Joe Parker has been removed from , the university announced Monday afternoon.
“Over the last year, I have spent time assessing and evaluating our athletics program, and navigating the rapidly changing landscape will require a new style of leadership,” university president Amy Parsons said via a news release. “Joe and I have agreed that he will be stepping into another role.”
John Weber, executive director of The Green and Gold Guard, CSU’s NIL (name, image and likeness) collective, will take over as interim athletic director, Parsons announced, and has resigned his “Guard” position. The university said Parker will move to an “advisory” role. A timetable to select his permanent replacement has not been revealed by the university. When contacted by The Post, a spokeswoman deferred to the school’s news release.
Parker had been in the position since March 2015, when he was hired from Texas Tech, where he’d served as deputy athletic director.
He had more than three years remaining on a contract that ran through Dec. 31, 2027, a deal that reportedly included a base salary of $439,192 through the length of his most recent extension. A source said that compensation could be mitigated depending on when and if Parker leaves before the end of the aforementioned extension and what his next role would pay him.
Despite CSU’s success with men’s basketball, Olympic sports and with sponsorships, facilities, academics and fundraising, the former CSU athletic director’s hiring record had come under scrutiny in recent years.
While Niko Medved, whom Parker tapped in March 2018, has revived CSU men’s hoops, the decisions to go with Steve Addazio, then Jay Norvell to run the football program have led to disappointment on the field and, in the case of Addazio, internal and external investigations off it.
The Rams haven’t posted a winning record in football since 2017, which is also the year they’d last reached a bowl game.
Addazio, who was hired from Boston College and whose abrasiveness clashed with some longtime CSU staffers, posted a 4-12 record over 2020 and ’21. Norvell’s teams are 8-16 since 2022.
Football struggles have led to significant frustration among the CSU fan base, given the department’s investment into Canvas Stadium. The venue opened in August 2017 to rave reviews but with a reported $220 million price tag paid for by donations and bond sales. Parsons hinted that the sweeping impact of NIL, and NIL collectives, also played a role in her decision, that “the world of intercollegiate athletics is going through a time of unprecedent(ed) change and volatility.”
Division I athletics has seen a massive upheaval in the last four years through NIL, the transfer portal and realignment. The ripples have been felt especially hard west of the Mississippi River. “Raids” by the Big Ten and SEC on larger football brands led to two expansions of the Big 12 — whose latest includes the CU Buffs — and the decimation of the Pac-12. The latter recently parted ways its commissioner, George Kliavkoff, after everyone but Washington State and Oregon State opted to leave the conference after June 30. CSU and its Mountain West football peers will play the Cougars and Beavers in football as part of a schedule-sharing agreement for the orphaned Power 5 programs this fall.
CSU officials and surrogates have reportedly had conversations with the Big 12 during its various expansion processes, most publicly in 2016.
