University of Maryland Athletic Director Damon Evans is leaving the school to take the same role with Southern Methodist University.

SMU announced Evans’ hire Friday night. It’s a six-year deal, according to ESPN, and Yahoo Sports first reported that the deal was finalized.

“While it is never easy to leave an institution that has become part of your family, the opportunity to come to SMU was too great to pass up,” Evans said in a news release. “SMU has tremendous momentum in all aspects of its Athletics program, but I believe we can push to even greater heights. I am honored to join the University and to be a part of something truly special.”

Evans’ official departure marks the end of a whirlwind week for the athletic director and men’s basketball coach Kevin Willard, who said at a news conference Thursday in Seattle that Evans is “probably going to SMU,” which the coach added was complicating negotiations for a new contract of his own amid reported interest from Villanova.

“It’s kind of tough to negotiate with somebody that’s maybe not here,” Willard added. “That’s why probably a deal hasn’t got done, ‘cause I need to see fundamental changes done. I want this program to be great. I want it to be the best in the country. I want to win a national championship, but there’s things that need to change.”

Evans signed an extension last August that was scheduled to keep the athletic director under contract through the 2028-29 academic year and gave him a $275,000 raise to a base salary of $1 million — near the middle of the Big Ten. He was among the 10 highest-paid state employees. According to a copy of the contract, with Evans leaving to take another position in college sports, he will be required to pay back $500,000 to the institution.Evans has been Maryland’s athletic director since 2018 and with the athletic department in other roles since 2014, his first jobs since resigning from the athletic director position at Georgia in 2010 after a DUI arrest.

The 55-year-old Evans served as deputy athletic director under Kevin Anderson with oversight of the football program when offensive lineman Jordan McNair, a redshirt freshman from Randallstown who starred at McDonogh, was hospitalized with heatstroke after an offseason workout in May 2018 and later died in June. McNair’s death prompted an investigation into the football program under coach D.J. Durkin, who was placed on administrative leave and then fired in October 2018. An extensive independent review determined that Durkin, then-university President Wallace Loh and Evans all bore some responsibility for a program that “fostered a culture where problems festered because too many players feared speaking out.” The university later reached a $3.5 million settlement with Martin McNair and Tonya Wilson, the parents of Jordan McNair.

Evans oversaw the hirings of Willard and football coach Mike Locksley, both of whom experienced up-and-down results amid their ongoing tenures with the Terps.

Locksley’s team made a bowl game in three consecutive seasons, the first time that’s happened in two decades. But the Terps have largely been uncompetitive against the Big Ten giants.

Willard’s group reached the NCAA Tournament in his first season, the first Maryland men’s basketball coach to ever reach the postseason in their debut year with the program. And the Terps are back this season as a No. 4 seed — their highest since 2015 — and opened with a blowout win over No. 13 seed Grand Canyon in a first-round matchup Friday.

Women’s basketball coach Brenda Frese wasn’t as heavy handed in her response to reports about Evans’ departure or the state of her program, which will host a first-round NCAA Tournament game Saturday.

“I’ve been here 23 years and the amount of support that I’ve been given from Damon Evans and the whole administration is nothing less than superior,” she said Friday. “It hasn’t changed the way I’ve been able to do my job. Clearly, we have a standard of consistency and excellence. It doesn’t just come down to money, but we’re fully supported in that way. I wouldn’t have been here as long if I didn’t have that kind of support.”

Frese has led her Terps to the NCAA Tournament in all but two seasons since 2002. As senior guard Shyanne Sellers quipped, “Her and March Madness go together like a pretzel and salt.”

While Maryland’s broader on-field results were mixed, Evans’ athletic department spent much of his tenure in financial flux. Evans went big on facilities, including the $149 million Jones-Hill indoor football practice facility and a $52 million basketball practice facility next to the Xfinity Center that is scheduled to open before next winter. But Evans said in a January statement that the department was in line to take on $25 million in new expenses once it begins sharing the maximum-allowable amount of $20.5 million with its athletes this fall as a result of the House v. NCAA antitrust lawsuit.

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