In formal introduction, new WSU AD Jon Haarlow ready to lead Cougars into 'most important fall in the history of WSU athletics'

Apr. 20—PULLMAN — Before he started his day on Feb. 21 , Jon Haarlow had to head to the bookstore. He was in search of a crimson jersey, the kind that would fit in seamlessly at Washington State's Beasley Coliseum, where the Cougars were set to host conference power Saint Mary's later that evening .

At the time, Haarlow was WSU's interim athletic director, but he was ready to join the student section for that night's game. A few days prior, he delivered a speech in a management class. A group of students approached him afterward. He saw the same group of students a few days later in Spokane, where WSU fell to Gonzaga, and a few days after that, he used a mutual connection to learn they would be attending that night's game against Saint Mary's.

So when 7 p.m. rolled around and the Cougars tipped off against the Gaels, Haarlow found himself the middle of the student section, rocking a crimson jersey.

"I thought it created a little bit of emotion," Haarlow said. "We gotta win that student group back, which we've got some things moving forward on that. I take pride in being open and what that emotion is."

Almost two months later, Haarlow was formally introduced as WSU's 16th Athletic Director, elevating from the interim role with a news conference Monday at Gesa Field. Formerly the program's assistant vice president and senior deputy athletic director/chief operating officer, Haarlow sees that day — joining WSU students at a basketball game — as the type of leadership it will take to steer the Cougars forward to what he called "the most important fall in the history of WSU athletics," when the Cougs will begin competing in the reimagined Pac-12.

Haarlow, the second straight WSU Athletic Director to be elevated from the interim position, was hired using what university president Betsy Cantwell called "non-traditional due diligence." Instead of hiring a search firm, Cantwell relied on "number of consultants," she said, including presidents and athletic directors at other universities.

Cantwell, who said that required no financial commitment on WSU's part, seemed to indicate in a previous interview that the Cougars were considering hiring a trio of people to take on the athletic director role. On Monday, she clarified that was "conceptual," saying she always planned on the AD being one person.

Cantwell laid out her vision for the leadership of WSU's athletics programs as an athletic director, which is "an uber operational position. It's much more complicated than it was even when (previous AD) Pat Chun was here," Cantwell said.

"Then we need someone whose one job is revenue generation, not necessarily philanthropic, but ticket sales, concerts, all of the ways that you see out there others generating revenue. "Then the third leg is, if you look at — I'm gonna pick some of the most out there — Kentucky, which put all its athletics infrastructure in a separate organization, or Stanford and Maryland, which hired someone from private media to be a component of the team. I call that a dealmaker, someone who understands these kinds of really unusual deal structures that we're not used to, whether it's private money, whether it's putting conglomerates together."