Associate AD to link Hogs, SEC Network

FAYETTEVILLE - The University of Arkansas athletic department has hired Mike Waddell as a senior associate athletic director who will serve on the senior leadership team for director of athletics Jeff Long.

Waddell, who had been athletics director at Towson University in Baltimore since Sept. 29, 2010, will be the director for external operations and strategic communications.

“The opportunity to work with a program that has a rich, long-standing tradition and for an athletics director in Jeff Long who has proven to be one of the most innovative and proactive in all of college athletics is something that I am eager to engage,” Waddell said in a UA news release.

Waddell, a two-year football letter winner at Guilford College in Greensboro, N.C., will oversee the Razorbacks’ athletic department’s marketing, licensing, media relations, public relations, ticket operations and RazorVision.

He will also serve as the Arkansas athletic department’s liaison with the new SEC Network’s broadcasting and digital platforms.

“With our program’s continued success and the launch of the SEC Network, it is important that we strategically coordinate our messaging to effectively tell the story of Razorback Athletics and the extraordinary success of our more than 460 student-athletes,” Long said.

Waddell oversaw a Towson athletics department that won six Colonial Athletic Association championships during the 2012-2013 school year, had five players named CAA player of the year and four coaches selected as CAA coach of the year, per the university release.

Waddell, a native of North Carolina, has previously served at the University of Cincinnati, the University of Akron, the U.S. Military Academy and Appalachian State.