Oliver Luck Is Not a Candidate for the University of Houston Athletic Director Job — A PaperCity Exclusive

With the University of Houston athletic director search in its fifth week, one thing has become clear. Oliver Luck is not interested in the job and has never been a candidate to replace Chris Pezman as the Big 12 school’s new AD.

“As much as I admire the work that Pres. Khator and Chair Fertitta have done at UH, I am not a candidate to replace Chris,” Luck texted PaperCity in a response to a question about the Houston AD opening and search.

This will no doubt disappoint University of Houston fans who admire the work Luck did as the former transformational athletic director at West Virginia (his alma mater), the former head of the Houston Sports Authority (overseeing the development and opening of NRG Stadium and the Toyota Center) and the first president and general manager of the Houston Dynamo, which won two championships under his watch. It also contradicts a Houston Chronicle report that cited Luck as a “name to watch” in the AD search, a report which then got picked up nationally and spread by outlets such as Sports Illustrated and MSN.

Now Luck is making it clear he’s not involved with the UH opening while praising the work Chancellor Renu Khator and UH Chairman of the Board of Regents Tilman Fertitta have done as Houston enters its second year in the Big 12 looking for a new leader for its athletic department.

Luck is currently the chairman of Altius Sports Partners, which helps college athletic programs with Name Image and Likeness strategies and solutions, giving Luck the type of national reach and impact he’s often had in the sports world. Altius is currently working with more than 40 universities, including athletic powerhouses such as the University of Michigan, the University of Tennessee, the University of Texas, the University of North Carolina, Duke University, the University of Kansas and LSU.

The former Houston Oilers quarterback has been tied to the Bayou City since the Oilers selected him in the second round of the 1982 NFL Draft. He and his wife Kathy’s four kids partly grew up in Houston with his son Andrew Luck famously attending Stratford High School before going on to Stanford and the Indianapolis Colts.

But another Houston reunion — at least not for this UH athletic director opening — is not in the cards.

“As much as I admire the work that Pres. Khator and Chair Fertitta have done at UH, I am not a candidate to replace Chris (Pezman).” — Oliver Luck

Chris Pezman was fired as University of Houston’s athletic director on June 20, something of an unusual time of year to let an athletic director go. Since then, the city of Houston got hit by Hurricane Beryl and somehow became crippled by CenterPoint’s inability to restore power quickly, which slowed down the search. But UH has cast a wide net, looking at both current athletic directors at other schools and nontraditional candidates with sports and entertainment backgrounds but not necessarily prior college athletics experience. Khator and Fertitta will not rush the search to have a new athletic director in place by a particular date and are “determined to get it right,” a source close to UH leadership tells PaperCity.

“This may be the most important hire of (Renu Khator’s) tenure,” University of Houston basketball coach Kelvin Sampson said the week after the Pezman dismissal. “I think there’s a whole new frontier out there for us to explore. We need Lewis and Clark.

“We need somebody to go where we haven’t been. We need to explore. We need new ideas.”

The 64-year-0ld Oliver Luck will not be bringing those ideas, but he wishes the biggest university in one of his near second hometowns nothing but the best.

Besides its hard-earned major power conference status (with Fertitta playing a huge role in making sure Houston got into the Big 12), the UH athletic director job is a highly attractive opening for a number of reasons. One of the best basketball programs in the entire country is already in place and rolling under Kelvin Sampson, with a clear continuation succession plan setup with UH assistant coach Kellen Sampson. New football coach Willie Fritz is already building enthusiasm with a major overhaul of that program. And all the resources and  advantages of being in Houston, the fourth largest city in America, are available for the new athletic director to take advantage of.

The job does come with some serious challenges, including the fact that Houston will not get a full share of the Big 12 revenue until 2025-26, and is not currently spending at the level of many of its conference competitors.