COLUMBIA, Mo. • Having attended more introductions of athletics directors and head coaches than the programs I’ve covered would have preferred to host, I can tell you there usually comes a point in most where a new hire does something, usually forced and often awkward, to attempt to show fans and media they are getting familiar with the place.
There was no need for Laird Veatch to reach into the bag of cheap tricks during Friday afternoon’s introduction.
Three of his four children were born here in Boone County and once donned Tiger onesies. Former Mizzou AD Joe Castiglione hired him to his first athletics department job at Mizzou. Former Mizzou AD Mike Alden mentored him, driving him and other members of the so-called “Alden’s Army†hard in order to test their commitment to this line of work. Late Mizzou legend John Kadlec and longtime equipment manager Bob Stanley poured into him.
One time, during the summer of 1997, while assigned the lowest-of-low Tiger Scholarship Fund duties of driving a stick-shift diesel truck hauling a trailer crammed with donated cattle that were destined to become steaks fed to Mizzou football players, he and fellow AD in training Ross Bjork, who is now leading Ohio State, scraped the Booneville bridge. Bjork, allegedly, nearly lost an arm. Good thing he didn’t, because the two still had to unload the cattle upon their arrival. There was slipping and sliding and, yes, a very bad smell.
“Not the ideal experience for a young fundraiser,†Veatch said with a smile. “But it is an example of what it was like in the old days. So, when any of my staff wants to question my work ethic, now they know the Mizzou meat story.â€
As Mizzou cycled through various short-timers at the athletics director position ever since Alden’s 17-year run ended in 2015, it became odd to observe Alden’s AD version of a coaching tree growing all over the country while Mizzou struggled to keep the same AD around for the amount of time it took incoming freshmen to become graduates.Ìý
“We believe this is a high-profile job,†president and MU chancellor Mun Choi said. “There’s so much momentum that we have. But we needed someone who is going to carry that momentum with us for the long term.â€
Veatch, 52, says he’s here from Memphis to change the turnstile trend, among other things.
Football, football, football is the primary focus of this athletics department for the foreseeable future, as broadcasted by the search committee and pinpointed by Veatch in his first few sentences. The Tigers are on a College Football Playoff mission. Everybody else, get on board or consider getting out.
Dollars, dollars, dollars will be another one. Raising a lot more of them. Reallocating some — maybe a lot — of them throughout the department’s budget once Veatch gets his hands on the books, hinted Choi. Maximizing the return on all of them, especially the ones sent the department’s way from the university side.
You know what would be a great help for both of those top-priority goals?
An AD who plants roots and nurtures them. One who excels at building and maintaining relationships with everyone from Mizzou's many campus decision makers to donors, current and potential. Someone who responds to hard times by looking for solutions here instead of opportunities elsewhere.
Veatch said all the right things Friday, no doubt.
But before we get too far into the latest homecoming celebration thrown on the campus that claims it invented the tradition back in 1911, this lifetime Mizzou follower feels an obligation to point out a couple things.
One, sometimes the play just doesn’t work.
Former men’s basketball coach Kim Anderson was a homecoming hire. Same for former football coach Barry Odom. Even Cuonzo Martin, the men’s basketball coach after Anderson, was presented with the homecoming angle due to his childhood in East St. Louis.
And two, a true Hollywood homecoming for Veatch would probably mean him being introduced as the AD at Kansas State instead of Mizzou.
The straight-shooting former Wildcats linebacker admitted Friday that he once thought that would indeed be his path. The native of Manhattan, Kansas, did pick Bill Snyder’s team over Bob Stull’s Tigers before becoming a team captain. And he did for a bit seem on track to captain the K-State athletics department years after his transition from player to future athletics director began at Mizzou. He climbed there from associate AD in charge of capital support to interim AD at Kansas State before Gene Taylor was hired instead.
Veatch can thank that twist for his SEC experience as a high-ranking athletics department staffer at Florida, which helped lead to his first shot at the big chair in Memphis, which led him back to Mizzou.
But not the first time around.
Veatch was the only one who brought it up Friday, but Mizzou passed on him for this last time. He was a candidate and believed to be a finalist before Choi and the previous AD search committee instead hired Desiree Reed-Francois from UNLV. She didn't last three years. Veatch kept plugging away at Memphis.
“He didn’t change in terms of his core values and his accomplishments,†Choi said. “But he’s had about two and a half, three more years of experience. And his ability to transform Memphis athletics, to be able to get a plan for a $220 million facility improvement, was something we saw as a very positive development. He’s still the very dedicated, committed individual. We’re happy he’s here.â€
(Don't forget that brand new $25 million name, image and likeness deal for Memphis with FedEx, too.)
Veatch isn’t the only one who’s changed.
Mizzou now has a surging football program, not a meandering one. It’s going all in on an Alabama model that suggests pushing the bulk of its chips into the middle of the football table can become a jackpot for all sports and the university as a whole.
“College athletics is changing,†Choi said. “Two and a half, three years ago, we didn’t have the incredible growth and NIL opportunities, as well as the competition from other universities in the SEC. We needed someone who is going to take us ahead of the curve, to think about what is coming down in college sports and preparing us as an institution to be best positioned to win.â€
Robin Wenneker, chair of the board of curators, took a lot of social-media heat after Reed-Francois bolted to Arizona due to a clashing of visions with university leadership and a disinterest in increased oversight from the board. Wenneker already has a nickname for VeatchÌý— "ADVeatch"Ìý— and is not being shy about her hopes for this hire, referring to it as a "momentum investment" in the forward progress Mizzou has developed and, "a signature moment in the history of Mizzou athletics." No pressure, right?
Veatch chuckled and shook his head when asked if he considered not chasing the Mizzou job after the Tigers prioritized someone else before. He jumped at the chance to make a run at the job again, this time with deeper front-line experience at a time where his fundraising prowess is in great demand. He found a familiar place that had new reasons to believe it’s going places, one yearning for a familiar face who sees Mizzou as a permanent stop instead of a stepping stone.
“Not everybody gets a second chance,†he said. “I’m happy I got one.â€
Homecoming has always been a bit of a funny term because many of the folks who look forward to it and revel in its pomp and circumstance didn’t grow up here or sometimes even near this campus. Instead they experienced something while here that made them feel at home. That’s what happened for Veatch, and that’s why after strengthening his credentials along the way it's not hard to see him as the right hire at the right time.Ìý
Now, he has to do something others since Alden could not or would not doÌý— stand the test of time.
“This,†Veatch said during Friday’s introduction, “is where we want to be. We have been ready for our forever home. We want to be a place where we can invest in lifelong friendships. This was always it, we just didn’t know. Just to be clear, there is no transfer portal for the Veatch family. We are committed. This is where it all started.â€
Hopefully, for Mizzou, this is where the AD turnstile spin ends.