COLUMBIA, Mo. — In January 2003, a party full of college students in Columbia became a headache for Laird Veatch.
The current Missouri athletics director was, at the time, an associate athletic director at Iowa State. After his football career at Kansas State and the start of his sports administration experience at Mizzou, Veatch had moved north for a tough-to-pass-up opportunity.
And then the scandal set in.
That party, which took place the night after the Tigers beat the Cyclones’ men’s basketball team, featured a prominent and problematic guest: Iowa State coach Larry Eustachy.
Photos of him at the party circulated the morning after. They’re dismissed as a coach posing for pictures with fans. A couple of months later, more images emerge — this time, of Eustachy kissing women at that party.
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After The Des Moines Register reported on the incident, Eustachy told reporters at an April 30, 2003, news conference that he was an alcoholic and receiving treatment but would not leave his coaching post. But within a week, he had been suspended and agreed to resign for a cash settlement.
It was a trying time for Veatch.
“It was hard because I was really young,” he said on an episode of the “Mizzou Storytellers” podcast, “and I was going into a job that I wasn’t really quite prepared for. ... For a young administrator to be in the middle of that and some other things that went on there was really difficult.”
In the aftermath of Eustachy’s departure, Veatch was quoted by newspapers when Iowa State’s athletics director went quiet.
Veatch stayed in Ames for just over a year before returning to Columbia to work with MU once again through Learfield — more on the business side of college sports than the administrative end.
“The experience I had at Iowa State made me kind of think, ‘I don’t know if I want to be in the head chair,’” Veatch said.
Of course, he did wind up an athletics director after all, some 16 years later at Memphis and now at Missouri. But that turbulent year at Iowa State still impacts the way Veatch handles business in an athletics department.
“I probably learned more in that year than in any others,” he said.
Part of the lesson has emerged in Veatch’s distance — both chronological and emotional — from the stressful spring of 2003.
“When you go through times where there’s trial or situations that seem unique or really challenging, at that moment, you feel like it’s the only thing going on, it’s never happened to anybody else,” he told the Post-Dispatch. “But over time, now, having been through college athletics, I look back on that and it was just another step in the process.”
Veatch’s stops with Learfield, K-State, Florida and Memphis reinforced that. He was part of or leading administrations that grappled with shifts to college sports including conference realignment, the transfer portal, and name, image, likeness compensation for athletes. Early in his tenure at Memphis, Veatch was directing his department through the COVID-19 pandemic.
“There’s been so many challenges and problems, if you will — crisis types of situations in some respect — that you get to a point where recognize that’s just part of it,” he said. “You have to be able to navigate change and work with your team to make decisions and process things as you go. That’s just become part of reality.”
The need for adaptation has continued through Veatch’s first weeks on the job. Revenue sharing will further shake up the barely settled status quo of compensating athletes. The potential for more realignment looms ever-present on the horizon. The need for more revenue means more open minds to the addition of sponsors and brand deals.
That fits Veatch’s philosophy toward the unpredictability of his job — a view that got its rocky but informative start back at Iowa State and a party inside a Columbia apartment.
“It used to seem like there was a system or formula to every year,” Veatch said. “You go back and do some of the same things over and over again. It’s less and less so. You still have to have your fundamentals in place, and we can’t lose sight of that, right? We’ve got to treat our customers a certain way. We’ve got to provide the right kind of culture and atmosphere for our student-athletes. We’ve got to be professionals in how we operate — all those things. But so much of it changes day to day that it’s really more about strategic thinking and working with a team to process problems.”
New AD Laird Veatch takes questions during his press conference at the University of Missouri on Friday, April 26, 2002. Video courtesy The University of Missouri