Michigan State athletic director Bill Beekman resigns; national replacement search coming

Michigan State’s athletic department is about to undergo another major shift.

Bill Beekman is resigning as athletic director but will remain in the post in an interim capacity as the school conducts a national search for his replacement, sources confirmed to the Free Press on Thursday afternoon.

A date for Beekman's departure has not been set, according to another source.

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Beekman's contract is worth $750,000 annually and runs through 2023. It has a provision that would allow him to be reassigned as “Vice President and Senior Consultant to the Offices of the Provost and the Executive Vice President for Administrative Services Finance.” It would be for the remainder of his five-year contract at a salary of $375,000, half of what he makes as athletic director.

Beekman, who had no experience in athletic administration, was appointed interim athletic director Feb. 5, 2018, by then-interim MSU president John Engler after Mark Hollis abruptly retired. Engler made Beekman permanent athletic director on July 16, 2018, after reneging on his January pledge to undertake a national search and “that no internal candidates will be considered in the search process.”

Handling the fallout of the Larry Nassar sexual assault scandal and an ESPN report detailing sexual assaults within the MSU football and men’s basketball program were immediate challenges for the novice athletic director.

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“There are changes, improvements, that we can always make. Every organization — mine, yours and everybody else’s — can make improvements,” Beekman said in July 2018. “And we need to do that, and we need to make sure that we’re prepared and have policies and procedures in place so that we can prevent things like this from happening ever again. ... And you have to think about it every day as you go through your day. That’s the culture piece.”

Those would the first of many dramatic situations Beekman faced in his short tenure.

An Okemos native and MSU alum, he was charged with replacing Dantonio after the Spartans’ all-time winningest football coach abruptly retired Feb. 4, 2020. Beekman’s initial target, Luke Fickell, withdrew his name from contention to remain at Cincinnati, and MSU quickly hired Tucker away from Colorado with a six-year, $5.5 million deal, eight days after Dantonio’s decision.

In October, Beekman announced MSU's men’s and women’s swimming and diving program would be terminated after the 2020-21 school year as part of budget tightening during the pandemic. The teams completed competition in March, but current swimmers and divers and program alums have continued to pressure Beekman and the MSU Board of Trustees to reinstate it in time for a 100th season.

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Beekman in May projected MSU’s athletic department budget would be operating at a $30 million deficit this fall, despite cutting $50 million during the 2020-21 school year. Prior to that, in February — along with with former Board of Trustee member Brian Mosallam — Beekman helped broker a massive $32 million donation from United Wholesale Mortgage owner Mat Ishbia, a former walk-on basketball player under coach Tom Izzo. That funding is expected to lead to the massive facilities upgrades, including a new football building.

Before his time as AD, Beekman served as vice president and secretary for the MSU Board of Trustees for a decade. The 1989 MSU graduate previously served as executive director of the MSU Alumni Association before that after being hired by his alma mater in 1995 as an administrator with the MSU Health Team. He also served as assistant dean for finance and planning in the College of Human Medicine from 1998-2004.

Beekman earned his law degree from Wayne State in 1993 and an MBA from Northwestern in 2004. His three-year tenure is the shortest by an MSU athletic director since Merrily Dean Baker from 1992-99.

Contact Chris Solari: csolari@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @chrissolari. Read more on the Michigan State Spartans and sign up for our Spartans newsletter.

MSU ADs through the years

Charles Bemies: 1899-1900

George Denham: 1901-1902

Chester Brewer: 1903-1910, 1917, 1919-1921

John Macklin: 1911-1915

George Gauthier: 1916, 1918

Albert Barron: 1922

Ralph Young: 1923-54

Clarence "Biggie" Munn: 1954-1972

J. Burt Smith: 1972-1975

John D. Shingleton: 1975-76

Joe Kearney: 1976-1980

Doug Weaver: 1980-1990

George Perles: 1990-1992

Merrily Dean Baker: 1992-1995

Merritt Norvell: 1995-1999

Clarence Underwood: 1999-2002

Ron Mason: 2002-2007

Mark Hollis: 2007-2018

Bill Beekman: 2018-2021

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Michigan State AD Bill Beekman resigns, national search coming