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NEW YORK — St. John’s on Wednesday hired Fordham athletic director and New York native Ed Cool as its next AD.
“Ed Cool has demonstrated a commitment to excellence on and off the field of competition,” said St. John’s President, Reverend Brian J. Shanley said. “This is an important hire at an important time in the changing landscape of college athletics, and I am pleased to have Ed rejoin our team.”
Grew up in Queens, not far from St. John’s, and was a star baseball player at Stony Brook, Long Island, graduating in 2003. Soon after, he started in athletic administration at St. John’s.
“To say it’s the honor of my professional life would be an understatement,” Cool said. “I understand that the task ahead of us will not be easy, but I sincerely believe that we will commit all the resources necessary to restore St. John’s to its natural place atop the collegiate athletic landscape.”
St. John’s has been without an athletic director since Mike Cragg and the school mutually agreed to part ways after six years at the Big East school.
Kuhl was identified a few weeks ago as one of SJU’s top candidates to become basketball coach Rick Pitino’s next boss.
He left college sports for several years before returning to St. John’s from 2011 to 2017, serving as vice president of athletics where he worked on revenue-generation projects for the university president.
Cool has been at Fordham since April 2020.
Under Kuhl, Fordham’s long-struggling Atlantic 10 Conference men’s basketball program found some success under the two coaches it hired, Kyle Neptune and Keith Urgo.
Neptune returned to Villanova after one season and replaced Jay Wright as head coach. Urgo led the Rams to their best season in three decades in 2022-23.
Fordham’s football team made the FCS playoffs in 2022 and the Rams earned conference titles and NCAA berths in water polo, men’s soccer, softball and women’s tennis under Cool.
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