Last month, the B1G retained TurnkeyZRG to search for its next commissioner. TurnkeyZRG also helped with the searches for the Big 12, Pac-12 and ACC commissioners in 2021 and 2022. This tweet is pretty consistent with other things I’ve read in terms of who the perceived front runners are:
The top three names getting talked about for the big Ten commissioner job right now are the following:
Kerry Kenny
Jim Phillips
Jennifer HeppelThe biggest reason they don't want an outsider is that are too many complexities remaining with the new TV deal and adding USC/UCLA. https://t.co/Ww6SKOJbot
— Big Ten football scheduling meeting in Feb 2023 (@Genetics56) February 7, 2023
For the unfamiliar:
- Jim Phillips has been the ACC’s commissioner since 2021. Prior to that, he was Northwestern’s AD. He’s a Chicago native and got his bachelors at Illinois. Prior to Northwestern, he was the AD at NIU, and prior to that, he served as associate director of athletics, then senior associate director of athletics for external affairs at Notre Dame from 2000-04. Obviously, TurnkeyZRG is familiar with him.
- Kerry Kenny is currently the B1G’s senior vice president for television, media analytics and emerging platforms, which means his fingerprints are likely all over the conference’s new media deal. He’s worked for the B1G for 15 years. Problem is, he’s never worked anywhere else in his career, which puts him about 37-38 years old. Academia is a peer-centric industry that values tenure and production—can he unify and lead group of people (presidents, chancellors, ADs), many of whom are old enough to be his parents but too old to see him as a peer?
- Jennifer Heppel has been the Patriot League’s commissioner since 2015. Prior to that, she was the B1G’s SVP for governance from 2010-15, Georgetown’s associate AD from 2005-10, and the B1G’s Associate Commissioner for Compliance and Enforcement from 1998-2005. The B1G broke the “color barrier” when it hired Kevin Warren; will it break the “gender barrier” by being the first P5 conference to hire a woman?
Edit: it won’t be Gene Smith, Jim Tressel, Urban Meyer or anyone whose current or last job was working for a school that’s a B1G member. That eliminates Barry Alvarez, Sandy Barbour, and other recent ADs.
