It’s football bowl time apparently. I just texted my sons to see if the bowl teams had been chosen, and, yes they have. Fun to see Syracuse in the mix. The Orangemen are playing West Virginia University in the Camping World Bowl in Orlando, Florida on December 28. When I visited WVU earlier this fall and walked the campus early on a Sunday morning, the steep hills reminded me of the Syracuse campus.
My friend Penny Proctor, a Hillsdale College Pi Phi alumna, sent me this info in an email and I asked if she would mind if I shared it. Thanks, Penny, for writing it.
Milo J. “Mike” Lude, one of the most respected D-1 athletic directors of his time, is an alumnus of the Beta Kappa chapter of Alpha Tau Omega.
A native of Vicksburg, Michigan, his college career was interrupted by his service in the Marine Corps during WWII. After the War he returned to Hillsdale College to be captain of the football team and a student coach of baseball. Three days after graduation he married his beloved Rena (a member of Pi Beta Phi) and embarked on a coaching career that began at the University of Maine, then took him to 14 years as an assistant coach at the University of Delaware. He left there for his first, and last, head coaching position, at Colorado State University. His coaching record was not impressive, but he became the athletic director at Kent State University in 1970, and that is where his talents shone. While at Kent State, he hired head coach Don James who led the football team to the MAC championship.
In 1976 he became Athletic Director at the University of Washington, and during his tenure turned the $400,000 deficit into an $18 million surplus as well as overseeing the halcyon years of Washington football. His was the deciding vote that to admit the University of Arizona and Arizona State University to the PAC-10 (as it was then). When he left there, he became AD at Auburn and hired Terry Bowden as head football coach. After he “retired” in 1994, he became a private consultant to college football programs all over the country.
Mike is the recipient of many awards, including Colorado “Sportsman of the Year,” the NCAA Corbett Award (1988) for top athletic director and the National Football Foundation John L. Toner Award (2001), for demonstrated superior administrative skills and dedication to college athletics, particularly football. Mike penned his memoirs, Walking the Line, in 2004. He lost Rena in 2015 but at 96 he is still going strong.
