Tom Burman Position: Director of Athletics

It has been an exciting first year for Tom Burman as athletics director at his alma mater.

In the fall of 2006, Joe Glenn and his Cowboy Football team won five of its last seven games of the season to post a third-place finish in the Mountain West Conference -- Wyoming's highest finish since becoming a founding member of the MWC in 1999.

During the winter, one of the most remarkable and thrilling seasons in University of Wyoming Athletics history took place when Joe Legerski and his Cowgirl Basketball team posted a school best 27-9 record on the way to capturing the 2007 Women's National Invitation Tournament Championship.

Along the way, Cowgirl Basketball shattered all previous school attendance records, averaging 4,686 fans. The Cowgirls also drew the second largest crowd in the history of Wyoming's Arena-Auditorium -- for either a men's or women's basketball game -- when 15,462 fans turned out to cheer the Cowgirls to victory over Wisconsin in the WNIT Championship game.

"The WNIT Championship run by the Cowgirls was one of the most exciting accomplishments in the history of our university," said Burman. "When you have a special team and a special season like that you want to make the most of it. We took a bit of a financial risk as we continued to submit bids to the WNIT Committee to host the tournament games. But we believed in our team, and in our fans, and because of the out-pouring of support by Wyoming fans that risk paid off."

The spring saw success in the classroom take the forefront, as UW student-athletes combined for an overall grade-point average in excess of 3.00. That was the first time that milestone had been reached since the spring semester of 2003.

It was also a busy first year for Burman. Following the 2006-07 Cowboy Basketball season, Burman hired former Cowboy assistant coach and former Portland State head coach Heath Schroyer to take over the Wyoming men's program. Schroyer has been instrumental in helping turn around programs at Portland State, as a head coach, and at BYU and Fresno State, as an assistant. Schroyer was an assistant on the Wyoming coaching staff the last time the Cowboys appeared in the NCAA Tournament in 2002.

Another area that Burman focused on his first year back in Laramie was the Cowboy Joe Club. As a former Executive Director of Cowboy Joe from 1995-97, Burman had guided the fund-raising arm of the UW Athletics Department through one of its most successful periods. Upon his return as athletics director, he is utilizing that past experience to push the organization to new heights.

"My goals for Cowboy Joe are to make it a more efficient and aggressive fund-raising entity, while rewarding the loyalty of Cowboy and Cowgirl fans," said Burman. "Our goal is to increase Cowboy Joe revenue from $2 million to $3.3 million by the 2009-10 academic year."

He became the first native son to be hired as Wyoming's Athletics Director when President Tom Buchanan announced Burman's hiring as UW's eighth athletics director on Oct. 9, 2006. Burman's original contract was for four years.

"Tom Burman is a Wyoming guy, and some UW fans will applaud his selection on this basis alone," said President Buchanan. "That's not why I hired Tom. Of the five outstanding finalists for this position, Tom was clearly the best person for this position right now.

"The University of Wyoming Strategic Plan for Intercollegiate Athletics has two overarching goals," Buchanan continued. "The first is to ensure that we operate our program with absolute integrity, which includes ensuring that our student-athletes earn a first-rate university education. The second is to be competitive in every sport within the Mountain West Conference.

"The University of Wyoming is poised for greatness in intercollegiate athletics, just as we are poised for academic greatness. Thanks to the vision of our political and institutional leaders--and the good fortune of high energy prices--we have the money, the facilities and the people we need to be competitive. Now, with Tom Burman, I believe we are ready to climb to the top of the Mountain West Conference."

"I am a Wyoming guy," Burman said. "I grew up in Wyoming, got my undergraduate degree at UW, spent five years in the UW athletics department in development and fund-raising and returned to UW earlier this year to raise funds for the University through the UW Foundation. I care deeply about this University and the success of UW Athletics and our student-athletes."

Burman takes over a Wyoming program that is poised for success.

"We will build a program that wins conference championships, is a source of great pride to our alumni and generates enthusiasm across this great state," Burman said. "The future starts now.

"At the University of Wyoming, I believe that we should compete for championships. My job is to provide our programs with the resources to compete for championships. That doesn't mean that every year they have to finish first, second or third, but it means that we go into the respective seasons knowing that we have a chance to win a championship.

"I believe we owe that to our student-athletes," he continued. "I have always felt that a great University like Wyoming will provide them with a quality education, quality support services, and a great campus environment. But if you don't provide them a chance to play in a championship game, or a meaningful match, they won't leave UW with a total experience. No matter what, they are competitors, and they want to go home after they have their degrees and tell their kids down the road that they played for a conference championship. I believe in our coaches, and I believe they have that same expectation. We can win championships here because we have."

Facilities are one of the obvious keys to success in intercollegiate athletics. Burman understands how important facilities are to Wyoming's future.

"They are the key," he said. "State-of-the-art facilities are very, very important in recruiting young people. With the indoor practice facility under construction, the continuing enhancements to War Memorial Stadium and the upgrades of our other facilities, we are getting there. We are in the middle of an impressive facility campaign project. When we successfully complete that one, there will be more. Fund-raising for facilities is an on-going program. It must be if a program expects to consistently compete at a high level."

While the term "dream job" is often overused, from Burman's viewpoint it describes very well how he perceives his new position. "'Dream job' means different things to different people," he said. "The reason this is my dream job is I believe we can have success here, and it is a great place for my family. I want to be here for a long period of time, and I feel good that I can be."

Burman served as Director of Athletics at Portland State University from September 2000 through March 2006. During that time, the graduation rate of PSU student-athletes increased from 36 percent to 44 percent, 11 percent higher than the general university rate. Athletics' successes included Big Sky Conference championships in men's basketball, women's soccer, softball and three championships in women's golf. He also hired coaches who were named conference coach of the year in soccer, golf, volleyball and softball. Under Burman's leadership, annual giving to the Viking Athletic Fund for scholarships increased by more than 98 percent.

Burman earned a bachelor of science degree from UW in 1988 and an M.B.A. in sports marketing and management from Robert Morris University in Coraopolis, Pa., in 1991.

From 1990-92, Burman worked as a project manager for the sports management company DeWilber & Associates in McLean, Va. He began his intercollegiate athletics career as Director of Marketing and Promotions (1993-95) at the University of Idaho in Moscow. Burman returned to UW in 1995 as Associate Athletics Director for Development, serving as Executive Director of the Cowboy Joe Club. In 1997, Burman was named UW Associate Athletics Director for External Affairs. Among other accomplishments, he was instrumental in raising funds for the Rochelle Athletics Center. After serving as Portland State Athletics Director from 2000-06, Burman returned to UW in March 2006 as Associate Vice President for Institutional Advancement.

Burman has great respect for the tradition of Wyoming and its intercollegiate athletics program. But he also understands that the department must move forward.

"Tradition is very important to me," he commented. "As I look at the history of Wyoming, I value tradition, but I also don't want to be so concerned about it that we're not progressive. We need to look forward, and we need to be aggressive in how we market ourselves and how we view ourselves. There are many things over time that have been eliminated by previous administrations. We will look at them all and decide which ones we want to bring back over time. I really think if you can have a happy medium between valuing tradition and being progressive that is where you want to be.

"As I look back as a young person growing up in Wyoming, sitting in the Knothole section in the football stadium was one of my fondest memories. To see that it is gone is disappointing, but it was a good decision. As we move forward, we have to value what was here and determine a balance."

Burman is 41 years old, born Jan. 4, 1966. He and his wife, Kathy, have two sons, Drew and Nathan.