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Big Ten’s Petitti Draws on Delany Era as Conference Reboots

daniel libit
·18 min read

The Big Ten’s seventh and current commissioner, Tony Petitti, has known Jim Delany, its fifth commissioner, since the early 1990s, when the former was an executive at ABC Sports, in charge of acquisitions and programming. Delany, then the relatively new boss of America’s most historic college football league, was steering it through expansion for the first time in 40 years.

At the time, ABC held the TV football rights contracts to the Big Ten, Pac-10 and 64-member College Football Association of independent Division I schools, a group that had included Penn State until Delany captured the Nittany Lions in 1990. In doing so, Delany would later acknowledge, he had failed to sufficiently consult with the conference’s coaches and athletic directors, leading to an infamous row with Michigan’s then AD Bo Schembechler.

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The growing pains of that experience proved instructive for Delany, as he presided over the Big Ten for the next three decades.

“What I always loved about Jim—and I maybe have even a greater appreciation about it now than when I was a younger person back then—is his understanding of history, tradition and also change,” said Petitti, who took over the Big Ten post in May. “That’s this job. You’ve got to respect how certain things have meaning to people in the conference, tradition, all of these things. At the same time, you have to change and innovate as the landscape around you changes.”

Change was the mission for Petitti’s immediate predecessor, and Delany’s successor, Kevin Warren, who left in April to become president of the Chicago Bears. An outsider to college sports, with a law degree and an NFL background, Warren pushed aggressively to shake up the century-old conference in spite of the pandemic, trying to modernize and centralize operations of an entity approaching a billion dollars in annual revenue.

Both Delany and Warren succeeded wildly in the job, at least by financial measures and media metrics. But their different philosophies left competing factions in the conference, including within the walls of its suburban Chicago headquarters. As Petitti stepped into his new role, he was faced with the question of whose footsteps he would follow in.

Like Warren, Petitti came to the Big Ten without previous college athletics administrative experience, having spent the previous eight years as chief operating officer for Major League Baseball. But where Warren often upended Delany’s approach, Petitti has largely reified it—as well as the man himself.

Beyond a series of notable personnel and strategic decisions, Petitti’s first five months on the job have seen a recasting of the league office’s role into Delany’s post-Penn State-acquisition model: an organization expressly subservient to its members. Consequently, Petitti has shown much less interest in, if outright indifference to, Warren’s view of a more top-down organization that comported itself like a billion-dollar corporation.

“It’s not any one person’s old vision or new vision,” Petitti told Sportico, when asked about where he sees his leadership on the Warren-Delany spectrum. “It’s what is best for student-athletes right now against the backdrop of incredible innovation.”

Petitti says that his immediate priority, upon taking over, was to shore up the Big Ten’s “core functions,” such as figuring out the scheduling quagmire next year that will accompany the additions of four new Pacific coast schools to the conference’s existing 14.

In pursuing this goal, Petitti, 62, has leaned heavily on the 75-year-old Delany, who since retiring at the start of 2020 has remained on contract as a Big Ten advisor, earning around $400,000 per year, according to the league’s tax returns. In the last fiscal year, Delany’s payment alone exceeded the compensation of any other Big Ten employee, aside from Warren.

Multiple sources tell Sportico that Delany’s agreement runs through next June, although another source familiar with the situation said the deal was effectively “indeterminate” in length and could automatically be extended. The conference declined to confirm the terms.

Delany’s renewed influence at the Big Ten, sources say, has manifested in both his day-to-day interactions with Petitti, as well as a number of key personnel moves and strategic emphases.

Though Warren shadowed Delany for several months prior to taking over the job, the two were not known to have worked closely thereafter, speaking perhaps no more than a few times per month. Petitti, by contrast, has been in frequent contact with Delany since before taking the job, with sources recalling Petitti’s phone blowing up with Delany text messages during his first week on the job.

Delany did not respond to interview requests. Warren also declined to comment for this article. In addition to having his hands full with a struggling NFL team—and its tortuous mission to procure tax incentives for a new suburban stadium—he is currently in negotiations with the Big Ten over a bonus he will receive for overseeing the conference’s seven-year, $7-plus billion media rights deal announced in August 2022.

As ESPN first reported in May, the conference has retained the consulting firm Korn Ferry to analyze how much extra he should be paid for this achievement. Though the bonus was expected to be resolved long before now, the task has lumbered along, in part, sources say, because of the challenge over the summer of gathering the Big Ten’s Council of Presidents and Chancellors to vote on it.

“This is one of many issues we are contending with,” said Illinois chancellor Robert J. Jones, chair of the COP/C, who declined to get into specifics. Asked whether or not it would be settled by the end of the year, Jones said, “I certainly hope it will.”

More than the actual financial cost to the league, Warren’s potential bonus carries heavy symbolic currency in what sources describe as an ongoing legacy battle between Petitti’s two predecessors over, among other things, who deserves more credit for the recent media rights agreement. Looming over the decision about how much to pay Warren is the $20 million-plus “success fee” the Big Ten is still in the process of paying off to Delany, for the conference’s previous media rights deal in 2015.

When asked about press portrayals of the situation in which Warren dropped the ball on his way out the door—ESPN described Petitti as “sprinting to navigate details left unresolved from his predecessor”—the new commissioner diplomatically demurred.

“There are things and initiatives that Kevin did (with) the media deal, the configuration about what we have on Saturday night was remarkably great,” said Petitti. “Of course, it leads to all these networks fighting with each other. That’s perfectly fine, I’ve seen that my whole career. Did it lead to certain things? Yeah, we had to fix a few things, but at the end of the day, the overall vision of that distribution was remarkably well done…Kevin deserves tremendous credit in having done it.”

Warren’s Buffet

The Big Ten has emerged with the SEC as the first two super conferences in college athletics. In a landscape of perpetual and potentially catastrophic instability, the two leagues now appear to be the runaway winners in a massive industry consolidation. One strategy for maintaining your position high atop the heap is to not fall off while reaching for something new. Conversely, there’s the idea that if you aren’t constantly at the cutting edge, you will eventually be consumed by the heap. Warren, who previously served in three NFL front offices, embodied the latter view.

High atop his list of pet projects was the launching, in late 2021, of the conference’s sports data and analytics department, which he described as anchoring his “bold vision to create competitive advantages” by using the latest technology to benefit the Big Ten and its membership.

Warren put the analytics shop under the leadership of Nate Schnader, his newly installed chief information officer, and named Jessica Palermo—who Delany originally hired in 2013—to be vice president, sports data management & analytics.

Like other Warren initiatives, this new department embodied a larger vision of turning the conference office into something more than just a proxy and pass-thru for its member schools. This approach aggravated a number of the Big Ten schools’ athletic directors and presidents, who had grown comfortable with the conference’s position of subservience.

“Any time there’s a transformation, there are tsunamis,” Warren said last year. “I [had] come into a historical environment that had been in business since 1895, that had had a leader here for 31 years, and that had very consistent athletic directors and meetings—they had a cadence down.”

As Sportico reported last week, under Warren, the Big Ten had been at the forefront of Power Five conferences in pursuing an official partnership with a sports betting data company. These talks led late last year to an unsigned term sheet with Genius Sports, for a 12-year, $240 million deal that included equity provisions. But Petitti has not pursued it further, likely leaving it to the Big 12 to be the first P5 league to do so.

Moreover, sources say, Petitti has effectively shuttered the conference’s analytics and data department.

“There are no active initiatives of collection and trying to organize data on behalf of membership,” he said in a phone call last week, explaining that this decision came after receiving “feedback from membership” who didn’t feel it should be among the conference’s priorities.

Then there are the microcosmic changes.

One example, mentioned by multiple sources, was Petitti’s decision to return to Delany’s system of priority parking, in which only a select group of senior staffers are given assigned spots in the lot right next to the Big Ten building, while everyone else is relegated to a covered garage across the street. Warren had decided upon a more egalitarian system, whereby the whole staff would have the chance to enjoy the primo parking on a rotating basis. (Petitti said he was unaware of what Delany had previously done, but thought it made more sense to do it that way.)

Toni Pettiti
Petitti has been in charge of the Big Ten since May.

When asked about the impression, conveyed to Sportico by multiple sources, that he was either stamping out Warren’s mark—or reinscribing Delany’s—Petitti insists that neither is the right way to understand his MO.

“I just look at what we have to deal with, what is the best way to serve the membership, to meet every challenge and put our people first,” said Petitti. “That is what I feel every day. We have done a lot together already, and there is no starting point of bias of who did what and why.”

Re-Opening Roster 

Delany’s influence is perhaps most apparent in the recent makeup of the Big Ten staff, where the balance of power has shifted back to a core group of the former commissioner’s loyalists.

Diane Dietz, who Petitti named Big Ten deputy commissioner in June, is a case in point. She had previously held the same job for nine years under Delany, when she was one of Delany’s closest confidants, entrusted with the Big Ten’s media and communications strategies. However, her role dramatically changed under Warren, who, according to multiple sources, was not fond of her PR guidance or how she delegated responsibilities.

In August 2021, Dietz transitioned from being a full-time employee to consultant, a move she says she recommended herself, in order to allow her flexibility to relocate from Chicago to Michigan during the pandemic for family reasons. Other Big Ten sources, however, viewed the transition as a protracted firing, noting that Warren, in several instances—including with some of his own, original hires—took the tack of gradually pushing out people under the pretext of advisory contracts or extended leave.

Over the 18-month term of her consulting agreement, Dietz found herself falling further and further outside the orbit of influence. Some staffers, who were critical of Dietz, questioned her commitment to the new commissioner. They noted that even after the conference office reopened amid COVID, Dietz only returned from Michigan a few times each month.

Among other points of contention, sources say, was Warren’s belief that the Big Ten had over-relied on outside consultants, some of whom Dietz was involved in hiring.

Back in 2014, when she became deputy, the conference paid the strategic communications firm Weber Shandwick $1.2 million to provide social media help, a relationship that continued until Warren ended it.

“I personally don’t have a preference one way or the other,” Dietz said when asked about her belief in consulting.

While preaching about the virtues of doing things in-house, Warren did also retain his own consultants, including the sports communications advisor Carrie Cecil, who filled the vacuum left by Dietz’s diminished role.

Cecil says she continues to work for the conference under Petitti on litigation and crisis matters.

According to Dietz, Petitti has also had meet-and-greets with both TeamWorks and Weber Shandwick, though there have been no formal discussions yet about reengagement. In a text message, TeamWorks CEO Jay Sharman told Sportico that it is a “high priority” for his firm to land its old client again.

Petitti says he did not come to the conference with any particularly strong feelings about outsourcing.

“I assess it against the result we are trying to achieve,” he said, “not against some sort of preconceived idea that this path is better than that path.”

All the Dietz

Dietz’s consulting contract concluded in December and was not renewed. While portraying a more hunky-dory version of her time working with Warren, Dietz acknowledged that the decision to part ways was not hers.

“I would have stayed on if they needed me to stay,” she said. “And then Tony came five months later.”

Petitti, who did not know Dietz prior to taking the job, says he heard good things about her from both Delany and others around the conference.

“I know Jim had mentioned Diane as somebody who had been in office a long time,” Petitti said. “Ultimately, staffing wise, it was my decision.”

Dietz, who says she is now back to living in the Chicago area full-time, has been a regular fixture by Petitti’s side, reclaiming a kind of gatekeeper function she had established with Delany. Her presence has been felt in some other small but striking ways, as well.

The Big Ten basketball tournament logo, which Warren had changed last year to a globe-like image, is reverting to the colorful pinwheel icon Pentagram designed for the conference in 2014, under Dietz.

Meanwhile, several of Warren’s key hires are now gone, including Adam Neuman, his chief of staff and deputy general counsel who departed in June for a front-office job with the Baltimore Ravens; and deputy commissioner Diana Sabau, who was named Utah State’s athletic director in August. Both declined to comment.

It is unclear what Petitti’s abandonment of analytics means for Schnader and Palermo; the conference declined Sportico‘s requests to interview them.

In June, Petitti named Kerry Kenny, the conference’s media rights point person, its chief operating officer, a duty that Warren had assumed for himself after the former COO, Brad Traviola, quietly departed in April 2020.

Kenny began his 16-year tenure at the Big Ten as an intern, and Delany later gave him an assortment of appointments in compliance, public affairs and TV. In 2021, Warren tapped Kenny to serve as senior vice president for television, media analytics & emerging platforms for the conference.

Despite his diversity of positions, the 39-year-old Kenny had previously overseen only one other Big Ten employee before being catapulted up the org chart.

“I think it is for others to judge if it is surprising,” Kenny said, when asked about the promotion. “What has allowed me to be successful and stay at the Big Ten is I have worked hard with what has been in front of me, alway been collaborative within the office, and been willing to extend to membership institutions and partners.”

Kenny’s new position now makes him a direct reportee of the Big Ten’s chief legal officer Anil Gollahalli, who previously served as general counsel for Oklahoma University, where he helped guide the Sooners’ leap from the Big 12 to the SEC.

Warren had made the creation of an in-house general counsel job a top priority, following decades in which Delany relied on his long-time friend, Jon Barrett, to handle the work on an outside basis. Gollahalli was Warren’s third hire for the GC role in a span of two years. In their short stint working together, Gollahalli had been central to the Big Ten’s latest expansion—beginning with USC and UCLA, which teed up the more recent additions of Washington and Oregon—as well as the media rights negotiations.

He was even named interim commissioner of the Big Ten during the one-month interregnum between Warren’s formal departure on April 14 and Petitti’s official start date on May 15. Since then, Gollahalli has seen his authority narrow, say sources, who point to the fact that he now reports to Kenny, a non-lawyer, on “operational legal” matters.

Petitti—who graduated from Harvard Law, but says he has long ceased self-identifying as an attorney—sees Gollahalli’s plate as being full enough with governance and litigation.

“It might be a little different on the media side, because we have Kerry, but on the governance piece, where we’re spending so much time, that is where I spend the most time with him,” Petitti said. ”That’s where we have the biggest need.”

Asked about his current job, Gollahalli said in a statement: “I joined the Big Ten Conference under commissioner Warren as (chief legal officer) to lead and bring an on-campus perspective to the significant legal, legislative and strategic issues facing the conference and college sports, and I continue to work directly with commissioner Petitti to help guide these same initiatives.”

Price of Success

While Delany’s golden parachute has previously been reported as $20 million, sources tell Sportico that it could be significantly more when the full lot is expected to be distributed by 2027. Big Ten tax returns show that Delany received “success fee” payments totaling $13.3 million from 2018, when they commenced, and June 2022.

In each of its last four fiscal years, the Big Ten paid Delany partial bonuses of $2,965,369. If that trend continues apace for the next five years, he could accrue another $14.8 million—and a total bonus payout close to $28 million. The conference declined to discuss his compensation.

Warren, according to sources, should expect far less. They note that Delany presided over the conference for three decades, becoming a historic college sports figure and retiring in the conference’s good graces. Conversely, Warren came in for three trying years and then jumped for an NFL gig—thereby distinguishing himself as the first Power Five commissioner to leave the job without retiring or being forced out.

Since his retirement four years ago, Delany, who now lives in Nashville, has continued to build his consulting practice in ways that, at least during Warren’s reign, raised conflict-of-interest concerns within the Big Ten office.

In 2020, one of Delany’s first consulting clients was Big Ten member Indiana, which tasked him to assist in its search for a new athletic director. Delany subsequently formed partnerships with a talent agency, the Montag Group, and an educational company, Huron Consulting, both of which later engaged in business with Big Ten schools. The Montag Group was brought on by Illinois' athletic department in 2021 while Rutgers, according to the Bergen Record, paid Huron as much as $200,000 last year to perform an athletics review in which Delany was actively involved.

Delany also consults with the Rose Bowl—which has had a Big Ten tie-in for over a half century—and serves as special adviser to DDSports Inc., creator of the ShotTracker tool, which is a partner with the Big 12.

Of Delany’s many business entanglements, the thorniest one has been his contemporaneous work with the Atlantic Coast Conference, whose commissioner, Jim Phillips, was once widely considered the shoo-in to replace Delany at the Big Ten.

Previously Northwestern's athletic director, Phillips was also Delany’s strong preference to succeed him. Delany’s recent consulting work for the ACC, sources say, has included the conference’s hiring of its first ever in-house general counsel. A spokesperson for the ACC declined to confirm Delany’s specific work, saying only that he has been used by the league as an “at-will consultant.”

Last month, Petitti told Sportico he was not aware of any current involvement Delany had with the ACC, but suggested that, regardless, he harbored no concerns over divided loyalties. To that end, if Delany would like to continue cashing Big Ten consulting checks beyond next June, Petitti appears happy to write them.

“I hope Jim wants to help,” said Petitti. “This was a huge part of his career, 30-plus years. He has a lot to offer and to the extent he is still interested in helping, I am sure it will be easy to find ways."

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