Bryan Blair ready to lead Syracuse into new era of college athletics

It’s been a hectic start to 2026 for Syracuse University and its athletic department. On Feb. 11, athletic director John Wildhack announced that he will retire in July. Then, less than a month later, Mike Haynie was announced as the next Chancellor of Syracuse University. Not to mention, men’s basketball head coach Adrian Autry was fired on March 11. 

Among the chaos, SU selected former University of Toledo athletic director Bryan Blair to succeed Wildhack and become the next leader of Syracuse University athletics. Blair was introduced and welcomed on Thursday morning as the twelfth-ever Syracuse University athletic director.

“I am so, so incredibly excited to be here today, be a part of this team, and lead us towards this next era,” Blair said Thursday morning.

Blair was selected by a search committee headed by Steve Ballentine, the chair of the board of trustees athletic committee. Ballentine said that the Syracuse community had a distinct vision of what they wanted to see in their next athletic director. 

“We had intensive conversations about what people wanted to see in our next director of athletics. The message we received was loud and clear,” Ballentine said. “A financially sophisticated AD, built for the modern NIL revenue sharing era, who can restore flagship competitiveness.” 

Blair checks all of those boxes. At Toledo, he set the standard for navigating NIL in the Mid-American Conference. Under his tenure, Toledo became the first MAC school with an NIL collective. Additionally, he raised fundraising at the school by more than 280%. The second largest financial gift in the University of Toledo history is attributed to him. At Syracuse, Blair knows that he’ll have to keep it up in order to compete with some of the more premier athletic departments in the country.

“We’re going to attack revenue generation. We’re going to attack NIL,” Blair said. “If we can’t win and be competitive, we can’t drive the commercial enterprise to feed this entire ecosystem.”

Blair knows a thing or two about being competitive. While he was at Toledo, the school was recognized as the MAC’s top athletics program for three consecutive years.

“Bryan Blair wins,” Chancellor-elect Mike Hainey said. “He delivered 16 conference championships (at Toledo) in less than 4 years, more than in the previous decade combined. From 2022 to 2024, Toledo led the nation in combined conference wins across football, men’s basketball, and women’s basketball.”

Outside of Toledo, Blair’s resume is stacked with experience and big names. He walked onto the football team at Wofford College and served as a captain his senior year. At the University of South Carolina, he earned a degree and worked alongside legendary women’s basketball coach Dawn Staley. At Rice University, he was an assistant athletic director and led the Owls to 16 C-USA titles. At Washington State, he helped recruit the current quarterback of the Tennessee Titans, Cam Ward. 

The Syracuse job will be Blair’s biggest task yet. In the midst of the ever-evolving, modern-day landscape of college athletics, taking over an ACC program has never been more challenging.

SU’s top two revenue-generating programs are in somewhat of a difficult spot. The men’s basketball team has missed the NCAA Tournament for five consecutive years, and the football team has won more than seven games only once since 2018. But Blair has a clear vision of bringing the Orange back to their glory days. 

“We want to wake this thing up and take control of our destiny, and make sure the world knows that Syracuse University is one of the top ten brands in all of college athletics, and that we’re here to stay,” Blair said. 

SU men’s soccer head coach Ian McIntyre was one of the seven people on the committee who helped identify Blair as a candidate for the job. He believes that Blair has all the right qualities to effectively lead Syracuse’s athletic department. 

“(He’s) sharp, energetic, passionate, and just a wonderful fit for us here at Syracuse University,” McIntyre said at Thursday’s event. “Bryan’s going to be a wonderful addition to a strong department. I think he’s going to support and challenge our programs, and I think our student athletes are going to love working within a department under his leadership.”

Blair assumes a massive responsibility almost immediately upon his appointment: selecting a new men’s basketball head coach. It’s a massive decision surrounding one of the most historic collegiate basketball programs in the country, and Blair told the media on Thursday that progress has been made. 

“I know the elephant in the room is the basketball search,” Blair said. “The reality is that process is well underway. We got a great pool of candidates, we’re really excited about the progress, and I think we’ll have something to share soon.”

No matter who is selected to be the next leader of the SU men’s basketball team, Blair has already figured out the formula for how he will achieve success as the leader of the Syracuse athletic department.  

“When you take people of high quality and integrity, you take the right culture, you add resources to the mix, and then you align it around a strategy, that’s how you get excellence,” Blair said. “That’s where records get broken. That’s where national championships are won. That’s where we reach our full potential as Syracuse Athletics.”