Val Ackerman | Big East Conference Commissioner

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There's joy in every journey. It's an intriguing time for college sports and for conference commissioners like Val Ackerman. Val, how would you describe this past season? These past few months, really, for women's college hoops?

It's hard to compare it to much of what's happened over the course of the last 50 years. I mean, I think it really has been a phenomenal stretch for women's basketball. If you look at the gains the WNBA has made the last few years playing in the summer, the interest around the women's college game particularly coming after the flap in 21 with the inequities that were exposed at the women's championship, the COVID bubble. San Antonio and the attention that was focused on the women's game at that point, I mean, it sort of turned around that and then some from that tournament. And then if you look at these bright young stars who are coming up, who are getting people excited, developing significant followings, developing incredible audiences on television and in arenas. So for somebody like me who's been following the women's game for many years, I played myself in the early years of Title Nine to see what's happening and how women's basketball has seemed to have turned a big corner. It's very exciting to see it. The Final Four had record viewership, not just for the national semifinals, but for the championship game.

Nearly 14 million viewers on average for those three games in Cleveland. You've been in the game for a long time. I've covered it for 25 years and that would have been unheard of, say, 10, 15 years ago.

Incredible. But why now, Val? Why do you think it's gotten to the point where it's exploding in 2024?

Well, I think some of it is accretive. You know, a sport that's been around for a long time. It was one of the early beneficiaries of Title Nine. It's had many peaks over the years. I mean, the start of the WNBA, which I was part of, was one such peak. There have been great stars that have come in over time. The Olympic team, which is going to have a window this summer going for its eighth straight gold medal.

Their performances since 1996 have been part of the peaks. This isn't a new sport that's just burst onto the scene by any stretch. But I think what's really contributed is, I would put a fair amount of this at the feet of Kaitlyn Clark, who has almost single-handedly elevated the sport with the interest that she's created, the scoring sensation that she is, the way she plays, the way she conducts herself. She's going to carry that into the WNBA.

That's incredible. But there's other great young players coming up as well, as evidenced by the draft this year and the style of play they're bringing to the league, etc. I think it's the combination of sort of buildup over time, sensational stars who've hit, and then the societal acceptance, I think, of women's sports is sort of at an apex. It wasn't so 50 years ago when Title Nine was passed, or even 28 years ago when the WNBA was launched. I think society now is more embracing of women who are strong and who are athletic and who are role models in all sorts of ways, and they're just seeing these sports in a completely different light now.

I think all of those things have combined to bring us to where we are today. You mentioned Kaitlyn. Of course, she's become a household name. Not an overnight sensation, but in the last year, I gauge the popularity of a sport through my mom, who really doesn't know a whole lot about sports other than what I do. But she did not miss an Iowa basketball game over the past couple months and couldn't wait to watch Kaitlyn and her teammates. I asked Lisa Bluder, I asked Lindsay Gottlieb, I've asked other people, how does the sport, and in a larger context, women's sports, capitalize on this wave of popularity?

How does that continue? It'll continue as it relates to her. If she does very well in the WNBA, I think the mystique will only grow. If she gets to the WNBA and she's sort of stopped in her tracks because the defenses are better or because the veteran players who are proud, their competitive juice is going, say, okay, she's not going to do what she did at Iowa. She's not going to do it here.

I can see that mindset. If that happens, and she's sort of relegated to a lesser role, then maybe things slow down a little bit. But I think if she comes in, just picks up kind of where she left off, she's making half-court shots. Her playmaking is continued.

I think if all of that keeps happening, then I can see continuous build here. Not unlike, I was part of the NBA in the early years of the Magic Johnson Larry Bird era. That's when I started working in basketball in 1988. And they came in very heralded from college.

And then they came into the pros, and they just kind of kept it going, including with each other, in terms of their rivalry. I think it's a little bit on her, but the WNBA is a pro league. They're adept at marketing. They're very much tied to the NBA, which is a casebook study on how to market a sports league. So I think the league will be equipped to amplify what's happening, to build up all of the teams and all of the players in ways, and take advantage through social media, the activations of sponsors, the promotion on television.

The television windows they're getting, et cetera. All those things combine to elevate. And I think the league is more than equipped to do that. In the case of this freshman here in my college talk, this rookie class, now and for years to come. We are so pleased to have the Big East Commissioner Val Ackerman with us on After Hours with Amy Lawrence, Naismith Hall of Famer, and also the first president of the WNBA.

Back to those days in the late 90s, it was a startup, Val. When you look back now, we're talking nearly 30 years, and as we go over the success and the growth, what is maybe an element of that league that you're proud of, having been part of the very first days? I think in some ways we're ahead of our time. When I hear people today talk about women's basketball like it's something new, and it's new because they've just discovered it, I kind of chuckle, to be honest. Because they're using lines that we were using, to your point, 30 years ago, when the idea for the WNBA started germinating in the NBA league office, which I was part of.

I kind of get patient with people and let them say what they want to say about it. But the fact is, the league has had incredible moments over the years. We had an incredible start. And candidly, the crowds that we had in the early years of the WNBA were the biggest the league has ever had, and then it sort of settled down. I hope it picks up again with this renaissance that we're seeing around the sport. But I think the embrace by fans, growing interest by sponsors, this is all the things you need for a sports league to grow. That's happening, clearly.

I don't know how to measure that. The buzz is there. I hope it's translating into commercial rewards. Are more sponsors coming in? Are they paying more money? Are television rights fees going up? Ticket sales? Revenues?

That stuff going up. Because that's what builds a league, to be honest. The economics have to start improving. And it seems like maybe that's where this is headed.

I hope it is. Because if that happens, then more can be reinvested into the sport, and importantly, the players can share in that. Because if the league's sort of stuck from a revenue standpoint, the players, just by definition, aren't going to benefit. But if it's growing, the people that run leagues know that the players should share in that, and will share in that, and should share in that.

And so hopefully that's going to be the next phase of growth for them. Val, as much as we talk about women's basketball, women's sports, certainly the Big East needs to be spotlighted for the back-to-back national champion. That is UConn and Dan Hurley. And what a run.

Record numbers in terms of their margins. Victory. Really tough to do. So how much does that mean to the Big East to have the first back-to-back national champ in almost 20 years, I guess? Yeah, it was awesome. The Huskies were fabulous this year. Coach Hurley has done a magnificent job. They lost some key players last year to the NBA, but they were able to kind of replace them with players who had been there last year, had the Final Four experience, and then just improved, developed. And they were able to add some newcomers. Frankly, for us at the conference, we tag along during March Madness.

It was fun to see it. You know, for the Big East, it's a proud moment because we're a league. We have 22 sports that we sponsor in this iteration of the Big East. The Big East has been around 45 years. It started out as a basketball-centric conference.

Football got added. And then 11 years ago, it became a basketball-centric conference once again, meaning we don't sponsor football. So to stay relevant and competitive and to bring home titles, we've won four of the last eight men's basketball college titles, is validating that a basketball organization can do it, if you will, in a football-driven ecosystem, which is what college sports is, essentially. This is all very exciting stuff for us at the conference. I know our presidents across the board are excited, proud of UConn. You know, we tip our hat to their leadership for making this happen. And they're determined. I mean, Dan Hurley has already told me he's going for a three-peat next year.

You know, in this environment, you never know what your roster will be like next year. But we can't compliment them enough. And we're very proud to have them back in the Big East. I read a quote from you, Val, in which you said, if college basketball has a soul, you will find it in our league. That's more than just winning.

What does that mean? What I like about the Big East, and one of the reasons I signed up for this job when I took it 11 years ago, is because I really felt like the Big East has an identity. As I mentioned in the answer to the last question, this is a league that was built on basketball. Our schools are in basically big cities. Our schools are among the top 35 media markets in the country. We have pretty sensible geography. If you look at the landscape now and the national conferences that have been formed, we're on the Eastern Seaboard, Northeast, and then the Midwest. Our schools have a proud history.

They're academically inclined. We have very high graduation rates in our league, second only to the Ivy League. We're very tied to New York City with our men's basketball tournament at the Garden.

Been there, I think, 42 years. We just signed an extension with the Garden that will give us 50 years at MSG coming 2032, which we're really excited about. We just have, I think, sort of a DNA here that combines athletics and getting a good education, as I mentioned. Then importantly, because of the Catholic missions of many of our schools, sort of an orientation towards service and the community and to developing young people. Very few of them are going to play pro sports with their lives.

They're going to go on and do other things. Our schools know that, and they're trying to develop them into leaders and responsible young adults and good citizens. Our schools really care about that, and I know that because I'm in the meetings with our presidents, and that's their job to think about that, and mine too. I guess, Amy, that package of attributes, it's more than skin deep with us.

There's a lot of things that we care about and value. I just feel proud to be associated with a league that cares about its history but also has an eye to the future and is trying to do it the right way. Big East Commissioner and Hall of Famer Val Ackerman is with us here after hours with Amy Lawrence. The league has gone through, maybe not its own conference realignment to the depths of the Big Ten and the SEC and some of the others, but has been affected by that. Some of these other conferences are becoming mammoth. Will the Big East stand pat, or is that something that the Big East is investigating or even looking at? In this environment, you can't not pay attention to what's going on around you, so we've followed, closely again with interest, the changes that we've seen nationally with the breakup of the Pac-12, frankly, which was analogous to the breakup of the old Big East. Fifteen or twenty years ago, it was the ACC at that time, I'm going to use this word, that raided the Big East and pulled out football playing schools to add to the numbers of schools at that time in the ACC, leaving behind schools that included the basketball-centric schools, many of whom I now represent in the new Big East.

For our presidents, they're kind of looking around, shuddering with this repeating of history, with realignment of the last couple of years, so we're paying attention. We have no plans at this minute to expand. We've investigated it to your question. We've had a bunch of inquiries from other schools who want to be part of what we're doing. We did add UConn back in 2020 to make it 11, so that's where we are right now. Might things change?

No one can rule that out in this environment. We're not looking for it, but if the circumstances are such that it makes sense for us to add schools, we would look at it. It would have to fit. It would have to be consistent with our goals. It would have to not mess up our basketball, which is pretty good and something we're really proud of here.

It would have to make sense from an economic standpoint. Scheduling, geography, all these factors come into play, so I can't say never on anything, but at least at this moment, we're set at 11, and that's going to be where we're going to land, I think for at least the next couple of years. Gosh, Val, you don't back down from a challenge, helping to launch the WNBA, then into the Big East and having to navigate all these waves of changes, not just for conferences and realignment, but also the changes in college sports overall with NIL and the transfer portal.

Do you like this kind of stuff, digging in and facing almost a mountain? I can't say I knew this was coming, Amy, when I signed up for this job 11 years ago. What we've seen in college sports over the last couple of years, I don't think anybody could have truly predicted. There were maybe undercurrents 10 years ago or longer about some of the things that have surfaced now about athlete empowerment and this push to have athletes have expanded benefits and maybe a piece of the pie. But it is better or worse, it is part of my job to keep up with all of that. I'm a lawyer, and that's been helpful here because there's so many legal issues right now, frankly, that are surrounding college sports.

So having my law degree and a few years of practicing helps me understand better some of the challenges that our space is confronting. I will say that when I took this position, part of the appeal was the fact that it was a rebuild, a restart, if you will, of the old Big East. The league had broken up.

It was coming back together again in a different form. I did have the experience with the WNBA, albeit within the confines of the NBA league office, starting a new property. And so the startup nature of this was not something new, but it was different in many ways and appealing.

I kind of thought, OK, I kind of think I know, you know, some things here that could be helpful to these to these schools. So it's been really exciting. And I do feel like lightning is struck twice in a good way with me to be able to have been at the ground floor of the WNBA and then to be part of this rebirth of the Big East over the last decade or so. I feel very fortunate to have had these experiences and, you know, and proud about the journey that I've had. What's next for the conference?

What's the next challenge? I think it's just what we talked about. It's navigating the ecosystem now and all of the changes that are possible in college sports and making sure that the Big East as a non-football conference without those revenues, but also without some of their distractions and expenses. Can we stay relevant and can we fulfill the mission of our schools to be really good in basketball, to serve our athletes, to, you know, create the kinds of experiences for them that I had as a student athlete? I played basketball in Virginia and made my life. I still think of every day. Think about, OK, the lessons I learned when I was playing basketball at UVA.

It's that powerful, those four years. And so I feel a sense of responsibility in my job to try as best I can to assist in the replication of those experiences for the young men and young women, growing numbers of young women playing college sports today, because I know how impactful that was for me. And they're going to be the future for, you know, not just in sports, but across the board in our country. So, you know, again, I think we've got the attributes needed to stay relevant and competitive and to serve our schools in the right ways going forward. But it's not easy. There's just a lot of challenges, especially for our ADs and our folks on campus.

They've got the heavy lifting in many respects, but whatever I can do to support them is whatever it may take, known and unknown right now. That's what I see is the job of me and myself and my staff. What do you do for fun, Val, when you get some time off?

Well, that's a great question. So I try to sleep. How about sleeping? You know, my husband and I watch, you know, we have some TV shows that we watch religiously. I try to work out when I can.

It's hard living in the city and with limited hours. But I do a little Peloton. I, you know, I belong to a swimming pool that I turn out some laps. I ride a bike. I love to hike. I love nature. I like being outdoors. Don't get enough of that.

But whenever I'm outside of the city, I'm looking for a trail. Gotten a little more into cooking, reading books. I've got two daughters, Emily and Sally, my husband and I. And so we were very close knit as a family. We were always in touch.

Our youngest daughter lives here in the city. We see her a lot. And so, yeah, I mean, it's just trying to maintain relationships, taking a breath every now and again, trying to recharge. I think executives in our line of work don't always do enough to recharge because these jobs are really they can grind. And so I sometimes have to remind myself that I'm not at 100 percent capacity unless every now and again I'm at zero capacity. That makes sense. I like that. I'm going to remember moving forward. Yeah. So it's sort of that that that mix of stuff that I try to do just to take the break that you need.

Val Ackerman is the current commissioner of the Big East, former WNBA president, first female president of USA Basketball, a Hall of Famer. Very busy. So it's an honor to have you on the show for a couple of minutes. Thank you so much for your time. We love to connect with you.

Thanks so much. Great being with you today. OK, picture this. It's Friday afternoon when a thought hits you. I can spend another weekend doing the same old whatever, or I can hop into my all new Hyundai Santa Fe and hit the road with available H-Track all wheel drive and three row seating. My whole family can head deep into the wild, conquer the weekend in the all new Hyundai Santa Fe. Visit HyundaiUSA.com or call 562-314-4603 for more details. Hyundai.

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