By DAVID DUPONT
BG Independent News
Bob Moosbrugger knew what he wanted in a career when he was a student at Bowling Green State University.
He wanted to be an athletic director. He wanted it so much that after two years playing baseball, and winning the award as the top freshman, he decided he needed to concentrate on his studies. He left the team.
On Tuesday, Moosbrugger became an athletic director, and he was returning to the Falcon roost to realize that goal.
BGSU President Mary Ellen Mazey introduced the 1994 graduate as the university’s new athletic director. He’ll start on July 18.
The announcement comes just five weeks after Chris Kingston announced he was leaving to go into the private sector.
“It was quick. It was fast,” Moosbrugger said. “It’s been a whirlwind tour.”
Mazey said that the search was conducted by Turnkey Search. She said she learned that when an athletic director position opens up, a lot of people are interested.
That one of those was a BGSU graduate was a plus. “It’s always great to bring a Falcon home and into the Falcon family.”
Mazey noted as a former athlete, Moosbrugger “knows that role of student athlete and how important that is to this university. … I was impressed by his passion for his alma mater.”
She said at previous institutions, she has worked with athletic directors who were graduates of those schools and found them to be effective at working with the entire university community from students to alumni. “They were very, very good fundraisers.”
“It’s truly a great day to be a Falcon,” Moosbrugger told those gathered for the press conference in the Stroh Center. “I’m coming home.”
Moosbrugger, a Celina High School graduate, has been the assistant director of athletics/chief operating officer at San Diego State. He rose to that position having started there in 2000 as the assistant director for the Aztec Athletic Foundation.
He emphasized that the story BGSU has to tell goes beyond wins and losses. “We have great student athletes who are developing academically and socially.” He noted that BGSU student athletes have an average GPA of 3.2.
BGSU, though, is not alone in having student athletes, or even coaches, whose story gets told in the pages of the police blotter. “It happens everywhere,” he said.
Still “we have to represent Bowling Green State University in a first class way from the athletic director to the head coaches to the student athletes,” he said. “You’ll have to be held accountable for your actions.”
He added, “with social media, you’re under a microscope.”
Every university wants to recruit athletes, coaches and administrators “of high character.”
“If you’re going to be disciplined in life, you’ll be disciplined on the playing fields,” he said.
In a time when increasing attention in placed on the dangers of concussions, especially in football, Moosbrugger said, “the health and well-being of our student athletes are paramount.”
Moosbrugger said he and his family – his wife, Esther, and their two sons, Andrew and Vincent – will be settling in Bowling Green. “You want to be entrenched in the community you work in.”
And that’s his “preference” for his staff in town, though “everybody’s personal situation is different.”
Before he settles in, he has some miles to travel. He said he’ll be taking his 72-year-old mother on a two-week trip back to her native Philippines. He’ll have his 10-year-old son along. “Pray for me.”
