NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Northern Iowa Athletic Director David Harris has been hired to take over Tulane’s athletic department, university president Michael A. Fitts announced Tuesday.
Harris, a native of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, was named Athletics Director of the Year by the National Association of Collegiate Directors of Athletics in 2021. He’ll officially take over in January for Troy Dannen, who left Tulane on Oct. 7 for a similar post at Washington.
Harris will take over an athletic program that is “at a high point in its long and storied history,” Fitts said.
Tulane had one of the best football seasons in program history a year ago, culminating with an American Athletic Conference championship and a victory over USC in the Cotton Bowl.
This season, Tulane’s football team is 10-1 and can clinch a spot in a second straight conference title game by beating visiting UTSA on Friday.
Harris said returning to his home state, and to the same region as his wife’s hometown of Natchez, Mississippi, helped draw him to the job.
Harris has been athletic director at UNI since 2016 and projects he has overseen there have included a major renovation of the UNI-Dome, construction of a softball hitting facility, outdoor tennis courts, a football team meeting room, an outdoor football practice field and the replacement of the playing surfaces for football as well as basketball and volleyball.
Harris also serves on NCAA committees attending to such matters as equity and diversity, and student-athlete transfers. He is a member of the NCAA’s Division I Council, the NCAA’s Council Coordination Committee and Chair of the NCAA’s Women’s Basketball Oversight Committee.
