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Texas Tech AD Myers retiring

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Updated Aug 26, 2010 5:58 PM ET
     
 

Texas Tech athletic director Gerald Myers, who brought Hall of Famer Bob Knight to the West Texas campus and got caught up in the contentious final year of football coach Mike Leach's tenure, is retiring.

The school said Thursday the former Red Raiders basketball coach will step down in May.

"Together we have accomplished a lot since the Big 12 started in the fall of 1996 and it has truly been a team effort," Myers said. "I feel like now is the time to turn this job over to someone else and I will be supportive of that person in every way that I can."

Texas Tech won two Southwest Conference titles and went to four NCAA tournaments in Myers' 20 years as coach, but he put the program on the national map by hiring Knight 11 years after he left the bench.

Knight led the Red Raiders to 20-plus wins his first four seasons - a first at the school - and four NCAA tournaments in six years, including a round of 16 appearance in 2005.

On Jan. 1, 2007, Knight got win No. 880 on Texas Tech's home court to surpass former North Carolina coach Dean Smith as the winningest Division I men's coach. He resigned in midseason in February 2008 with 902 wins.

Myers became athletic director in 1996, four years before he hired Leach in hopes that a pass-happy offense would bring life to a football program that had grown stagnant under Spike Dykes.

Leach's fan-friendly persona and high-scoring offense did the trick, culminating in the school's highest-ever national ranking at No. 2 in 2008 before a loss to Oklahoma derailed Tech's championship hopes.

Messy contract negotiations, including testy e-mail exchanges between Myers and Leach's representatives, became public knowledge the following offseason. Leach was fired late last season after he was accused of mistreating a player with a concussion. Leach denied the allegations and has sued the university.

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