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Tim House Leaving Michigan State to Become Old Dominion's AD

By JR·2 min read
Tim House Leaving Michigan State to Become Old Dominion's AD
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Tim House is finalizing a deal to become Old Dominion's next athletic director, less than a year after Michigan State hired him away from Purdue.

  1. Old Dominion has found its next athletic director, and it's a fundraising guy. Pete Thamel reported that ODU is finalizing a deal to hire Tim House, currently the president of Michigan State's Spartan Athletic Foundation, to run its athletic department. College AD first had House as the target.

    Pete Thamel
    Pete Thamel
    @PeteThamel

    Sources: ODU is finalizing a deal to hire Tim House, the President of Michigan State’s Spartan Atheltic Foundation, as the school's next athletic director. He’s a veteran fundraiser who has worked at Purdue, where he was deputy athletics director and led record breaking fund raising numbers. College AD first reported House as the target.

    Pete Thamel: Sources: ODU is finalizing a deal to hire Tim House, the President of Michigan State’s Spartan Atheltic Foundation, as t

    The timing is the wild part. House only got to East Lansing in November 2025, when Michigan State named him deputy AD for development and strategic initiatives after he left Purdue. Now, less than a year later, he's already jumping again — this time to run his own shop instead of raising money for someone else's.

    House built his name at Purdue, where he spent 7 years turning the John Purdue Club's annual fund from $6.75 million in 2018 into a record $13.5 million by the time he left. He also oversaw the largest single cash gift in Purdue Athletics history, a $20 million donation that helped push the program to $81 million raised in one year. That track record got him named the National Association of Athletic Development Directors' 2025 University Fundraiser of the Year.

    ODU has a real opening to fill. Longtime athletic director Wood Selig announced in December 2026 that he'll retire at the end of the year after 16 seasons running the department, and the school brought in an outside search firm to find his replacement. House, at 40-something and with zero prior AD experience, would be a bet on a fundraiser's ability to run the whole operation rather than a traditional administrator.

    For Michigan State, it's another name walking out the door. House becomes at least the third notable athletics staffer to leave MSU for a new gig in short order, following stints from other department leaders who've bolted for opportunities elsewhere. For Old Dominion, landing someone with House's donor rolodex — built across two Power 4 programs — is exactly the kind of hire a Group of 5 school makes when it wants to close the resource gap the old-fashioned way: by raising a lot more money.

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