A couple of former Michigan State athletic directors apparently got new jobs this month.
The most public was obviously J Batt who decided to up and leave Michigan State for the vacant athletic directors job at Kentucky but the other one flew under the radar a bit.
Lost in the shuffle of the offseason, former Michigan State AD Alan Haller accepted an interesting new job with the NFL, according to Matt Wenzel of MLive. He’s reportedly taking the NFL’s senior director of collegiate flag football development job. Yes, that’s a real thing.
While that may seem like a wild job, flag football is actually one of the fastest-growing sports in the world and the NFL invested $32 million on a professional league back in December, per Wenzel. It’s also being added to the Olympics in 2028, so this is actually a more important job than people realize. He’s going to be responsible for helping to grow a sport that’s going global.
Not a bad follow-up gig for the former Spartan athletic director.
Fans view Alan Haller’s legacy at Michigan State differently
Haller wasn’t the most outstanding athletic director that Michigan State ever had, but he got the athletic department through a tough transition.
Although he wasn’t responsible for hiring Mel Tucker, he made the difficult decision to fire him following an alleged scandal between the head football coach and Brenda Tracy. Unfortunately, his decision to replace Tucker with Jonathan Smith was one of his biggest downfalls. That unfortunately is his legacy to a lot of Spartan fans.
Well, that and not exactly killing the fundraising game.
While there were plenty of disappointments in the Haller era both with fundraising and a coaching hire that very clearly didn’t pan out, he also had some impressive accomplishments that often get overlooked. While I do agree that football should be a main priority, growing other programs can’t hurt the athletic department.
Haller was responsible for hiring women’s basketball coach Robyn Fralick, men’s tennis coach Harry Jadun, and hockey coach Adam Nightingale. All three of those coaches have turned their respective programs around, and with the exception of Jadun who left the college tennis coaching profession, they’re each building title contenders. Haller also helped usher in the Jeff Hosler era of women’s soccer even though he didn’t directly hire him.
Facility and stadium renovations, alcohol sales at games, and some really solid coaching hires for hockey, men’s tennis, and women’s basketball should be his legacy, but instead he’s remembered by many for poor fundraising and essentially killing the football program with a bad hire.
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