Jamie Pollard - Director of Athletics - Staff Directory

Staff Directory

Jamie Pollard

Title:
Director of Athletics
Email:
Phone:
515-294-0123

Updated July 2025

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Jamie Pollard, Iowa State’s longest-tenured Director of Athletics and the nation’s second-longest serving active Power Four Director of Athletics behind Kentucky’s Mitch Barnhart, enters his 21^st year leading the Cyclones’ 18-sport program in 2025-26. His vision for the academic and athletic success of ISU’s student-athletes, coupled with an unbridled passion to creatively execute that plan continues to have a major impact within the campus community, throughout the Big 12 Conference and across the intercollegiate athletics landscape.

Introduced as the Cyclones’ 14^th Director of Athletics on September 19, 2005, Pollard has reimagined nearly every facet of the ISU program since moving from the University of Wisconsin, where he had served seven years, including the final two under then-Badger Athletics Director and Hall of Fame football coach Barry Alvarez.

Based upon the National Collegiate Athletic Association’s (NCAA) most-recent academic metrics, Cyclone student-athletes continue to thrive in the classroom under Pollard’s leadership. For the 10^th-straight year, Iowa State student-athletes established a school-record Graduation Success Rate (GSR) score, as its 95 percent 2024 institutional GSR equaled the school-record of the previous two years and its most-recent multi-year 990 institutional Academic Progress Rate (APR) was also a school-record.

ISU's institutional GSR has improved each of the last 10 years, from 77 percent in 2014 to its 95 percent mark the past three years, while equaling or establishing a school-record every year during that span. Iowa State's 2024 mark, which ranked second in the Big 12 Conference, also came in five points higher than both the most-recent NCAA FBS and Big 12 averages and marked the sixth-straight year it surpassed 90 percent. All-told, eight Cyclone teams led the Big 12 in GSR—men’s golf, women’s basketball, women’s golf, gymnastics, softball, swimming & diving, tennis and women’s track & field/cross country.

Iowa State's 92 percent GSR for its male student-athletes was a school record, ranked second in the Big 12 and improved for the 10th-straight year, while its female student-athletes GSR of 98 percent tied for third in the conference, matched the second-highest score in department history and marked the 19th-straight year it topped 90 percent.

In addition to its continued commitment to classroom excellence, Iowa State enjoyed a solid all-around athletic year in 2024-25, headlined by Cyclone football’s first 11-win season in program history capped off with a thrilling 42-41 victory over No. 15 Miami in the Pop Tarts Bowl, the program’s sixth bowl game in the last seven seasons; men’s and women’s basketball both reached the NCAA Tournament for the fourth-straight year; men’s cross country placed second at the NCAA Championship and women’s golf advanced to the NCAA finals site for only the second time in program history. All-told, 13 teams represented ISU in the 2024-25 postseason.

The Cyclones also continued their recent dominance of Iowa in the Iowa Corn Cy-Hawk series, capturing their third title in four years, 14-11, to take a 10-9-1 lead in the all-time series. ISU won the 2022-23 series, 17-8, to match its widest margin of victory ever against their in-state rivals.

Since his arrival in Ames, he has invigorated the Cyclone fan base, registered all-time program bests academically and athletically, and shattered attendance marks in the department’s five major sports. Landmark achievements of Pollard’s tenure include:

After breaking ground in March 2023 on CyTown, Iowa State’s innovative 40-acre mixed-use entertainment district being built between Jack Trice Stadium and the Iowa State Center, he announced in February 2024 the selection of Midwest-based Goldenrod Companies to lead the project’s design, development, financing and construction.

CyTown’s initial phase was completed in 2024 to include a makeover of the Iowa State Center parking lots south of Hilton Coliseum as well as installation of the infrastructure necessary to support the multi-use district which is slated to be completed ahead of the 2027 football season. In April 2025, CyTown’s first tenant, McFarland Clinic, broke ground on its 78,000-square-foot sports medicine and urgent care facility.

Modeled after the Green Bay Packers’ Titletown and Kansas City’s Power and Light District, CyTown will be the first-ever entertainment district built in the heart of a college campus. The project will include a full-service hotel, 60 three-bedroom suites, a 3,000-seat outdoor amphitheater, and over 200,000-square feet of additional commercial and entertainment facilities.

An investment of more than $400M in new construction and facility renovations impacting nearly every Cyclone sport; the two most-recent large scale projects being completion of the $90M, 110,000-square foot Stark Performance Center which opened in August 2021 to serve every Iowa State student-athlete, and the Gateway Pedestrian Bridge and RV Village which debuted in 2022 to further enhance the game day experience for Cyclone football fans at Jack Trice Stadium.

Two more capital facility projects, the conversion of the McKee Tennis Center into a state-of-the-art volleyball practice facility and the construction of a new Tennis Center, to include six outdoor courts, six indoor courts and a team facility, were completed during the 2024-25 academic year.

Iowa State’s Cyclones Serve program received the Fiesta Bowl’s 2023 Community Service Award as selected by the National Association of Collegiate Directors of Athletics (NACDA). The Fiesta Bowl Community Service award was designed to recognize NACDA member institutions in Division I honoring exceptional athletics departments that make volunteerism and community service a way of life.

ISU remains the only Big 12 Conference institution to have earned this prestigious honor. The Iowa State Student-Athlete Engagement Team oversees the Cyclones Serve program, annually coordinating community outreach activities that stretch throughout central Iowa and touch a multitude of lives. The goal of Cyclones Serve is to encourage student-athletes to volunteer their time while using their platform to build "Community" through sports. Participation in Cyclones Serve programs includes all 18 Iowa State Athletics sport teams.

Secured the largest donation ever received by ISU Athletics – a $25 million gift from the Reiman family – that was the lead donation for Jack Trice Stadium’s south end zone enclosure which increased capacity to 61,500— the Big 12 Conference’s second-largest stadium.

Since the 2011-12 academic year, ISU is the nation’s only institution to average at least 50,000 fans at home football games (13-straight seasons), 12,000 fans at home men’s basketball games (15-straight years), and 9,000 fans at home women’s basketball games (17-straight seasons), excluding the COVID-impacted 2020-21 academic year.

The department launched a one-of-a-kind cable and digital TV network (Cyclones.tv), which continues to provide an exciting way to engage with fans across the region.

Assembled, arguably, the strongest coaching staff in ISU history.

Iowa State has earned 25 of its 28 all-time academic NCAA Public Recognition Awards in 11 different sports under his direction.

The Cyclones have won 23 of their 31 all-time Big 12 team titles in seven different sports on his watch and produced at least one league championship squad in 11 of the last 14 years.

Simply put, the Iowa State Athletics brand has never been stronger.

National observers have taken notice of the athletics revival in Ames, as Pollard was honored as the 2023 and 2019 Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) Athletics Director of the Year by NACDA, one of only 20 individuals to earn multiple FBS honors in the award’s 27-year history. The three-time (2025, 2023 and 2019) Sports Business Journal AD of the Year finalist was also the first collegiate administrator selected for Street & Smith’s Sports Business Journal’s Forty Under 40 award in 2003.

Amid a six-year term as a member of the United States Olympic & Paralympic Committee’s College Athletics Council, Pollard completed his five-year tenure on the prestigious NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Committee in 2023-24.

He served the 22,000-member NACDA organization as its 2021-22 President and previously was President of the Division I-A Athletics Director’s Association and the Collegiate Athletics Business Manager’s Association (CABMA) as well as chair of the Big 12 Athletics Directors Committee. He is the only individual to have ever been President of NACDA, the I-A Athletics Director’s Association and CABMA.

The Oshkosh, Wisconsin, native attended his hometown school, the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh, where he earned four letters in cross country and three in track & field from 1983-87. Pollard became the school’s first cross country All-American as a senior in 1986 and then capped his collegiate career by winning the 1987 NCAA Division III Outdoor 5,000-meter title in a then-school-record time of 14:31.20. In 1999, he was inducted into the school’s Athletics Hall of Fame.

The 1987 UW-Oshkosh graduate spent two years working as a CPA at Arthur Andersen Company in Milwaukee, before launching his highly successful administrative career in intercollegiate athletics at Saint Louis University in 1989. Pollard then served in various administrative capacities at Maryland (1994-98) and Wisconsin (1998-2005) before his arrival at Iowa State.

Jamie and his wife, Ellen, have four children: Thomas (wife Kami), Annie (husband Greg), Maggie and James.

Iowa State’s Directors of Athletics

S.W. Beyer, 1903-14
Clyde Williams, 1914-19
Charles Mayser, 1919-23
Hugo Otopalik, 1923-24
T. Nelson Metcalf, 1924-31
George F. Veenker, 1932-45
Louis Menze, 1945-58
Gordon Chalmers, 1959-66
Clay Stapleton, 1967-70
Lou McCullough, 1971-82
Max Urick, 1983-93
Gene Smith, 1993-2000
Bruce Van De Velde, 2000-05
Jamie Pollard, 2005-present

ISU In Learfield Directors’ Cup Under Jamie Pollard
2005-06—97^th
2006-07—73^rd
2007-08—58^th
2008-09—58^th
2009-10—34^th(highest finish in school history)
2010-11—60^th
2011-12—46^th
2012-13—41^st
2013-14—38^th
2014-15—45^th
2015-16—64^th
2016-17—59^th
2017-18—56^th
2018-19—53^rd
2019-20—No Standings, COVID 19
2020-21—38^th
2021-22—42^nd
2022-23—62^nd
2023-24—35^th
2024-25—56^th