When the College Football Playoff hired Andrea Williams two months ago to be the body’s chief operating officer, she became the most recent example of a high-level college sports administrator whose career launched from working at the Big Ten.
The COO position makes Williams one of the highest-ranking African-American female administrators in college athletics, and she credits her decade at the Big Ten with setting the table for her rise to the CFP.
The conference’s diversity and inclusion efforts have become a point of pride — and results — for the league’s membership and particularly Commissioner Jim Delany, who has directed the Big Ten since 1989.
“Having a commitment to diversity comes from people’s hearts, comes from policies and initiatives, and it comes from the strength and character of the people pursuing change,” Delany said. “It requires a mindset.”
For those who have come through the conference’s Chicago office, they cite the league’s pipeline of diverse talent that’s been created by a series of mentoring relationships. Former Big Ten Associate Commissioner Charles Waddell, now South Carolina’s deputy athletic director, mentored Robert Vowels. Vowels, now the AD at Detroit-Mercy, mentored Williams and Duer Sharp, the former SWAC commissioner.
One relationship begot another and a pattern evolved.
“There was a culture of taking care of people in your charge rather than being in charge of your people,” Williams said.
It wasn’t an organic process, though. The conference instituted policies along the way to stimulate the development of its African-American administrators and send the message that diversity would be a major priority.
The Big Ten advisory commission brings together former athletes who played in the conference to provide feedback and serve as liaisons to the NCAA. The league’s gender equity action plan, which has been in effect since 1992, promotes equal participation numbers for women and men. When Delany came into the league, 72 percent of the athletes were male. Within five years, it leveled at 50-50.
After the Big Ten Network’s launch in 2007, the conference put together a plan to have equal coverage of men’s and women’s events.
These initiatives weren’t driven by Title IX so much as they were an attempt to “move the needle,” Delany said, and strike a balance.
“It all works together — history, policy, openness,” Delany said. “Then you find the right people.”
Others followed. Big Ten office alum Jennifer Heppel is now commissioner of the Patriot League. She, like Williams, did two stints in Chicago.
The emphasis on diversity extends beyond the conference office to campus. The Big Ten has a more diverse pool of ADs — Ohio State’s Gene Smith, Michigan’s Warde Manuel, Maryland’s Damon Evans, Wisconsin’s Barry Alvarez, Penn State’s Sandy Barbour — than any other power five conference.
“If you don’t have a focus on diversity and inclusion, it’ll fall by the wayside,” Vowels said. “You have to have a purpose and plan in place to help it along. It’s not going to happen by itself.”
