Ray Tanner will be leaving his role as South Carolina athletic director and taking on a new job at USC, the school announced Friday.
“For a while now, I have thought there’s going to come a time for Carolina to get a new athletics director, and the president and I have had those conversations,” Tanner said in a statement from the school. “There was interest for me to remain at the university. I agreed to stay in a new role because of my passion for this university, this city and this state.”
Tanner has officially been the school’s athletic director since Aug. 2, 2012, a role he took on after national championship success as the Gamecocks’ baseball coach.
“I loved my experience as a baseball coach and as an administrator,” Tanner said in the statement. “I’m grateful to have been able to work here for such a long time.”
Tanner is moving into a new role as senior advisor to the president. He will remain on as athletic director until a new AD is found.
“Tanner will then transition to become athletics director emeritus and senior advisor to the president, focusing on fundraising and community engagement,” USC said in a statement announcing the change. “A national search for a new athletics director will begin at the end of the fall semester.”
Tanner, 66, signed a contract extension as the school’s athletic director last spring that was set to run through June 2026. He will stay in his new role as senior advisor to the president until at least June 2028, but his contract could be extended beyond that.
“He’s not stepping down,” USC President Michael Amiridis told reporters. “He’s transitioning to a new position.”
It was Tanner’s decision to pursue the change, Amiridis said during a Friday board of trustees meeting.
Tanner will be paid current his current annual salary of $1.175 million through June 30, 2025, and then make $987,500 through June 30, 2026. The new contract calls for an $800,000 annual salary in its final two years.
Tanner has been the school’s athletic director since August 2012. Among his most high-profile hires over the last year were men’s basketball coach Lamont Paris; football coaches Shane Beamer and Will Muschamp; men’s soccer coach Tony Annan; and baseball coaches Chad Holbrook, Mark Kingston and Paul Mainieri.
In the Tanner era as athletic director, the women’s basketball team won three national titles (2017, 2022 and 2024) under coach Dawn Staley. The equestrian team won the 2015 national championship. USC teams won 21 SEC regular-season and tournament titles and made 154 postseason appearances over the last 12 years.
South Carolina facility upgrades during Tanner’s tenure include the Spurrier indoor football practice facility and Long Family Football Operations Center, Carolina Softball Stadium, Sheila and Morris Cregger Track and Field Complex, and Carolina Tennis Center.
He also helped the athletics department navigate the financial crunch of the COVID pandemic and the early years of the name, image and likeness era for college athletes.
Before transitioning to his AD job, he was Gamecocks baseball coach from 1997-2012 and led the program to back-to-back national championships in 2010-11.
In addition to the two national championships, he led the Gamecocks to three Southeastern Conference regular season baseball championships (2000, 2002, 2011) and SEC tournament championship in 2014.
The Gamecocks made six College World Series trips under Tanner and he won 738 games. In 2013, Tanner’s No. 1 jersey was retired. Overall, he finished with a record of 1133-489-3 at USC and North Carolina State.
Local News
