By Brett Hudson
Scott Wetherbee’s career in collegiate athletics has taken him from California to North Carolina to Mississippi, but home has always been his native Michigan.
Starting sometime this summer, Wetherbee’s career will take him home.
Wetherbee, Mississippi State’s Deputy Athletic Director, was introduced as Eastern Michigan’s new athletic director Tuesday. Wetherbee is EMU’s 14th athletic director and will replace Heather Lyke, who left after four years at EMU to become Pittsburgh’s athletic director.
Wetherbee credits Lyke for what he sees as a job that has gotten easier over recent years.
“Heather Lyke loves this place,” Wetherbee said in his introductory press conference. “She helped turn the corner, start to get a different belief and change the culture, and I just want to continue that.”
Wetherbee signed a five-year contract for $269,000 per year, with additional incentives for championship appearances, academics, attendance and other criteria.
The new job is a return home for the Kalamazoo native who was an all-state linebacker in high school. The state of Michigan and EMU’s conference, the Mid-American Conference, also gave Wetherbee his start in collegiate athletics.
His first job came as an intern in the ticket office at rival Western Michigan before a stint as a graduate assistant at conference foe Ball State. Jobs at Fresno State, San Diego State and East Carolina brought Wetherbee to MSU, where he was hired as the Senior Associate Athletic Director for External Affairs in 2013. Wetherbee held that position until June, when he was promoted to Deputy Athletic Director.
The promotion was not Wetherbee’s first experience that close to a sitting athletic director: he served as MSU’s interim athletic director in the two months between Scott Stricklin leaving for Florida and John Cohen being hired for the job.
Wetherbee thanked both Stricklin and Cohen for their roles in getting him this job.
“John Cohen has been so supportive. It’s not everyday you can go to your boss and say, ‘Hey I want another job,'” Wetherbee said.
Wetherbee takes over the athletic department in Ypsilanti with good timing, coming in after the football team made its first appearance in a bowl game since 1987 and five other teams won conference titles. Wetherbee’s football environment will be a drastically different one from MSU’s in the MAC’s dedication to midweek games in the month of November, all in the effort to get more television exposure.
EMU did not play a Saturday game in November last fall and will not play one this fall. There has been debate in the offseason as to if the television exposure of playing on a weekday is worth the uphill battle for attendance, but Wetherbee doesn’t see such a drawback.
“I’m really excited about the midweeks,” Wetherbee told The Dispatch. “I understand there’s challenges about that, but here at Eastern, we have a lot of commuters. We have a lot of people that come, stay Monday through Thursday and go home, plus I’ve got the big bully up the road where 100,000 people are going to football games on Saturdays.
“Tuesdays and Wednesdays, we need to make it an event. We need to make it something cool.”
Wetherbee recognizes continued winning will be what he is ultimately judged on, but in his introduction he set another standard.
“In everything we do, we’re going to focus on the student-athlete,” Wetherbee said. “In everything we do, we’re going to have integrity. In everything we do, we’re going to promote Eastern Michigan University — not athletics, the university.”
Wetherbee exclusively told The Dispatch, “Our brand is going to be great experiences. It’s going to be, ‘Man, what are they doing there? I want to go be a part of that.'”
Follow Dispatch sports writer Brett Hudson on Twitter @Brett_Hudson
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