AD Bill Byrne will announce Retirement Today

Bill Byrne

As first reported yesterday on WTAW.com, the Bill Byrne era at Texas A&M will end today when he officially announces his retirement from the Athletics Directors’ job he’s held for nine and a half years.

 Byrne’s current contract runs to Aug. 31, 2013 but on Friday, the A&M Board of Regents gave school President R. Bowen Loftin authority to negotiate Byrne’s early departure and within hours of that, today’s  press announcement was planned for 12:30 p.m. at the Zone Club.

 The official media advisory went ut last eveing, after Byrne met with athletic staff members at the Lettermen’s Lounge at Kyle Field.

 Asked after the gathering for a comment, Byrne politely told reporters, “Good to see ya… See ya tomorrow… Thanks for coming out.”

 There was also no comment from long-time Associate AD John Thornton, who is expected to take over as interim Athletic Director.

 Loftin is out of the country at the A&M campus in Qutar, but will hold a teleconference with reporters at 2:30 this afternoon.

  Byrne was hired in December of 2002 as A&M’s ninth Director of Athletics and the department has experience vast athletic success in his tenure. In nearly a decade at A&M, the school has won 45 Big 12 Championships in 11 different sports, and 15 National titles combined in equestrian, track and field, women’s basketball and men’s golf.

 Prior to taking over at A&M, Byrne was AD at Nebraska for 10 years and before that at Oregon for eight years.

KZNE-1150 AM will broadcast Bill Byrne’s Retirement announcement live today at 12:30 p.m.

Short URL: http://wtaw.com/?p=42035

Posted by Tom Turbiville on May 8 2012. Filed under Sports. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry