Holmoe named to NCAA Division I men's basketball committee

INDIANAPOLIS — Brigham Young University director of athletics Tom Holmoe has been appointed to the Division I men’s basketball committee. Holmoe will serve out the remaining two years of the position held by West Coast Conference commissioner Jamie Zaninovich, who was appointed to the committee in 2011 but is leaving the post after he takes the position of deputy commissioner and COO of the Pac-12 Conference next month.

Holmoe earned his undergraduate degree from BYU in 1983 and returned to the school to complete his master’s degree in 1995. A native of La Crescenta, Calif., Holmoe went to BYU on a football scholarship in 1978. He earned first-team All-WAC honors as a senior in 1982 and was selected in the fourth round of the 1983 NFL Draft by the San Francisco 49ers. Over a seven-year NFL career, he played on three Super Bowl championship teams with the 49ers in 1984, 1988 and 1989. Holmoe earned a fourth Super Bowl ring as a defensive backfield assistant coach with San Francisco in 1994 and coached in the collegiate ranks at Stanford and California, where he served as head coach from 1997-01 before returning to BYU. 

Holmoe was associate athletics director for development from July 2001 to March 2005, when he was promoted to director of athletics. BYU has captured 81 conference regular-season or postseason championships, and more than 200 student-athletes have earned All-America status since Holmoe's appointment. Under his tutelage the men's basketball team has enjoyed tremendous success. BYU posted 25-win seasons in six out of the last eight years and the Cougars have made the postseason nine straight seasons, including an NCAA Sweet-16 run in 2011. The program has also received NCAA Academic Progress Rate recognition seven times during his tenure.

“I’m honored to be selected to represent the West Coast Conference and to serve on the NCAA Division I men’s basketball committee,” Holmoe said. “I appreciate those who have served before me and will do all I can to keep the tournament the wonderful event it has become.”

The committee will be chaired in 2014-15 by Scott Barnes, the vice president and director of athletics at Utah State University. Other members of the committee will be Joe Alleva, the director of athletics at LSU; Joe Castiglione, the director of athletics at the University of Oklahoma; Mark Hollis, the director of athletics at Michigan State University; Judy MacLeod, associate commissioner of Conference USA; Bruce Rasmussen, the director of athletics at Creighton University; Peter Roby, the director of athletics at Northeastern University; and first-year committee members Janet Cone, the director of athletics at the University of North Carolina Asheville; and Bernard Muir, the director of athletics at Stanford University.

“Jamie has been an incredible asset to the men’s basketball committee and to the championship as a whole, and we wish him continued success as he prepares to leave for the Pac-12,” said Dan Gavitt, the NCAA’s vice president for men’s basketball. “Tom has a tremendous amount of respect from his colleagues in collegiate athletics and is an ideal choice to replace Jamie. We look forward to his contributions to the group.”