Allen Biddinger – Lehigh University

On a raw February afternoon over three decades ago, a young student trainer stood on the sideline of a Waynesburg University practice field, taping ankles and wondering if he could picture himself doing the same job at fifty. The answer, quietly and without fanfare, was no. That small moment of self-reflection would end up rerouting an entire career, sending Allen Biddinger away from the training table and into the world of facilities, construction, and event operations—a world he now oversees at Lehigh University as Associate Athletic Director for Facilities and Events.

Biddinger’s path to that title was neither fast nor flashy. He earned his undergraduate degree in sports medicine, spending his junior and senior years as a student trainer before realizing that his interests lay in athletic administration, not athletic training. He went on to complete a master’s degree in athletic administration at West Chester University of Pennsylvania, and in August 1997, he arrived at Lehigh as a paid intern. That internship became a full-time job, and the full-time job became a career, with Biddinger climbing steadily through the ranks—manager, assistant director, associate director—before stepping into his current role in January 2022.

A landscape shifting beneath everyone’s feet

College athletics has rarely stood still, but Biddinger describes the current moment as especially fluid. Conference realignment, the rise of name, image and likeness deals, and the widening financial gap between power conference programs and everyone else have all reshaped what administrators like him have to think about day to day.

“College athletics is in a unique place at this time, with an ever-changing landscape,” Biddinger says.

Despite the turbulence, he believes Lehigh’s identity has held steady. The Patriot League has long emphasized the balance between academics and athletics, and Biddinger sees it as both a selling point and a genuine institutional value, rather than a marketing slogan. Football’s back-to-back Patriot League championships and a men’s basketball trip to the NCAA Tournament this past season are evidence, in his eyes, that competing at a high level and prioritizing the classroom are not mutually exclusive.

Lehigh University is a private research institution in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, that fields varsity teams in the Patriot League. Its athletics department oversees a broad footprint of facilities across multiple campuses, supporting varsity competition, university functions, and third-party rental events.

Money, Biddinger acknowledges, drives much of the conversation in college sports today, from television contracts to NIL packages. But he maintains that Lehigh’s coaching staff hasn’t let that shift change what they’re actually trying to accomplish with the young people in their programs.

“Money is the driver, but our primary motivation is preparing young men and women for the future,” he says.

He points out that most Lehigh athletes are headed toward careers outside professional sports, and that while some do have NIL arrangements, those deals are rarely the reason a recruit chooses the school in the first place. It’s a distinction he thinks matters, especially as bigger programs wrestle with mounting financial pressure and coaching turnover tied directly to results.

“I feel lucky that we don’t have to deal with some of the challenges that are happening at the Power 4 schools,” Biddinger says.

Building for the sports that get left out in the cold

Much of Biddinger’s day-to-day work involves capital projects, coordinated closely with athletics development and the university’s physical plant. He has helped guide baseball and softball facility upgrades in 2015 and 2016, and a 2019 renovation of the football stadium press box that added premium seating and improved the overall gameday experience. Turf conversions and playing surface replacements have rounded out a steady, if unglamorous, stream of infrastructure work.

The next major goal on his list is an indoor turf facility, something only a handful of Patriot League peers currently have. Without one, outdoor sports like lacrosse are stuck working around winter weather and an outdoor turf field that can only handle so much wear before it needs a break.

“You can only plow the turf field so much, so you’re losing practice time,” he says.

Adding an indoor facility, he explained, would give Lehigh’s men’s and women’s lacrosse programs—and other outdoor sports that start practice in the cold—a place to train regardless of what the sky is doing outside. It’s the kind of project that doesn’t generate headlines but directly affects how competitive those programs can be.

Space isn’t the constraint it is at many other schools. Lehigh’s Goodman Campus spans more than 500 acres, much of it undeveloped, giving the athletics department room to grow that landlocked programs elsewhere would envy. The football stadium’s grass surface, increasingly rare in the northeast, is one example of how that extra land shapes decisions other schools don’t get to make.

A fan experience that keeps people coming back

Facilities work isn’t only about competition. Biddinger’s group also manages the experience for spectators and outside groups renting Lehigh’s spaces, from high school graduations to the Greater Lehigh Valley Auto Dealers Association’s annual car show, staged under a tent in Stabler Arena and in Rauch Fieldhouse, an event large enough to be considered an international auto show. This past year, the department introduced alcohol sales at football games and inside the basketball arena for the first time, a move Biddinger says was well received without the behavioral problems some worried it might bring.

“We want to win with clean facilities, good food, little traffic,” he says.

Whether it’s a family attending a Saturday football game or a company hosting an event or a local school district’s graduation ceremony, the goal is the same: a smooth, positive experience that brings people back. That philosophy extends to regional competitors like the Lehigh Valley IronPigs and the Lehigh Valley Phantoms, as well as the city festivals that fill Allentown and Bethlehem every summer.

The people who make the place

Biddinger never set out to become an athletic director. His ambitions were more modest and, in hindsight, more specific: an associate or assistant AD role, ideally somewhere he could stay for a long time. Lehigh gave him that from the start, and the opportunities kept opening up enough that he stopped looking elsewhere.

What has kept him there, he says, isn’t the facilities or the championships but the people—coaches, staff, student-athletes, and colleagues across campus in admissions, financial aid, communications, and campus police. When search committees and candidates ask him what makes Lehigh special, his answer is always the same.

“People make the institution; our coaches, staff, and student-athletes are all good people,” he says.

That collaborative spirit runs through his own operation as well, where wage staff, volunteers, grounds crews, and campus police all share the load of running a Division I athletics program with fewer resources than the sport’s biggest names.

Outside of work, Biddinger keeps things simple. He’s married, without children of his own, but with plenty of nieces and nephews, and he and his wife are planning a trip to Paris this fall. At home, mowing the lawn and other small chores serve as a break from the demands of running a department. It’s a fitting rhythm for a man who has spent nearly thirty years working behind the scenes, content to let the fields, the buildings, and the people who use them speak for themselves.