"Gary Barta" is the current athletic director at the University of Iowa. He succeeded Bob Bowlsby on August 1, 2006, when Bowlsby stepped down after 15 years as Iowa's athletic director to take the same position at Stanford University. Before coming to Iowa, Barta was the athletic director at the University of Wyoming.

While at Iowa, Barta has overseen the completion of the most-recent renovations at Kinnick Stadium and has opened a new tennis and recreation center. He is also responsible for the hiring and the firing of Todd Lickliter as Iowa Hawkeyes men's basketball/basketball coach. He is also responsible for the hiring of current men's basketball coach Fran McCaffery. Barta is also responsible for the August 4, 2014, firing of Tracey Griesbaum as Iowa Hawkeyes women's field hockey coach.

As the Iowa athletic director, Gary Barta's results in the NACDA Directors' Cup/Learfield Director's Cup, Big Ten standings (by year):

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! Year !! Place !! Notes

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/ 2006 // 11th // out of 11 Big Ten schools, or last in conference athletics

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/ 2007 // 11th // out of 11 Big Ten schools

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/ 2008 // 10th // out of 11 Big Ten schools

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/ 2009 // 11th // out of 11 Big Ten schools

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/ 2010 // 9th // out of 11 Big Ten schools

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More Gary Barta on Wikipedia.

We haven't talked about any changes in the program.

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Today, all of our teams -- minus three or four -- are either competing for a championship or are off the bottom of the standings. We've made huge strides. We've got to do that consistently now. We're getting good in a lot of sports. Now we talk about going from good to great, so we're consistently fighting for the top.

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Am I disappointed in some of our records? Yes. But I am not discouraged by the fact that if you take a five-year window we're still moving up.

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It's in the paper every day how we are doing, and it's about wins and losses. We look at that just like the fan does. You can't hide from that. With that said, I go deeper than that to see if our foundation is solid, so when we take a dip it isn't so deep and so far down and it's hard to climb back up.

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