Former Kansas Jayhawks AD Bob Marcum, who rehired Don Fambrough, has died at 87

Former University of Kansas athletic director Bob Marcum, who worked at KU from 1978-82 during a 40-year career as an administrator in college athletics, died Tuesday at the age of 87.

At KU, Marcum ran an athletic department that racked up 15 Big Eight Conference titles in six sports.

KU won Big Eight titles in women’s basketball (1979, 1980, 1981), women’s swimming and diving (1979, 1980, 1981, 1982), softball (1979), men’s swimming and diving (1979), men’s indoor track and field (1980, 1981, 1982) and men’s outdoor track and field (1979, 1980, 1982).

Marcum also re-hired football coach Don Fambrough to a second term in 1979. Fambrough had served as KU coach from 1971-74 and was the 1981 Big Eight coach of the year as KU reached the 1981 Hall of Fame Bowl.

Following his years at KU, Marcum was the athletic director at South Carolina from 1982-88. He was AD at Massachusetts from 1993-2002. After UMass, he held the same post at Marshall from 2002-09.

Marcum began his career in college athletics in 1971 at Iowa State, where he was an associate athletic director before taking the Kansas AD position.

From 1988-90, Marcum left college athletics and was the president and general manager of Charlotte Motor Speedway.

A native of Huntington, West Virginia, Marcum was inducted into the UMass Athletics Hall of Fame in 2009.

According to the Associated Press, Arkansas basketball coach John Calipari, who worked under Marcum at Massachusetts, posted on social media Sunday that Marcum was hospitalized after complications from a stroke.

Calipari posted about Marcum’s death, saying the two spent time together in the hospital.

“We talked about our time together at UMass, he as AD and me his coach,” Calipari wrote on social media. “We laughed cried and prayed.”