Auburn goes Greene for new AD

AUBURN | University president Steven Leath told trusted advisors in December that he was more interested in strong candidates than familiar résumés during the school's search for a new athletic director.

The idea was that orthodoxy shouldn't hold anyone back.

In that vein, Auburn has hired Allen Greene to be its new athletic director. He grew up in Seattle, played baseball at Notre Dame and currently serves as the leader of University of Buffalo's athletics enterprise. Aside from a four-year stint in development at Ole Miss ending in 2012, Greene has no professional experience in the South.

"Allen kicks off the next exciting chapter for Auburn Athletics,” Auburn president Steven Leath said. “In our interviews and due diligence learning all we could about him, it became overwhelmingly clear that Allen has the right combination of leadership, enthusiasm, experience and management to lead Auburn Athletics to success well into the future.”

Greene knows sports.

He was drafted by the New York Yankees out of Notre Dame and spent four seasons as a minor-league outfielder. He then worked in compliance at Notre Dame before moving into fund-raising, which is where Kevin White, then Notre Dame's athletic director, identified him as an up-and-coming star in the business.

White, now the athletic director at Duke, helped Greene get a job in development at Ole Miss. Over the course of four years in Oxford, Greene was promoted twice. He left in 2012 as assistant athletic director in charge of development.

Greene left Ole Miss for Buffalo, largely because the Bulls had just hired White's son, Danny, as athletic director. Greene served as Danny White's top lieutenant until Danny White moved to UCF in 2015. Buffalo then promoted Greene into its top spot.

Less than three years later, he finds himself helming a storied, Southeastern Conference program.

"Serving Auburn University as Director of Athletics is a tremendous honor and an awesome responsibility," Greene said. "Time-honored traditions have helped create a culture of success at Auburn that is incredibly rare. Whether in the classroom or on the fields and courts of play, these lofty expectations are embraced, and I am eager to get to work for the Auburn Family."