RALEIGH - On the day Leo Hart was inducted into the North Carolina Sports Hall of Fame, it was also a day for the Kinston native to consider a future close to home.

Asked if he would be interested in the Duke athletic director's job, the former Duke football star, successful businessman and Duke athletics fundraiser pondered the question for several moments.

"I am certainly interested in what is best for Duke," said Hart, 59, in a news conference of inductees at the North Carolina Museum of History.

"Duke has been near and dear to my heart forever. It gave me a foundation after I left Kinston. If there were ways I could help Duke, certainly I'd be interested, and I'd be honored to do so."

Duke has been searching for a new athletic director since Joe Alleva ended a 10-year tenure and accepted the athletic director position at Louisiana State last month. His last official day at Duke is June 30.

Hart has answered the call from Duke in recent years, serving as chairman of the school's athletics advisory board and teaming with the late Frank Bassett to guide the successful fundraising campaign to finance construction of the Yoh Football Center.

The AD search committee led by Roy Bostock met for the first time May 8. Duke University President Richard Brodhead said Saturday that the committee didn't have anything to report.

The job will attract interest nationally. For now, it's clear Hart is intrigued. Should Duke consider current staff members, Duke associate AD Mike Cragg is considered the likeliest to get a shot.

Cragg has successfully directed the Legacy Fund, the autonomous fundraising arm of the Duke men's basketball program that has endowed one coach's salary and all of the team's scholarships.

Former Duke AD Tom Butters, who preceded Alleva, still considers the Duke athletic director job the best in the country.

Butters, another 2008 N.C. Sports Hall of Fame inductee, knows better than most what awaits the person who takes it.

He guided Duke from 1977 to 1998, hiring men's basketball coach Mike Krzyzewski along the way. That period was a prosperous one for Duke athletics.

Butters said he was too far removed from the current situation to suggest any names as possible replacements. He has been battling a serious lung condition called interstitial pulmonary fibrosis in recent years and adds his health is OK at the moment.

But he described the job as "the most singular, important hire that Duke will face for the next several years."

"They're going to have to find a person of deep integrity," Butters said. "Someone who wants the responsibility more than they want the title. Someone who isn't looking to inherit a job but rather someone who is willing to give their all to create a job."

The new Duke AD would be overseeing a strategic plan that will seek to overhaul an underachieving football program and give more opportunities to non-varsity athletes. The new AD also might have to guide Duke athletics in the post-Krzyzewski era. Krzyzewski is 61 and will be in his 29th season at Duke in 2008-09.

Hart called Krzyzewski Duke's "franchise player and home run hitter." Butters said he's "just happy it's going to be the kind of transition that it's going to be."

"Mike has brought intercollegiate athletics a long way," Butters said. "You can't replace him. I certainly wouldn't want to do it."