Bryan Blair just got hired at Syracuse and already has one giant item on his to-do list: Hire the next men’s basketball coach.
Syracuse fired men’s basketball Adrian Autry this past Wednesday and announced Blair as its new athletic director Thursday. In an interview with ESPN on Friday, Blair said he understands the “magnitude of the moment” in getting this hire right.
“Anytime you’ve got to hire a coach, you’re going to feel that pressure,” Blair said. “You hire the individuals that dictate the experience of your student-athlete, and when you’re talking about a sport like Syracuse basketball, in many ways, dictates the image and the self-esteem of a department and sometimes an institution and a region.
“So, I understand the magnitude of the moment. But if you spend too much time thinking about that, versus focusing on the process and evaluating all the different pieces of the puzzle, you end up in a bad spot.”
Blair spent the past four seasons at Toledo, where his fundraising skills helped elevate the overall athletics department. Since 2022, he grew fundraising by 282% and built the MAC’s best NIL program. Syracuse will rely on those fundraising abilities — and his creative ideas when it comes to generating revenue — to get into a better spot financially.
At the top of the list are football and men’s basketball. Blair said he has already spoken with football coach Fran Brown and former Syracuse coach Jim Boeheim for input on what needs to be done to elevate both those programs.
Men’s basketball, with six Final Four appearances and one national championship, has struggled for relevancy over the past five seasons. Under Autry, who took over for the retiring Boeheim in 2023, Syracuse went 49-48. The Orange have not made the NCAA tournament since 2021 and have posted consecutive losing seasons for the first time since 1968-69.
“This is not a place where you pick and choose football or basketball. You need to do both. You need to do both at a high level,” Blair said. “Working with Fran and his team to understand what they need going forward, and how we can continue to build upon that football program and having those same conversations when we flip it to basketball.
“This is one of the best basketball programs in the entire nation. You need somebody that can adapt to not only what we have been, but also what we need to be going forward.”
