Doug McNamee Introduced as Baylor’s New Athletic Director, Outlines Vision for the Future

WACO, Texas – Doug McNamee had finally carved out an hour to prep for an interview for his dream job.

Ever since he left Baylor’s athletic department in 2018 to become the President of Magnolia and, eventually, the President of Field & Stream — an outdoor lifestyle brand — McNamee’s goal for his professional journey had been to become Baylor University’s athletic director.

Now that the opportunity of a lifetime had presented itself, he didn’t want to waste it.

As McNamee sat down to rehearse his lines and talking points, he told himself, “You know what? I’ve had 27 years to prep for this conversation. There’s no prep needed.”

Instead, he visited his parents’ headstones at a local cemetery, both of whom had passed away within the last three years, to sit, reflect and relax his nerves ahead of his big interview.

“That peace and that calm and just the trust in God’s plan to walk into that conversation with the president and the committee gave me all the trust and the confidence that I need,” McNamee said.

He continued, “I walked out of the [interview], and I said, ‘May God’s will be done.’ I left it on the field. I believe strongly in my vision and what I can do for this university. But if there’s somebody better, all the trust in the world for President Livingstone and her decision and Baylor is in great hands.”

The rest is history, as they say, as news broke over the weekend that Baylor was finalizing a deal to make McNamee the 13th athletic director in program history.

“It’s too good a dream to be true, and it’s an honor of a lifetime,” McNamee said during his introductory press conference on Monday. “When I left Baylor seven years ago, I’d say the objective for my professional journey was always to get this job. The objective for me today isn’t to get this job. The objective is to be successful and to deliver the athletic department that the President and the Board of Regents have asked us to deliver, and I will give every ounce of energy to do so.”

As for what made McNamee, a 2003 Baylor graduate, the selection for the school’s next athletic director, President Linda Livingstone said his pre-existing ties to the university played a role but weren’t the determining factors, and that his overall vision made him the ideal hire.

“We were looking for as complete a package as we could find,” Livingstone said on Monday. “Everybody brings strengths to the table. Everybody brings things to the table where they need others to help support them and encourage them. For Doug, the fact that he is a Baylor person and has deep Baylor ties was a benefit. It certainly added to the equation and helped tip the scale, but overall, in a lot of other ways, he was our strongest candidate.”

Obviously, the biggest question about McNamee is the fact that he’s been away from college athletics for close to a decade. Will he be ready to jump back in and take the reins in the most tumultuous time in the history of college athletics? McNamee, however, believes that his time away from athletics in the business world gives him a unique perspective to help keep Baylor ready to compete at the top and to handle whatever changes may come its way.

“It wasn’t my job, but [college athletics] has remained my passion; I certainly monitored it closely, but the revenue component of college athletics has really been amplified over the last seven years,” McNamee said. “The last seven years have prepared me to tackle that well. There’s a lot of change, and it’s difficult to keep up with all the things that are happening, all the legislation and different conversations. I’ve been reading frequently, but I will tell you, as a department and university, we will be nimble. We’ll be ready. We’ll be at the forefront to adjust to whatever is necessary and put our university in the best possible position to be successful.”

One of the biggest benefits of hiring McNamee was his entrepreneurial mindset and the good relationships that he’s developed with Baylor’s biggest donors following his first stint in the athletic department, where he spent several years working in the Bear Foundation.

“Most of them know Doug from his previous time here, or his time in Waco, because he’s been here for so long; they’re unbelievably supportive and excited, and they want to help us to be successful,” Livingstone said when asked about the donors’ thoughts on hiring McNamee.

She later added, “I have no worries that our major donors will come alongside us, that new donors will come alongside us and others as well. This is going to take everybody all up and down that donor pipeline to help us in the new world that we’re in.”

Speaking of raising money, while McNamee didn’t have an opportunity to provide a plan for how Baylor expects to stay toward the top of the Name, Image and Likeness game, particularly in the Big 12, he acknowledged that Baylor needs to be a lot clearer in its communication of how raising money can help its various athletic programs moving forward.

“We need to tell what our purpose and our mission are; we need to tell our constituency how they can come alongside and help us — that’s an opportunity for us to improve,” he said. “There’s so much confusion, and I would say, buzz words around NIL and revenue [share], I think if we can tell that story well, and we show why it’s important for Baylor to be successful in college athletics, in this day and age, I am very confident and I’ve seen it happen before, we have a constituency and the fan base that will step up and we will be able to support our our teams and our student athletes at acceptable levels to be successful.”

As for other means of raising money, McNamee was asked about potentially allowing the sale of alcohol at McLane Stadium, to which he said, “I will defer to the President of the Board of Regents as far as that decision is concerned. I will certainly provide perspective, but I want to be respectful of that specific decision. I would tell you, in general, though, every rock is going to be flipped over to evaluate if there’s a revenue opportunity.”

As for McNamee’s next order of business, he wanted to stress the importance of making the fanbase feel seen and heard. Over the last decade-plus, there’s been a significant disconnect between Baylor’s athletic department and the fanbase, but those days are gone, according to McNamee, who stressed that he will work hard to earn their “trust and commitment.”

“I want to make sure that our fans know that I’m one of them, and that I’ve come from them, that we hear them, that we need them, and that we want them to come alongside us,” McNamee said. “The fans of Baylor University, whether that be individuals with names on buildings or in a casual way with a Wacoan that just happens to be interested in coming to a game, I want them to know that they’re welcome and they’re needed within our university and our athletic program.”

One of the reasons McNamee feels so passionate about Baylor’s opportunity to compete at the highest levels is that he sees the athletic program as a “front porch for the university” and believes Baylor has three distinct advantages: an ideal location where 80% of the state’s population is within a three-hour drive, support from every level within the school and the faith-based mission of the university.

“We have those three advantages that no one else can touch,” McNamee said. “From a faith perspective, at Baylor, you can’t accept or tolerate it; you have to embrace it and lean into it. It’s our most genuine, authentic competitive advantage that provides our student athletes an opportunity that can’t be matched, and gives our fans a mission to understand the importance of the university in terms of fulfilling our largest mission of spreading the Word.”

McNamee was also asked extensively about how he plans to evaluate head football coach Dave Aranda, who was unexpectedly retained after former athletic director Mack Rhoades stepped down in late November. That timeline proved too chaotic to hire both a new head football coach and an athletic director, according to Livingstone.

“We all collectively understand the importance of winning,” McNamee said. “That is very, very clear in the trajectory of the program. I’m anxious to get over there and better understand the culture, what’s working well and what needs to be improved. I’d say at this point, it would be premature to say anything beyond that, other than we’ve got to do better. We know the current state is unacceptable, and we’ve got to keep driving that bus forward, and we will.”

He also stated that he and Aranda have talked on the phone more than five times over the last 36 hours. McNamee mentioned how much joy he got from the goal-line stand in the Big 12 Championship in 2021 against Oklahoma State and beating Texas Tech last year in Lubbock, and how the Bears must find their way again, and that he’s willing to do whatever it takes for the football program to be successful.

“Dave and I both agreed that those really, really enjoyable moments, we need more of them — we haven’t had enough,” McNamee said. “He shared that. We’re in total alignment. We need more of those great moments. It’s been a tough road of late.”

Yesterday, it was revealed that Baylor, although it finished the year 5-7, had the opportunity to accept a bid to the Birmingham Bowl but quickly declined, citing that the program had already “progressed deeply into the offseason timeline of preparation for the 2026 season.”

McNamee, who technically wasn’t on the job yet, didn’t make the decision and Livingstone provided context, saying, “We felt like, given the season we had that was disappointing for all of us, the better use of our time and energy over the next two or three weeks was to focus on next year and prepare for the portal and make sure they were ready for the portal,” and also added, “We frankly didn’t earn the right to play in a bowl game given our outcome.”

While significant questions remain about the trajectory of Baylor football and the challenges ahead, McNamee’s introductory press conference provided a perfect breath of fresh air for the athletic department. Whether McNamee can translate that optimism into results will unfold over time, but for now, Baylor appears to have found a leader ready to reconnect, rebuild and push the program forward.