Purdue introduced Tommy McClelland as its new vice president and director of intercollegiate athletics on Thursday, Aug. 6, at the Purdue Memorial Union. He becomes the 10th full-time athletic director in school history.
McClelland replaces Mike Bobinski, who announced earlier this year that he will step down at the end of the calendar year after running the department since 2016. The Board of Trustees and interim President Mitch Daniels made it official in West Lafayette.
Who Tommy McClelland Is
McClelland is 44 and arrives in Tippecanoe County with nearly two decades of experience running athletic departments, according to Purdue.
He spent the last three years as vice president and director of athletics at Rice. Before that he was deputy athletic director over external affairs and revenue generation at Vanderbilt from 2020 to 2023, where he also ran point on football. He led Louisiana Tech's department from 2013 to 2020 and first became a Division I athletic director at McNeese State at age 26.
He is a native of Basile, Louisiana, and earned his bachelor's (2004) and master's in sports administration (2005) from Northwestern State. He and his wife, Jessica Stokes, have two sons, Lawson and Grayson.
A Track Record of Raising Money
The money side of the resume is the part Purdue fans should read closest.
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At Vanderbilt, McClelland oversaw Vandy United, which raised more than $300 million and stands as the largest athletics fundraising campaign in that school's history. At Louisiana Tech, private giving hit record numbers in each of his last five years. At Rice, he built the school's NIL operation, creating the South Main Fund to work alongside the existing Owl Club.
That matters at Purdue, where revenue sharing and NIL now sit at the center of every Big Ten athletic department's budget.
What He Did at Rice
In 2025-26, 11 of Rice's 14 sports posted perfect NCAA Academic Progress Rate scores, and seven earned perfect four-year scores of 1,000.
He added women's programs rather than cutting them, bringing back diving in 2024-25 and adding women's golf for 2026-27. Rice football reached bowl eligibility, and the women's basketball team reached its first American Athletic Conference championship in the school's first year in that league. He has also moved two schools between conferences, taking Louisiana Tech into Conference USA and Rice into the American.
"Our student-athletes will remain at the center of every decision," McClelland said at the introduction.
Purdue Has Had Four Athletic Directors Since 1942
This is not a job that turns over often. Before McClelland, Purdue had exactly four athletic directors across eight decades: Mike Bobinski (2016-26), Morgan Burke (1993-2016), George King Jr. (1971-92) and Guy "Red" Mackey (1942-71). Burke alone held it for 23 years. Mackey held it for 29.
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What Happens Next
Bobinski stays through the end of the calendar year, so the two will overlap during football season and the start of basketball. Purdue has not published McClelland's start date or contract terms.
For Boilermaker fans, the near-term questions are the ones every Big Ten department is answering right now: how much gets shared with athletes, how the Ross-Ade and Mackey facility plans get funded, and who holds the checkbook for Purdue football.
A Purdue Grad's Read
I graduated from Purdue in 2022. I watched Purdue beat No. 2 Ohio State, 49-20, at Ross-Ade. I was still a student in December 2021 when the Boilermakers took the No. 1 spot in the AP poll for the first time in program history, after 379 weeks of being ranked and never once getting there. And in 2024 the program played for a national title and lost to a UConn team that sent Stephon Castle and Donovan Clingan into the top seven picks of that summer's draft.
Three Final Fours: 1969, 1980, 2024. Two national championship game appearances. Zero titles. That last number is the whole point. This fan base does not measure a season in bowl eligibility or a conference championship appearance. It measures in April, and it just watched a Big Ten Tournament winner lose in the Elite Eight.
McClelland's record says he can fund that. He helped oversee Vanderbilt's Vandy United campaign, which raised more than $300 million. Louisiana Tech set private giving records five years running. He launched Rice's South Main Fund to bankroll NIL.
He has never hired a football coach with Purdue money and Purdue expectations attached to it. That is the actual question, and nobody answers it in August. He is stepping into a big job, and I would expect he was vetted like it.
