Big Ten Is Latest Conference to Make Major Non-Traditional Hire

The Big Ten has chosen media executive Tony Petitti as its next commissioner, the conference announced on Wednesday.

He will succeed Kevin Warren, who will official step down on Friday as he moves into an executive role with the Chicago Bears. Petitti’s official start date is May 15.

The hire follows a recent trend in the upper echelon of college sports in which new executives are plucked from other industries. As college conferences look less like educational institutions and more like billion-dollar pro-sports businesses, hiring former media and business executives — even politicians — has become the norm.

The Pac-12’s George Kliavkoff and Big 12’s Brett Yormark both came from outside the industry.  Even NCAA president Charlie Baker, a former Massachusetts governor, never worked in college sports.

• Petitti has worked primarily in the media rights space — he’s a former executive at ABC, CBS Sports, and Major League Baseball, where he helped launch MLB Network and then served as league COO.
• He’s had plenty of experience with college sports media rights, however. He was an architect of the BCS and oversaw the NCAA Division I men’s tournament while at CBS.
• He also had a short stint as the president of Activision Blizzard but stepped down in June of 2021 after less than a year in the role.

Petitti will take the reins of the richest conference in all of college sports. Last year, Warren struck a mid-$7 billion media rights deal with CBS, NBC, and FOX. 

The incoming commissioner will also oversee the arrival of UCLA and USC in 2024.