Stephen F. Austin will name Ryan Ivey the next Director of Athletics

UPDATE (6:23 p.m.) - SFA has officially announced Ryan Ivey as Director of Athletics via social media and athletics website.

Ryan Ivey, Director of Athletics at Austin Peay, is expected to resign his position at the Clarksville, Tennessee school to claim the same title at Stephen F. Austin, a source told The Sawmill on Thursday morning.

Ivey has led the Governors for the past three years since authoring a wildly successful two-year revival at Texas A&M-Commerce that made him one of the industry's rising stars.

A former student-athlete at Memphis, Ivey has Southland Conference connections where he spent several years as an assistant (and later associate) AD at McNeese State University. According to his official bio at Austin Peay, Ivey created "a revenue generating master plan for the athletics department," at McNeese and "he led an initiative that saw the women’s basketball team have one of the largest NCAA attendance increases during the 2010-11 season."

Besides the East Texas connections while working in Commerce and his ties to the same league Stephen F. Austin competes in, the hire does come as a surprise to some who expected a "big splash."

The reality is, though, Ivey could be just that. He has been measurably successful in each of his past stints while dealing with (and increasing) marginal budgets. His legacy at Austin Peay may be defined by the facility upgrades he spearheaded that are continuing on the campus to this day. Focus on facilities has been a priority at SFA, too, where aging buildings and a failed athletic fee referendum have cast doubt on the university's ability to keep pace with their peers. 

Ivey will succeed longtime Lumberjacks AD Robert Hill who announced his retirement in January. A timeline for an official announcement and introduction has not yet been made clear.

This story is developing.