UW News

September 17, 2008

Emmert picks Woodward as athletic director

News and Information

University of Washington President Mark A. Emmert announced today the appointment of Scott Woodward as Director of Intercollegiate Athletics. Woodward, the UW’s Vice President for External Relations since 2004, has been serving as interim athletic director since February. His appointment is effective immediately, subject to approval by the UW’s Board of Regents.

“The search committee and I looked all over the country for an athletic director,” said Emmert. “I concluded that we had the best person for the job already in place. Scott is a talented administrator who knows higher education and understands the place of intercollegiate athletics at a university like this. He is student-oriented and as his background in politics suggests, is highly competitive and puts a premium on winning. I have great confidence in his abilities and know he will provide excellent leadership for the department.”

Woodward worked with Emmert at Louisiana State University as director of external affairs in the Office of the Chancellor from 2000 to 2004. In that position, he acted as the liaison between the university and government and corporate officials and advised the chancellor on the implications of potential policy changes external to the university. He also served as the liaison from the Chancellor’s office to the LSU athletic department and helped Emmert oversee it.

While Emmert and Woodward were at LSU, the institution’s intercollegiate athletic teams won 10 NCAA national championships, including one in football in 2003. Woodward also experienced first-hand national championship caliber teams in baseball, basketball, and track and field. In addition, during that span the athletics program ranked among the top 11 in the nation three times in the annual NACDA Director’s Cup — a measurement of broad-based competitive athletics success — and claimed 11 CoSIDA Academic All-America selections.

“Scott has seen what it takes to compete at the highest levels and to do it the right way,” said Emmert. “He knows the kind of support coaches need and has the right values to provide the kind of leadership our athletic program requires.”

Woodward holds a bachelor’s degree in political science from LSU. In Louisiana, he served as a political consultant, a legislative liaison in the office of the governor, a lobbyist, and for eight years as a principal in his own government and public relations firm.

The University of Washington’s nationally-prominent department of intercollegiate athletics sponsors 23 highly-successful sports programs and is a Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS, formerly known as Division IA) member of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), the Pacific-10 Conference and the Mountain Pacific Sports Federation (MPSF). The Husky athletics program has ranked among the top 25 athletic programs nationally for the last eight years, in terms of athletic success, and its student-athletes graduate at the second-highest rate among public institutions on the West Coast. Washington football has appeared in 14 Rose Bowls, the second-most among Pac-10 institutions, and the UW athletics program recently featured 16 current and former athletes in the Beijing Olympic Games.