‘A visionary, a builder’: Former Miami Hurricanes athletic director Sam Jankovich dies
Former Miami Hurricanes athletic director Sam Jankovich, who oversaw an athletic department that won seven national championships and the rise of both the school’s football team and athletics fundraising efforts, died Wednesday morning. He was 85.
“Our hearts are broken with the passing of legendary former UM AD Sam Jankovich,” current Hurricanes athletic director Blake James wrote in a statement on Twitter. “No one personified what being a Cane meant more than Sam. The Hurricane Family sends its love to Sam’s family and friends.”
Jankovich, a Butte, Montana native who most recently lived in Hayden Lake, Idaho according to UM Sports Hall of Fame executive director John Routh, took over Miami’s athletic program in 1983 in the midst of what ultimately became a dominant decade.
“A great man, hero, dad,” Jankovich’s daughter, Sue Ellen Jankovich, posted on Facebook at about 10 a.m. Wednesday. “... God welcomed him home. He was a gift of love to all of us. I was blessed to call my dad my best friend...”
The Hurricanes won national championships in women’s golf (1984), baseball (1985), women’s tennis (doubles, 1986), men’s tennis (singles, 1987) and football (1983, 1987 and 1989) during Jankovich’s tenure.
Jankovich hired Jimmy Johnson in 1984 to lead the football program once Howard Schnellenberger left following the team’s 1983 national championship season. The Hurricanes went 52-9 in five years with Johnson at the helm and won the national title in 1987.
Johnson’s successor at UM once he jumped into the NFL coaching ranks after the 1988 season: Dennis Erickson, who led Miami to another national title in his first season. Overall, Erickson won two national titles in his first three years (also in 1991) and went 63-9 overall in his six seasons with the Hurricanes.
Jankovich and Erickson were close friends and lived about 5 miles apart in Idaho.
“I got to know him very well,” Erickson, who played at Montana State in the mid-60’s when Jankovich was a defensive assistant, told the Miami Herald. “The reality is he was the one who helped make my career because he hired me at UM. When Jimmy left, Sam gave me the opportunity to get in one of the best programs in the country. If it wasn’t for him, who knows where my career would have been?”
Jankovich also brought UM’s men’s basketball program back to life in 1985 after the university dropped the sport in 1971.
He was inducted into UM’s Sports Hall of Fame in 2001.
“I was just informed of the passing of Sam Jankovich, who was athletic director here, really, when it all started, in ’83 through the run of the first three national championships,” football coach Manny Diaz said Wednesday. “Just on behalf of the entire University of Miami family, I want to express our condolences to his family and just our thoughts to all of his friends — and certainly what he meant to helping build, leading what this is today and his impact on that.”
Jankovich left UM in December 1990 to become the chief executive officer of the New England Patriots, a role he held for two years.
“He and I talked many, many times that both of us should have stayed at UM forever, but we didn’t,” said Erickson, 72. “About a month ago, I was at his house and we talked about a lot of memories from our UM days.”
Routh, who served as Miami’s mascot Sebastian the Ibis from 1984 through 1992, said Jankovich hired him in 1991 to become “Pat C. Gull,’’ a Patriots mascot with a body that “was kind of a combination between the Miami Maniac and Ibis.’’
“I’d work UM games on Saturday,’’ Routh said, “Then they would fly me up to Foxboro on Sunday mornings for the Patriots’ game before they flew me back to Miami. Sam was just a wonderful person who was very loyal. I’ll tell you what I’m going to miss. When I send out emails to our Hall of Fame members, Sam has always been the first to respond, and it was always, ‘What a wonderful job the University of Miami is doing,’ or ‘The best time of my life was when I was at the University of Miami.’”
Jankovich’s impact on the Hurricanes’ athletic program extended beyond the results on the field. He was pivotal in spearheading the program’s fundraising efforts.
The athletic department’s annual gifts “rose from $750,000 in 1982 to $3 million in 1990,” according to his UM Sports Hall of Fame bio. “Major facilities improvements also were a byproduct of Jankovich’s stewardship as the $1.1 million Knight Sports Complex was completed along with the Tom Kearns UM Hall of Fame Building, the Golden Cane Football Office Building, renovation of the Hecht Athletic Center, construction of the Ron Fraser Building for baseball, and additions to the Neil Schiff Tennis Center.”
Before coming to Miami, Jankovich was the athletic director at Washington State.
“We’re sad to learn of former athletic director Sam Jankovich’s passing,” the school wrote in a statement on its official athletic department Twitter account. “Sam was a visionary, a builder and will be remembered in Coral Gables for as long as they tee it up on football Saturdays and say “Play Ball” at The Light. Our thoughts are with his friends & loved ones.”
This story was originally published October 30, 2019 at 12:14 PM.
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