Dan Radakovich is heading back to the Clemson area this summer, but in a way, he never really unpacked.
When he took the Miami athletic director job in 2021 after nine years at Clemson, Radakovich was eager for the challenge. He also knew the move came late in a long career, and he and his wife, Marcie, made a point of keeping their lake house about 15 minutes from Clemson’s campus. While he settled into South Florida, she kept splitting time between Seneca, South Carolina and Coral Gables - a running joke that made her the family “snowbird.”
Now Radakovich, 68, says he’s ready for the next phase of life back in Upstate South Carolina after retiring from Miami and wrapping up nearly 40 years 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.”
Radakovich’s Miami run closed with the kind of football breakthrough the Hurricanes had been chasing. His partnership with coach Mario Cristobal reached its peak this past season, when Miami won three College Football Playoff games and finished as national runner-up to Indiana.
That ending looked a lot different from the early days of the marriage. Cristobal’s first three seasons produced a 22-16 record, a 12-12 mark in the ACC and plenty of attention for his game-management mistakes. But the final season changed the tone around the program in a big way.
Radakovich’s own connection to Miami goes back much further. Before he ever became an athletic director, he was a graduate student there, earned a master’s degree in 1982 and landed his first college athletics job at the school. So when Miami opened the AD position in 2021, the chance to return to where it started carried real weight.
“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.
He also understood that the job in Coral Gables might be his last. That’s part of why he and Marcie kept the Clemson-area lake house. Radakovich said the decision to step away came from him, not from pressure inside the athletic department.
“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 the conversations with Miami leadership as “really positive.”
He formally announced his retirement plans on April 28. His contract with Miami ran through the end of 2026, but his retirement became effective June 1.
Miami’s search for his replacement has drawn attention of its own. The Herald, citing a source, previously reported that the school wanted an AD who could raise money more effectively and navigate the NIL/revenue-sharing era, and had been targeting entertainment CEO Michael Yormark “for months.”
The Herald also reported in June that Miami was “taken aback” by the negative reaction to the expected Yormark hire and is moving more carefully now. As of Tuesday, the school had not made a hire.
Radakovich said athletic director hiring trends “run in cycles,” and he understands why schools are looking beyond traditional college sports backgrounds to boost revenue. Even so, he said the heart of the job still belongs on campus.
“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.”
For now, his own priorities are a lot less complicated: travel, golf, his wife’s to-do list and time with family. The Radakoviches’ two adult sons live in the Atlanta area, and the older one is married with a young daughter, so Dan and Marcie plan to split time between their Seneca home and a smaller place in Atlanta.
Radakovich also expects to do some consulting for Miami, mostly to help finish a few athletics projects that began on his watch. He’s also considering a few other opportunities that would keep him around college sports.
As for a possible return to Clemson in any formal role, he laughed that one off.
“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.”
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