenging and time-consuming, O’Day, who is married and has three sons, said he’s enjoying the work.

“If you believe in what you do, you don’t necessarily look at it as a job.”

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