AD Bill Beekman: Final Four gives Michigan State 'something to celebrate'

MINNEAPOLIS — Bill Beekman looked around U.S. Bank Stadium and beamed, seeing more than 5,000 green and white-clad fans filling the seats as Michigan State’s basketball team practice.

It has been a long 14 months since the 51-year-old Okemos native became the Spartans’ interim — and then permanent — athletic director. And Beekman is mindful of the trials and tribulations of MSU sports in the past few years, from sexual assault cases involving football players in early 2017 to the Larry Nassar trial in early 2018 to allegations of other improprieties with coaches Mark Dantonio and Tom Izzo’s programs over the past decade.

But Beekman also wanted to put the focus on the players who were about to take college basketball’s biggest stage, who were not part of any of that.

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“I think you have to respect your history. And moving forward doesn’t mean forgetting the past. It means living in reflection of the past,” Beekman said, a day before Izzo’s eighth Final Four appearance in the past 21 seasons. “I think these opportunities give people something to celebrate. And we needed something to celebrate. And hopefully people will embrace that.

“It couldn’t happen to a better group of guys.”

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Former athletic director Mark Hollis retired abruptly after 10 years on Jan. 26, 2018 amid the Nassar fallout and hours before an ESPN report detailed allegations of sexual assault and violence against women by MSU's football and men's basketball players.

Beekman, who had never been an athletic administrator, took over on an interim basis on Feb. 5 that year, and on July 16 was named permanent athletic director by then-interim president John Engler.

It has been an adjustment period for the former vice president and secretary of the MSU Board of Trustees, whose only athletic experience was on his high school cross country team more than 30 years ago.

“As a person who’s not new to the university but who is to athletics, it’s just a little bit of a learning curve and understanding how I can be helpful to our 25 different sports and our 19 different head coaches,” Beekman said. “Everyone is a little different, with different issues and different problems and different challenges. How I can be helpful to them, my job is to be resource to the coaches and their players, their student-athletes. So that’s been what I’ve been trying to figure out — simply how I can be a part of the machine that helps drive it forward in a positive way.”

Getting to know the athletes and their concerns, Beekman said, has been his primary mission in adjusting to his new job. He has started a “Breakfast with Bill” session every other week with open invitations to any Spartan athletes who want to have a morning meal on him and discuss anything they want.

“It’s sort of a weird thing to say, because I’ve known many of the student-athletes over the years in my prior roles,” he said. “But just top to bottom how extraordinary these young people are. They’re very, very special. I reflect on my college days, and I probably spent too much time in my dorm room playing video games. And back in the day, they weren’t even good video games.

“And now they go to class — they actually go to class — they practice, they travel. And then I’ll find them out doing charitable work and doing good things in the community. It’s not so much a surprise as it is a tremendous reaffirmation. They’re just really, really — virtually all of them — are wonderful kids.”

The 1989 MSU graduate previously served as executive director of the MSU Alumni Association, after being hired by his alma mater in 1995 as an administrator with the MSU HealthTeam. He also served as assistant dean for finance and planning in the College of Human Medicine from 1998-2004.

He earned his law degree from Wayne State in 1993 and an MBA from Northwestern in 2004.

Beekman called himself “sort of a behind-the-scenes kind of guy” and said he and his staff are finishing up a strategic planning process for the athletic department “that I think will help guide us over the next decade.”

“I’m just trying to really get the team together — whether it’s our student-athletes, our staff, our coaching team — to make sure we’re all on the same page and driving toward the same direction,” Beekman said.

As for Spartan basketball team and its Big Ten championships and Final Four run, Beekman said the university “couldn’t have a better example” for the rest of the MSU sports to emulate.

“This really is on a true national stage, and it’s sort of a capstone event,” he said. “I think it’s meaningful for Tom and the program, but it’s also meaningful for our institution, for the community and, from my perspective, for the state of Michigan. Not to in any way not be mindful of the past, but I think it’s something that’s positive with a very positive group of young men that hopefully people can feel good about.”

Contact Chris Solari at csolari@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @chrissolari. Read more on the Michigan State Spartans and sign up for our Spartans newsletter.