Former UC Davis athletic directors Teresa Gould and Kevin Blue face major challenges in new jobs
Gould tries to save the Pac-12 while Blue deals with Canada Soccer Olympic drone scandal
THERE'S ALWAYS A LOCAL ANGLE ... In March of this year two former UC Davis athletic directors assumed new top level positions in the world of sports.
Teresa Gould, who served as interim athletic director at UCD in 2015-16, became Commissioner of the Pac-12, tasked with putting back together a 108-year old conference that is down to just two teams, Oregon State and Washington State.
Blue, a native of Canada who succeeded Gould at UC Davis and served as Aggie AD through the end of 2020, was named as General Secretary and CEO of Canada Soccer after originally leaving UCD to become Chief Sport Officer at Golf Canada.
Both Gould and Blue have bright spotlights on themselves and enough on their plates to keep them occupied 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
Gould refers to Oregon State and Washington State as "America's teams," and told columnist John Canzano that in attempting to rebuild the Pac-12, "We'll continue to overturn every stone that we know of and try to create some stones we don't know of to figure out what scenarios are possible."
Already, the two schools plan to compete this academic year as independents in football and members of the West Coast Conference in men's and women's basketball. Oregon State has announced plans to compete as an independent in baseball.
In her brief tenure, Gould has already negotiated a Pac-12 television contract that assures both OSU and WSU will have national television exposure for all home and away football games this fall.
One thing Gould asks: please don't call her conference the Pac-2. She has plans to make that name obsolete.
Blue, unfortunately, has a mess on his hands, though not of his own making.
Shortly after Canada's Olympic women's soccer team arrived in Paris, Blue had to make the difficult but correct decision to send home head coach Bev Priestman and two assistants after a scandal involving the use of drones to spy on the practices of an opposing team.