Syracuse and Toledo athletic director Bryan Blair have agreed to terms to make him the school’s next athletic director, sources told ESPN.
The deal is still subject to final board approval tomorrow, and is expected to be announced soon after that happens.
It’s the latest significant move for Syracuse, which in the last 10 days has named a new chancellor, Mike Haynie, and fired basketball coach Adrian Autry.
Blair has been the AD at Toledo since 2022. And he’ll face an important decision immediately upon starting at Syracuse, as he’s expected to lead the search to select Autry’s successor.
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He’ll replace the departing John Wildhack, who retired after 10 years and uneven results in the school’s major sports. Wildhack’s final major action as athletic director was the dismissal of Autry, which happened on Wednesday morning.
He inherits a basketball program that hasn’t reached the NCAA tournament in five seasons, with the last appearance coming in 2021. Syracuse’s football program won 10 games under Fran Brown in 2024 before slipping to 3-9 last year in the wake of an injury to quarterback Steve Angeli.
Blair brings a reputation as a fundraiser, a strong football background and comes from an athletic department that won 13 MAC championships in his tenure. Toledo was the first MAC school with a collective and has a full-time executive for NIL strategy.
Blair has worked in the athletic departments at Washington State, Rice and South Carolina in various roles prior to coming to Toledo. He holds a law degree from South Carolina and played football in college at Wofford.
