June 11, 2009
FARMVILLE, Va. -- Longwood University Director of Athletics
Troy Austin has announced the recent appointment of
Bill Irish as the school's Associate Athletics Director for Internal Operations. He most recently worked for The Thomas James Company, an event management, operations, and marketing consulting group in Atlanta, following an appointment as director of operations for the 2008 NCAA Division II Spring Championships Festival in Houston. Irish previously had been a vice-president of programming operations and scheduling for FOX Sports South/SportSouth Networks from 1995-2008.
“I am excited for Bill to join the Longwood Athletics Family,” said Austin. “He brings a wide breadth of sports business experience to the department and a passion for collegiate athletics.”
Irish will handle department budget management along with oversight of travel procedures, game operations and ticket sales, and team sport supervision for both field hockey as well as men's and women's tennis. He will also serve as the department's liaison with the Budget Office, Accounting and Financial Reporting, the Longwood Foundation, Facilities and Material Management, Human Resources, and Information Technology Services, and he has been invited to and will serve on the Longwood Campus Impact Committee as well.
“Over the last 26 years, I have played a part in creating, programming and managing sporting events and have worked in professional sports, collegiate athletics and in the sports television business,” said Irish. “I am excited about the opportunity to come to Longwood and be a part of their athletic family and the Farmville community and look forward to playing a key role in the future of Lancer Athletics.”
At FSN South/SportSouth, Irish's vast and varied duties included selection of seasonal schedules for professional and collegiate teams and conferences, input and upkeep of the monthly schedules, territorial switching reports as mandated by professional and collegiate contracts, and served as the contract administrator and network contact for ACC Live and SEC-TV programming packages. He was involved in negotiation and administration of all regionally-developed programming agreements and underwritten regional network programming, worked directly with the controller and the executive producer on the annual programming budget, and was the format administrator for the network his last five years, working with ad sales and production to create the most effective formats for the networks.
In addition, Irish worked for the Turner Sports-managed and operated SportSouth Network as both director of programming (1992-95) and program manager (1990-92), and for Pacific Sports Network (1989-90) as program manager. He served as the assistant executive director for operations and event management at the Chick-Fil-A Peach Bowl (1988-89), was the director of athletic marketing, travel, radio & TV at Rice University (1985-88) and was the athletic business manager at Rice (1984-85) as well. Irish was the director of community relations/group ticket sales manager/broadcasting, and merchandising manager for the Houston Gamblers (1983-85) of the now-defunct United States Football League as well.
A native of Houston, Irish earned his bachelor of arts degree in industrial psychology from the University of St. Thomas in Houston. His wife, Teresa, is a native of Front Royal.
