TCU has found its new athletic director, as the school is expected to hire Army AD Mike Buddie in the upcoming days, sources told ESPN on Tuesday.
The school has begun to inform key stakeholders of the hire, sources told ESPN.
Buddie, who has been at Army since 2019, heads to TCU in the wake of one of the Black Knights’ most successful football seasons in modern history. Army, with 12 wins in football for the first time in school history, won the American Athletic Conference in its first year in the league.
Buddie, 54, led Army from independence in football into the AAC during his tenure, bringing a league affiliation while still allowing the Black Knights to compete for the Commander-in-Chief’s Trophy.
At TCU, he’ll replace Jeremiah Donati, who left for the athletic director job at South Carolina in early December. Buddie takes over an athletic department where the football program is coming off a 9-4 season and played for the national title after the 2022 season.
In the reconfigured Big 12, TCU looms as one of the league’s top jobs. The athletic department has established coaches in Sonny Dykes in football and Jamie Dixon in men’s basketball.
Buddie brings extensive experience as a fundraiser, as he oversaw multiple key fundraising efforts at West Point.
Prior to his time at Army, Buddie worked as the athletic director at Furman. Before that, he worked in the athletic department at his alma mater, Wake Forest, for nearly a decade.
Buddie is a former Major League Baseball pitcher. He won a World Series with the New York Yankees in 1998 and also pitched for the Milwaukee Brewers.
