Long-time Bulldog Foundation Annual Fund executive director Pat Ogle is talking retirement. Sort of.

Ogle says the 2008-09 school year will be his last at his current post. But, come the end of next June, he'll take a part-time job as a major gifts officer for Fresno State athletics.

University officials see major gifts -- $10,000 or more -- as a fund-raising area with big potential.

Ogle has seen many changes in Bulldogs athletics and the Bulldog Foundation since he became the latter's executive director in January 1982. The athletic department's evolution has been well documented to the public, the foundation's less so. Suffice it to say that today's Bulldog Foundation, in organizational structure and scale of mission, is immensely more complex than when Ogle began his gig.

Through it all, Ogle has served Bulldogs athletics with grace and distinction.

Of those almost three decades, Ogle says: "It's been a great time."