Winning More: The ADs Driving the Largest Three-Year Gains Across College Athletics

Momentum is a strong signal in college athletics, but it’s one that needs context. It’s one thing to have a winning year; it’s another to keep winning, year over year, across sports. At AD Vantage, we believe in using data to highlight hard-fought wins and tell the story from the AD’s vantage point.

What does it take to create a winning standard and then maintain it? It’s more like “Who” does it take, and the answer, it turns out, is everyone. No, really, everyone.

Take it from Lamar University Vice President and Director of Athletics Jeff O’Malley:

“What we’re building here is a true team effort. Success multiplies as you move forward, and it’s fun to be a small part of and fun to watch it grow.”

Using the AD Vantage platform, we generated our list of the Top 25 Most Improved Athletic Directors. The analysis brought us to O’Malley’s desk. After publishing the results, we reached out to capture some qualitative perspective to accompany our quantitative findings.

The significance of campus-wide buy-in when changing a culture emerges throughout O’Malley’s comments:

“Beyond wins and losses, when you measure a program’s progress, you look at the culture, how players are reacting to coaches, and how the staff responds to the head coach.”

You might expect this approach to require bringing in a fresh set of faces for a new start—a complete reset, if you will. But that wasn’t O’Malley’s way.

“Bob Marcum and Mike Hamrick (two AD’s O’Malley worked for as he rose through the ranks) approached the job by giving people already there a chance to be successful, including myself. I wanted to mimic and adopt that same philosophy when the circumstances dictated.”

That philosophy is evident in O’Malley making head coaching changes only in football and women’s volleyball during this extremely successful run.

So, how did O’Malley and the Cardinals soar to the top spot among the 25 Most Improved ADs, gaining 20.3 percentage points while becoming the only program in the country to improve across all six sports?

“It’s about instilling a belief that we can be successful and finding people who want to be here.”

O’Malley is also very quick to point out that Lamar’s turnaround has been an all-hands-on-deck effort, starting with the Office of the President, led by Dr. Jaime Taylor, and extending to every sport’s staff, support team, and athletes.

“It all starts with Dr. Taylor and what he’s been able to do across the entire campus. He preaches teamwork and collaboration every Monday morning, and that breeds connectivity and unity. There’s not a big gap between campus and athletics. We’re all on the same page.”

Lamar’s rise to the top offers one clear example of what sustained, department-wide progress can look like. But the paths to improvement were not identical. 

But before we explore the five biggest success stories, here’s how we arrived at the rankings. Our methodology measures three-year changes in winning percentage across six sports to identify the athletic departments showing the strongest overall momentum.

Graphic courtesy of AD Vantage

Now, here’s a closer look at the five ADs who led the largest three-year gains and what drove each program’s rise.

#1 Jeff O’Malley, Lamar University

Since O’Malley joined the Lamar University staff in June 2022, the Cardinals have increased their win % in each sport by double digits, with football leading the way at 28.9%. After the 2022 football season ended with a 1-10 (1-5) and T-7th in the Southland, O’Malley made a change at the head coach position, hiring Coach Pete Rossomando. This immediately led to 6 wins in 2023, followed by 7 in 2024, with the Cardinals boasting an 8-5 (5-3) record and ranked 2nd in the conference in 2025. In baseball, former head coach Will Davis averaged 26 wins per season before O’Malley’s arrival. Since? 37.5 wins per season, including 44 wins in 2024, the highest single-season total since 1993.  Softball?  Same story.  Win totals have increased every year since O’Malley took over, with Amy Hooks’ squad moving from 8 total wins in 2021 to 34 at the end of 2026.

#2 Matt Roberts, College of Charleston

While having been with Charleston since 2016, Roberts has shown great agility in the NIL era, having a win % increased over all 5 of the sports they sponsor from this list. He has led the Cougars forward with a win % increase of 14.8%, driven by a renaissance in Women’s Basketball (36.7%).  Former head coach Robin Harmony’s program jumped from 11 wins in 2022-23 to three consecutive 20+-win seasons, the first time that had been accomplished since 1989.  Roberts also took a chance on internally developed talent by hiring the youngest softball head coach in the nation in Maggie Mrowka, who had already helped lead the Cougars to 31 wins in 2025, followed by a CAA championship and a 30-win season in her first as head coach in 2026.

#3 Marvin Lewis, George Mason University

Lewis started at George Mason in July of 2023. The biggest turnarounds Lewis led are in women’s basketball and women’s volleyball, historically two sports that have been difficult to generate revenue from. Women’s basketball saw a 34.5-percentage-point increase over the past three years. Lewis retained Coach Vanessa Blair-Lewis, who started at George Mason in 2021. Under Coach Blair-Lewis, the Patriots made big strides up the rankings from #335 to #236 and, at the end of the 2023 season, to #174. We see that trend accelerate after Lewis’s arrival, finishing #63 in '24, #45 in '25, and settling at #61 this past year. Lewis renewed the head coach’s contract through March 2032 after last season. Strides in women’s volleyball are nothing to sniff at either. After four seasons of gradual improvement, George Mason had their first winning season, going 17-13. Before that season, they’d yet to crack 11 wins. That’s a 55% increase in win percentage in one season. 

#4 Dr. Richard Duran, University of the Incarnate Word

Prior to his departure for Northern Arizona University, Duran led a 12.3 percent improvement over the past three years. His hiring of Kim Dean proved to be instrumental in leading the Softball program back to relevance with campaigns of 34, 29, and 33 wins, the highest 3-year total in program history. Women’s sports thrived under his leadership, with Volleyball (23.3%) and Basketball (14.1%) also jumping up to new heights.

#5 Travis Goff, University of Kansas

A downside of having one of the most storied Men’s Basketball programs in the country is the lofty standards and the fact that 20-win seasons are below expectations. Outside of that, Kansas athletics have exploded under the tenure of Goff, with Football, Baseball, and Women’s Volleyball all increasing by over 20%. One of Goff’s first hires, Dan Fitzgerald, has led a baseball renaissance, taking a program from 157th in EOS RPI in 2022 to a program record of 19th in 2026. In football, sure, the fan base always wants more. But when Goff took over, the Kansas football program had not achieved more than 5 wins in a season since 2008 (!!!). 2022 through 2025? All 5+ win campaigns, including a 9-win season in 2023.

There’s No One Way to Win

All of these departments, and the ADs who lead them, are exceptional. They’ve established standards that are extremely difficult to achieve in the current environment of collegiate athletics. No two have the same story. No two have the same challenges. But they all found a way to create alignment, build belief, and move their departments forward.

The numbers tell us where the greatest gains occurred. The stories behind them show us how those gains were made possible. Our ethos at AD Vantage is to do just that: provide an ecosystem where decisions can be made with a clearer understanding of the difference between success and failure. No more siloed information, but connected insights across the categories that matter most.