Kirby Hocutt’s ability to improve an athletic program began long before he became an administrator in intercollegiate athletics. As an All-Big Eight linebacker for Kansas State during the early 1990s, Hocutt helped turn around a Wildcats football program once dubbed by Sports Illustrated as “Futility U,” leading it to two bowl games in his last two seasons at the school.

Success didn’t end on the gridiron. It has followed Hocutt wherever he’s hung his cleats.

At the University of Oklahoma, where he served as associate athletics director for external operations and sports administration, Hocutt led the school’s athletics fundraising to an all-time high in annual giving and capital campaigns. And in his three years as athletic director at Ohio University, the school won 11 team championships and had four head coaches named Mid-American Conference Coaches of the Year.

Now Hocutt faces a new challenge. As the University of Miami’s new director of athletics, he will lead a program that is on a mission to drastically improve its facilities and infrastructure.

“Our vision is to become the premier intercollegiate athletics program in the country, and relentlessly, each and every day, we’re going to focus on just that,” Hocutt said at the press conference where he was introduced as UM’s new AD. “We’re going to strive for excellence in all of our endeavors—in the classroom most importantly, in competition, in this community, and in the way that we represent this great institution nationally. We’re not going to settle for anything else. And it’s going to start at the top with me.

“Obviously there are some important tasks that lie in front of us—the transition to Dolphin Stadium is a tremendous opportunity for this department, for this football program, and for this institution,” Hocutt continued. “And we’ve got to make that transition successful. The Sprint campaign is currently going on, and we’ve got to continue to move the bar forward.”

At 36 years old, Hocutt is one of the youngest athletic directors in Division I, and with his still youthful appearance, he could very easily be mistaken for a student on the Coral Gables campus. But his boyish looks belie his 17 years of experience in intercollegiate athletics.

“He has always impressed me with his extraordinary work ethic and dedication. I’m not surprised by his quick ascent in our profession,” says Oklahoma head football coach Bob Stoops, a former co-defensive coordinator at Kansas State who coached Hocutt.

“A phenomenal hire” is how Oklahoma athletic director Joe Castiglione, who mentored Hocutt, describes his hiring.

“He’s a young man obviously, but he’s also been through some very difficult times,” says Pat Richter, a former Wisconsin athletic director who served as a consultant in UM’s search for a new AD. “After you’ve had those questions thrown at you, everything else coming at you is a little bit simpler.”

“We think that he’s the perfect person for the job,” UM President Donna E. Shalala says of Hocutt. “He’s had experience in women’s sports. He knows Title IX thoroughly. He’s had experience in every aspect [of intercollegiate athletics], from ticket sales to customer relations to fundraising to the management of a complex athletic program.”

Hocutt grew up in Sherman, Texas, where he was an all-state high school football player. Scouts said he was too small to play major college football. But Hocutt never listened to the critics. In 1993 at Kansas State, the only Division I college football program that showed an interest in the 5-foot-10-inch linebacker, Hocutt led the then-Big Eight in tackles (135) and was named by the Sporting News as one of the top 20 underrated players in the nation. Says Hocutt, “I was determined not to let my size prevent me from accomplishing my dream.”

Hocutt replaces Paul Dee, M.Ed. ’73, J.D. ’77, who announced his retirement after 15 years as UM’s director of athletics.