USF Athletics

Griffin served as Director of Athletics for 15 years (1986-2002), leading USF through a transformational period and rapid ascent that saw the addition of fast pitch softball, women’s soccer (1995) and football (1997), elevation from the Sun Belt Conference to the Metro Conference to Conference USA and the capturing of 63 conference titles.
 
Honored as the 1999 Southeast Region Athletics Director of the Year by the National Association of Collegiate Directors of Athletics, Griffin inherited a USF athletic program that was $650,000 in debt and within two years, the debt was gone and a new era of fiscal solvency had begun. Griffin was instrumental in the University’s charter membership to Conference USA and was responsible for developing the plan and launching South Florida's football program at the NCAA Division I-AA level and later move to I-A just four seasons later.
 
One of his first hires was men’s basketball coach Bobby Paschal, an eventual USF Athletic Hall of Fame inductee, who Griffin twice granted contract extensions despite three consecutive losing seasons. Paschal’s Bulls won the 1990 Sun Belt Conference Tournament title – still the only men’s basketball conference tournament title — and earned two NCAA Tournament bids and an NIT berth in a three-season span.
 
In perhaps the biggest moment in USF’s drive to implement a football program, in 1993 Griffin hired local legend Lee Roy Selmon as USF’s associate athletic director for external affairs. Griffin went on to build a $5 million endowment and help sell 17,000 season tickets for the inaugural season, far surpassing the goal of 10,000. Selmon would go on to serve as USF Director of Athletics (2001-04) and an integral member of the department until 2012 and was inducted into the Athletic Hall of Fame.
 
Griffin’s other notable hires include convincing former USF baseball player Ken Eriksen to join the softball staff and eventually become the program’s head coach – amassing more than 1,000 career wins, a College World Series appearance and earning a silver medal in 2021 as head coach of the U.S. Olympic Team. In 2000, Griffin elevated then assistant Jose Fernandez to interim head coach for women’s basketball. Fernandez finished his 22nd season in 2022 and has posted more than 400 wins, reached the NCAA Tournament eight times and postseason play 17, won the 2009 WNIT, captured USF’s first conference title (2021) in women’s basketball and is a two-time AAC Coach of the Year. Griffin also hired an executive director for the 1999 Men’s Final Four’s local organizing committee — then 27-year-old Michael Kelly, who would go on to join the Athletics staff and eventually become USF Vice President of Athletics in 2018.
 
Griffin oversaw the NCAA Men’s Soccer Tournament being held on USF’s campus in 1990 and 1991 and was a catalyst in the Tampa Bay Area, attracting the 1999 NCAA Men’s Basketball Final Four held at St. Petersburg’s Tropicana Field.

Griffin was selected for induction with the USF Athletic Hall of Fame Class of 2022.