Big East commissioner Val Ackerman retiring after 13 years leading reshaped conference

Big East commissioner Val Ackerman announced Monday she is retiring after 13 years leading the conference through a realignment-induced transformation that brought the league back to embracing its basketball roots.

Ackerman’s retirement will go into effect Aug. 31, and the Big East board of directors will commence a search for her replacement immediately.

Ackerman, 66, took over as commissioner of the conference in 2013 after many of its biggest football brands bolted for other power leagues. The Big East’s remaining Catholic schools pivoted away from having major college football members and instead focused on adding similar basketball-focused schools Creighton, Xavier and Butler to a group that included Villanova, St. John’s, Seton Hall, DePaul, Georgetown, Marquette and Providence. UConn also returned to the Big East in 2020.

The Big East signed a media rights agreement with Fox that allowed it to hold a unique position in the college sports landscape, thriving in basketball without FBS football.

“Speaking on behalf of all the Big East presidents, we announce commissioner Val Ackerman’s retirement with a tinge of sadness and deep gratitude,” said St. John’s president Rev. Brian J. Shanley, the chair of the Big East board of directors. “When we re-founded the Big East in 2013 as a basketball-centric conference, our first task was to find a commissioner who could provide the strategic vision needed to position us as a basketball peer with the power football conferences and compete with the country’s best. We found that visionary leader in Val Ackerman.”

Ackerman, who was previously the first president of the WNBA, helped secure the Big East’s long-term relationship with Madison Square Garden for its men’s basketball tournament and negotiated the conference’s latest TV deal with Fox, TNT and NBC, which runs through 2030-31 and is worth about $80 million per year.

“With our long-term business deals securely in place and knowing we have strong, focused leadership on our campuses, I am confident that the future of the conference, and Big East basketball in particular, is very bright, and I believe the time is right for me to hand off the baton,” Ackerman said.