Chairmanship was pinnacle for Princeton AD
By: Justin Feil
It’s been 40 years since Gary Walters concluded his senior year at Princeton University by helping the men’s basketball team achieve a Top 5 national ranking. That achievement came two years after playing in the Final Four.
Walters went on to coach collegiately. At 24, he was the youngest head coach in NCAA history at Middlebury in 1970. He moved up to coach at Union College, then at Dartmouth and then Providence.
After a stint in the business world, he returned to basketball and the sports world when he became athletics director at Princeton University in 1994. There, he heads one of the largest athletic programs in the country, which includes the signature Princeton basketball program.
All of those experiences have been rewarding, but nothing can top Walters serving at chairman of the NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Committee.
"The last four weeks have been a whir," Walters said. Though his term does not officially end until Sept. 1, and there is still a summer meeting in late June, the conclusion of the NCAA Tournament last week brings Walters’ main duties as chairman to a close.
"From a professional standpoint," he said, "this was the epitome, both in terms of overall responsibility as well as publicly representing the NCAA and the committee on a national level. Having now gotten through it, I feel gratified about having done it. More so, I feel I’ve learned a lot in the process and I grew a lot as a person and an administrator because you’re exposed to so many qualified and competent people."
Walters returned to Princeton last week to put his lessons to work. He had managed to juggle his duties with the Tiger athletic programs with his responsibilities to the NCAA committee.
"The university was very accommodating for me," Walters said. "I had discussions with the administration about the tremendous responsibility that I had as chair of the NCAA committee, which is responsible for roughly 90 percent of the revenue that flows into the NCAA. As such, they allowed me to devote a significant amount of my time January, February, March, to my basketball responsibilities.
"It’s a big responsibility. You become the public face of the tournament. I am greatly appreciative to the university for allowing me to do that. Fortunately for me, I have a very, very capable staff. The place probably ran better in my absence."
Being the chairman ended Walters’ five-year commitment to the NCAA committee. George Mason athletics director Tom O’Connor inherits the post in September, and will have a hard time following what was generally considered with the exception of some disgruntled Air Force, Drexel, Kansas State and Syracuse fans a fine job.
"Every year you’re going to have the criticism that’s related to selecting the final at-large teams," Walters said. "You’ll just never avoid that, and frankly in some ways it’s part of the allure of the tournament. It’s a highly selective process. After you’ve been involved in this process, you know what it’s like to be dean of admissions at Princeton. You have so many qualified candidates, but only so many spaces so there’s a scarcity value of getting in the tournament and obviously there’s a huge prestige value. As someone who has played in the tournament, I can empathize with the great disappointment that the coaches and teams do feel."
The tournament ended with two No. 1 seeds squaring off, with Florida topping Ohio State for the NCAA title, but Walters isn’t sure if that’s a good measure of the tournament’s success or even the committee’s seeding and bracketing abilities.
"This year we had some upsets, but we came close to some very significant upsets," Walters said. "Ohio State was one play away from not making it to the Final Four. Florida, in the Butler game, was tied with 2:20 to play and (Al) Horford scored on a three-point play that 50 percent of the country thought was an offensive foul, 50 percent of the country thought was a good play. If those teams are defeated, you have the two teams playing for the national championship out of the tournament. That gives you some idea of the serendipity.
"I basically feel once you select, seed and bracket the teams," he added, "you end up with a different snowflake every year and the outcomes are different every year."
Walters prepared to oversee just where the best teams were by watching anywhere between 300 and 400 games. He even flew to the West Coast on two weekends to see teams in person. He is looking forward to a more manageable basketball load when his tenure ends.
"I’m a basketball fan and I may tune in to a game a night, and on weekends, we have 38 sports at Princeton, so I’m always attending games," he said. "I will cut back a lot, and my wife will greatly appreciate taking control of the television."
Walters will never get too far from the game, but he will miss some of the duties of the committee members. It was a unique job experience for Walters.
"One of the differences between my job at Princeton where I’m constantly spinning many platters," Walters said, "and one of the things I enjoyed not just being on the committee, but chairing the committee, when we were in those rooms together, there was a singular focus and it’s basketball. From that standpoint, it complements the other things I do. I’ll miss that singular focus of what you’re doing."
And he will miss the 10-member committee as well. They put their stamp on the NCAA Tournament.
"The most rewarding thing without question is the friendships and the quality of people that serve on the committee and working together toward a common cause," Walters said. "It’s the fundamental underlying aspect of what loyalty is, where you share the same values and goals and you work together. People put their conference or university affiliation hat at the door and operate with a tremendous amount of integrity. That’s the most gratifying thing.
"I’m going to miss that part of it, the collective team effort toward, No. 1, giving back to the sport, and two, hopefully producing an event that captures the imagination of the American public. I think it goes without saying that there isn’t another event in the American culture that goes on for a month that has that signature element to it and has this serendipity as it relates to the possibility of upsets where the underdog can win. That’s pretty neat."
Walters’ and the committee’s duties did not end with Selection Sunday. Walters was in a car to Dayton, Ohio, for the play-in game the next day, then watched the first- and second-round games from a command center in Indianapolis. With eight monitors going, he could watch all the action.
"For somebody like me," he said, "it was eye candy."
The next weekend, he took in a day’s action at each of the four regional sites, ensuring that each site was operating smoothly. His frequent-flyer weekend ended in East Rutherford where former Princeton University coach John Thompson III’s Georgetown team topped North Carolina.
"It was particularly gratifying for me to be able to watch the Georgetown-North Carolina game, not that I had a rooting interest because Roy Williams has been a friend of mine going back to the 1970s," Walters said. "But it was gratifying also to see John Thompson and Georgetown have the success they had."
Walters continued his role as the public face of the tournament at the Final Four in Atlanta. Upon its conclusion, it was back to Princeton and back to his regular duties as athletics director. The immediate focus remains on men’s basketball.
"Obviously," he said, "the No. 1 issue right now is I have to go out and find a coach. That’s what our focus will be for the next few weeks. Once that’s done, there’s no shortage of things to be done."
Gary Walters had already done plenty in basketball. Acting as chairman of the NCAA selection committee was a new high.

