Pitt chancellor: Multiple factors will play into a new contract for AD Heather Lyke

New University of Pittsburgh Chancellor Joan Gabel minced no words when it came to her assessment of Athletic Director Heather Lyke.

“Heather is without question one of the best athletic directors in the country,” Gabel recently told the Tribune-Review. “She’s been recognized as such (for) wins on the field and academic progress.”

Pitt has experienced an athletics transformation over the past decade, characterized by on-field success and facilities upgrades to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars.

Lyke has been at the center of it since 2017, when she was hired by Gabel’s predecessor, Patrick Gallagher, to become Pitt AD.

That is not lost on Gabel — who has been on the job only a little more than a month — nor is Lyke’s contract status. Lyke’s contract expires in 2024.

Gabel said a conversation at the appropriate stage of Lyke’s contract would be driven largely by a market evaluation of Pitt, and compensation of athletic directors generally and someone performing at Lyke’s level.

“If it comes to that, we would absolutely do a market assessment and see where Heather sits,” Gabel said.

Gallagher credited a change in culture with the athletic department’s successes, a change fueled by Lyke.

“She’s the one responsible for recruiting and hiring coaches, but she’s also responsible for supporting all of these programs and supporting our student-athletes,” Gallagher said. “It’s that expectation that we’re here to operate at the highest level — compete at the highest level — that comes from her.”

Pitt’s success has made Lyke an increasingly hot commodity. Her name has been linked to various athletic director jobs, from Ohio State to Michigan State to the University of Southern California.

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For her part, Lyke deflected the attention.

“There are thousands of decisions that are made every day. I’m not making all of those decisions,” she said. “You have to build a team. We share common vision. We’re committed to excellence. We’re going to build champions.”

“When people talk about what makes a difference here at Pitt and what matters, inevitably it is the people. You win with them.”

The Pitt Stadium question

In her interview with the Trib, Gabel touched on an array of topics related to the athletic department, including conference realignment and the possibility of an on-campus football stadium.

It’ll be 24 years in November that the last game was played at Pitt Stadium. And it seems that for most of that time, the question has been raised of if and when Pitt will ever again have a stadium in Oakland.

Gabel said “anything’s possible” but added that she is not yet in a position to fully assess that question, being so new to the job. She said it is a complicated question with implications for Pitt’s relationship with the city and the surrounding neighborhood.

“It’s a big change to bring that kind of traffic to a new location, whether it’s on campus or somewhere else in the city,” she said. “But I am absolutely open to the exploration and to the evaluation.

“I think we’re due for master planning. And so it’s probably time to certainly include that in the questions we would ask ourselves about the future of campus.”

The Petersen Events Center resides where Pitt Stadium did, and the university is in the midst of constructing the $240 million Victory Heights project on an adjacent plot. That is scheduled to open in 2025.

Conference realignment

Gabel called the latest tremors to strike conference realignment “unsettling” — including the near-collapse of the Pac-12 Conference and the growing positions of strength of the Big Ten, Big 12 and Southeastern conferences.

“You cheer for your team, but you also feel an identity with the conference that that team is in,” she said. “And so the idea that schools that you would identify as being in a certain conference, that they’re not in that conference anymore, or that that conference doesn’t exist anymore, is unsettling.”

Still, she said, Pitt is well positioned in the Atlantic Coast Conference. Specifically, she cited the ACC’s winning history, academic performance — “winning the right way,” Gabel said — national championships and NFL recruits.

“So there’s a lot of chaos going on and a lot of discussion about what-ifs. At the moment, they don’t directly affect Pitt. And they probably won’t,” Gabel said. “But we watch with interest.

“And I’m in the room ready to advocate for what’s best for this institution and what’s best for college sports in general, the student-athlete experience first and foremost and what’s best for them, and then also appreciating that being a Pitt Panther and cheering for the team is a very big part of the identity that people have with this institution.”

Staff writer Jerry DiPaola contributed.