People all think ADs work long, hard hours. What would be hard? Attending games, meeting donors- doubt it is all that hard.
An AD is in charge of 20 little businesses (however many sports programs the school has). What could go wrong? You got 20 different coaches each with their own demands and requests and their own culture.
The AD is responsible for the success of those programs. Hiring and firing. Assistant coaches...approval at the minimum. Better know something about this person when questions arise.
You have parents of the athletes each coming to you complaining about playing time or the mis-treatment of their child to some degree for some reason.
Each of those sports has a budget to be managed. Schedules, referees, game day support personnel....ushers, ticket takers, concessions, video, sound, entertainment. Sometimes 3 or 4 or 5 of these going on at once.
Transportation to and from away games.
Complaints from teachers about something an individual coach is doing or the overall program has too much emphasis on athletics and not academics. Or academics is diminished because this sport is too successful.
But he is responsible to an an administrator who doesn't care about his problems only results...winning, public perception etc. No complaints better go that high up the chain or the AD is under fire from another level of concern.
Media, TV policies to oversee and monitor. What is being said? Social media monitoring...what could go wrong?
Win or lose the complaints are never ending. And actually, far less complaining all around if you are a losing program. NOBODY cares, nobody complains. It's not important to anybody.
It is a very demanding job done right.
I'm sure there are more tasks and firestorms that didn't come to mind.... hard job if winning is important to you.