MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – When you begin to dig deeper into Wren Baker's professional background there is one thing that really stands out to me - he is a former coach.
 
Today, the trend is to hire business and marketing-savvy people to run athletic departments as if they are Fortune 500 companies, and Baker certainly has those qualities as evidenced by the dramatic financial growth North Texas has experienced under his stewardship.
 
Ticket revenue increased by 125%. The five largest gifts in UNT history came under Baker's watch and his five-year strategic plan included lucrative new contracts for multi-media rights, licensing, apparel and equipment.
 
Those things are vitally important to the health and well-being of any athletic department, which is why college presidents today are so enamored with businessmen and businesswomen.
 
Securing sponsorships and generating extra revenue takes talent, skill, creativity and persuasiveness, particularly at places like West Virginia University where no Fortune 500s exist. All indications point to Baker having those important qualities.
 
But don't discount the brief period Wren spent in the coaching profession. It has value, and it still matters.
 
West Virginia's first three athletic directors, Anthony Chez, E.R. Sweetland and George Pyle, were administrative types who balanced budgets and did mostly scheduling.
 
Harry Stansbury was the first athletic director to have publicity, marketing and business experience when he took over in 1917. Stansbury oversaw the construction of old Mountaineer Field and the Field House during a tenure that lasted 21 years.
 
Roy "Legs" Hawley also had publicity and marketing in his background when he came on board in 1938. His strong people skills and valuable relationships eventually steered WVU toward the Southern Conference in 1950 during a time when the league also included North Carolina, Duke, Wake Forest, North Carolina State, Clemson and Maryland.
 
Then, West Virginia turned to men's basketball coach Red Brown in 1954 when Hawley died suddenly of a heart attack, beginning a streak of 56 straight years of former coaches leading WVU athletics.
 
Leland Byrd, an ex-coach, was hired in 1972. Big Eight assistant commissioner Dick Martin had coaching in his background when he replaced Byrd in 1978, as did Fred Schaus, of course, when he took over in 1981.
 
Ed Pastilong was Salem's head football coach before he replaced the retiring Schaus in 1989.
 
You can argue the period from Brown's first year in 1954 until Pastilong's final season in 2010 represent the most sustained on-field success in West Virginia University sports history.
 
During Brown's tenure, men's basketball played in the 1959 NCAA championship game and had a reputation in the late 1950s on par with Kentucky. A case could be made that West Virginia then was comparable to Gonzaga today.
 
Jim Carlen and then Bobby Bowden transitioned Mountaineer football from the Southern Conference to Eastern independence in the mid-1970s, setting the table for Don Nehlen's transformational 20-year tenure that included two undefeated regular seasons in 1988 and 1993.
 
What Nehlen did beyond the football field to help transform WVU into a world-class university has never been fully appreciated, in my opinion.
 
Gale Catlett gave men's basketball a big shot of adrenaline when he finally got things going in the early 1980s. Then, when John Beilein arrived in 2003, he put Mountaineer basketball back on the map and helped set up Bob Huggins for his incomparable run of success that today stands at 16 years and counting.
 
Rich Rodriguez's 2005, 2006 and 2007 seasons rank as the greatest three-year period in modern Mountaineer football history, equaled only by Clarence Spears' three-year run from 1922-24.
 
These coaches were successful, in part, because their bosses were once coaches who understood all that goes into fielding winning teams. Being an ex-coach is certainly not the be-all, end-all, and lots of very successful ADs have no coaching backgrounds whatsoever, but it doesn't hurt to possess it. 
 
That is what immediately came to mind when I watched Baker step up to the podium on Monday morning and confidently address the media, fans and supporters the way he once talked to his teams.
 
"I've always cared about being in a profession where I had the opportunity to help people grow and develop," he said. "Once I plugged into intercollegiate athletics, I really found that. I had an opportunity to coach early and had some success there but didn't feel as comfortable and confident in that role as I did in the AD's role. It is a different path, but I can look back now at that journey and each of those steps and how each of them prepared me."
 
During his quick two-day stay in Morgantown before returning to Texas with his family, Baker made it a point to stop over and watch a little men's and women's basketball practice. Old ball coaches always seem to love to watch a little practice.
 
"Everybody who called me said, 'You're getting a terrific AD.' That's coaches he's had associations with," Huggins said Tuesday morning. "I didn't call them, they called me. They said, 'Hey, listen, this guy is really good. You're getting the right guy.' I felt really good about it before I ever met Wren because of what everybody had to say about him."
 
Baker's association with Eddie Sutton also caught Huggins' attention.
 
"I don't know that much about what Wren did, but I know he worked with Eddie and Eddie Sutton was one of the great coaches of all time. I coached against Eddie several times," he said. "I kind of hit it at the right time when the new guys were coming in and the old guys were going out. I was kind of in the middle, so I had a relationship with the Eddie Suttons and the Bob Knights and so forth."
 
First-year Mountaineer women's basketball coach Dawn Plitzuweit is impressed with Baker's well-rounded background as well.
 
"Obviously, before news breaks, news breaks, right?" she said. "Before he was announced, there were some people who were letting me know this is who it's going to be. And the people who I know in the profession who know him and work with him just have incredible things to say about Wren.
 
"He's got a very charismatic personality, but he's also very genuine. I think there are a lot of people excited about him being here. He's got a lot to do at this point in time, so to stop by practice and meet our young ladies … he didn't give us any shooting demonstrations. He said he could defend and rebound, so we'll bring him back to practice and tell us a little about that," she joked.
 
When Plitzuweit got her first college job at Grand Valley State, the person who hired her was former Toledo player and coach Tim Selgo. 
 
Coaches know good coaches.
 
"We had many conversations about it," she said. "(Selgo) was an offensive guy, though, so our very first practice at Grand Valley we didn't have all of the lights turned on. I didn't know. How are you supposed to know those things? We were doing a lot of rebounding drills and I'm thinking to myself, 'We'll see how this works out.' But it worked out pretty well."
 
Indeed, it did. 
 
Plitzuweit led Grand Valley State to a Division II national championship in 2006.
 
Baker has similar aspirations for that type of success here at West Virginia University when his tenure officially begins on Dec. 19.
 
Stay tuned.