New director hired
to lead Grizzly athletics

The University of Montana hired one of its own in the search for a new athletic director.

Jim O’Day, 47, director of development for UM’s Intercollegiate Athletics, was named the new athletic director July 3 during a news conference in the Adams Center. O’Day will replace Don Read — the most successful coach in Griz football history — who led the athletic department during the past year.

“We have many challenges ahead, with many peaks and valleys, but together we can climb those mountains,” O’Day said. “Together we can make Grizzly athletics one step better than it is today.”

A search committee comprising community members and UM staff, faculty, students and administrators selected five finalists from a pool of more than 60 applicants.

The other finalists were Calli Sanders, senior associate athletic director at Iowa State; Tom Sadler, senior associate athletic director at the University of Hawaii; Mike Marlow, associate athletic director at the University of Oregon; and Tom Collins, senior associate athletic director at Arizona State University.

After reviewing recommendations from the search committee, UM President George Dennison made the final decision about which finalist to hire. “I talked to a lot of people on and off campus,” he said, “and Jim O’Day is who the institution and department needs at this time.”

O’Day is a native of Cut Bank. For the last five years he has been director of development for UM Intercollegiate Athletics, and he was assistant director of the Grizzly Athletic Association for two years before that. He received his undergraduate journalism degree from UM, where he was sports editor of the Montana Kaimin student newspaper.

As director of development, O’Day assisted the athletic director with developing and fulfilling short- and long-term private needs and goals. He coordinated the cultivation, solicitation and stewardship of major constituent donors for Grizzly athletics.

In addition, he served on the Executive Committee for UM Athletics, the Budget Development Committee and the Marketing Committee for Intercollegiate Athletics, among others. He also worked closely with the athletic director’s National Advisory Board for Grizzly Athletics and maintained a close working relationship with the Grizzly Scholarship Association.

Before working at UM, O’Day was the owner and publisher of The Western Breeze newspaper in Cut Bank. He started his newspaper career at the Daily Interlake in Kalispell as a reporter and sports editor.
O’Day and his wife, Kathy, have three sons.

Retiring director Don Read coached the Griz during 1986-95, amassing a career record of 85-36 and a Big Sky Conference mark of 54-22. He had 10 straight winning seasons, with 10 straight victories over cross-state rival Montana State University. The capstone of his UM career came when the Griz captured their first I-AA national championship in 1995. Read resigned from his head coaching job on April 15, 1996.

Read leaves a department that’s ahead of schedule in its plan to erase a $1 million deficit, and the state Board of Regents recently honored him with the title athletic director emeritus for intercollegiate athletics.