Welcome to Basketball Insider, presented by The BIG EAST Conference. As I have written before, The BIG EAST Conference is the presenting sponsor here, but my writing about the work and legacy of Val Ackerman has nothing to do with that fact — it predates this sponsorship, which itself operates independently of any editorial direction, by many years. Accordingly, we’re going to take a moment of appraisal today for Ackerman’s legacy and what it teaches us about women’s basketball, here on the occasion of her retirement.
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The decision by Ackerman to step down after 13 years as commissioner of the BIG EAST came as a surprise to many, even if the circumstances, given the moment, make all the sense in the world. Ackerman served as commissioner for 13 years on an original deal that called for her to lead for five seasons. She’s solidified the ground for the conference, managing to elevate a basketball-first group of schools amid a landscape absolutely dominated by football. She’s steered the conference into long-term financial security around television deals with multiple big players in the media rights sphere — NBC, Fox Sports and more — and finalized contracts to keep the women’s tournament at Mohegan Sun, the men’s iconic battles at Madison Square Garden, for many years to come.
And she’s 66, with 38 years in the world of sports business. She’s earned the next phase, as she put it during her press conference on Tuesday, “being with my family, traveling a bit less, sleeping a bit more, and taking up some old and new pursuits while my health is good and my energy level is still pretty high.”
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It’s hard to separate the personal from the professional here. On a personal level, there’s the chance, every time I cover a BIG EAST event, to hear from Val, to learn from her, both on what had been her current project, and at the same time, to hear her informed take, with historical precedent, about the WNBA, where she served as the first president, overseeing the most successful period of the league’s existence until the current one.
There’s also what she managed to build in both instances. The WNBA of 1997 and the BIG EAST of 2013 provide a pair of counter examples to what served as the conventional wisdom of the time. There were many doubters about the idea that a pro women’s basketball league could succeed, and there had been numerous previous attempts that, despite the incredible talent on the court, had failed for off-court, business reasons.
Not only did Val Ackerman’s WNBA succeed initially and immediately, but we’ve seen the revitalization of the league under Cathy Engelbert adopt many of the same basic infrastructure patterns that Ackerman first utilized. The movement away from independent ownership and toward WNBA teams playing in NBA arenas is a return to the original vision of the league.
Similarly, Ackerman’s ability to steer into the most disruptive and consequential changes in the college conference landscape ever — as a basketball-first group amid the football money flowing into the other major conferences — guaranteed the BIG EAST a seat at the table in ways that most wouldn’t have believed possible when the original conference effectively dissolved in the early 2010s. A conference whose position Ackerman rightly called “a unicorn” on Tuesday has thrived amid the chaos.
St. John’s President Fr. Brian Shanley, O.P. also joined the call, and the singularity of this job was obvious in his answer about exactly what he’s looking for in a successor to Ackerman.
“I don’t have a cookie-cutter model in my mind,” Shanley said. “I don’t think the other presidents do, and we really haven’t talked about it yet. Obviously, I think you want somebody with a sports background, but I’ve had people introducing themselves to me via email in the last 24 hours who come from very different backgrounds. And we’ll see. I think the job is an exciting one, because we’ve proven that we can be successful in the world that we’re in. And I will be looking for Val’s help in figuring out the next person as well, because nobody knows the job better than she does. But stay tuned. It’s going to be a process.”
If I have any concerns about the BIG EAST, it is this: every bit as much as the conference itself is a unicorn, the same can be said of Ackerman herself. No one needed to wonder whether she could build or maintain the relationships necessary to keep the BIG EAST thriving — not with media companies, or arenas, or college presidents or vital figures in the sports themselves. No one had to wonder, with Val Ackerman in charge, whether women’s sports would receive short shrift. I cannot say the same of numerous other conferences, and I’d argue a failure to capitalize on the Pac-12’s own women’s basketball legacy, among other problems, led to the dissolution of that institution.
George Kliavkoff was no Val Ackerman.
It is a popular sentiment around women’s sports right now to take the boom as a given, independent of any actions from leadership among teams and leagues to maximize and perpetuate it. Those of us who have seen the ebb and flow know better.
And even amid the successes achieved in the nearly four decades she’s helped shape the sports world, something she is quick to credit Title IX for and is usually the last to shout out her own work, what Val Ackerman has built stands out. Her legacy will last, and her presence will be missed. She is the unicorn.
“Becoming Caitlin Clark” is out now!
Howard Megdal’s newest book is here! “Becoming Caitlin Clark: The Unknown Origin Story of a Modern Basketball Superstar” captures both the historic nature of Clark’s rise and the critical context over the previous century that helped make it possible, including interviews with Clark, Lisa Bluder (who also wrote the foreword), C. Vivian Stringer, Jan Jensen, Molly Kazmer and many others.
This week in women’s basketball
Emma Baccellieri with a must-read story on The Last Mamba.
Lauren Gosselin’s press conference revealed a lot about how Princeton chose her.
Loved this from Terry Horstman on the Prince-Lynx connection.
Speaking of the Ivy League, Jenn Hatfield catalogues Mia Broom’s rise.
The Angel Reese era in Atlanta is so intriguing.
So is the Satou Sabally era in New York.
Five at The IX: Val Ackerman
Mondays: Soccer
By: Annie Peterson, @AnnieMPeterson, AP Women’s Soccer
Tuesdays: Tennis
By: Joey Dillon, @JoeyDillon, Freelance Tennis Writer
Wednesdays: Basketball
By: Howard Megdal, @HowardMegdal, The IX Sports
Thursdays: Golf
By: Marin Dremock, @MDremock, The IX Sports
Fridays: Hockey
By: @TheIceGarden, The Ice Garden
Saturdays: Gymnastics
By: Jessica Taylor Price, @jesstaylorprice, Freelance Writer
