Dr. Wood was hired on October 23rd, 2020. So let’s look at the past three years, the results on and off the field and assess his performance as Athletic Director
latechsports.com
Positives:
Baseball is the only specific thing that one can comfortably say has improved during his tenure. All other sports are worse, budget hasn’t improved, fan support is in the toilet, and while Dr Wood has done a good job communicating a vision, it’s been three years and none of that vision has been actually, physically implemented. Rather, the vast majority of his scope is demonstrably worse than it was in October 2020.
What do we think? How are we feeling about the next 3 years under Dr. Wood’s leadership, based on what we’ve seen for the first 3?
Dr. Eric A. Wood - Vice President & Director of Athletics - Staff Directory - LA Tech Athletics
Culture. Class. Competitive Excellence. Those are the pillars that Dr. Eric A. Wood has embraced and vocalized since stepping foot on the Louisiana Tech University
latechsports.com
Positives:
- Baseball – 2021 C-USA West Division champions and 2022 C-USA Tournament champions
- Softball – 2022 C-USA Regular Season champions
- Women’s Basketball – 2022 C-USA West Division champions
- Men’s Basketball – 2021 C-USA West Division champions
- 987 single-year APR average and 981 multi-year APR average
- 230 student-athletes named to the C-USA Commissioner’s Honor Roll (2021-22)
- 75 student-athletes receiving the C-USA Commissioner’s Academic Medal (2021-22)
- 8 programs recording a perfect 1,000 single-year APR score (2021-22 and 2020-21)
- Launch of the Aillet Society
- Baseball has become a successful program with high fan interest
- Good communicator and public speaker
- Arguably an all time low in fan interest in football.
- Arguably the worst 3 year stretch in football program history. The downturn of the program almost exactly aligns with Dr. Wood’s hire date.
- Failed student vote on athletics fee, that was horribly and laughably botched in its execution in every facet.
- Passed up in conference realignment. Largely out of his control, so not docking him too much here.
- Made a horrendous football coach hire, parading an “air raid” hire that even us as fans at the time could clearly see was not not the case
- Repeated broken equipment, streams, typo’d social media posts and other small embarrassments. File these under a lack of quality control or care about the little things
- Fired successful coaches (soccer) and replaced them with clearly worse options
- No full COA. No NIL foundation.
- No notable, non-tornado-related facility improvements. Some slated for 2024.
Baseball is the only specific thing that one can comfortably say has improved during his tenure. All other sports are worse, budget hasn’t improved, fan support is in the toilet, and while Dr Wood has done a good job communicating a vision, it’s been three years and none of that vision has been actually, physically implemented. Rather, the vast majority of his scope is demonstrably worse than it was in October 2020.
What do we think? How are we feeling about the next 3 years under Dr. Wood’s leadership, based on what we’ve seen for the first 3?
