Potential Boston College Athletic Director Candidate Profile: Graham Neff

Who: Graham Neff is the Deputy Director of Athletics at Clemson University, serving under Athletic Director Dan Radakovich. Prior to joining the Clemson team, Neff was the Associate Athletic Director at Middle Tennessee State University. Neff hold an undergraduate degree and an MBA from Georgia Tech, where he also served as the manager of the men’s basketball team.

Why: Working at Clemson, Neff is already intimately familiar with the ACC. Neff’s background is in finance, which could be particularly useful as we both deal with a pandemic-induced economic crisis and as BC looks to continue fundraising so as to improve athletics facilities. In his job at Clemson, Neff’s responsibilities include helping out with fundraising, finances, and facilities. Similarly, at Middle Tennessee he was responsible for budgeting, athletics contracts, and facilities/capital projects. He also spent 2 years at Georgie Tech in the capacity of Financial Controller and Assistant Director of Ticket Operations and worked for Deloitte prior to entering the athletics field. Neff’s background in basketball, both as a manager at Georgia Tech and working at Clemson, could also be a positive as it is likely that the new AD will be hiring a new men’s basketball coach sooner rather than later.

Why not?: After hiring a young AD with no connection to BC who left after just 3 years, it makes sense that BC might be cautious about following that same path again. Neff has stayed down south for college and career, so he may also be hesitant to leave a nice gig at Clemson for a job up in cold, snowy Boston. Neff also has seemingly no background in hockey, which is a negative for BC in general, but particularly since the next AD will likely be the one to hire Jerry York’s replacement. While bringing back Greg Brown or promoting Mike Ayers or Brendan Buckley are all decent (and likely) directions from the hire, one would expect that the university would want someone with decent background knowledge of the college hockey world.