CSUN Mourns the Passing of Former Athletic Director Dick Dull
1/8/2026 2:20:00 PM | General
NORTHRIDGE, Calif. - California State University, Northridge is mourning the passing of former Director of Athletics Dick Dull, who passed away on Tuesday morning (Jan. 6) at the age of 80 from natural causes.
A respected administrator at several levels of collegiate athletics, Dull served as CSUN's Director of Athletics from May 1999 to July 2005.
Dull began his career as Director of Athletics at the University of Maryland from 1981-86. At Maryland, Dull increased athletics' gross revenues from $3.7 million to $9 million over five years, and increased annual giving to athletics from $900,000 annually to $2.8 million. Also during that time, he hired Bobby Ross as head football coach and increased the football program's attendance from 30,000 in 1981 to 52,000 per game in 1985.
The Maryland Terrapins also enjoyed considerable success on and off the field under Dull's guidance. The football team earned consecutive bowl invitations while the men's basketball squad reached the NCAA Final 32 from 1982-86. The women's basketball team participated in the NCAA Division I Final Four in 1982, while Maryland's women's lacrosse team won the NCAA National Championship in 1986. Maryland also saw its total number of student-athletes on the Atlantic Coast Conference Honor Roll jump from 35 in 1981 to 82 in 1986. Dull also served as the Chairman of the Atlantic Coast Conference Athletic Directors from 1984-86.
He was hired as the athletic director at the University of Nebraska-Kearney, a Div. II school, where he would serve from 1995-98. At Nebraska-Kearney, Dull's program led its conference in the number of honor roll student-athletes in 1996-97 and negotiated a corporate sponsorship program with Nike. Dull would move on to Moravian College in Bethlehem, Penn., for one year (1998-99). In that one year, Moravian won five Middle Athletic Conference championships. After his success at Moravian, Dull left the small private school to come west to Northridge.
Dull began his tenure at CSUN in 1999, and many of the school's teams enjoyed success under Dull's leadership. Women's soccer engineered an impressive turnaround under first-year head coach Terry Davila, finishing 12-6-1 and reaching the Big West Tournament semifinals in 2004. The men's soccer team, also coached by Davila, reached the NCAA Tournament each season from 2002-05, upsetting the team that played for the National Championship, UC Santa Barbara. Davila was named Big West Coach of the Year in 2002 and 2003, and Co-Big West Coach of the Year in 2005.
"Mr. Dick Dull was my first athletic director at CSUN and set the standard for professionalism and leadership I measure all others against," said Davila. "Few people truly make an institution better—he did. CSUN was better because he was there, and I am a better coach and person for having known him."
Head men's basketball coach Bobby Braswell led CSUN to a 22-10 record, a Big Sky Conference Championship, and the school's first Div. I NCAA Tournament berth during the 2000-01 season. In 2005, the men's Track and Field team won the Cal-Nevada Track and Field Championships, and the Matador men's volleyball team upset the heavily favored UCLA Bruins in the Mountain Pacific Sports Federation Tournament before falling to top-ranked Pepperdine in the semifinals.
While at CSUN, Dull also worked with University leadership to improve the athletic facilities. The softball field was improved, and the track was resurfaced with "the best surface in America," according to Dull. For the baseball team, a brand new grandstand and press box were added, and the women's volleyball team got its own locker room. Dull also moved the program from the Big Sky Conference to the Big West Conference in 2001. He stepped down as CSUN's athletic director in 2005.
"Dick brought the best out in all of us," said CSUN women's tennis coach Gary Victor. "He had a special way about him. Dignified yet warm. Brilliant yet humble. Always caring and curious. I have thousands of his books that he left when he and Sally moved back to the East Coast. He was a Renaissance man in so many ways. What a wonderful man, and he is greatly missed."
Dull retired from CSUN, but moved back to the East Coast in June 2007 with his wife, Sally, to work as the athletic director at Belmont Abbey College in Belmont, N.C. He established a Belmont Abbey Athletic Hall of Fame in 2008, before giving retirement another try in 2009.
"Dick was not only a great athletic director, but was just an amazing person," said CSUN men's golf coach Jim Bracken. "He cared a lot about people and the CSUN community and how Athletics represented itself in the community. He was the first athletic director to give some coaches multi-year contracts, which was important in recruiting and stability for those programs. Everything he did was for the betterment of the department."
An accomplished javelin thrower, Dull attended college at the University of Maryland, where he competed in the javelin throw at the intercollegiate level. As a senior in 1966, he won the Atlantic Coast Conference championship in the event with a throw of 223 feet and 3.5 inches. That year, he also placed in the top ten in the NCAA event.
Dull earned his law degree and a bachelor's degree in political science from the University of Maryland.
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