Kelly Lyell

kellylyell@coloradoan.com

Joe Parker has worked for some of the most-respected athletic directors in the country: DeLoss Dodds at the University of Texas, Bill Martin at Michigan, Joe Castiglione at Oklahoma and Jeff Long, now at Arkansas.

He learned from each of them the importance of listening carefully when others are speaking and formulating your own thoughts carefully before speaking up.

The former All-American swimmer at the University of Michigan tries not to make many waves while quietly and efficiently going about his business. With his white button-up shirts, conservative ties and a collection of CSU baseball caps he wears to protect his head from sunburns whenever he’s outside for long, he seamlessly blends into the crowd whenever he chooses to do so.

Parker, CSU’s athletic director for the past 13 months, in many ways, comes across as the antithesis of the man he replaced, Jack Graham, a bold and outspoken businessman and former Rams quarterback.

In his own way, Parker, 51, has been every bit as effective at raising the profile of Colorado State University athletics.

“It’s kind of like being led by a Zen master,” longtime volleyball coach Tom Hilbert said. “Joe Parker is just super mellow and quiet, but he’s always at work on a lot of different stuff. His personality does not lend itself to showing that, but he’s been very deliberate about how he wants to run the department and what he thinks the department should be about.”

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Graham, 63, now running for the U.S. Senate, was a lightning rod, drawing both praise and criticism for just about everything he did in his 32 months on the job.

He got the controversial on-campus stadium project off the ground, negotiated the contract that forced football coach Jim McElwain to pay a $7 million penalty when he left for Florida after just three seasons and hired basketball coaches Larry Eustachy and Ryun Williams, who have each guided their programs through the most successful stretches in school history.

As he set out to do when he was hired Dec. 1, 2011, Graham changed the way CSU athletics is viewed, within the department, across the university and throughout the country. But he also ruffled a lot of feathers along the way, a necessary side effect, Graham said, to the kind of wholesale culture change he brought about.

His management style, ultimately, led to him being fired Aug. 8, 2014.

After a long and deliberate national search while deputy AD John Morris oversaw the department, CSU President Tony Frank hired Parker to pick up where Graham left off.

And that’s precisely what Parker, married with two teen-age children and running an athletic department for the first time in his career, has done.

“I think Joe’s a great guy, and I respect the work that he’s doing,” Graham said.

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Parker has overseen a marketing team that has sold 80 percent of the premium seating available at the $220 million on-campus stadium set to open for the 2017 football season while already surpassing the projections for total year-one revenue from those sales. He’s secured home-and-home series in football with Oregon State in 2017 and 2020, Texas Tech in 2025 and 2026 and a guarantee game in 2019 at Arkansas, giving the Rams games at Southeastern Conference schools annually from 2017-2019. He helped set up men’s basketball games with Kansas State last year in Wichita, Kansas, and this year in Denver, and a home-and-home series with Arkansas during the 2017-18 and 2018-19 seasons.

CSU teams have won six Mountain West titles in Parker’s 13 months on the job, including a seventh consecutive title in women’s volleyball and third straight in women’s basketball. The Rams also have won back-to-back outdoor titles and one indoor title in women’s track and field and an outdoor title in men’s track and field during his brief tenure.

Under Parker’s leadership, CSU has received a record $30 million in donations earmarked for athletics in the past year, school officials reported earlier this month. That includes $20 million to name the field at the new stadium in honor of former football coach Sonny Lubick and $3.5 million from energy executive Michael Smith to go toward construction of the alumni center in the new stadium as part of an overall gift to the university of $13 million.

Those are the results Parker knows his job performance will ultimately be judged upon. He learned the value of teamwork early in life, he said, and he applies its principles to most everything he does.

“I don’t need to highlight the role that I play in any of the activities we’re doing,” Parker said. “There’s a lot of people that I rely on to get the work done. I’m ultimately going to be accountable for every aspect of our department.

“… It’s my responsibility to set the vision and make sure that we’re on that trajectory and keeping our focus where we need to.”

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Responsibility, accountability and vision were a big part of what Graham focused on, as well. He just approached it from the standpoint of a chief executive officer running his own large business, which is exactly what he had been doing before becoming CSU’s AD.

“I think people with different leadership styles can accomplish great things,” Frank said. “You see that all across society.

“… I think there are a lot of things in big organizations that are going on, that people are doing and working hard at and maybe not necessarily pushing out to the front of things. I think that’s more Joe’s style; he’s going to work more quietly.”

San Diego State AD Jim Sterk worked with both Graham and Parker on matters of importance to the Mountain West Conference, of which both CSU and San Diego State are members. Both men, he said, represented CSU effectively in their own unique ways.

Graham was “maybe over the top” sometimes in his approach, Sterk said.

“But I liked that he questioned a lot of things. He questioned why we were doing things, and I think that’s healthy in an organization to ask those kinds of questions.

“So he definitely contributed in his way, and I think Joe’s very effective in his way. … He’s thoughtful, and well respected, so when he does speak, people listen. … I sent a note to Tony Frank that he’s got a good one in Joe Parker.”

Follow reporter Kelly Lyell at twitter.com/KellyLyell and facebook.com/KellyLyell.news.

CSU athletic directors

Joe Parker, 2015-present

Jack Graham, 2011-14

Paul Kowalczyk, 2006-11

Mark Driscoll, 2003-06

Jeff Hathaway, 2001-03

Tim Weiser, 1997-2000

Tom Jurich, 1994-97

Corey Johnson, 1990-93

Oval Jaynes, 1986-91

Fum McGraw, 1976-86

Jack O'Leary, 1974-76

Perry Moore, 1968-74

Jim Williams, 1965-68

Bob Davis, 1953-65

Harry Hughes, 1911-53

George Cassidy, 1910-11

Claude Rothgeb, 1906-10

John McIntosh, 1904-05