COLUMBIA, Mo. (AP) — Missouri is set to hire San Diego State athletic director Jim Sterk as its new AD.
San Diego State announced Monday night that Sterk had resigned after six years with the school and would take over at Missouri on Sept. 1. The school said it will launch a national search for a replacement.
The 60-year-old Sterk will replace Mack Rhoades, who recently left for Baylor.
Missouri's board of curators will meet Tuesday night, presumably to approve the hire. The meeting will include a closed executive session.
Sterk was recently honored as the AD of the year by National Association of College Director of Athletics and was selected to the Division I Men's Basketball Committee. He's in his seventh year at San Diego State and in that time 50 teams have advanced to NCAA tournament play.
"Jim has made extraordinary contributions to the success of SDSU's athletics teams," school president Elliott Hirshman said. "I am grateful to Jim and his family for their service to the university community and wish them great success in their new endeavor."
Missourinet.com was first to report the hire.
Sterk was previously athletic director at Washington State from 2000-10 and at Portland State from 1995-2000.
San Diego State hired Jenny Bramer as interim AD.
Since the beginning of the 2012-13 academic year, the Aztecs have won 32 team conference titles and the school's football and men's basketball programs have posted the third-highest combined winning percentage in the nation this decade.
Sterk has a reputation as a strong fund-raiser, building the scholarship fund to $5.6 million this year. In his first season, the school raised $2.6 million.
Missouri hired two interim ADs after Rhoades left on July 13. Sarah Reesman was appointed last week after Wren Baker took the AD job at North Texas.
Rhoades was at Missouri just 15 months before leaving for Baylor, where he'll start full-time on Aug. 15. Before that, he was AD for nearly six years at Houston.
Rhoades' brief tenure at Missouri was marked by campus strife over social issues. Racial tensions spilled over into the athletic department when the football team threatened to boycott a game in support of protesters demanding the resignation of then-president Tim Wolfe.
Former coach Gary Pinkel and Rhoades stood by players and both the president and school chancellor, R. Bowen Loftin, resigned.
Rhoades promoted defensive coordinator and former Missouri player Barry Odom to head coach after Pinkel resigned after disclosing he was fighting cancer.
