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UPDATE: This story was updated at 1:53 p.m. on April 30, 2026.

When John Wildhack arrived at Syracuse in 2016, the school’s athletic department was in a difficult era.

Former director of athletics Mark Coyle had suddenly left for Minnesota after just 11 months at Syracuse. Wildhack stepped in with no prior athletic administration experience and inherited major SU programs all in different phases.

Syracuse’s basketball programs were near the peak of their powers, with the men’s team coming off a miraculous Final Four run as a No. 10 seed in the NCAA Tournament. The women’s team made its first-ever national championship game in 2016 before falling to UConn.

SU’s football team, meanwhile, hadn’t had a winning season in two years and was consistently a doormat in the Atlantic Coast Conference. It was Wildhack’s job to rebuild the flailing programs while continuing the successful reign of others.

Ten years later, Wildhack’s era is almost over. He announced his retirement on July 1, making way for incoming director of athletics Bryan Blair.

The Daily Orange has broken down the numbers defining Wildhack’s tenure as Syracuse’s athletic director:

1 NCAA, 7 ACC titles

Any athletic director’s tenure is defined by the number of championships they bring to campus. Under Wildhack’s leadership, SU won one NCAA title and seven ACC Tournament Championships, spread across five teams.

Helmed by head coach Ian McIntyre, Syracuse men’s soccer brought home the lone national championship in its miracle 2022 campaign. The Orange entered the season unranked but rattled off a 12-2-3 regular-season record. SU won the ACC Tournament before collecting three NCAA Tournament victories to reach the program’s second College Cup.

The Orange defeated Creighton 3-2 in the semifinal before beating Indiana on penalties to win their first-ever national title and Wildhack’s first as Syracuse’s director of athletics.

Syracuse men’s soccer players run on the field in celebration after a win at the 2022 College Cup. The soccer program’s 2022 national title was SU’s lone NCAA championship during John Wildhack’s tenure as director of athletics. Meghan Hendricks | Daily Orange File Photo

Before that title, though, SU’s success during Wildhack’s tenure mostly came in smaller sports. His first four conference tournament championships were in men’s cross country, as the Orange won the ACC Championships in 2016, 2017, 2018 and 2019.

SU men’s soccer’s 2022 ACC Championship was the next before Syracuse women’s rowing took the conference title in 2024. Its men’s lacrosse squad was the first of the program’s five major sports to claim a conference tournament title under Wildhack when it won the ACC Tournament last May.

The men’s soccer national title was an accomplishment few athletic directors across the nation have on their resumes. But in Wildhack’s tenure, Syracuse never won a conference tournament in football or men’s and women’s basketball. In fact, the men’s basketball program regressed significantly from being a Big East powerhouse in the early 2010s.

And while Wildhack departs with a few ACC titles under his belt, it seems SU’s two most notorious teams are stuck in rebuilding stages again.

14 coaches hired

Across his time at SU, Wildhack navigated coaching changes for nearly every sport. Thirteen of 16, to be exact, including 14 separate hires.

One of his best hires was Fran Brown. Wildhack arrived at Syracuse in the first year of Dino Babers’ eight seasons leading SU football, though Coyle hired him. With Babers, the Orange dwindled into irrelevancy. Wildhack finally pulled the plug on Babers’ tenure in 2023, replacing him with Brown, Georgia’s former defensive backs coach. Wildhack was vindicated instantly, as SU went 10-3 in Brown’s debut campaign for its most wins since 2018.

On the hardwood, Wildhack handled Jim Boeheim’s abrupt retirement, choosing an in-house candidate in Adrian Autry. Autry’s three-year tenure was a mess, and one of Wildhack’s last decisions at SU was firing him in March. Longtime women’s coach Quentin Hillsman resigned in 2021, presenting an equally challenging scenario. Vonn Read filled in for a year before Wildhack hired Felisha Legette-Jack in 2022, who’s seamlessly maintained the standard Hillsman set.

Recently, Syracuse’s premier sport has been lacrosse. Wildhack’s decisions have played a factor in that success. When John Desko retired in 2021, Wildhack moved program legend Gary Gait from leading the women’s team to the men’s squad. For the women, Wildhack turned to Kayla Treanor before finding Regy Thorpe when Treanor unexpectedly bolted to Penn State last spring.

Among other hires, Wildhack notably chose Shannon Doepking to lead the softball program in 2018, Nicky Thrasher Adams for women’s soccer in 2019, Bakeer Ganesharatnam for volleyball in 2022 and Lynn Farquhar for field hockey in 2023.

The only current coaches Wildhack didn’t hire are men’s soccer’s McIntyre — who’s made the program one of the most revered in college soccer over 16 years — men’s rowing’s Dave Reischman and tennis’ Younes Limam.

4 lacrosse, basketball Final Fours

This statistic is a bit deceiving. Syracuse’s basketball and lacrosse teams made four Final Fours in Wildhack’s tenure. Three of those came from SU women’s lacrosse, while the fourth was men’s lacrosse’s appearance last year.

From 2021-24 — Gait’s final year and Treanor’s first three helming Syracuse women’s lacrosse — the Orange made the Final Four in all but one season. In 2021, SU beat No. 2 Northwestern to advance to the national title game, where it lost to Boston College. The Orange’s 2023 and 2024 runs ended against BC again — albeit one round earlier. In all, SU made every women’s lacrosse NCAA Tournament in Wildhack’s tenure.

But the same can’t be said for the men’s program. It took until 2025 to reach the Final Four under Wildhack. His choice to hire Gait spurred that turnaround. SU was dissected in a loss to Maryland, but that was the furthest it had advanced since 2013.

What about basketball? Nothing. Wildhack entered at maybe the best point Syracuse basketball has collectively seen with its dueling Final Four appearances.

Wildhack couldn’t maintain that momentum, and neither team has gotten close since. The men’s squad made the Sweet 16 in 2018 and 2021 — both times as a No. 11 seed with little chance to advance much further. Now, in Boeheim’s final two years and three with Autry, the program has nose-dived to unfamiliar depths, missing the last five tournaments.

SU’s women’s squad more consistently makes the big dance, but it hasn’t advanced past the second round since that 2016 run. Syracuse is often good but never great — a harsh reality under Wildhack.

29 first-round picks

Across Wildhack’s 10-year tenure, Syracuse had 29 players selected in the first round of professional drafts. As expected, though, lacrosse and soccer did most of the heavy lifting.

Syracuse had eight men’s lacrosse players selected in the first round of the Premier Lacrosse League and Major League Lacrosse drafts, most recently Joey Spallina and Michael Leo into the PLL this season. Nine SU women’s players were chosen in the first round across Athletes Unlimited and Women’s Lacrosse League drafts, including six since 2021.

Ten SU men’s soccer players have been selected in the first round of the Major League Soccer SuperDraft since 2016. Two of them — Tajon Buchanan and Miles Robinson — even evolved into international stars on some of the sport’s biggest stages. The Orange also had four MLS first-round picks since their title-winning 2022 campaign, most recently goalkeeper Tomas Hut.

In some of the bigger sports, though, Syracuse hasn’t been as prominent on draft night. The men’s and women’s basketball programs had just one first-round pick each, both in 2017 with Tyler Lydon and Brittney Sykes. The football program hasn’t had a first-round selection since Justin Pugh in 2013.

While there’s been some recent promise with talented recruits, Syracuse has struggled to keep many of its major pieces — like Donnie Freeman and Kamilla Cardoso, who both transferred out — in the name, image and likeness era. Time will tell if other young stars like Sadiq White, Kiyan Anthony, Calvin Russell and Uche Izoje can turn around the fortune during Blair’s tenure.

Syracuse football players pose after defeating Washington State in the 2024 Holiday Bowl. It capped a 10-3 campaign, one of the football program’s best seasons under John Wildhack. Leonardo Eriman | Daily Orange File Photo

2 bowl wins

As much as Syracuse’s basketball programs have disappointed across the last decade, its football team may have been worse.

In Babers’ eight years with the Orange, they earned just one bowl win — a 34-18 victory over West Virginia at the 2018 Camping World Bowl. But bookending that 10-3 campaign were five losing seasons.

Through it all, Wildhack stuck with Babers — even after two subpar years to start his tenure and a one-win 2020 season. Not axing Babers until 2023, when Syracuse legitimately resembled a middle school team, might’ve been Wildhack’s biggest mistake.

Brown seemingly restored the program in 2024. The Orange produced three ranked wins, capped by a stunning upset of No. 6 Miami in the regular-season finale. Then, Brown and quarterback Kyle McCord helped conquer Washington State in the Holiday Bowl.

Even though Brown captured that magic, he hasn’t proven it wasn’t a fluke. After all, the Orange stumbled to a 3-9 record in 2025 following Steve Angeli’s Achilles tear.

It can’t be understated how poor two bowl wins in 10 years are. One of Blair’s biggest tasks with Syracuse will be to truly prove SU football is the real deal.

CORRECTION: A previous version of this article stated that Syracuse’s two bowl wins in John Wildhack’s tenure was one of the worst marks among Power Four teams. Thirty-five percent of Power Four teams have two or fewer bowl wins in that span. The Daily Orange regrets this error.

Published on April 29, 2026 at 10:19 am