Stanford’s next athletic director will be former Nike CEO and PayPal chairman John Donahoe, two sources briefed on the decision told The Athletic on Thursday night.
The school had been without a permanent AD since February, when Bernard Muir was forced out after 13 years on the job. Alden Mitchell has been serving as interim athletic director.
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As part of the regime change, Stanford football general manager Andrew Luck, who was hired by president Jon Levin last November and has been reporting directly to Levin, will now report to Donahoe.
ESPN first reported Donahoe’s hiring.
Donahoe, a 65-year-old who holds an MBA from Stanford, played basketball at Dartmouth from 1978-82 but has never worked in college athletics. He was CEO of Nike during a turbulent period from 2020-24, when shoe sales dropped, the company’s stock declined and it went through multiple rounds of layoffs. Nike announced his retirement from that role last September.
Donahoe previously served as president and CEO of Bain Consulting and was CEO of eBay from 2008-15. He was also the chairman of the board of PayPal for nine years before resigning from that position in July 2024.
He arrives at Stanford during a time of considerable change with its athletics, which has struggled at times to adapt to the landscape of NIL and the transfer portal. The football team has gone 3-9 each of the last four seasons, the first two under longtime coach David Shaw and the last two under Troy Taylor. Luck fired Taylor in March following an ESPN story about two investigations into his workplace conduct and hired former Indianapolis Colts head coach Frank Reich as the Cardinal’s interim coach in 2025.
Donahoe will presumably play a role in hiring the next coach after this season, along with Luck.
(Photo: Kevin Dietsch / Getty Images)
This news was originally published on this post .
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