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Eric Hyman serves as the Director of Athletics at the University of South Carolina. Regarded as an architect of championship programs, an advocate for academic success and a skilled administrator, Hyman began his duties at South Carolina on July 1, 2005.
Hyman has developed an outstanding reputation as a leader among his peers. He was named the 2003-04 Street and Smith's Business Journal National Athletics Director of the Year and was also selected as the Division I-A West Regional Athletics Director of the Year by the National Association of Collegiate Directors of Athletics (NACDA). In September 2008, he will assume the duties as President of the Division 1A Athletic Directors' Association.
Under Hyman's leadership, the USC Athletics Department has made tremendous strides in becoming a nationally prominent program with the goal of competing for championships. His $200 million master plan of facilities and the school's first athletics capital campaign is well underway with the construction of a state-of-the-art baseball stadium scheduled to open in 2009, and the groundbreaking for the Dodie Anderson Academic Enrichment Center, which is slated to be completed by the Fall of 2009. In addition, a new athletic training center will be completed at Williams-Brice Stadium in the Fall of 2008.
During Hyman's tenure, the Gamecocks have enjoyed their share of success on the field of competition. Over the past two years South Carolina has competed in the post season in football, women's basketball, baseball, softball, men's and women's soccer, indoor and outdoor men's and women's track and field, men's and women's golf, women's tennis and men's and women's swimming & diving, and captured a national championship in equestrian. Off the field, South Carolina student-athletes have combined to surpass the 3.0 grade point average plateau for the first time in department history and have topped the SEC in Academic Honor Roll for four consecutive semesters from 2007-08.
During 2005-06, Carolina was one of only 11 schools in the country and the only school in the SEC to have its football team participate in a bowl game, have both its men's and women's basketball programs play in post-season tournaments and have its baseball squad reach the regionals. In addition, the women's outdoor track & field team finished third in the country while crowning a pair of individual national champions, and the equestrian hunt seat claimed a national title. Men's soccer earned a conference title while both men's & women's golf and tennis teams advanced to postseason action.
Hyman came to South Carolina from TCU, where he served as the athletics director for over seven years. Under his leadership, TCU teams recorded 32 conference titles and consistently posted a graduation percentage rate higher than that of the overall student body. Hyman was instrumental in orchestrating TCU's invitation to join Conference USA in July 2001 and spearheaded the effort for the Horned Frogs to join the Mountain West Conference in July 2005, moving the program from the Western Athletic Conference it was in when Hyman arrived. During Hyman's tenure, the TCU football team went to six bowl games in seven seasons, boasted a Heisman Trophy candidate in LaDainian Tomlinson and was ranked as high as sixth in the BCS polls; the women's basketball team went to five straight NCAA Tournaments; the baseball team earned back-to-back regional appearances for the first time in school history; and the men's indoor and outdoor track and field and men's tennis teams finished seasons ranked among the top five in the nation.
As TCU's Athletics Director, Hyman worked diligently to improve athletic facilities. He helped raise over $30 million in facility improvements and directed a three-phase building plan that completely renovated the athletic departments facilities.
Prior to his stint in Fort Worth, Hyman was the athletics director at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. During his tenure, Miami had the fifth-highest student-athlete graduation rate among all NCAA Division I schools in the country. His last two years at Miami brought home 10 conference championships. Hyman also served as athletics director at VMI in Lexington, Virginia, in the 1980s.
No stranger to the Carolinas, Hyman coached football at Furman University for nine years under Art Baker and Dick Sheridan, and was an associate athletics director for two years. Eric earned a master's degree in educational administration (1975) from Furman. He and his wife, Pauline, coached the women's basketball team at North Greenville University in Tigerville, S.C., leading the team to national rankings in the `70s.
Hyman played football at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill where he was an all-ACC football player, on the Dean's list and selected for the Hula Bowl. He also served as the Executive Associate Athletics Director at North Carolina State University in Raleigh in the early 1990s.
His wife, Pauline, is a native of North Carolina and also has her undergraduate and graduate degrees from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She did some post-graduate work at South Carolina in the early eighties. She played and later coached women's college basketball, taught sociology and psychology and served as a college administrator. Pauline developed and taught the NCAA CHAMPS Life Skills course and various seminars for student-athletes at both Miami University and TCU. Since coming to South Carolina, she has taught the Etiquette Seminar in the Gamecocks' CHAMPS Life Skills course and assists with other seminars in preparing the student-athletes for their futures, such as the Dress for Success and Networking and Interviewing seminars.
The Hymans have a daughter and son-in-law, Corrine and Michael Quast, and a son, Ryan. Corrine is a realtor in Fort Worth, Texas; Michael is a financial analyst and Ryan, is in the property and casualty insurance business, also in Fort Worth.
