SDSU's JD Wicker Named SBJ AD of the Year

San Diego State director of athletics JD Wicker has been named the Sports Business Journal AD of the Year, which was announced Wednesday night at the 16th Annual Sports Business Awards in New York City. Wicker became the first athletic director from a Group of 5 school to win the prestigious award.

Wicker is coming off one of the most successful years at San Diego State, which started with the opening of the new 35,000-capacity Snapdragon Stadium at SDSU Mission Valley, saw the Aztec men's basketball team reach the national championship game of the NCAA Tournament, has had six Mountain West team championships and most recently announced that the San Diego Major League Soccer expansion team will be playing its home games at Snapdragon Stadium.

In describing the Wicker win, the SBJ wrote, "It's not often that an athletic director has an opportunity to build a football stadium from the ground up, but that's exactly what J.D. Wicker has been doing at San Diego State. Wicker led a potentially thorny process to get Snapdragon Stadium to the finish line last season, bringing together the city of San Diego, the university and the athletics department in a way that kept the $310 million project on budget and on time for a 2022 opening."

"(I am the) first Group of 5 (athletic director) to ever win," Wicker said in his speech. "It feels like we get nominated a lot, but if you're not in the Power 5, you're not at that level. Two weeks ago, we graduated a bunch of student athletes, and that's how I know we're succeeding. The softball team is in their first-ever Super Regional this weekend. That's succeeding. We just announced MLS [expansion] in San Diego in the stadium San Diego State built for the community. That's succeeding. There's always something around the corner; you can get lost in all the things at times. But we're doing a lot to make San Diego successful."

The six MW championships so far have come from swimming & diving, men's basketball (regular season and tournament), men's golf, softball (tournament) and baseball (co-regular season). The Aztec baseball team starts MW Tournament play on Thursday, while the softball team begins its first NCAA Super Regional appearances Friday night at Utah.