The BIG EAST announced on Monday that Val Ackerman, the league’s Commissioner since 2013, will retire from the position, effective Aug. 31, 2026. The BIG EAST Board of Directors has begun a national search for her replacement.
“It’s been an extraordinary honor for me to serve as the Commissioner of one of the most prestigious and storied organizations in college sports,” Ackerman said in a statement. “I want to thank our Presidents for entrusting me with this one-of-a-kind leadership opportunity and for supporting the investments needed to maintain the BIG EAST’s stature and meet our schools’ high competitive and academic standards.”
Ackerman has had a prolific career as an executive in the sports industry. In 1997, she launched the WNBA as it’s founding president. For eight seasons, she oversaw the burgeoning sports enterprise, now in its 30th season. She was president of USA Basketball (2005-08) and served two, four-year terms as the U.S. representative for men’s and women’s basketball to FIBA, the the sport’s international governing body.
When she joined the conference as Commissioner in 2013, Ackerman inherited the unique challenge of launching a new entity when the traditional BIG EAST was swept into conference realignment. At the time, seven non-football members of the traditional BIG EAST (DePaul, Georgetown, Marquette, Providence, St. John’s, Seton Hall, and Villanova) separated from the conference and aligned with Butler, Creighton and Xavier to form a new conference, retaining the BIG EAST name in the split. UConn later joined the conference (in 2020) to form its present configuration.
On a conference call with reporters on Tuesday, Ackerman elaborated on the unique challenges, compared to her role as the WNBA’s founding president, of launching the new BIG EAST over a decade ago as a basketball-centric conference.
“The WNBA, we were, in effect, launching a brand-new property, but one that was branded with [the] best brand in the sport of basketball, in the NBA, and when we launched the league, we had the benefit of all of that infrastructure …”
“And so for me, [the BIG EAST Commissioner role] was actually in many ways a harder assignment, because we had to rebuild. It was very much a startup. And on that score, I just want to thank our schools, because everybody at that point sort of chipped in. I had to build my staff again. We didn’t have an office, you know, I was sort of working off my iPhone. [It] took a while to get a BIG EAST email account set up for everybody, and my staff believed me when I told them that I would eventually get them a benefits plan after I hired them.”
It was a risky proposition to go all in on basketball as a major college sports conference in a landscape where football became the major revenue-generator. But Ackerman understood the legacy of greatness and passionate fandom associated with that the BIG EAST since the conference’s founding in 1979, and leveraged that support to build it back up.
“This league that had been wildly successful after its launch, had put three teams into the NCAA Final Four in the mid 80s, had a collection of iconic, colorful Hall of Fame quality [men’s basketball] coaches in Coach Carnasecca and Coach Thompson and Coach Massimino and Coach Boeheim and Coach Calhoun. … The list goes on and on and on. People knew what the BIG EAST was … So the charge for us was to try to bring that back, and to try to recreate, in many ways, what the BIG EAST had been.”
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Ackerman was able to use her business acumen to maintain the high-profile status of the BIG EAST across a decade-plus of massive, unprecedented change that most recently includes evolving legislation around student-athlete compensation from name, image and likeness (NIL) deals and revenue sharing. During her tenure BIG EAST schools have won four men’s basketball national titles (Villanova in 2016 and 2018 and UConn in 2023 and 2024) and the UConn women’s basketball has retained its spot among the sport’s elite, culminated by a national championship in 2025.
On the media rights side, Ackerman has maintained a television rights deal with FOX, the conference’s lead national television provider, since her arrival in 2013. In 2024, she oversaw a multi-network media deal that’s active through 2031 including FOX Sports, NBC/Peacock and TNT Sports platforms, adding ESPN+ in 2025. This move allowed for more coverage and the integration of streaming platforms as options for fans to watch BIG EAST basketball. The Commissioner’s strategic, collaborative approach to partnership has yielded success and resulted in the conference’s increased visibility and sustained brand recognition.
“[FOX Sports] took a bet on the on the BIG EAST back in 2013 by acquiring the programming. They needed the tonnage, they were launching FS1 the summer of 2013 and so the the fates of the two organizations were aligned. … I really have been able to enjoy the fruits of a successful collaboration with a network partner, first with FOX and now with our good friends at NBC and TNT and ESPN.”
Through her entire 38-year career, Ackerman has remained a staunch advocate for women’s sports, working diligently to ensure that women athletes have the opportunity to compete in college sports like she did as a member of the women’s basketball team at Virginia. She was one of the school’s first female student-athlete scholarship recipients in the early years of Title IX, and the first 1,000-point scorer in the program’s history.
During Monday’s conference call, Ackerman directly attributed her success as a leader to the skills and experiences she gained as a student-athlete saying, “I’m sitting here today because of the experience that I had at the University of Virginia, and whatever we do … I hope we can ensure that women and girls don’t go backwards with respect to sports participation opportunities.”
When asked about the existential threats that face women’s college sports in an rapidly-evolving landscape where institutions tend to prioritize revenue-sharing resources for football and men’s basketball, Ackerman elaborated on what is required to maintain the momentum of women’s sports.
“The concern, naturally, is okay if we’re going to direct, if you will, even more money to football and basketball. What does that leave for all the other sports?,” Ackerman said during the conference call. “Are there enough resources, if you assume resources are, at the end of the day, finite?”
“I can tell you, we have lots of conversations about this at the BIG EAST. I know our schools are fully committed to doing what they need to do under Title IX, number one. But also our schools care about these young women, and they want to see them thrive. Many of these women are bringing great pride to their schools.”
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Ackerman is a living example of the off-court, long-term impact that Title IX had on a generation of student-athletes. As her career comes to a close, she leaves the BIG EAST better than she found it, reviving it from the depths of conference realignment chaos. Her impact on the BIG EAST conference and women’s sports cannot be overstated, and she’s positioned the conference to provide the same kind of life-changing opportunities that she had as a student-athlete during the dawn of Title IX.
“They are going to go on and be the leaders of tomorrow, and so it’s in our interest to make sure that they’re getting the best experience possible on our campuses,” Ackerman said. “And with that, all the leadership training that comes with playing college sports. I mean, that’s what happened to me. So I can relate to that.”
