Speaker 1:
From the library of the New York Stock Exchange at the corner of Wall and Broad Streets in New York City, you're Inside the ICE House, our podcast from Intercontinental Exchange on markets, leadership, and vision in global business, the dream drivers that have made the NYSE an indispensable institution of global growth for over 225 years. Each week we feature stories of those who hatch plans, create jobs, and harness the engine of capitalism right here, right now at the NYSE and at ICE's exchanges and clearinghouses around the world. And now welcome Inside the ICE House. Here's your host, Josh King of Intercontinental Exchange.
Josh King:
I had a chance to attend the 124th Army-Navy game in Foxborough in December. Both teams came into America's game at five and six, but alas, for my plea bid, Shipman Navy went back to Annapolis at five and seven. Looking forward to the 2024 season with hopefully, a new class of mids that are going to bolster the offensive line for head coach, Brian Newberry, as he begins his second season on the sideline.
Josh King:
But as Coach Newberry recruits players for the Navy squad, he won't be able to dangle the financial benefits that standout players can generate from their name, image, and likeness, or NIL as we've come to phrase it. Midshipmen, you see, are technically employees of the federal government prohibited from any outside income while they wear the uniform of the United States. That doesn't stop the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marines from, for example, enlisting Paige Bueckers, star guard for the University of Connecticut Huskies, from striking a deal with GoArmy, the U.S. Army's recruiting arm, believed to be the first time a college athlete signed an NIL partnership with the military branch.
Josh King:
Name, image, and likeness, the transfer portal, TV deals, and conference realignment have left student-athletes and fans wondering what could possibly come next. I played college lacrosse at Swarthmore eons ago and was never the kind of player like my teammates, Jerry Hood and Joe Valis, who would attract the interest of the local Ford dealership for sponsorship. In any case, social media didn't even exist back then. Paige Bueckers, she has a million followers across her social platforms, and that can be monetized to help enlist more female soldiers.
Josh King:
While the future is uncertain for athletes and fans, school and conference administrators are scrambling for survival. Conference realignment driven by massive TV rights deals, has created clear separation between leagues, and those choosing not to attack this new era, find themselves on the brink of extinction. Few, if any, understand these changes both from an athlete's and an administrator's perspective better than our guest today. BIG EAST's commissioner, Val Ackerman.
Josh King:
A former women's hoop star at the University of Virginia, Val led the BIG EAST for the last 10 years. She has experience working for the NBA and was the WNBA's first president, shaping its past and helping the league set itself up for its current-day success. The BIG EAST under Val's leadership has defied the odds, thriving in a college football world without sponsoring the sport. But even that strategy to put basketball first has not left the conference immune from the vast changes happening in college athletics.
Josh King:
Teams like Rutgers, Louisville, Syracuse, and West Virginia have left while others like Xavier, Butler, and Creighton have joined. UConn, an original BIG EAST member before leaving in 2013, came back into the conference in 2020, and through all these changes and all these uncertainties, the conference has not lacked success in its premier sport, winning five of the last 13 NCAA men's basketball championships and four of the last 10 women's basketball championships.
Josh King:
On today's episode, we're going to dive deep into Val's origin story, all the way up to taking over the BIG EAST in 2013. What did she learn from former NBA commissioner, the late David Stern? How has her experience building the WNBA helped in her current role as BIG EAST commissioner? We're also going to hit on the ever-changing nature of college athletics, the implementation of NIL, conference realignment, TV deals, and so much more. Our conversation with Val Ackerman is coming up right after this.
Speaker 3:
Their grandfather once crashed an auto show by driving through a plate glass window on purpose. Their father was the most awarded SUV ever, and their crazy uncle raced sports cars and won. While the blood of their relatives still runs true, none of them can do what these can. Introducing the next generation of Jeep Grand Cherokee available in two-row, three-row, and four-by-eight. The legacy lives on.
Josh King:
Welcome back Inside the ICE House. Remember, please to subscribe to wherever you listen to your podcast, and rate and review us on Apple Podcasts so other folks know where to find us and can hear your comments. Now, our guest today, Val Ackerman, has been commissioner of the BIG EAST since 2013. She's previously the founding president of the WNBA and a past president of USA Basketball. Val was inducted into the Women's Basketball Hall of Fame in 2011 and the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 2021. Val, thanks so much for joining us Inside the ICE House.
Val Ackerman:
Thanks, Josh. Great to be here today.
Josh King:
I know you're no stranger to the NYSE on a couple of occasions often to celebrate the start of the BIG EAST Men's Hoops Tournament. In March, you rang our opening bell, and this past October we hosted head coach Rick Pitino and the St John's men's basketball team as they traveled from Queens to ring our opening bell. UConn head coach, Dan Hurley, was here back in April to celebrate the Huskies' national title. Villanova did the same back in 2016 after their national championship.
Josh King:
Few schools outside the BIG EAST really can provide these kinds of opportunities to their athletes. Do these experiences, Val, like a trip to the NYSE, become part of what makes this conference unique and this setting in the Northeast so special?
Val Ackerman:
I think so. It's hard to say no to that, and thanks for having us by the way.
Josh King:
Always.
Val Ackerman:
We appreciate all of those checkpoints.
Josh King:
We love to see the mascots on the floor. There's nothing like it.
Val Ackerman:
It really is. The first time I was on the floor, I was just awestruck, and it just is the quintessential New York experience in many ways, so it's always a pleasure to be here when we get invited.
Josh King:
What was your first memory of coming here? Do you remember?
Val Ackerman:
Oh, gosh. Actually, it might've been when I was with the WNBA. We rang the opening bell one day, and it was in connection with some event we were staging and maybe the start of our season one year. It was an incredible experience.
Josh King:
Speaking of uniqueness, the BIG EAST Men's Basketball Tournament is played every season at Madison Square Garden. That's NYSE symbol MSGS. The partnership, which began in 1983 when Chris Mullin and St. John's beat Jay Adams and Boston College is really the longest-running, postseason championship at the same location in the sport, and it's going to continue at least for the next couple years as back in 2018, the BIG EAST and MSG extended their partnership through 2028.
Josh King:
Why is it so important to keep this relationship going and have the postseason tournament every year at what we all refer to as the Mecca of basketball? Fans of Bill Bradley know that one.
Val Ackerman:
Well, I'd say a few reasons, Josh. One is just the history you noted, the long-running nature of the relationship. I believe this year will be ... I always lose track. We're in the forties now, so I think it's 42 straight years of the BIG EAST tournament at MSG. One of my predecessors, Dave Gavitt, had the good idea to bring the tournament to this fair city and the world's most famous arena, so we've kept that going.
Val Ackerman:
The building itself is just ... I've been to a lot of basketball games in my life and there's something about it that's different, some combination of the lighting and the banners and the way the crowd noise just sort of bounces off the ceilings. So, we love being there. We know it's a relationship that the Garden believes is important as well, which is good. You noted we're there through '28. Hopefully, we'll be there for many years to come.
Josh King:
You went to UVA, and at that time there were only two women at the school there on an athletic scholarship. First, did you ever get the opportunity to play at Madison Square Garden in college? If not, do you have any MSG memories prior to joining the BIG EAST and that sound bouncing off the rafters?
Val Ackerman:
Yeah, the answer to the first one is no, never had a chance to play at MSG. Although my fourth year at Virginia, we did play a Christmas tournament in Queens at Queens College, which was actually a really good women's basketball program for many years around that time, now 40 years ago. My memories of playing basketball over at Virginia were amazing. As you noted, there weren't many scholarships to be handed out when I was there. I played in the early years of Title IX, so the program was just getting off the ground.
Val Ackerman:
The men's program actually was pretty good when I was there. They made it to the Final Four, my fourth year with Ralph Sampson and others. But we were on the ground floor and proud frankly, that we were able to help get the program started. When I see what women's sports and women's college sports in particular are doing today, it's a feeling of great satisfaction that I was there to help get that started.
Josh King:
Of the six Power Conference commissioners only you and the Pac-12 commissioner, George Kliavkoff, were student-athletes. How does intimately understanding the student experience impact how you navigate your role?
Val Ackerman:
It's very helpful. It's very helpful to have been in those shoes and have lived trying to juggle going to class, doing well academically, dealing with practice, dealing with travel, dealing with games, dealing with the pressures of all of that, trying to be a good teammate, trying to have a social life. The time demands piece in particular really I get, but at the same time, I'm very grateful for the experience I have, and I think many athletes that's not written about much.
Val Ackerman:
I think many athletes today are and should be grateful for having the chance to represent their universities, get it paid for. That was me. I graduated debt-free at a time when that's no small thing. I wish more was made out of the benefits of the life experience you get when you play on a team at that level.
Josh King:
After graduating from Virginia debt-free, as you say, you went across the country and got your law degree from UCLA. I don't know if you got that paid for too, but you landed an associate position here in New York at the white shoe law firm of Simpson Thacher & Bartlett, where NBA commissioner, Adam Silver, also practiced. Did you find any correlation between your time in the profession of law and running a sports league or conference like both you and Adam do now?
Val Ackerman:
Well, I really wanted to get a job working in sports out of law school, but no one said yes. I didn't have enough experience to get a job in-house, so I, as you noted, went to Simpson Thacher, was in the corporate and banking department for a couple of years, and it was really great experience, had nothing to do with sports.
Val Ackerman:
But the answer to your question is, yes. One, the experience itself set the stage for my later work in sports. Number two, the contacts that I made at Simpson. There were people there that had a relationship with David Stern. They put the call in when the staff attorney job opened up at the NBA, and I was able to apply. So, I think in every way, it helped me. The best part was I met my husband Charlie at the firm, and then we decided to get married. We now have two daughters, and we've been married a long time, so that was really the best part of it all.
Josh King:
Charlie still at Simpson Thacher?
Val Ackerman:
No, he's a retired partner, so he does a lot of golf and is incredibly supportive of our daughters and me.
Josh King:
Speaking of David Stern, ask anyone who ever met him and that have nothing but good things to say about him. Let's hear what Hall of Fame NBA coach, Greg Popovich, said after Stern passed in 2020 about the impact that he had on both him and the NBA.
Greg Popovich:
David Stern was an iconic figure, but that's quite an understatement. What he was was a force of nature, an amazing businessman, leader, manager, a man who took over back in the mid-80s as commissioner at a difficult time and was the visionary and the catalyst that made it what it is today. It's why we're all here and doing well.
Josh King:
That's the Spurs Greg Popovich. Val, we welcomed David to the NYSE back in January 2009, and his presence made quite the impact to those who were here on the floor that day. In what ways did Stern influence you?
Val Ackerman:
I can't count them, Josh. I agree 100% with what Coach Popovich said. What he didn't have was the perspective of David as a boss, which I did. He was a boss and a mentor to me. I worked very closely with him over 16 years-plus. When I left the league, I still stayed closely in touch with him through other work that I did. I was really in contact with him till the end, so it was a great loss to the basketball world, the sports world at large when he passed.
Val Ackerman:
He was a demanding boss, I will tell you. Pushed all of us, was somebody who could look around corners and see the future in ways that the rest of us couldn't, so whether that was international or work-around technology. Certainly, and I live this firsthand, his belief in the importance of women to the future of the game of basketball was something that touched me directly, and he was the force. I like the word force of nature. It's not wrong. He was the force behind the founding of the WNBA.
Josh King:
Certainly, creating the international status of the NBA is one of his lasting legacies, but focusing on the women's sport, Val, in 1996, after a number of years at the NBA, you were named the WNBA's first president. You walk in on your first day at the league with no players, no coaches, no cities, and a first season that was set to begin less than a year later in 1997. We had Paul Rabil on the podcast here just a couple of years ago as he was launching the Premier Lacrosse League. Take us through the process, Val, of creating a professional sports league, literally from scratch.
Val Ackerman:
Well, the groundwork for that really had been quietly laid leading up to the announcement that the league was going to launch, and that announcement was made really before the Olympics in '96. The NBA announced that the board of governors had approved the concept of a WNBA leading into Atlanta games in '96, so there was already some work being done there. What I would say is the job was made ... Yes, it was a track meet. The first year we were sprinting every day, but it was made infinitely easier because really the full force of the NBA was put behind it. Every department was involved. David told us it was an organizational priority, so it was drop everything and work on this.
Val Ackerman:
I was a little bit of an air traffic controller, directing departments and working with colleagues there. It was a group effort of the highest order, and our senior management team at that time, David and Russ Granik, deputy commissioner, Rick Welts, head of NBA Properties, Adam at that time was in the senior management team, all were very, very closely involved in it. So, we had a head start. It wasn't, I would say, a true startup. It was like a creation of a new operating division within the league, so there was lots of support there.
Val Ackerman:
But that said, you're right. Everything had to be done from ground zero in terms of roster composition, choosing teams, choosing team names, the teams hiring their staffs, getting players and referees lined up, getting sponsors, getting the television, stuff that's one-time in nature, but it happened all at once. So, it was a great deal of work, and it was really when opening day hit in 1997, it was a day of a lot of emotion because all of that planning was finally coming into clear focus. We did it. We made it happen.
Josh King:
You mentioned team names is one of the things that you did, and those of us who grew up watching basketball, I think the first non-animal mascot in pro sports might've been the New Orleans and then Utah Jazz. But the WNBA was always known for its more creative names. Talk about the creativity involved in the league office as you were sort of batting around both cities and names and how you were going to create this distinctive, more cutting-edge feel of the women's league.
Val Ackerman:
Well, when we started the league, it was set up legally as a so-called single-entity structure. The WNBA was owned by all of the NBA teams at that time, and so the teams were in NBA cities fronted by NBA teams in those cities through a sort of franchise agreement. The creativity behind the names was to try to find a name that had a link to the NBA team name. By way of example, one of our early teams and most successful early on was the Houston Comets. May they rest in peace. We chose the name Comets because the men's team was the Rockets. Phoenix, we chose the name Mercury because the men's team was the Suns. It is the Suns, and Mercury happens to be the planet closest to the Sun.
Val Ackerman:
Now, New York, we couldn't really think of anything that lined up with Knickerbocker. That was a tough one, so we ended up with the Liberty, which of course is the most famous woman in New York because she's standing out in New York Harbor welcoming people from all over the world. So, it was the New York Liberty. And so it went. That was really the thinking, and so the names we tried to match up, and the colors were all the same. Again, early on it was the NBA teams who were doing most of the work, so it was, I think, the ideal setup for us at that time.
Josh King:
Just like Paul Rabil had Major League Lacrosse or MLL as a competitor during its launch, the WNBA contended with the now-defunct American Basketball League. Why did you think over 25 years after its inception, the WNBA is still in existence while many basketball fans would likely not be able to tell you what the American Basketball League ever was?
Val Ackerman:
When we started the league, we knew it was going to be a little bit of an uphill climb because there were roughly 15 maybe more women's pro basketball leagues that we were aware of that had launched prior to the WNBA, and it all failed. So, we knew our work was cut out for us. We thought the WNBA would be different for a few reasons. One was the timing coming out of the Atlanta Olympics. We felt we had tremendous momentum. In fact, we had the star players from the Olympic team signed up from the get-go with the WNBA.
Val Ackerman:
Number two, we chose the summer season, which was really TV-driven. We knew in order to be successful long-term, the league needed quality TV for credibility and exposure and revenue, and we didn't see quality, plentiful, TV windows in the traditional "winter basketball season". We thought the summer had a better shot for what we needed, and that's proven true.
Val Ackerman:
Then number three, we had the NBA behind us. We had the best basketball organization in the entire world, which was throwing its weight against women's basketball in ways that it had never done before. So, we thought we had more than an edge. And you're right, the ABL had their own vision. They wanted to play in the winter. They didn't have very good television. I think they overextended themselves on player salaries early on. They basically promised money so they couldn't afford. Within a couple years, they ceased operations. Those players came to the WNBA, and here we are today.
Val Ackerman:
It was really actually an exciting time in women's basketball coming out of Atlanta that you had these two leagues each trying to prove that women's basketball's time had come, and that, I think, was the positive of the two leagues coming out of Atlanta.
Josh King:
You decided then in 2005 to step down as WNBA president and have Donna Orender take over the position. Why was that the right time to step away from the league that you had built from scratch?
Val Ackerman:
To be honest, I was exhausted. The time I had put in at that point was 10 years-plus. If you take into account what we were doing with the national team that played in the Atlanta Olympics, which was the foundation for the WNBA, I was very involved in that team and that effort. My kids at that point were, I think, 12 and 10. Mom running out the door to go to work was all they ever knew. My husband was still working at Simpson Thacher, and I felt like the league at that point, I'd done what I could do, and I knew it was in good hands with the NBA behind it.
Val Ackerman:
I had a landing place because I had been on the board of USA Basketball for many years, and the opportunity to be board chair presented itself to me at the same time. That materialized into my service to USAB between '05 and '08, so I got to serve as board chair through the Beijing games, which was just another incredibly exciting part of my journey. As far as the WNBA went, it was a hard decision in some ways because of everything that had been put into it, but in some ways, it made sense for me because of what I felt I had to do with my family.
Josh King:
Talking about Atlanta '96, I was there with President Clinton. These are always breakout moments for new sports that are being demonstrated or medal sports for the first time, but also a time for the traditional huge sports like men's and women's soccer, men's and women's basketball to increase new popularity and following in the United States. What have you seen so far about what LA is doing on the basketball front?
Val Ackerman:
Well, I'll attest that there's really no sporting event like the Olympics. I've been to six of them starting in '92 every summer games after that through London and mostly for basketball. It really is a sports event like no other, just the way different countries come together and the crowds and the pride people have and the athletes have in representing their nations. It really is an extraordinary sports endeavor and a hard one for the host organizing committee because there's so many moving parts. For that reason, I am really glad that LA took it on. Casey Wasserman, who's chairing the Olympic committee, someone very well known to the sports community, he's masterful. He's his own force of nature. I think anybody will tell you.
Josh King:
As was his grandfather.
Val Ackerman:
Exactly. The Olympic movement is in good hands. Kathy Carter, who's driving the sales effort there, is a dear friend and also a very, very talented executive, and they have a lot of time to plan.
Val Ackerman:
I think the other benefit of LA because I was in law school in Los Angeles in 1984 ... I was a law student at UCLA when that was hitting ... they've got infrastructure in place, which I think makes it sensible. They don't have to go out and build everything, which has been the case with some of the other Olympic sites. That's costly. You're left with white elephants sometimes, buildings that don't have any future use. I think the fact that they've been very thoughtful about using facilities that are already built tells me ... I don't know much about what they're doing. I just have a general sense, but I think they have a great plan in place.
Josh King:
There might not be a bigger star right now in women's basketball than Caitlin Clark of the University of Iowa. She has close to a million followers on social media and has partnered with brands like Nike, ticker symbol NKE, or H&R Block, HRB, Goldman Sachs, ticker symbol GS, among so many others. She's even getting tremendous praise from NBA superstars like the Golden State Warriors' Steph Curry. Let's take a quick listen.
Steph Curry:
Her range, her three-point shooting overall, her flair for testing her range every night and knowing that the other team's going to try to take it away, and she's fearless. No shot is a bad shot, and when you can shoot it as well as she can, that definitely rings true.
Josh King:
Fearless. No shot is a bad shot from Steph, coming from the man who knows a thing or two about shooting from everywhere in the court. With a soon-to-be star like Caitlin joining all the talent in the league right now, do you think the WNBA and its popularity is at an all-time high?
Val Ackerman:
It seems to be. It would be my observation. We did really well early on. When the league launched in '97, '98, we were bringing in crowds we just didn't foresee. We were averaging 10,000 fans a game the first couple of seasons, which blew away our projections. I think some of that looking back was probably a bit of a novelty factor, something new. The NBA was behind it. Again, we were taking advantage of the summer season and the fact that other levels of basketball were dark that time of year, so my grounding is in that. The league then things settled down, and what I'm observing now in the last few years is the pickup again. That's heartening, very heartening.
Val Ackerman:
I think some of that is due to societal currents now in the league's favor maybe not as much when we started the league a generation ago. It was always my view that the league was going to have to sell itself at some point. It wasn't just going to be the NBA, pumping it, pumping it, pumping it. It had to be these players and these rivalries and the quality of the game was going to have to be the calling card for the league just like it's been for the NBA over decades. So, I think now that's happening.
Val Ackerman:
The quality of play is much better than when we launched it. The players coming out of college have name recognition. Part of that is because there is no early entry into the WNBA like there is on the men's side. Players in effect have to stay in college for basically four years. By the time they come into the league, people know who they are. We've lost that in men's basketball for the most part. So, I think there's a lot of things in the league's favor right now, and the answer to your question is yeah, I think the future continues to look really, really bright.
Josh King:
Let's pivot then back into college and the BIG EAST. Fast forward about eight years after you stepped down from the WNBA in 2013, hired as commissioner of the BIG EAST. The league that you were coming into is certainly not like the one that you or I grew up with. You mentioned Dave Gavitt earlier, an original BIG EAST member like Boston College for example, with the childhood idols that I had, people like Doug Flutie on the football field, Dana Barros on the basketball court left back in 2005 for the ACC, while Marquette, which based all the way west in Milwaukee, joins the BIG EAST at the same time. What drew you to the role and the opportunity to lead the conference at such a critical time in its existence?
Val Ackerman:
Well, I'll tell you, it was not anything I ever saw coming. It wasn't like I had this idea in my head 20 years ago, "Maybe someday I'll take over from Dave," or the people that followed Dave, who I knew, by the way. He was the commissioner of the BIG EAST, president of USA Basketball, later the chair of the Basketball Hall of Fame, so someone I had a chance to work with very closely and learn from and over when I was a junior executive. So, when this opportunity presented itself to me in 2013 out of the blue through the search firm as you noted that what my first thought was, "Oh, my gosh, this is Dave's League. What an honor it would be to take over."
Val Ackerman:
That said, it wasn't the same league that Dave started, as you noted. It had been through change and started out as a basketball league. They added schools that played football. The football schools started leaving, and then the group of schools that I came to represent were the so-called basketball schools who wanted to take control over their destiny as the football schools were making decisions that they felt were right for them. That was sort of my calculus at the time was, "Okay, I know a little bit about basketball. It was not football. Football was not a sport that the BIG EAST chose to sponsor 10 years ago, which was frankly fine by me. I don't know a ton about football, even though my grandfather was a football coach," and I just was in New York. They wanted to set up shop here. They were moving from Providence.
Val Ackerman:
It really struck me as I like the vision, the idea that a basketball league could be successful in a football world given the history that this conference had given the commitment to basketball by all of the schools at that time, given the presidents at that time, very impressive during my interview process, and I really bought into what they were trying to do. That was it. My husband said, "Great, go back to work." My daughters were in college, so it was a personal matter. I had the bandwidth back, and then here we are.
Josh King:
Yeah. Here we are. Talking about the storied history of this league, a couple memories come to mind when Rick Pitino led Providence to the Final Four in '87, two years earlier when Villanova and its head coach, Rollie Massimino, upset Georgetown and Patrick Ewing in the NCAA Tournament championship game. You mentioned your dad being a basketball coach, and you grew up in New Jersey. Did the BIG EAST and that basketball tradition resonate with you at the time, or is this out of the blue when you decided to go back to work?
Val Ackerman:
Oh, no, no, absolutely. The answer is everybody knew what the BIG EAST ... If you live in this part of the world, you knew what the BIG EAST was. I actually, it's funny you should mention it because my hometown, Pennington, New Jersey, is equidistant between Philly and New York. Basically, for me, now that's between Villanova and Seton Hall. But it really is, I think, the name recognition of this conference, everything that it accomplished, particularly in the mid-80s when the league was cresting and had three teams in the Final Four ... I think it was in '85. The reputation of the league I think has preceded itself, and I still deal almost every day with fans, particularly fans of my age who remember those early days of the old, what I still call the old BIG EAST and the rivalries and the coaches, Coach Massimino and Coach Carnesecca and Coach Thompson and Coach Boeheim and Coach Carlesimo.
Val Ackerman:
I still hear about these guys, and I'm glad I've gotten to know really all of them. Coach Calhoun, who's still around the UConn program. It really was a special league, and so I just take very seriously. I feel like it's a sacred trust that's been handed to me and my staff to try to keep the traditions and the successes of this proud league going and growing.
Josh King:
It was a conference that was filled with uncertainty at the time of your hire, the Catholic Seven consisting of schools like DePaul, Georgetown, Providence, Villanova, and the three others had announced that they were leaving to form their own conference a couple months earlier. Notre Dame was also pushing for an earlier exit as they, in every sport beside football, were looking to move to the ACC. Did you ever look at your husband and say, "Well, I decided to go back to work, but what the heck if I got myself into?"
Val Ackerman:
I did, but not for those reasons. Actually, it wasn't about conference composition that had my head spinning early. It was the fact that we were starting up the infrastructure again. The old league now named the American, I think you noted that, had the office back in Providence. They had staff. They were all set and ready to go. I took over a league that had no staff, that had no office. We spent the first 14 months in the offices of our outside council who kindly gave us space. We had no website. We had no office email accounts. We had no checking accounts. One of our schools was managing our accounts. That was Georgetown.
Val Ackerman:
It was just a brand new company, and so a lot of my work early on was really just getting the infrastructure in place and relying on our schools who were chipping in and helping with the core work of the conference, which is principally scheduling and officiating and running the conference championships. It took me really a couple of years just to get all that squared away and get my staff hired. We weren't doing a long-term plan until we got that all settled, but that very first year we had a national championship.
Val Ackerman:
I remember Providence won the national championship in women's cross country right out of the gate. Whoa, this is fun. And then we got four teams into the men's basketball tournament that year, and nobody knew what to expect with that. Then the successes kept coming in basketball. It was like the start of the WNBA, honestly, a track meet and a lot going on, and I'm not sure I could do that again with the launch of a league or the relaunch of a league, but it was very exciting and again, very gratifying to see how far we've come since those early years.
Josh King:
Gratifying to see how far we've come. We're going to talk a lot more about that after the break. Val Ackerman and I are going to talk about today's ever-changing nature of college athletics and really the future of the BIG EAST. That's all coming up right after this.
Speaker 7:
Connecting the opportunity is just part of the hustle.
Speaker 8:
Opportunity is using data to create a competitive advantage.
Speaker 9:
It's raising capital to help companies change the world.
Speaker 10:
It's making complicated financial concepts seem simple.
Speaker 11:
Opportunity is making the dream of home ownership a reality.
Speaker 12:
Writing new rules and redefining the game.
Speaker 13:
And driving the world forward to a greener energy future.
Speaker 14:
Opportunity is setting a goal.
Speaker 15:
And charting a course to get there.
Speaker 7:
Sometimes the only thing standing between you and opportunity is someone who can make the connection.
Speaker 16:
At ICE, we connect people to opportunity.
Josh King:
Welcome back. If you're enjoying this conversation, want to hear more from guests like BIG EAST commissioner, Val Ackerman, remember to subscribe to Inside the ICE House Podcast wherever you listen to your podcast. Give us a five-star rating and a review on Apple Podcasts. It would help a lot. Before the break, Val and I were discussing her experience working for the NBA, creating the WNBA, and then now taking over the BIG EAST conference. I want to discuss all the changes, and we've mentioned it a little bit in the introduction, around college athletics now, and we have to start with the implementation of name, image, and likeness, NIL, which allows student-athletes to make money off of their own brand.
Josh King:
My former Massachusetts governor and the current NCAA president, Charlie Baker, released a proposal earlier this month that would basically allow schools to pay their athletes in ways not tied to educational resources. What's your reaction to Charlie's proposal, and what could it mean for schools and athletes you think?
Val Ackerman:
I don't even know where to start with this answer here because maybe I'll start by saying you're right. It's been a very volatile past few years in college athletics. It's not just name, image, and likeness. We're dealing with new freedoms for athletes around transfers. We're dealing with conference realignment. We're dealing with the possibility of congressional intervention to try to come up with a national framework that would reconcile the antitrust labor and Title IX laws that are all in play in college athletics.
Val Ackerman:
I guess the answer to your question is President Baker has hit the ground running. I think he's been at it for about eight months. All of us applaud his energy. He's really thrown himself in. He's been a really good listener, trying hard to understand the issues across D-I, II, and III. It's not a monolith. I think that's an important note here about college sports. We have over 1,100 schools under the NCA umbrella, and they're all shapes and sizes, and their budgets are all shapes and sizes, and their revenues and expenses are all shapes and sizes.
Val Ackerman:
I think what Charlie and others are trying to do here is try to understand how we fit together under a big tent, what holds us all together, but also trying to figure out a way to reconcile the differences between schools that have more resources versus schools that have less resources and what that means in terms of support for our athletes, the ability to hold together as a single entity, and importantly, how we can manage the ongoing legal threats to the enterprise, in part, driven mostly by the commercial outcomes that we're seeing against schools at the very highest levels of college sports.
Val Ackerman:
It's early now to really talk about what Charlie's proposals mean. It's a subject of tremendous conversation right now, and I expect that conversation is going to continue in the weeks and the months ahead. What it means for the future of college athletics, I think it's a little bit too early to say, but I think the idea of getting things off the ground with honest conversation is a good starting point.
Josh King:
You say Charlie's been a good listener, and honest conversation is a good starting point. There's a lot of sports talk on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, also on any part of talk radio or sports television. I'm sure you've seen polling or survey research about what supporters and fans think. If you could generally characterize what people who are coming into the arenas to watch college athletics feel, do they want to see those kids both earning money from their likeness and also being seen as more professional than amateurs?
Val Ackerman:
Well, let me, Josh, separate it a little bit. I know you had asked about name, image, and likeness. I actually co-chaired the very first NCAA working group on name, image, and likeness that was formed in 2019, so almost four years ago. My co-chair is Gene Smith, athletics director at Ohio State. It was the view of our working group, which was made up of a cross-section of administrators across D-I, II, and III, that athletes should have the opportunity to monetize their NIL. It's an opportunity that regular students have. We thought it would only be fair student-athletes have the same opportunity.
Val Ackerman:
Our challenge was then and remains how to reconcile the NIL environment with the unique aspects of college athletics, in particular, the fact that athletes are recruited. There is frankly, competition among schools to bring athletes to their schools. That athlete acquisition process is very heavily regulated in pro sports. Players come in through a draft. They can't leave their team unless they get waived or they satisfy free agency benchmarks, etc. We don't really have any of those controls in college sports because the athletes aren't employees, so we have a very different environment.
Val Ackerman:
We had some real concerns about how NIL would work in the college space, but we thought we needed to do it. The key really was that the payments were coming from outside of the schools, and because of that reality, we thought that would help keep these payments from turning into employment, and it would help us manage Title IX considerations. I guess really the answer to your question is I see NIL as something very different than employment status. The answer to that piece of your question would be, I think for most athletes, employment is not the answer in terms of their relationship with their school.
Val Ackerman:
Frankly, athletes right now are getting compensated in a manner of speaking. They're getting their educations paid for. They're getting a host of other benefits. For most athletes, and I'll put myself in that boat, that's a pretty good deal. I went to the University of Virginia on a full scholarship. I got my education paid for it at an incredible school, had the experience of a lifetime. I don't think the university was obligated to pay me a salary, and that's most of college sports. These are non-revenue-producing endeavors by the universities that draw handfuls of fans and cost a lot of money.
Val Ackerman:
I think the challenge is what to do about the sports that are generating significant revenue, and there's a few of those in a few sports. I think that really is the question at hand. Back to my earlier point is, how do you take these differences between schools and between sports and find a system that maybe isn't a one-size-fits-all for everybody ... because not everybody should have the same size ... but deals with certain sports in certain ways? I think that's frankly what President Baker and others are trying to get their arms around right now.
Josh King:
You mentioned earlier potential congressional intervention. Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia has given his thoughts on the subject about a month ago at a meeting of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Just want to hear a little clip from that committee hearing
Joe Manchin:
Myself and Tommy Tuberville, who is a coach at Auburn, we've put a bill together, which is called the PASS Act. What we're trying to do is put some guardrails, if you will, for boosters and collectives to make sure they're associated with the schools and they're in sync with the schools for the purpose of making coordination there. We're not trying to harm any student from able to sell their value. We just don't believe it should be auctioned off school against school. Pretty simple. If you got that value and that talent, you're on TikTok, whatever you are, get yourself a lawyer, get yourself an agent, and go to it. Just don't come to West Virginia University and then basically say, "They'll give me this much, and now Maryland's going to give me this much or so-and-so." We're trying to take that out of it.
Josh King:
You think Senator Manchin, Senator Tuberville are on to something?
Val Ackerman:
Yes, that's it. That's very much what's happening is we're seeing bidding wars for players. That was my point earlier about how to manage NIL in the context of the athlete acquisition system in college sports. The other thing I would note that I think Senator Manchin alluded to was the fact that we have different rules in different states because there is no single national standard around NIL. My working group, the ones I've been involved with, tried to get to that and to create one national rule around NIL, but the Alston case set everyone back, suggested that a national rule might not be enforceable, so now we have a patchwork of state laws around NIL.
Val Ackerman:
An athlete in West Virginia may be dealing with a different set of rules than an athlete in Connecticut, and that's created a lot of confusion in our space for the athletes and the administrators alike. Step one for many of us with a federal bill would be what we call preemption, which would basically wipe out the state laws, create a single national standard around NIL. What the components of that would be is another question because there's a lot of detail if you did that right. But how to reconcile the patchwork of state laws and then as I mentioned, how to deal with the realities of athlete acquisition in the college sports world, I think is the beginnings of a potential federal reform bill, if you will, in college sports. I know President Baker and others are working hard on that.
Josh King:
Let's segue then, Val, into conference realignment. We hit on it before how the BIG EAST is now not the conference that we grew up with. What was once a group of schools along the East Coast now includes Creighton in Omaha, Butler in Indianapolis, Xavier in Cincinnati. There were even rumors a couple of months ago that the conference might add Gonzaga all the way on the other side of the country in Spokane. How are you, the BIG EAST presidents, the athletic directors, attacking realignment and any potential additions or departures that might move forward from the league?
Val Ackerman:
Well, the irony for the BIG EAST is that the BIG EAST was the league that was picked apart 10, 15 years ago, mostly by the ACC as schools like Syracuse and Louisville and Pitt, Notre Dame, others were defecting to go to what they saw as greener pastures in the ACC and more money. It's again, ironic now that we're a league of relative stability in the face of great change that has hit most of all the big football conferences and has led to the soon-to-be dissolution of the Pac-12 Conference, which is really very sobering that a 106 league will be no more come next July.
Val Ackerman:
The answer to your question is we are very closely monitoring the landscape. We talk about member composition pretty much every meeting of our presidents. We were really happy with 10. That was the new BIG EAST number in 2013, but when the chance to bring back UConn presented itself in 2019, it made sense. They're a different school than the current BIG EAST profile because they're a big public university. They play FBS football now as an independent, but there was so much history there and commonality with geography and the basketball focus that it made sense to bring them back, so now we're at 11.
Val Ackerman:
We have been approached by a number of other schools to join the BIG EAST. Our presidents have not seen fit to expand at this moment in time, so we are standing pat at 11 schools. Frankly, being out of the football fray has helped us right now, so we're enjoying the moment of relative stability here, but what the future holds, I think, is really impossible for any conference to say to you right now in this environment. I don't know that we'll do anything proactively anytime soon, but if there were scenarios like the dissolution of a conference for example, that created opportunities for us to add additional members, we would certainly look hard at that.
Josh King:
What was the thinking going on in stores when they picked up the phone and called you and said, "Ms. Ackerman, can we come back in?" Obviously, with Geno Auriemma, Jim Calhoun, they had established their bona fides wherever UConn was playing, but the Huskies wanted to be back to their old home. What was going on?
Val Ackerman:
The American is a great league. I've great respect for Commissioner Aresco, who's announced his retirement recently. I think for UConn, they just didn't feel a sense of affinity with the other schools in the league. They were playing against schools in Florida and Texas and Oklahoma and other places, Kansas, and I think they were missing the good travel that they had in the BIG EAST.
Josh King:
Buses.
Val Ackerman:
Providence, for God's sakes, is 50 miles away, and everything else is easy. I think they were missing the rivalries, particularly in basketball. Their men's basketball program had clearly fallen off, and they were looking for a way to revitalize that, and expenses associated with the travel were an issue for them. Those were the kinds of things that we were hearing about when they came back to us, and it was some good conversation among our presidents because again, they were not the profile of the current schools in the BIG EAST. Again, all of those positives really carried the day for us.
Val Ackerman:
Again, I don't know what the future holds, but it has absolutely been a win-win to have UConn back in the BIG EAST, and anytime you see the impact of their fan base, most of all their home games when they play at the Garden, you name it, when they're on the road, they attract a crowd, it's really paying benefits. So, we're thrilled to have them back.
Josh King:
You mentioned the Pac-12 earlier. The Big Ten, which had historically been a conference based in the Midwest adding Oregon, USC, UCLA, and Washington in 2024, and the SEC Conference in the southeast part of the country, where ICE Intercontinental Exchange is based, is adding Texas and Oklahoma. All this movement largely driven by TV revenue has already led to, as you said, the demise of the Pac-12. Is the creation of these SEC and Big Ten super-conferences, you think, a good thing for college athletics, even if it results in the demise of the Pac-12?
Val Ackerman:
Well, I think it remains to be seen. It hasn't happened yet, so these moves kick in essentially next summer. You're right. Our understanding is that these moves were driven by football and revenue principally. I can't speak to what consideration was given to the impact on, say, volleyball or basketball, whether from a travel standpoint, mode of travel standpoint, scheduling standpoint. I was not in those rooms, so it wouldn't be fair for me to make a comment on the thinking. But obviously, those schools led by smart people decided that was the right move for them.
Val Ackerman:
So, we're all just in a wait-and-see mode. As I said, I'm glad that the BIG EAST has been out of that fray for now. We do hope it doesn't affect our scheduling opportunities in non-conference play. It's a little bit of a, in-the-weeds comment, but we, for example, have had a challenge with the Big Ten in basketball known as the Gavitt Games, named after Dave Gavitt. That's been discontinued now in part because of the Big Ten's expanded footprint and their desire to maintain some flexibility with their non-conference scheduling. That was a realignment casualty. That's an example of how we were impacted, but again, we will see what impact this has on those leagues and all of us.
Val Ackerman:
My sense is that if you look over a period of time, realignment probably isn't over. We're probably going to see more of it in the years to come, but I don't have the crystal ball to give you the specifics on that.
Josh King:
The BIG EAST's current deal for television is with Fox, which expires in 2025. In June, we had Jimmy Pitaro, the chairman of ESPN, owned by Walt Disney Company, ticker symbol DIS, on the podcast a couple months ago, talking about these and other issues. Just take us, Val, for the uninitiated, a little bit behind the scenes of what happens in rights renewal negotiations. If Fox wants to keep you, but ESPN wants to have you, how do you marshal your legal team, your negotiators, to think about what's best for the BIG EAST?
Val Ackerman:
Well, I'll start by saying Fox has been an absolutely spectacular partner to the BIG EAST. The relationship got off the ground in 2013 when the new BIG EAST came into being. It coincided with Fox's decision to launch FS1, a national sports cable network in the summer of 2013. So, the two entities, the new BIG EAST and Fox Sports came together then with a 12-year deal that has been really the reason, frankly, one of the main reasons that the new BIG EAST has been so successful because of the resources and the visibility that that relationship has provided. Fox has been a terrific partner.
Val Ackerman:
They were the exclusive licensee. They cut sublicenses with CBS and SNY, so we have some different partners. We have a number of contests that are also on a digital network. We have a BIG EAST Digital Network, which is carried by FloSports. We're in a couple of different places now. Fox has backend rights in their agreement with us, so they will be the people that we talk to first about hopefully, an extension of our great deal with them. We expect those conversations to be starting up very soon. We've gotten very encouraging signs from Fox that they want to stay in business with us, and we've relayed the same sentiment back to them, so that's really how it all starts.
Val Ackerman:
I can't really say much beyond that. We've added value to Fox in ways that go beyond ad sales. We've been proud of what we've accomplished, including with their help in terms of keeping our identity and our successes and our brand strong. So, we're really hopeful that we're going to stay in business with Fox for many years to come.
Josh King:
As we begin to wrap up our conversation, Val, during the discussion we've had, we've talked about NIL, conference realignment, and now TV deals. Add in the ability for student-athletes to transfer schools, and we have something really similar to what we see in modern-day professional sports. With all the changes and potentially more to come, have we seen the end of amateur sports as we know them? Will Army, Navy, and Division III and conferences like the NESCAC be the last bastions of true amateurism? We're a long way from Jim Thorpe.
Val Ackerman:
We really are. That's true. That is a true statement. The short answer is I think college sports are too big to fail. They're beloved, and they're important, and they're part of our culture, especially in the month of March. As a product of that system, I wouldn't be talking to you today, Josh, if I didn't come up as a college athlete with everything that taught me and made me into as a young adult. I think there's too much good here to cast aside, and that's most of college sports, the experience that I had.
Val Ackerman:
I don't think college sports will go away, but I think it's inevitable that it will be reformed in some manner, particularly at the highest levels. By that I mean the levels that are producing the largest commercial outcomes. I think the money is just impacting what this enterprise will turn into, at least at that level. The question is, what about that might trickle down to the levels below? With all of that, is there a way to hold on to all of the good that college sports has created for athletes and universities and colleges and for fans around the country?
Val Ackerman:
People are proud of their alma maters, and that's water cooler talk. When your team won the big game the night before and upset somebody and there was a court storm, that's what people love about college sports. I still think about that with my alma mater. Where it goes, I'm not sure. I do think it's very complicated, and the listeners need to understand there's a lot of legal complexities here around the labor laws and antitrust law and Title IX that it's really hard to sort out. Unfortunately, a lot of lawyers are very involved in this, making a lot of money, trying to challenge the system. I think people of goodwill here hopefully will carry the day, and hopefully, what we're able to hold onto will be again, what has made college sports so important and so beloved by so many.
Josh King:
We've been focusing so much, Val, on March and what happens in basketball in the men's and women's game and football. We mentioned a little bit of lacrosse and some volleyball, but as the BIG EAST commissioner, you see a lot of sports and think about a lot of sports. Just speaking as a fan and what you would see if you go back to Charlottesville, my son, who rows for men's lights on Navy went down to Charlottesville to row against the Cavaliers and the other schools that were gathered for that regatta. We've got boys in the boat about to come into theaters talking about the great crew escapades decades ago. What do you as a fan of college sports, beside the big ticket ones, love to do if you just have a Saturday or Sunday?
Val Ackerman:
Well, I'm still an athlete at heart. It's getting harder to move my legs, but I do try to work out and keep myself grounded to something that's been a part of my life for as long as I can remember, and that is playing sports. I do like to watch sports. Sometimes I need a break and need to watch something on television other than a sports event. But to your point, Josh, what you made me think about with your question was we sponsor 22 sports at the BIG EAST. We don't have football. Men's and women's basketball are the premier sports, but we have 20 others. I've been to all of those events, and those athletes work just as hard, care just as much, compete just as intently as athletes in any sport.
Val Ackerman:
Because I lived it per our earlier comments earlier at the beginning of the show, I know what they're getting out of that experience. So, I just feel really good about being in a position I'm in now where I can help make that life journey possible for all of those athletes. Again, it's another reason why I hope we can keep this thing that's so precious, college athletics and what it means to young people and how it's embedded in their education, how we can keep that strong in the years to come.
Josh King:
The BIG EAST has defied the odds over the years, surviving and thriving. As we try to project into the future, what do you think is next for the BIG EAST? What does the conference look like five, 10, 15 years down the road?
Val Ackerman:
Well, I'm not sure the group of schools that I'm representing now have an interest in going back and sponsoring football. A few play it, but they get their schedules elsewhere. We don't get involved in that, and I don't foresee them going back to the old BIG EAST football. That's number one, but that could change if the composition of the league were to change or the leadership were to change.
Val Ackerman:
I do think this group of schools will maintain their focus on the sport of basketball. That's really been the DNA of the league from day one back to the Dave Gavitt days, and the traditions and the rivalries and frankly, the resources that our schools are committing to basketball in particular are proof of that. I foresee continued commitment there, hopefully, continued successes there. We're doing all right this year in basketball, and that's a good sign.
Val Ackerman:
Beyond that, I think all of every school in D-I is trying to figure out, "Okay, how are we going to manage the cost of doing business, particularly if there's a new economic model vis-a-vis the athletes?" What does that mean? What are the costs associated with that? Where's the money going to come from? Whether it's media contracts with your broadcast partner or partners, whether it's sponsorship money, how much do you have to lean on philanthropy? How much do you have to borrow from the university in order to cover these costs? These are questions that athletics directors around the country are wrestling with every single day in this environment.
Val Ackerman:
It costs money to run these programs. I don't think enough is said about the costs of college sports. A lot's made of the revenue. Not a lot is made of the cost, and the costs are very significant, and they're real. So, we work on that at the BIG EAST. I mean our ADs, we have a strategic review process. We're trying to read tea leaves in terms of what a new model might look like.
Val Ackerman:
I don't have the answers for you at this moment, but it's not like we're not thinking hard about it. I guess we're just going to continue to work internally, work with colleagues as best we can, support President Baker and what he's trying to do in terms of maybe some intervention by Congress, and hope that the system that we come up with, if it's different than the one we have now, works for everybody.
Josh King:
I will continue to watch closely this season as it unfolds. Look forward to seeing all the BIG EAST teams in action and look forward hopefully, to hosting you back at the New York Stock Exchange around the BIG EAST Tournament at Madison Square Garden, and then of course, see what happens at the big dance. Thanks so much for joining us Inside the ICE House.
Val Ackerman:
Yeah, great, Josh. Thanks for having me. It's been great.
Josh King:
That's our conversation for this week. Our guest was Val Ackerman, Commissioner of the BIG EAST Conference. If you like what you heard, please rate us on Apple Podcasts so other folks know where to find us. And if you've got a comment or a question you'd like one of our experts to tackle on a future show or hear from a guest like Val, make sure to leave us a review, your suggestions. Email us at [email protected] or tweet at us @icehousepodcast.
Josh King:
Our show is produced by Lance Glinn with production assistance, editing and engineering from Ken Abel, Pete Asch is the director of programming and production at ICE, and I'm Josh King, your host, signing off from the library of the New York Stock Exchange. Thanks for listening. We'll talk to you next week.
Speaker 1:
Information contained in this podcast was obtained in part from publicly available sources and not independently verified. Neither ICE nor its affiliates make any representations or warranties express or implied as to the accuracy or completeness of the information and do not sponsor, approve, or endorse any of the content herein, all of which is presented solely for informational and educational purposes. Nothing herein constitutes an offer to sell, a solicitation of an offer to buy any security, or a recommendation of any security or trading practice. Some portions of the preceding conversation may have been edited for the purpose of length or clarity.
