There is no doubt high-level college sports leadership positions have become more temporary. Coaching has been a revolving door for decades, and lately it seems like the athletic director role has also featured plenty of chopping and changing, with the most important part of the jobs at major programs boiling down to whether an AD can hire a successful football coach.
But what happens to college sports if that also starts to be the case for the conference commissioner job?
Conference offices have the reputation of being the administrative equivalent of a country club environment somewhat removed from the school-level politics and turnover. On the extreme end, that contributes to significant disconnect between a league office and its schools. You go there, you work for twenty-ish years and you call it a career. But perhaps that’s no longer the case. Of the 10 FBS conferences, six have had a commissioner change since 2019 with multiple longtime leaders leaving their roles for retirement, including Bob Bowlsby, Craig Thompson, Jim Delany, Karl Benson and John Swofford.
There’s a new era of conference commissioners. How long they last, and why they leave, if they leave, will be something to track moving forward.
Consider the Big Ten, which Delany retired from in 2019 and Kevin Warren took over in ’20. Warren has now gone on to be the CEO of the NFL’s Chicago Bears, and his short legacy is complicated. On one hand, there is the obvious sea change he brought about to college sports by facilitating USC and UCLA’s move to the Big Ten and the landmark media rights deal that came shortly after that. But missteps from early in his tenure from how he handled the COVID-19 pandemic will always cloud the view of him for some.
David Banks/AP
Replacing Warren is Tony Petitti, an executive with a past in college sports after being integral to how the BCS was formed and running a college sports television network. He also spent significant time at Major League Baseball. Petitti’s profile is a clear example of the changing face of the job. It used to be relatively simpler—organize championships, maximize revenue for your league and handle governance issues. But now it’s not unreasonable to expect Petitti to be at the forefront of a rapidly changing enterprise given the place the Big Ten has in the sport and how many threats seem existential.
At Georgia’s national championship celebration in January, SEC commissioner Greg Sankey’s comments came off like a shot across the bow at Warren, who had recently announced he was leaving.
“We need leaders today in college football and college sports,” Sankey said. “Not leaders who make a stop to build a résumé and go on to something else—those who understand the problems ahead are real and demand our attention.”
The presidents and those in charge of hiring Petitti wanted options with their finalists, and not a few of the same kind of career college sports administrators who have traditionally been hired for these roles. Even how Petitti may be expected to maximize revenue moving forward will be fascinating. His experience makes him a relative outsider on paper, but the lines on his résumé read like they’re more prerequisites to the changing face of the job. In the words of one Big Ten administrator, “I wouldn’t call anyone in big media or big-media-adjacent an outsider anymore.”
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But Petitti’s hiring hints at a friction within college sports leadership. What’s the main reason any of these people take these jobs? Is it strictly dealmaking or is it really about effecting long-term change in college athletics and athletes? Some of what you can do boils down to the mandate you have from the school presidents who hire you. It also has to do with college sports’ omnipresent role as not quite professional, but also certainly not purely the high-minded extension of education so many wish it to be.
“Over time as those expertises get diversified you see conferences reacting and looking for a different skill set,” new Mountain West commissioner Gloria Nevarez says. “I can’t think if it’s churn and burn from college athletics or if it’s compounded by COVID that’s created the most significant churn recently. I truly believe COVID has pushed some of those out sooner rather than later, then maybe they wouldn’t have as much churn in the conference room. I went from one of the newbies in the room to one of the most tenured commissioners like that.”
Nevarez took over in 2023, and the concept she’s getting at of burnout isn’t limited to leaders, and it certainly isn’t limited to college sports, but it is something you hear from many weary administrators. The reality is the conference commissionership likely isn’t a forever job anymore. If you’ve spent any amount of time around Big 12 commissioner Brett Yormark you know he can barely sit still, and it sure seems like George Kliavkoff’s tenuous future will be framed by the value of the Pac-12’s pending media agreement. If it’s inadequate and the league stays together, is he still the right man for a league that could be on the cusp of breaking apart? For both good and bad, you could see commissioners charting the course for their leagues’ future, yet still moving on or being moved on.
The commissioner job has changed, but then again, so has the rest of college sports.
