How should an athletic director be judged?

Last week when the salaries of the SEC athletic directors were released, a lot of attention was paid to how little Mal Moore's salary was relative to that of the other athletic directors. A particular point of comparison was between Moore's salary and that of Jay Jacobs. Specifically, how could Jacobs, whose two major programs are at historically low points, make so much more than Moore, who oversees a department enjoying unparallelled levels of success?

However, when judging the success of an athletic director how much weight should on-the-field wins carry? While I am not claiming that Jacobs has been as successful an AD as Moore, it does seem that Jacobs gets a disproportionate share of the blame for poor on-the-field performance while Moore receive a disproportionate share of the laurels that have been generated by the likes of Nick Saban and Sarah Patterson.

The counter-argument to this point is that AD's are responsible for the coaches they hire. That is certainly true. However, Jacobs arguably only made one bad hire: Chizik. Many analysts thought Tony Barbee was an excellent hire. Is it his fault that in three years Barbee hasn't lived up to the expectations? Conversely, Moore made the hire of the century in Nick Saban, but he was dangerously close to becoming the AD who hired Rich Rodriguez.