History UsefulNotes / CollegiateAmericanFootballNonPlayerFigures

* '''Jim Tressel''': The only coach to win national championships at the FCS and FBS levels and part of the first father-and-son pair to win national championships.[[note]]His father Lee Tressel won the 1978 D-III title at Baldwin Wallace University (then a "College") in Ohio. The other father-and-son national championship coaching pair is at D-III powerhouse Mount Union, where Larry Kehres and his son Vince, who succeeded him, both won multiple titles.[[/note]] He first made his name at Youngstown State, guiding the Penguins to four I-AA national titles from 1991-97. In 2000, Ohio State hired him from YSU, and he brought immediate success to the program, winning the BCS Championship in 2002 and turning around the school's fortunes against archrival Michigan. However, his tenure ended after a 2010 investigation found his players sold memorabilia to a drug dealer. As a result of the investigation, he was fired, the Buckeyes were banned from the 2012 postseason, and all victories from 2010 were vacated, including the Sugar Bowl victory. He returned to the college ranks in 2012 as an administrator, having been barred from athletic department positions until 2016. He eventually returned to Youngstown State as the school's ''president'' in 2014, serving in that post despite protests over his lack of qualifications until retiring in January 2024.

* '''Ken Niumatalolo''': The HC of Navy from 2007–22 and the winningest in its long history, having taken over for the last game of the 2007 season after his predecessor was hired away. Prior to coaching, Niumatalolo, a ''kamaʻāina''[[labelnote:*]]Hawaii-born[[/labelnote]] of Samoan origin, was a successful QB at Hawaii who led the school to its first bowl game in 1989. His hiring at Navy made him the first collegiate HC of Samoan descent on any level and only the second person of Polynesian descent to coach in FBS. He led the Midshipmen to three 10-win seasons, six bowl wins, and 11 wins over Army, but would be shown the door after consecutive 4–8 seasons. After a year as an assistant at UCLA, he was hired as HC at San Jose State. Also notable as one of the six featured individuals in the [[UsefulNotes/{{Mormonism}} LDS]] [[UsefulNotes/MormonCinema documentary]] ''Meet the Mormons''.

* '''Tod Eberle and Dick Yoder''': Possibly the greatest examples of SmallRoleBigImpact in college football history. In 1986, Eberle was commissioner of the D-II Pennsylvania State Athletic Conference, and Yoder was the AD at PSAC member West Chester and a member of the D-II council. At the time, the PSAC faced a football scheduling conundrum—it had 14 members, and its two divisional winners played a championship game. However, NCAA limits on regular-season games meant that every PSAC team had to leave a schedule slot open, and only the two divisional winners got to play all of their allowed regular-season games. Eberle asked Yoder to draft NCAA legislation to allow the PSAC to stage a championship game that ''didn't'' count against scheduling limits. Yoder's original draft required a league have 14 members, with the PSAC then being the only league in any NCAA division with that many football members. However, before Yoder brought the proposal up for a vote, another D-II conference with 12 football members asked him to change his draft to reduce the required number of teams to 12. He did just that, and the NCAA passed this rule with little fanfare.[[note]]At the time, such changes had to be voted on by the entire NCAA membership, but it was a non-issue for Division I-A (now FBS) conferences, none of which had more than 10 members.[[/note]] This rule ended up setting the terms of FBS conference realignment for the next three decades, because the first conference to actually take advantage of this rule was the SEC (see Roy Kramer below).[[note]]Ironically, the PSAC abolished its championship game immediately after this rule change passed. The NCAA expanded the D-II playoffs from 8 to 16 teams in 1988, and the PSAC feared that the result of a title game could cost the conference a potential at-large playoff berth. The title game wasn't reinstated until 2008.[[/note]]

* '''Teresa Gould''': Upon taking over from George Kliavkoff (below) as Pac-12 commissioner on March 1, 2024, became the first woman to head a power conference... for a few months, as the Pac will be reduced from 12 members to 2 later that year. She comes to the job after more than three decades in college sports, most recently as Kliavkoff's deputy with past stints at UC Davis, Cal, and the West Coast Conference. Gould will likely have the hardest job of any conference commissioner in modern times, as she'll have to find a way for the surviving members (Oregon State and Washington State) to find a viable conference home, whether by expanding the Pac or merging it with another conference.

* '''Teresa Gould''': Upon taking over from George Kliavkoff (below) as Pac-12 commissioner on March 1, 2024, Gould will become the first woman to head a power conference... for a few months, as the Pac will be reduced from 12 members to 2 later that year. She comes to the job after more than three decades in college sports, most recently as Kliavkoff's deputy with past stints at UC Davis, Cal, and the West Coast Conference. Gould will likely have the hardest job of any conference commissioner in modern times, as she'll have to find a way for the surviving members (Oregon State and Washington State) to find a viable conference home, whether by expanding the Pac or merging it with another conference.

* '''Jon Steinbrecher''': Commissioner of the MAC since 2009, making him the longest-tenured of the current FBS commissioners. While the rest of FBS has been rocked by conference realignment during this century, the MAC has been an oasis of stability during his tenure—it hasn't had a change in its core membership since 2005 (though it's had a couple of football-only changes). This stability has enabled him to take the lead on many initiatives to improve student-athlete wellness. For better or worse, he's also partly responsible for the MAC's [[HashtagForLaughs #MACtion]] branding. Before taking on the MAC job, the former Valparaiso football and tennis player had been the commissioner of the non-football Mid-Continent Conference (now the Summit League) from 1994–2003 and the OVC from 2003–2009, making him the only person to have been a conference commissioner in all three subgroups of Division I (non-football, FCS, FBS).

* '''George Kliavkoff''': Pac-12 commissioner from 2021 to February 29, 2024, a few months before the conference's effective demise, he's received a good deal of blame for the conference's collapse, though by many reports his immediate predecessor Larry Scott (below) left him in a no-win situation. Like Scott, Kliavkoff came from outside college sports, instead working in pro sports and entertainment with (among others) Major League Baseball, [=NBCUniversal=], Hulu, Hearst, and most recently MGM Resorts before taking on the Pac-12 job. When Kliavkoff came on, the Big 12 was vulnerable to poaching after the announcement that Oklahoma and Texas would leave for the SEC, but he was unable to convince the conference presidents and chancellors to expand. More significantly, he allowed the Big 12 to jump ahead of the Pac in media negotiations. After the announcement that UCLA and USC would leave for the Big Ten, he failed to convince the remaining university suits to sign off on a lesser media deal, leading to the mass exodus that effectively killed the conference.

* '''George Kliavkoff''': Pac-12 commissioner from 2021 to the conference's effective demise in 2024, he's received a good deal of blame for the conference's collapse, though by many reports his immediate predecessor Larry Scott (below) left him in a no-win situation. Like Scott, Kliavkoff came from outside college sports, instead working in pro sports and entertainment with (among others) Major League Baseball, [=NBCUniversal=], Hulu, Hearst, and most recently MGM Resorts before taking on the Pac-12 job. When Kliavkoff came on, the Big 12 was vulnerable to poaching after the announcement that Oklahoma and Texas would leave for the SEC, but he was unable to convince the conference presidents and chancellors to expand. More significantly, he allowed the Big 12 to jump ahead of the Pac in media negotiations. After the announcement that UCLA and USC would leave for the Big Ten, he failed to convince the remaining university suits to sign off on a lesser media deal, leading to the mass exodus that effectively killed the conference.

* '''Judy [=MacLeod=]''':[[note]]pronounced "[=McCloud=]"[[/note]] Commissioner of Conference USA since 2015 and most notable as the first woman to hold said position in an FBS conference. A former basketball player at D-III Puget Sound, she spent a few years as an assistant coach at then-NAIA Seattle before going to grad school at Tulsa, eventually becoming AD in 1995. [=MacLeod=] presided over Tulsa's sequential moves to the WAC and CUSA before joining the latter's staff in 2005. She became commissioner in 2015, after C-USA had lost much of its pre-2013 membership to what is now The American. She kept things stable for a time, but was faced by the raiding of the conference in the early 2020s, successfully navigating it by bringing in new schools.

* '''Larry Scott''': Commissioner of the Pac-12 from 2009-21 and widely blamed for the impending demise of that conference (though he's far from the only culprit). Scott was one of the first in a wave of conference admins whose background was outside of college sports; he was a former pro tennis player with little on-court success who made a major mark in that sport on the business side, increasing revenue and narrowing the gender pay gap. Scott's tenure saw the Pac-12 court much of the Big 12 but eventually pick up only Colorado (plus Utah from the Mountain West). He also launched the Pac-12's own Network in 2012, with a lucrative side deal with ESPN and Fox for football and men's basketball that ran through 2023–24. Unfortunately, the Pac-12 Network proved to be a disaster, thanks in no small part to Scott being unable to reach a carriage deal with satellite TV providers, and the Pac was financially left in the dust by the SEC and Big Ten. Making matters worse, Scott had by far the largest salary of any conference commissioner and moved the Pac-12 HQ into a ludicrously expensive downtown San Francisco building that cost millions more than any other conference. By his departure in 2021, many Pac members--especially the tentpole programs of UCLA and USC--were looking for a way out, which would soon come.

* '''John Swofford''': A former QB and DB at North Carolina, Swofford made his mark in the sport as ACC commissioner from 1997–2021 after 17 years as the Tar Heels' AD. Under his watch, the ACC kicked off the first major conference realignment of the current century by poaching Boston College, Miami, and Virginia Tech from the Big East in 2004 and 2005. The ACC expanded even further during his tenure, bringing in Pitt and Syracuse in all sports and Notre Dame in non-football sports in 2013 and Louisville the following year (though the conference did lose Maryland to the Big Ten), and Swofford also oversaw the creation of the ACC Network. However, the media deal that allowed for the creation of the ACC Network would come back to bite the conference in the early 2020s, as it left the ACC enormously behind the Big Ten and SEC in revenue, with no apparent hope of change until well into the 2030s.[[note]]Said media deal was originally for 15 years from 2012–2027. It was extended in 2016 to a ''20-year'' deal. Both deals included a "grant of rights" (GOR) stating that if a school leaves the ACC during the contract term, all remaining broadcast revenue during the contract goes to the conference. Not to mention that the ACC's exit fee was reported in 2023 to be about $120 million (to be precise, three times the conference's annual operating budget). Several schools have lawyered up in an attempt to find a way out of the GOR; none have yet been able to, though Florida State sued the ACC in December 2023 in an attempt to get out of it (with the ACC responding with a countersuit). On top of that, the Big Ten and SEC deals that start in 2024 will end before the ACC's deal, giving those conferences a chance to cash in even more.[[/note]] As an aside, his older brother was the late singer [[Music/{{Oliver}} Oliver.]] %% The page on his brother includes an exclamation point, mostly because the page on the movie (which has the exclamation point) existed first.

* '''Willie Fritz''': Current HC at Houston with a career stretching back over 40 years. A two-time NJCAA champion at Blinn Junior College in the '90s, he moved through head coaching positions at Central Missouri (1997–2009), Sam Houston (2010–13), and Georgia Southern (2015–16) before arriving at Tulane. After nearly getting fired following a 2-10 season in 2021, he oversaw the largest single-season turnaround in major college football history as the team went 12-2 in 2022, culminating in a Cotton Bowl berth where they upset USC after a 4th quarter MiracleRally. His success got him hired by Houston in 2023.

* '''Pat Fitzgerald''': All-American LB for Northwestern and a key piece of the Wildcat team that broke a 48-year bowl drought in their Cinderella 1995 Big Ten champion season. The first player to win the Bronko Nagurski Award twice, but still went undrafted and entered into coaching. Became his alma mater's HC in 2006 at just 31-years-old after the death of his predecessor, broke their 65-year bowl win drought, and became the winningest coach in school history. However, his tenure came to an end in 2023 when allegations of severe player hazing within the program were exposed following a one-win season.

* '''George Kliavkoff''': Pac-12 commissioner from 2021 to the conference's all-but-certain demise in 2024, he's received a good deal of blame for the conference's collapse, though by many reports his immediate predecessor Larry Scott (below) left him in a no-win situation. Like Scott, Kliavkoff came from outside college sports, instead working in pro sports and entertainment with (among others) Major League Baseball, [=NBCUniversal=], Hulu, Hearst, and most recently MGM Resorts before taking on the Pac-12 job. When Kliavkoff came on, the Big 12 was vulnerable to poaching after the announcement that Oklahoma and Texas would leave for the SEC, but he was unable to convince the conference presidents and chancellors to expand. More significantly, he allowed the Big 12 to jump ahead of the Pac in media negotiations. After the announcement that UCLA and USC would leave for the Big Ten, he failed to convince the remaining university suits to sign off on a lesser media deal, leading to the mass exodus that effectively killed the conference.

* '''Judy [=MacLeod=]''':[[note]]pronounced "[=McCloud=]"[[/note]] Commissioner of Conference USA since 2015 and most notable as the first woman to hold said position in an FBS conference. A former basketball player at D-III Puget Sound, she spent a few years as an assistant coach at then-NAIA Seattle before going to grad school at Tulsa, eventually becoming AD in 1995. [=MacLeod=] presided over Tulsa's sequential moves to the WAC and C-USA before joining the latter's staff in 2005. She became commissioner in 2015, after C-USA had lost much of its pre-2013 membership to what is now The American. While she kept things stable for a time, eventually navigating the raiding of the conference in the early 2020s by bringing in new schools.

* '''Mike Slive''': Along with the aforementioned Jim Delany, an administrator little-known to the general sporting public who had a huge impact on the 21st-century college sports scene. While Slive had several admin gigs in his earlier career, including being the inaugural commissioner of ''two'' D-I leagues (the non-football Great Midwest Conference and its successor Conference USA[[note]]C-USA was formed by a merger between the Great Midwest and Metro Conferences[[/note]]), he truly made his mark while commissioner of the SEC from 2002-15. First, he cleansed some of the stench around the SEC by telling league members who had complaints about other members' recruiting practices to take them to the league offices instead of the NCAA. The number of SEC schools facing sanctions dropped, though it's unclear whether it actually changed their practices. Next, he was the main architect of today's College Football Playoff. Slive had proposed a similar system as early as 2004 but faced opposition from the Big 12 and Big East. The SEC's dominance on and off the football field strengthened Slive's leverage, the Big 12 came on board in 2012, and the Big East (at least in its original form) imploded the next year, paving the way for the CFP to start in 2014. Slive also lured Texas A&M and Missouri into the SEC in 2012, which helped pave the way for his final great accomplishment: the SEC Network, which helped make the already ridiculously-wealthy SEC [[MoneyDearBoy even more so]]; its 2014 launch was arguably the most successful for any US cable network (not just in sports!), with virtually every cable and satellite provider offering the service to viewers within the conference footprint. Retired in 2015 and passed away in 2018.

* '''John Swofford''': A former QB and DB at North Carolina, Swofford made his mark in the sport as ACC commissioner from 1997–2021 after 17 years as the Tar Heels' AD. Under his watch, the ACC kicked off the first major conference realignment of the current century by poaching Boston College, Miami, and Virginia Tech from the Big East in 2004 and 2005. The ACC expanded even further during his tenure, bringing in Pitt and Syracuse in all sports and Notre Dame in non-football sports in 2013 and Louisville the following year (though the conference did lose Maryland to the Big Ten), and Swofford also oversaw the creation of the ACC Network. However, the media deal that allowed for the creation of the ACC Network would come back to bite the conference in the early 2020s, as it left the ACC enormously behind the Big Ten and SEC in revenue, with no apparent hope of change until well into the 2030s.[[note]]Said media deal was originally for 15 years from 2012–2027. It was extended in 2016 to a ''20-year'' deal. Both deals included a "grant of rights" (GOR) stating that if a school leaves the ACC during the contract term, all remaining broadcast revenue during the contract goes to the conference. Not to mention that the ACC's exit fee was reported in 2023 to be about $120 million (to be precise, three times the conference's annual operating budget). Several schools have lawyered up in an attempt to find a way out of the GOR; none have yet been able to, though Florida State sued the ACC in December 2023 in an attempt to get out of it. On top of that, the Big Ten and SEC deals that start in 2024 will end before the ACC's deal, giving those conferences a chance to cash in even more.[[/note]] As an aside, his older brother was the late singer [[Music/{{Oliver}} Oliver.]] %% The page on his brother includes an exclamation point, mostly because the page on the movie (which has the exclamation point) existed first.

* '''Joe Paterno''': An institution at Penn State for [[LongRunner over 60 years]], arriving as an assistant in 1950 and becoming HC in 1966. "[=JoePa=]" won two national titles (1982, 1986), had five unbeaten seasons, won a record 24 bowl games (out of an also-record 37 appearances), amassed an FBS record of [[TheAce 409 career wins]], was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2007 while still an active coach, and coached for an NCAA record 548 games (over ''50'' more than second place). However, his once-pristine image was badly tarnished in 2011 with the revelation that the school had covered up the sex crimes of former assistant Jerry Sandusky (see below) for more than a decade. He was fired during the season, died only two months later, and had all 111 wins between 1998 and his firing stricken from the record books by the NCAA. The wins were restored in 2015, again making him the winningest FBS coach, after it came out in court that the NCAA had broke its own rules in the Sandusky investigation. Paterno was portrayed by Creator/AlPacino in a 2018 HBO film about the Sandusky investigation. In 2022, Paterno's image suffered another blow when a survivor of a 1978 sexual assault by suspended Nittany Lions player Todd Hodne (see the "Notorious Players" folder of the "Names to Know" page for more on him) told an ESPN interviewer that [=JoePa=] had called her in an attempt to intervene in her case.

* '''Joe Paterno''': An institution at Penn State for [[LongRunner over 60 years]], arriving as an assistant in 1950 and becoming HC in 1966. "[=JoePa=]" won two national titles (1982, 1986), had five unbeaten seasons, won a record 24 bowl games (out of an also-record 37 appearances), amassed an FBS record of [[TheAce 409 career wins]], was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2007 while still an active coach, and coached for an NCAA record 548 games (over ''50'' more than second place). However, his once-pristine image was badly tarnished in 2011 with the revelation that the school had covered up the sex crimes of former assistant Jerry Sandusky (see "Notorious Coaches" below) for more than a decade. He was fired during the season, died only two months later, and had all 111 wins between 1998 and his firing stricken from the record books by the NCAA. The wins were restored in 2015, again making him the winningest FBS coach, after it came out in court that the NCAA had broke its own rules in the Sandusky investigation. Paterno was portrayed by Creator/AlPacino in a 2018 HBO film about the Sandusky investigation. In 2022, Paterno's image suffered another blow when a survivor of a 1978 sexual assault by suspended Nittany Lions player Todd Hodne (see the "Notorious Players" folder of the "Names to Know" page for more on him) told an ESPN interviewer that [=JoePa=] had called her in an attempt to intervene in her case.