Missouri overhauls athletics leadership with Maggard hire

Missouri athletics just turned over one of the most important chairs in the building. Deputy AD Marcy Girton, the department's chief operating officer and senior woman administrator, is retiring in mid-August after more than 3 years on the job and a career in college athletics that stretches back over 4 decades.

Pete Thamel

@PeteThamel

Industry news at Missouri: Deputy AD/COO/SWA Marcy Girton will retire in mid-August after more than three years of service to Mizzou Athletics and  career spanning more than four decades in college athletics.

Girton's résumé is the kind that gets a hire like this taken seriously across the industry. She's held COO titles at Auburn and South Carolina, worked as a football sport administrator at both Auburn and Texas A&M, and even stepped in as Missouri's interim athletic director during the school's 2024 leadership transition. She joined Mizzou in 2023 and, per the school, has overseen NIL and revenue-sharing rollout while serving as sport administrator for football and softball — arguably the two highest-stakes portfolios in the building right now.

Missouri isn't waiting around to fill the void. The school is bringing in Louisiana athletic director Bryan Maggard as the new deputy AD and COO, a move that also carries extra weight because Maggard was recently named to the College Football Playoff selection committee.

Pete Nakos

@PeteNakos

Missouri has hired Louisiana AD Bryan Maggard as deputy AD. Recently named to CFP selection committee.

Maggard isn't a total outsider walking into Columbia — he spent 22 years working in the Mizzou athletic department before leaving for Louisiana, most recently as an executive associate athletic director. He's spent since 2017 running Louisiana's program, a stretch that included 8 straight bowl trips, 5 Sun Belt championship game appearances and 2 conference titles, numbers that made him one of the more sought-after AD names in the country when his name started circulating for bigger jobs.

Pete Thamel

@PeteThamel

Missouri also is hiring Louisiana VP for Intercollegiate Athletics Dr. Bryan Maggard as Deputy Athletics Director/COO.

The timing matters. College athletics is mid-overhaul with revenue sharing, roster limits and NIL enforcement all still shaking out, and Missouri just handed the person managing that chaos day-to-day to someone who spent the last 9 years as a sitting AD and now also sits on the committee that picks the playoff field. That's a lot of institutional juice concentrated in one hire, and it signals Missouri wants continuity in football and basketball oversight rather than a learning curve.

What to watch next is how quickly Maggard's transition happens and whether Louisiana moves fast to name his replacement, since ADs walking mid-cycle tend to trigger a cascade of hires elsewhere. For Mizzou, the bigger question is whether this new front office pairing can keep pace with an SEC arms race that isn't slowing down for anybody's retirement party.