Big Ten commissioner Kevin Warren is off to the Chicago Bears after spending fewer than 30 months in Rosemont, Ill. It was a short but eventful tenure — from facing a pandemic just months into the job and canceling the Big Ten’s college football season before restarting it, to adding USC and UCLA and signing a record-setting seven-year, $8 billion media rights deal.
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The open Big Ten job is one of the two most powerful positions in all of college sports, alongside SEC commissioner Greg Sankey. The two leagues bring in significantly more money than their peers on an annual basis, with the gap only widening in the coming years.
So, where does the Big Ten look? Almost the entire Council of Presidents and Chancellors has turned over since Warren was hired, which makes it harder to predict — and presidents tend to be an unpredictable group in the first place. Do they opt for another outsider like Warren, who had no college sports experience when he was hired? The Big 12, Pac-12 and even the NCAA just opted for outside hires for their biggest jobs. The potential remains for the Big Ten to go outside of college sports once again.
Or the league may go in the opposite direction, trying to avoid some of the pitfalls and friction that stemmed from hiring someone who did not have an innate feel for college sports or preexisting relationships with athletic directors or others on campuses.
The Athletic spent the last couple of weeks discussing the opening with administrators, agents and those who work at search firms to get a sense of the potential candidate pool. Some are viewed more as short-term solutions; others would be in it for the long haul. With the media rights deal done, USC and UCLA coming in 2024 and the 12-team College Football Playoff set to begin the same year, there is no major pressing project for the next commissioner. But he or she will walk into a period of great instability and uncertainty, with the collegiate sports model under attack from outside forces. Still, the position is one of unprecedented strength, power and finances. And the next commissioner will lead the first college sports conference that stretches from the Pacific to the Atlantic.
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“Every AD in the country would take it,” said an industry source.
Current commissioner candidates
Jim Phillips, ACC. A commissioner moving from one Power 5 conference to another would be darn near unprecedented. But Phillips was widely believed to be the frontrunner to land this job in 2019, before Warren came out of nowhere to ultimately win the presidents over. Can Phillips come back nearly four years later? For what it’s worth, 12 of the 14 school presidents in the conference have turned over since Warren was hired, including at Northwestern, where Phillips served as AD for 14 years. Could that change in decision-making power work for or against Phillips’ candidacy? Hard to say.
Phillips is a Chicago native who was a men’s basketball manager at Illinois and spent much of his administrative career at Notre Dame, Northern Illinois and Northwestern before he was hired as John Swofford’s successor in December of 2021. His family still lives in the Chicago suburbs, as Phillips is in the process of relocating the ACC’s offices from Greensboro to Charlotte. He has served on more NCAA committees than one could count, but more importantly, he has the respect of all of his AD peers in both the Big Ten and the ACC. If the Big Ten ADs were in charge of this search, Phillips would be the guy, period. And there is no mistaking that the Big Ten is far better-positioned than the ACC is for the future of college athletics.
But is Phillips ready for whatever changes come? He is very much a purist who believes in the collegiate model the way it has always worked, to the point that sometimes his commentary on the issues of the day feels a bit outdated. Can he be proactive in a changing environment, one in which paying athletes directly and/or revenue sharing may be coming?
Jennifer Heppel, Patriot League: Heppel has served as the commissioner of the FCS Patriot League since 2015, where she negotiated media and marketing rights deals while improving the visibility of the conference. She came to the Patriot League following her second stint in the Big Ten office; most recently, she served as the associate commissioner for governance from 2010 to 2015. Heppel has served on a number of national governance committees and is one of the most forward-thinking commissioners in the country. She was a finalist for this role the last time it opened.
Sitting athletic director candidates
Ohio State athletic director Gene Smith: Smith has been the Big Ten’s most powerful voice this side of Warren. (Some would say even more powerful than Warren, at least in the commissioner’s early days.) Does he want to take on this challenge at this stage of his career? Smith is 67, eight years older than Warren. He signed an extension with the Buckeyes in 2021 that will keep him in Columbus through 2026, which would mark 21 years at the school. Smith would be a popular hire and a stabilizing one with all of the good things the Big Ten has going for it. But the conference may want someone younger and more innovative, as most of its pressing business concerns matters that will take place in 2030 (the last year of the new TV deal) and beyond.
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Stanford athletic director Bernard Muir: Muir’s predecessor at Stanford was Bob Bowlsby, who left the Farm to become the Big 12 commissioner a little over a decade ago. Could Muir do the same, but for the Big Ten? He has overseen the most successful stretch in school history, with 28 NCAA championships won and 37 national titles overall. Stanford has won the Learfield Directors’ Cup seven times during Muir’s 11-year tenure, which would likely impress the presidents and chancellors in a conference that prides itself on sponsoring and succeeding in a wide variety of Olympic sports.
UCLA athletic director Martin Jarmond: The 43-year-old Jarmond would add some youth and energy to a conference that, for all of its financial success, has never been mistaken for being on the cutting edge. He spent the bulk of his career in the Michigan State and Ohio State athletic departments, so he was already intimately familiar with the Big Ten before he helped his current employer land in the conference and out of the financial abyss of the Pac-12. Would presidents balk at ceding power to the leader of a school that’s only just joining the conference?
Non-campus candidates
Mark Silverman, President and COO of Fox Sports: It’s no secret that Fox had a heavy hand in the Big Ten’s acquisitions of USC and UCLA last summer, as well as the conference’s blockbuster media rights deals. In a highly unusual move, Fox essentially served as the Big Ten’s media consultant … even with its competitors making their pitches. That’s a lot of influence. Silverman, who launched the Big Ten Network and worked at BTN before jumping to Fox in 2018, understands the collegiate sports landscape well. He has also pushed all of the right buttons as Fox has shifted its overall college football strategy, ushering in a “Big Noon Kickoff” pregame show that has competed admirably with ESPN’s “College GameDay” and the wildly successful Big Noon Saturday game, which has leaned hard on its top Big Ten brands. We’ve seen other Power 5 conferences make out-of-the-box hires because of the candidates’ business and media backgrounds, and if the Big Ten opts to go this way, Silverman could be a prime option.
Ted Carter, University of Nebraska System president: Carter has presided over the University of Nebraska System since the beginning of 2020, which means he has led through arguably the most challenging stretch for higher education ever. He also understands the value of football to Big Ten schools and what needs to be done when that football product isn’t performing at a high enough level. Carter’s military background makes him an unflappable leader, and it’s always worth remembering who ultimately gets to make these hiring decisions: presidents and chancellors. Might they want to elevate one of their own?
Kerry Kenny, Senior Vice President, Television, Media Analytics & Emerging Platforms at the Big Ten: Kenny could be a strong internal candidate for the job, if Big Ten presidents and chancellors want to look within the office. He has been with the league for 15 years, so he’s worked closely with both Delany and Warren as he’s grown in his career. His experience with the league’s media rights negotiations should be a big plus, even though he’s not yet 40 and far greener than others on this list. Kenny is a great relationship-builder and a rising star in the industry. Another potential internal candidate could be personable chief legal officer and general counsel Anil Gollahalli, who spent 14 years in a similar role in Norman and helped move Oklahoma to the SEC before joining the Big Ten.
Cathy Engelbert, WNBA commissioner: Another nontraditional candidate, Engelbert has served as the WNBA’s commissioner since the summer of 2019, with experience negotiating a collective bargaining agreement, managing the 2020 COVID-19 season in the Wubble and announcing plans to extend the length of the WNBA season and intentions to add expansion teams. The WNBA’s impressive growth trajectory can be seen in increasing TV viewership but also in increased player visibility/marketing campaigns and sports wagering.
Engelbert, who worked at Deloitte for 33 years and became the first female CEO at a Big Four firm, played college basketball at Lehigh University under Hall of Fame coach Muffet McGraw. The Big Ten has seen the growth potential in women’s basketball as well, hiring Megan Kahn as its first-ever vice president of women’s basketball in 2021, and if leaders want to lean into someone who understands how to grow sports like that, Engelbert would be an inspired choice. Big East commissioner Val Ackerman, who launched the WNBA back in 1997, could be another intriguing candidate if Big Ten presidents and chancellors are willing to consider those without football backgrounds.
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Tim Pernetti, IMG Academy president: Pernetti was last in a front-facing role as the AD at Rutgers, which he helped get into the Big Ten from the crumbling Big East in 2012. A former Scarlet Knights tight end, Pernetti became one of the public fall guys in the aftermath of the Mike Rice player abuse scandal with the Rutgers men’s basketball team, resigning in 2013. But that was almost a decade ago, and Pernetti has kept a large enough presence in the college sports space that he ended up becoming one of three finalists for the Big 12 commissioner job that went to Brett Yormark this past summer. Pernetti had a long and distinguished career as a TV executive before taking over at Rutgers. Since then, he has been chief business officer for MLS club NYCFC, president of IMG College and worked briefly at Endeavor before joining IMG Academy in Bradenton, Fla., in 2020.
Chris Howard, ASU Public Enterprise executive VP/COO: Howard is a popular name for big searches because, quite simply, his resume is unmatched: He is a former college athlete (Air Force running back) and has been a college president (Robert Morris University). He is a Rhodes Scholar with an MBA from Harvard who was awarded a Bronze Star for his service in Afghanistan. He has been on the College Football Playoff selection committee, too. Howard, like Pernetti, was an early candidate for the NCAA president job, but he pulled himself out. Could this job — one that carries much more influence — be enough to attract him?
(Photo: Justin Casterline / Getty Images)