OXFORD — One month into Glenn Boyce's tenure as Ole Miss' chancellor, there's plenty of speculation about his first major hire.

Ole Miss announced the formation of a search committee to find its next athletics director on Wednesday. The university has operated with an interim AD since the end of May when Ross Bjork left to take the same job at Texas A&M.

Ole Miss was not able to make headway on the search for a new AD because the school had been without a chancellor since Jeff Vitter stepped down in January.

But now Boyce is in place, although he declined an interview for this story. That said, Boyce told Mississippi Today he's looking for someone who can raise money, puts a value on compliance and understands the complexity of the job.

Given these criteria, here's a list of individuals the Clarion Ledger believes would be a fit for the job.

John Hartwell
One of the more obvious fits for the job is Utah State athletics director John Hartwell. He has been the AD at Utah State since 2015, and before that spent three years in the same position at Troy. Prior to that, Hartwell worked at Ole Miss for nearly a decade, serving as second-in-command in the athletics department and as the COO of the Ole Miss Athletics Foundation.

Of note, Hartwell chaired the search committee that ended up hiring Andy Kennedy as Ole Miss' men's basketball coach. Kennedy coached 12 seasons in Oxford and is the winningest coach in Ole Miss basketball history but resigned in 2018.

Hartwell now oversees a Utah State athletics department that was one of five schools in the NCAA to finish in the top 25 in both football and basketball for the 2018-19 athletic year.

Hartwell's history at Ole Miss and his experience running modern athletics departments seem to make him a prime candidate to fit Boyce's criteria. The big question that remains is what it would take to get Hartwell to return to Oxford.

Keith Carter
Ole Miss football coach Matt Luke was elevated into his job from an interim position. Could interim athletic director Keith Carter follow suit?

It's certainly possible. Carter hasn't been a wallflower in his months as interim AD. He negotiated to approve alcohol sales at sporting events, which were unveiled this fall. He took a big swing to add party tents in the student sections at Vaught-Hemingway Stadium, even if that big swing hasn't been met with much positivity.

That said, retaining Carter presents a potential optics issue for Boyce. Social media and student reactions to Boyce's hire weren't positive, partially because of the perception that Boyce was an "inside man" and the search process wasn't national enough or outside-the-box enough in scope.

Carter may be a qualified candidate. His experience inside Ole Miss' athletics department is remarkably similar to what Hartwell's was before he left for Troy. But Boyce may want to go more national with his search to bring in fresh blood to initiate change in the athletics department.

3 other names
Beyond Hartwell and Carter, there are a handful of other candidates with connections to Ole Miss and Oxford.

Walker Jones
One is Walker Jones, a former Under Armour executive and Ole Miss football alum. He worked in the Ole Miss athletics department before joining the private sector. A risk of hiring Jones might be his recent past, given that he was "removed" from his position as Under Armour's senior executive of sports marketing in December related to "questionable spending," according to the Baltimore Business Journal.

Charlie Hussey
Another candidate might be Charlie Hussey, the associate commissioner and COO of the Southeastern Conference. Hussey grew up in Oxford and graduated from Ole Miss. He doesn't have experience working in a university athletics department, but he has worked for the SEC office for nearly 20 years.

Brad Teague
Third, there's Brad Teague, the athletics director at Central Arkansas since 2007. Teague is a Jackson native with degrees from Ole Miss and Delta State. He also is the current chair of the FCS playoff committee.

Outside candidates
As mentioned in a Clarion Ledger article in May, there are plenty of ways Ole Miss can approach this AD search. If Boyce prefers to find an outside candidate with few or little Ole Miss connections like his predecessors did with Bjork, there are more than a few candidates who could match Boyce's qualifications.

There are young candidates like Louisiana Tech AD Tommy McClelland II and Buffalo AD Mark Alnutt. They have connections in the Southeast and oversee successful football and basketball programs despite hamstrung budgets.

There are more veteran candidates like former Auburn AD Jay Jacobs, who led the Tigers' athletics department from 2004-18 but now works as an assistant AD at Florida.

And there are up-and-coming young sports administrators across the country. It's important to remember that when Ole Miss hired Bjork, he was an unexpected choice who few prognosticators had heard of.

Some reports are indicating that Boyce intends to make an athletics director hire by Thanksgiving. If that's the case, that could give him and his search committee plenty of time to identify a candidate who no one has found yet. Or it could give him an extra month to pick a more obvious candidate like Hartwell or Carter.

Contact Nick Suss at 601-408-2674 or nsuss@gannett.com. Follow @nicksuss on Twitter.