Sandy Barbour

At Penn State, Barbour directs one of the nation’s most comprehensive and successful athletic programs with approximately 800 students in 31 sports (16 men’s/15 women’s) and an Intercollegiate Athletics staff of more than 300 whose daily mission is preparing students for a lifetime of impact. Penn State’s 31 programs are tied for fourth-largest among all 130 FBS institutions.

In the seven-plus years Barbour has led Penn State Athletics, the Nittany Lions have captured six NCAA Championships in women’s soccer, women’s volleyball and wrestling and won 31 Big Ten titles, seven EIVA crowns and one CHA championship for a total of 39 conference championships.

Barbour’s leadership was recognized with her selection for the prestigious National Association of Collegiate Directors of Athletics (NACDA) Under Armour AD of the Year Award in 2016-17, having directed Penn State to nine conference championships and one NCAA title. She was among four Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) Athletic Directors to be honored at the 2017 NACDA Convention, marking the second time in her career she had received the NACDA honor.

In 2020, Barbour was among the honorees on Sports Illustrated’s “The Unrelenting” list of the most powerful, most influential and most outstanding women in sports.[3]

In 2018, she was named one of five finalists for Sports Business Journal’s prestigious Athletic Director of the Year.[4] Barbour, the recent chair of the Big Ten Athletic Directors, was recognized at the 11th Annual SBJ Sports Business Awards Gala in New York City in May, the second time she’s been a finalist for SBJ’s Athletic Director of the Year.

Barbour is a member of the NCAA Football Oversight Committee, serving as Chair beginning in July 2021 for a term to end June 2023[5] and represents the Big Ten Conference on the NCAA Division I Council.[6] In 2017, she was selected as one of the inaugural members of the United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee’s (USOC) Collegiate Sports Sustainability Think Tank. The Think Tank is charged with bridging the gap between high-contributing collegiate stakeholders and the Olympic Movement.

In March 2022, Barbour announced she would retire from Penn State in Summer 2022.[7]

The Director of Athletics at Cal from 2004-14, Barbour guided the Golden Bears through one of the most successful periods in school history as the athletic department became one of the consistently elite programs in the country. Barbour’s 10-year term as AD was the longest for the department since men’s and women’s athletics merged into a single entity in 1992.

During her tenure overseeing Cal’s 30-sport program, the Golden Bears won 20 team national championships, 97 individual national titles, finished in the top 10 in the annual Learfield Directors’ Cup standings six times, including a program-best third in 2011, and reached record levels in ticket sales, sponsorships and fundraising.

Among Cal's many team athletic accomplishments under Barbour’s leadership were a 2006 Pac-12 co-championship and seven bowl game invitations in football; the men's basketball team's first conference title in 50 years in 2009-10; a first-ever NCAA Final Four berth in women's basketball in 2013, two trips to the national semifinals in women’s volleyball and six NCAA Championships in men’s and women’s swimming and diving.

Barbour served as athletic director at Tulane University from 1996 until resigning in 1999, having joined the staff as an associate athletic director in 1991.[8] She was instrumental in hiring football coach Tommy Bowden, who produced an undefeated 12–0 1998 football season that finished with the Green Wave ranked No. 7 in the nation.

• Penn State profile
• Cal profile