Career: Executive Director, Intercollegiate Athletics, San Diego State University

Rick's final position as a sports executive took him to San Diego, where he retired as the Executive Director of Athletics and Special Assistant to the President at San Diego State University.  He had served as Director of Athletics for the Aztecs since 1995.

Rick was the first athletic director in SDSU history to sit on the president's cabinet as an integral part of the university’s administrative management team.  The president also named him chairman of the search committee for the new Vice President for Student Affairs, one of the few athletic directors in the nation to lead a nationwide vice-presidential search.

In seven years on the job, he spearheaded the drive to fund and build the new $4 million Tony Gwynn Baseball Stadium, and assisted in the opening of the new Cox Arena, a state-of-the-art coliseum that seats 12,500 spectators, which was funded from student fees.  Rick raised the money to build the new $20 million, four-story, 120,000 square foot Aztec Athletics Center, which opened in the fall of 2001, and successfully solicited additional funds to build a new softball stadium and tennis center.  These new facilities made the Aztecs’ physical plant equal to any on the west coast, including those of the Pac-10.   The addition of Cox Arena resulted in SDSU’s procurement of three major NCAA championships for San Diego - the NCAA Men’s Division I Sub-Regional Basketball Tournament in 2001 and 2008, and the NCAA Women's Final Four Volleyball Championship.

Rick resurrected the moribund San Diego State men's basketball program with the hiring of former University of Michigan 'Fab Five' coach, Steve Fisher, who has re-written the Aztecs' recrod book.  Rick also hired current SDSU baseball coach, Major League Baseball Hall of Famer, Tony Gwynn, and brought the New York Yankees to the San Diego State campus to play the Aztecs in an exhibition game.   

Under his leadership, San Diego State athletics achieved virtual compliance with the gender equity requirements

mandated by the CSU-CAL NOW Consent Decree he inherited when he arrived on campus.  This lawsuit settlement required SDSU to mirror male/female student enrollment ratios in reaching “proportionality” among its male and female student athletes in participation opportunities, grant-in-aid expenditures and overall expenditures.  Thus, SDSU now offers six men’s sports and twelve women’s sports, having added women’s crew four years ago.  

Rick was also well known on campus for stressing the importance of academics in the lives of student-athletes.  He developed the annual Aztec scholar athlete awards dinner, which honors those student-athletes who have achieved a minimum 3.2 GPA for at least one of the two previous semesters.  In 2002, an all-time high of 158 Aztecs’ student-athletes met this goal, compared to only 43 when the award was initiated in 1992.  In addition, SDSU student-athlete graduation rates improved dramatically during Bay’s tenure.  The SDSU student-athlete graduation rate for those entering school in 1992-93 was four percentage points below the graduation rate of the general student body.  However, the student-athlete rate for those entering SDSU in 1994-95 was 19 percentage points higher than the student body.  

Rick resigned under pressure in 2003 when he refused to sign off on a California State University audit of his department, portions of which he knew to be false and dishonest. He also charged the San Diego Union Tribune and its leading sports columnist with orchestrating a campaign against his administration in retaliation for Rick having exposed the paper for its flagrantly inaccurate reporting of the hiring procress of a new Aztecs' football coach.

 

Rick with the late Don Coryell, legendary football coach for the St. Louis Cardinals,
San Diego Chargers and San Diego State