Other articles by Greg Hansen:

Opinion by Greg Hansen : Beavers, armed with Pac-10's top player, will fire 'best shot' Opinion by Greg Hansen : Cats' success fails to fill seats, no butts about it Opinion by Greg Hansen : Cats testing fans' faith, loyalty early in season Opinion by Greg Hansen : 'Underdog' will often describe UA Opinion by Greg Hansen : Cats, Hoosiers on same path Opinion by Greg Hansen : Second half encouraging, but UA is long past moral-victory stage Opinion by Greg Hansen : Interim coach: a curse or a chance? Opinion by Greg Hansen : Ultracool atmosphere at UO fouled by some uncool fans Opinion by Greg Hansen : Film is Busch League work, and great Opinion by Greg Hansen : Dec. 30, 1998, is no longer 'last time'

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To revive the struggling athletic department at Washington, the Huskies last week hired a man whose career has been spent in politics, government, public relations and fundraising.

Shortly before that, the Oregon Ducks hired a zillionaire booster, a man who made a fortune buying and selling insurance companies.

The UW's Scott Woodward and Oregon's Pat Kilkenny are the Pac-10's newest athletic directors, two strangers who have almost no expertise in the art of college sports, two non-traditional ADs who, in a culture of followers, are apt to change the dynamics and direction of Pac-10 athletics.

If Woodward and Kilkenny do well — and they should because Oregon and Washington have fewer financial worries than most Pac-10 schools — you can book it that the next few ADs to be hired, possibly including the replacement for Arizona's Jim Livengood, will be from the finance sector.

"I suspect the presidents who made these hires have a different view of athletics than what we have known for the last 40 or 50 years," said Tucsonan Joe Kearney, a former commissioner of the WAC. "There seems to be a new breed of administrators in athletics: people from the corporate world, people with expertise in legal matters and fund-raising."

What does Joe Kearney know?

In his career as AD at Washington and Michigan State, Kearney hired coaches (football's Don James and basketball's Jud Heathcote) who won national championships.

Kearney's background? He was a high school coach who rose through the ranks in the UW athletic department.

A business executive dropped into high-velocity college sports is sure to lack the instincts that contemporary athletic directors have spent years developing. Livengood, for example, coached high school basketball, football and track before he was hired as an entry-level administrator at Washington State.

He was an equipment manager, a facilities coordinator and a father figure to hundreds of young athletes before he hired (or fired) a coach and raised a few bucks for dear, old Wazzu.

He has 25 years of networking within college sports, 25 years of developing relationships with student-athletes and working in their behalf, which may be some of the best and most significant work of his career.

Livengood and many ADs of his generation are hands-on, athletes-first administrators.

The hires of Woodward and Kilkenny accelerate the profit-driven motor of college sports. The goal seems to be building The Next Great Facility, not the welfare of 500 kids on scholarship.

Woodward has been hired to help raise $300 million to redo Husky Stadium and to restore the Huskies to football health. Kilkenny was hired because he was granted approval by Nike czar Phil Knight.

"I hope this isn't a trend,'' says ex-UA associate AD Bob Bockrath, former director of athletics at Alabama, Texas Tech and Cal. "I would hope that people in the system have an opportunity to be in that chair. They've spent their career preparing themselves for these opportunities.''

Now comes an insurance guy and a lobbyist.

"I can't understand today's tendency for athletic departments to hire people with corporate and legal backgrounds,'' says Bockrath. "I think you lose the camaraderie with the coaches and athletes when you do that. There are qualified people for these jobs everywhere in athletics. It's just a matter of going out and finding them.''

Unfortunately, the problems facing athletic directors are less and less institutionally specific. The need to raise more money for coaches' salaries and build bigger ballparks has become universal. It is likely to continue on an even more preposterous scale.

At Cal, for example, fifth-year AD Sandy Barbour has created a ticket plan that would essentially require Bear fans to take out a second mortgage to get the good seats.

In an attempt to raise $1 billion for its athletic department, Cal developed a system that could ask fans to buy a seat for 25 or 50 years, or for life, requiring $250,000 or more. The plan, called "Equity Seat Rights,'' is sure to trigger similar concepts at schools with a sizable network of wealthy boosters.

That would not go in Tucson or Corvallis, Ore., but it might fly in four or five Pac-10 cities, further separating the rich from the middle class and continuing the emphasis of money running college sports.

"In this job, you have to be external,'' Woodward told the Seattle Times last week. "You have to be a manager. You have to understand budgets. You have to understand complicated contracts. It's a different set of skills. … I've fought a lot of media as a political consultant. I've had a pretty broad and diverse education.''

Not a word about a baseball coach, the UW's star quarterback or a vow to get the Huskies to the Final Four.

Instead, it is about budgets and contracts and managing the media.

Give me an old high school coach such as Joe Kearney any day.