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GREENSBORO -- UNCG's philosopher-AD will step down Tuesday, partly for philosophical reasons and partly for athletic reasons. Either way, the Spartans will have lost a good one.

Nelson Bobb, 61, will leave after 26 years at the helm of a sports program almost no one can fully understand or appreciate. In this day and age of big-time athletics played on a national landscape by athletes in the guise of students and universities in the guise of colleges, UNCG has remained a beacon on a hill.

Understated and classy in its own way, the school not that far removed from Woman's College, not that far removed from Division-III designation, not that far from an entire athletics program being run from an actual log cabin, is among the most respected in the country.

That has a little to do with the chancellors and a little to do with the students and a little to do with the community and a lot to do with Bobb. He is the only full-time athletics director in the history of the college.

"It's time to let the university have different leadership," he said Saturday.

And with that, he'll walk away Tuesday and let someone else try it for a while.

Things are changing at UNCG. A new chancellor has brought bold new ideas to the school, and a lot of people who'd been yelling for a lot of years are being listened to, and that might be a good thing and it might be a bad thing. We'll see. Bobb, an old football coach, was not about to bring it all down around him.

"I'm an old offensive guard," he said. "I never put my quarterback in harms way. This was never about (chancellor) Linda Brady and me. I'm not going to play out all the backdrops. That doesn't do anybody any good. I felt, and Linda agreed, that it was time for me to step down for the good of the university."

That's all he'll say. There's a lot more to it, and it's sad to see Bobb leave the program he built because of a few people envisioning bowl games and television loot and packed arenas and merchandising and vast campus expansion. Does any of that sound like UNCG?

It's OK to dream, and it's always been cool to watch UNCG grow. But come on. The fact that this school went from Division III to Division I in five years while building one of the strongest soccer programs in the nation and bringing baseball to a national level, joining the Southern Conference and piling up titles and trophies and NCAA bids and following the precepts of Title IX better than any university in the country is amazing in and of itself. If that's not enough for some people, then that's kind of sad really.

"I'm proud of what we did," Bobb said. "The critics around the city seem to be more vocal. There seems to be some people who believe I was holding the athletics department back."

He wasn't, of course. Bobb was guiding it the way he always did, with class and style, with patience and consistency, with integrity and principle. The athletes are students. They graduate. There have been no violations. The department isn't in debt. It is, in fact, headed in the proper direction and has for 26 years. Now we'll see which direction it turns.

The school recently announced it would move basketball games to the cavernous Greensboro Coliseum. There are additions to the baseball stadium and improvements to the basketball practice facility, all happening under Bobb's watch. The move to the coliseum wasn't his idea.

"I think it's great for the community and for the coliseum," he said. "It's an outstanding opportunity. I just hope they don't look back in two or three years and ask 'What were they smoking?' "

He fears that success at the coliseum will bring on the inevitable talk of football, something he swore would never be allowed on his watch.

He fears UNCG will lose its soul to athletics, something he fought against from the day he arrived at a school known for not having football, known for its quaint traditions and slow, steady, logical growth.

Bobb is respected in the athletics community, known in the tight circle of athletics directors around the country as the best football AD at a non-football school He wants to stay close to home and family, and he's likely to land somewhere else sooner than later.

But he's in no real hurry. He'll study the situation carefully and make a reasoned decision.

"Charlie Harville always called me the philosopher-AD," Bobb said. "I'm a Spartan. I've invested 26 years here, and my philosophy is the same as it's been for all three chancellors. I'm an old offensive guard. I protect the backfield. I do what's in the best interest of the university."

In this case, it meant taking his helmet off for the good of the school and walking away without pointing fingers. Things are changing at UNCG, and Bobb's departure will be marked as the end of a long era of integrity and the beginning of whatever comes next.

Contact Ed Hardin at 373-7069 or ed.hardin@news-record.com