Peter E. Pilling has been named Columbia’s new Director of Intercollegiate Athletics and Physical Education, President Lee C. Bollinger announced on Tuesday.
Pilling has served as Vice President for IMG College, a marketing company which manages corporate sponsorships for athletics conferences and universities, since 2007. Prior to that, he was Senior Associate Athletics Director at Brigham Young University and Associate Athletics Director at Villanova University.
“Peter has spent his career working at several of the most respected college sports programs in the country. His wealth of knowledge, experience, and enthusiasm will help Columbia Athletics build on a recent record of historic achievement and reach the new levels of excellence that we expect in everything we do as a great university,” Bollinger said in an email to the Columbia community.
Pilling succeeds M. Dianne Murphy, who announced her resignation in September, and will begin work on February 23, according to Bollinger’s announcement.
“Peter brings to this important assignment not only professional expertise in sports management, but a deep and abiding commitment to the academic, research, cultural and civic mission of higher education,” Bollinger said in his announcement. “He impressed everyone who has met him with his vision of the role athletics, health, and wellness can play in enhancing the educational experience of all our students, as well as his respect for the unique values of the Ivy League in the larger landscape of intercollegiate athletics.
In an interview with The Columbia Daily Spectator on Tuesday, Pilling said that hiring a new football coach was “priority No. 1,” then added, “And I think the next area is to listen. I’m going to meet with all the senior administration, meet with the coaches, meet with the staff, and listen.”
At Brigham Young, Pilling was a member of the two-person search committee that hired football coach Bronco Mendenhall, who has led BYU to two conference championships. Pilling said Columbia needs to hire a new coach who has proven their ability to build a football program, and that while there is no specific timeline, urgency is a key aspect of the search.
Pilling also told Spectator that, along with making the football program competitive and listening to those around him, the other major priority will be to ensure that student athletes are given an opportunity and are pushed to succeed in all facets of their lives at Columbia. “The entire athletic department is a priority — to make sure our student athletes can be successful in the field of competition and can have success in the classroom and have success in life.”
Pilling is a graduate of BYU with a B.S. in accounting. He continued his education at Ohio University, where he earned a master’s degree in sports administration.
