IOWA CITY — Beth Goetz is here to stay.
Goetz, who has served as the University of Iowa’s interim athletics director since Aug. 1, has been named the university’s permanent athletics director, the UI announced in a news release on Thursday.
“Beth is a talented and dynamic leader, and the national search we conducted has substantiated that she is the best athletics director for the University of Iowa,” UI President Barbara Wilson said in the news release. “She has done a remarkable job as interim, and I am confident she will lead our athletics department and student-athletes to new levels of achievement both on the field of play and in the classroom.”
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Goetz first arrived at Iowa in September 2022 as the deputy athletics director. Eleven months later, she assumed the interim AD role following predecessor Gary Barta’s retirement.
Goetz — already with AD experience from her stints at Minnesota and Ball State — earned rave reviews during her first five-plus months as Iowa’s interim AD.
"Every coach is behind her 100 percent,“ said Lisa Bluder, Iowa’s head women’s basketball coach, at the Big Ten’s basketball media days before the 2023-24 season. ”She is an unbelievable team builder. She’s a great leader. … I just think if we don’t hire her, that would be really, really not a smart thing to do.“
Many of Goetz’s colleagues from past jobs have also gone out of their way to rave about her, including Boston Celtics team president Brad Stevens.
“I’ve told everybody that would listen everywhere she’s been and everybody I know that she’s one of the best administrators and leaders I’ve ever worked with,” said Stevens, who worked with her at Butler, in a phone call with The Gazette last year.
Goetz, 49, is now permanently in charge of a department that has seen unique longevity at the AD position. Barta’s tenure at Iowa lasted exactly 17 years, and Bob Bowlsby was at Iowa — first leading the men’s athletic department before the men’s and women’s departments merged in 2000 — for 15 years before that.
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Goetz’s base salary as interim athletics director was $650,000, which was the same as Barta’s base salary when he announced his retirement.
Thursday’s announcement concludes an official search process that began late last year.
The UI hired TurnkeyZRG to conduct the search and established a 10-person search committee, which included a mix of university and athletic department staff, one current athlete and major donor P. Sue Beckwith.
TurnkeyZRG has previously conducted several other high-profile searches in collegiate athletics, including for the NCAA president, Big 12 commissioner and ACC commissioner.
It is unclear how much the university spent on the search.
The UI’s contract with TurnkeyZRG, which The Gazette obtained last month via a public records request, says that the search firm will receive a fee that is a “percentage of the position’s first-year total cash target compensation.”
The contract did not indicate what that percentage is, however. The UI has not yet fulfilled a follow-up request for attached documents that might indicate the exact percentage and the request for proposals for search firms (or a waiver to bypass an RFP).
Beth Goetz named University of Iowa’s permanent AD, losing interim tag
Beth Goetz, who has served as the University of Iowa’s interim athletics director since Aug. 1, has been named the university’s permanent athletics director.
www.thegazette.com
