Brock Fowler / For The Post / bf278107@ohio.edu

Director of Athletics Kirby Hocutt is leaving Ohio University to become the Athletics Director at the University of Miami in Florida.

Ohio University Athletics Director Kirby Hocutt is leaving Athens to take the same position at the University of Miami in Florida, sources confirmed.

Tom Davis, interim secretary to the Board of Trustees, said that he thought Hocutt’s experience at OU helped him obtain the new position and added that the announcement was not yet official. Athletics department sources confirmed that Hocutt’s new position is at the University of Miami in Coral Gables, Fla.

“From my perspective I hate to see Director Hocutt leave,” Davis said.

The Miami Herald reported that the University of Miami expects to name a new athletics director today and that Hocutt is the leading candidate for the position. Another finalist was eliminated Tuesday, according to The Herald.

Hocutt said he had no comment on whether he would be at the university next year or if there would be an announcement on the topic during the next few days.

Hocutt earns a yearly salary of $176,851 at OU.

Hocutt’s two-and-a-half-year tenure was marred by the elimination of four sports teams, the conviction of football coach Frank Solich for drunk driving, an investigation into a gambling ring allegedly run by baseball players and the misuse of department purchasing cards by his former director of business and internal operations.

During Hocutt’s second year on the job, 17 football players were arrested in a nine-month span, prompting a complete reconstruction of Ohio’s student-athlete code of conduct and disciplinary procedures.

Hocutt does have a reputation as a successful fundraiser, which he added to in May 2006 with the creation of the Ohio Bobcat Club, an all-encompassing fund-raising wing of the department. The athletics department announced in mid-January that it has raised $1.4 million toward a $2.5 million goal of endowment support.

The University of Miami, a private institution, has been searching for a new athletics director since fall, when it hired a search consultant, said Mark Pray, assistant athletics director for communications at the University of Miami. Pray would not say how many candidates were in the running for the position, how much the current athletic director makes or whether Hocutt had been selected for the job.

Paul Dee, the University of Miami’s athletics director for 15 years, announced in May he would retire effective June 1. During his tenure, the University of Miami won three national titles — two in baseball, one in football — after recovering from a series of scandals that resulted in some sports being placed on probation multiple times during the mid-’90s and again in 2003 by the NCAA.

The University of Miami is a Division I member of the Atlantic Coast Conference.— Kristina Hauptmann contributed to this report.