Dan Radakovich living in SC again. What’s next for former Clemson, Miami AD?
Dan Radakovich is returning to Clemson this summer.
Then again, he never really left.
When Radakovich accepted Miami’s athletic director job in 2021 after nine years in the same position at Clemson, he was fired up about the opportunity.
But Radakovich, 63 years old and three decades into his administrative career when he was hired at UM, also sensed it’d be his last job. So he and his wife, Marcie, decided not to sell their lake house roughly 15 minutes from Clemson’s campus.
Radakovich relocated to the Miami area immediately and oversaw a successful period of UM sports. But his wife, they often joked, was a “snowbird,” splitting time between Seneca, South Carolina and Coral Gables, Florida during the four and a half years her husband worked as the Hurricanes’ AD.
Now, “DRad” said he’s ready to enjoy his next chapter in Upstate South Carolina after retiring from Miami and concluding a nearly 40-year career in college athletics.
“We knew that we were going to come back” to the Clemson area, Radakovich told The State in May during his final ACC spring meetings in Amelia Island, Florida. “We wanted to make sure to continue to be a part of the community.”
Miami run ends with football breakthrough
Radakovich, 68, spent nine years as Clemson’s athletic director from 2012-21 and is widely regarded as one of the school’s most effective ADs. That’s mostly because of the Tigers’ remarkable football success during his tenure.
Years before he was raising national championship trophies alongside coach Dabo Swinney, though, Radakovich was a graduate student at Miami. He earned a master’s degree from the school in 1982 and worked his first college athletics job there.
A chance to finish where he started weighed heavily on Radakovich when Miami’s athletic director job opened in 2021. The school wound up hiring Radakovich away from Clemson around the same time it poached Oregon’s Mario Cristobal as its next football coach, hoping to revitalize a sputtering program.
“It’s exciting to be able to take what we’ve learned and what we’ve done here and see if we can transfer it to another great ACC member,” Radakovich said at the time.
Cristobal’s UM tenure got off to a shaky start. After three seasons, he was 22-16, 12-12 in the ACC and primarily known for his high-profile game management errors.
But the Radakovich-Cristobal partnership peaked this past season, as Miami won three College Football Playoff games and finished as national runner-up to Indiana.
Radakovich: ‘Good time’ to step away from UM
Rumors about Radakovich’s retirement began as Miami’s football season was wrapping up. He told the Miami Herald a week after the national title game he “had no immediate plans to retire” but would discuss his future with his university president in coming weeks.
Radakovich formally announced his retirement plans on April 28. His most recent contract with UM ran through the end of 2026, but he retired effective June 1.
The Herald, citing a source, previously reported that Miami wanted to hire an athletic director who could more effectively fundraise and make deals in the NIL/revenue-sharing era and had been targeting entertainment CEO Michael Yormark to replace Radakovich “for months.”
The Herald also reported in June that Miami was “taken aback” by the negative public reaction to its expected hire of Yormark — who has no formal college sports experience — and is now proceeding with its search more deliberately. The school hasn’t made a hire as of Tuesday.
Speaking to The State at his final ACC spring meetings in May, Radakovich said he didn’t feel pressured by Miami to retire and the decision to step away was his alone.
“After the end of the year, I took a little bit of time and sat down with my president and said, ‘You know, I think it’s probably a good time to transition,’” Radakovich said, describing his exit conversations with Miami leadership as “really positive.”
Next steps in Clemson
Speaking broadly about the state of his industry, though, Radakovich said athletic director hiring trends “run in cycles.” He understands why schools are looking to hire ADs with experience outside college sports to improve their revenue but hopes they don’t lose sight of what makes college sports great in the process.
“This (job) is, at its core, on a college campus, and college campuses are about relationships,” Radakovich said. “Whether you’re the dean of the school of business or the college of education or you’re the director of athletics, you need to have those kinds of relationships with your coaches and your student-athletes while still having the opportunity to go out and gain revenue.”
As he steps away from college sports after almost 40 years of service, Radakovich said his top priorities are travel, golf, his wife’s to-do list and family time.
Both of the Radakoviches’ adult sons — the older of whom is married with a young daughter — live in the Atlanta area, so Dan and Marcie will split time between their Seneca, South Carolina home and a smaller residence in Atlanta.
Radakovich plans to do some consulting work with Miami — mostly to see through a handful of athletics projects that started during his tenure — and said he’s weighing a few other opportunities that would keep him involved in college sports.
Would he ever consider working for Clemson again?
“Oh gosh, I don’t want to be a full-time employee anywhere,” Radakovich said, laughing. “If Graham (Neff) needs me to help him on something somewhere down the road, we’ll chat about it. But no, I’m done with the clocking in and clocking out.”
Dan Radakovich’s college athletics career
- 1983-85: Miami (athletic business manager)
- 1989-94: Long Beach State (senior associate AD)
- 1994-2000: South Carolina (chief financial officer)
- 2000-01: America University (athletic director)
- 2001-06: LSU (senior associate AD)
- 2006-12: Georgia Tech (athletic director)
- 2012-21: Clemson (athletic director)
- 2021-26: Miami (athletic director)
This story was originally published July 7, 2026 at 8:00 AM with the headline "Dan Radakovich living in SC again. What’s next for former Clemson, Miami AD?."
