Coaches and athletic department staff members shuffled from an auditorium on the ground floor of the San Diego State athletic building yesterday, most of them clearly dazed at the end of a day that left them leaderless.

"Just shock," said Francisco Montes de Oca, an assistant equipment manager. "Everyone was like zombies."

Montes de Oca and others spoke after emerging from a meeting in which SDSU President Stephen Weber addressed his decision to ask for the resignation of athletic director Rick Bay and to terminate Jana Doggett, a senior associate athletic director.

"Confusion and a little bit of fear of the unknown," softball coach Kathy Van Wyk said of the emotions harbored by department members. "We all have immediate issues going on. We don't even know who to ask about those things."

Weber told athletic staffers that Sally Roush, vice president of business and financial affairs, would oversee the department in the short term. He said he hopes to have an interim athletic director from outside the campus in place within two weeks and a permanent replacement hired by the end of the calendar year.

Bay did not speak to the department as a group yesterday, though he did talk briefly with some coaches and members of his staff.

At a meeting earlier this week, Bay and Doggett congratulated SDSU's coaches on a solid spring. Softball, men's tennis and women's track and field won regular-season conference championships; women's tennis won the conference tournament; and the men's golf team is going to the NCAA Tournament next week.

The tone of that meeting added to the shock at the sudden turn of events, coaches said.

"I was extremely surprised," Van Wyk said. "But I guess you can't be completely surprised – with all the things that have gone down the past (11) months."

Van Wyk and other coaches expressed their gratitude to Bay and complimented him as an effective leader.

"I'm really sad to see Rick leave this way," football coach Tom Craft, hired by Bay in December 2001, said by phone later. "He gave me an opportunity to go back to my alma mater, a chance to turn the program around. I'm indebted to him. I've really admired him.

"Rick has always been very open, very supportive to all of us. As somebody who is new coming into the department with not a lot of agendas and prejudices, I've viewed Rick as being very open and honest. Rick has been very supportive to me and everybody else in the department."

Those sentiments were echoed around the Mountain West Conference.

"I think the world of Rick," Utah athletic director Chris Hill said. "He's a very, very principled guy. He's strong in his convictions. He wants to do things the right way."

Bay was chairman of the MWC's television committee, and conference commissioner Craig Thompson lamented his loss. With the conference meetings set for June 1-3 in Carlsbad and league expansion among the issues scheduled to be discussed, Thompson said, "It's never good timing. But this is really not good timing."

Hill said Bay, 60, had privately expressed to him in the past that he might retire at some point in the near future. Several sources have said in the past that Bay planned to retire, but that the NCAA and California State University investigations had delayed that plan because he did not want to leave under a cloud.

Thompson said Weber first contacted him earlier this week. He said the president asked him yesterday for help identifying possible candidates to become SDSU's interim athletic director.

Thompson said he had "no concern" about the direction of the SDSU athletic department.

"Obviously, they've got some leadership questions now," Thompson said. "The immediate concern is getting someone with credibility who knows college athletics in there (as interim AD) as soon as possible."

Coaches expressed trepidation that the upheaval in their department would be used against them in recruiting, and at least one administrator predicted a backlash financially.

"I think it will be an undeniable shock to a lot of people in the community," said associate athletic director Joe Moeller. "Rick has tentacles throughout the community – the business community, the benefactor community . . . Any time you have difficulty in an athletic program, certainly fund-raising is impacted. I'm sure we're going to have some challenges in fund-raising."

Moeller and others, however, were ready to move on.

"Any time you're a family and the head of the family decides to leave, it's tough," he said. "The unique thing about families is you have an opportunity to reunite and figure out what you can do to overcome your challenges and move forward. The things Rick has helped provide for us will provide a foundation for the future."