Gloria Nevarez has been named the next commissioner of the Mountain West conference. She will succeed retiring longtime commissioner Craig Thompson on Jan. 1, 2023. Here’s what you should know.
- Nevarez has spent the past four years as the commissioner of the West Coast Conference, and before that, she worked as a senior associate commissioner at the Pac-12 conference.
- Other previous campus stops over the course of a 25-year career in college sports include Oklahoma, Cal and San Jose State.
- She has also held prestigious leadership roles during the current period of NCAA reform, serving on both the Constitution Committee and the Division I Transformation Committee.
Here’s what you need to know:
Background
Nevarez’s background in various leagues based on the West Coast and her innovative leadership made her an attractive candidate for this position. She will be the first Latino commissioner of a Football Bowl Subdivision conference and just the second female FBS commissioner, joining Conference USA’s Judy MacLeod.
Previous accomplishments
During her time as WCC commissioner, Nevarez led the WCC to adopt Division I’s first diversity hiring initiative, the groundbreaking “Russell Rule” adopted in July of 2020, requiring all WCC schools to include a member of a traditionally underrepresented community in the final candidate pool for every athletic director, senior administrator, head coach and full-time assistant coaching search. She is a well-respected leader and administrator, though her recent roles did not have her directly working in FBS football. — Auerbach
What this means for the West Coast Conference
The WCC is in a precarious position at the moment, with crown jewel Gonzaga having conversations with other conferences — the Big 12 and Pac-12 — and now losing its commissioner. BYU, which had housed its non-football sports in the WCC for years, is also off to the Big 12, starting next year. This is a league that does not sponsor FBS football and whose identity has been shaped over the past couple of decades by Gonzaga’s deep runs in the NCAA tournament. The Zags’ runs are lucrative and important, and if they dry up with a departure, that prompts questions about what this league prioritizes, cares about and competes for moving forward. The WCC is clearly at a crossroads at the moment. — Auerbach
The future of the Mountain West
Nevarez will be the second commissioner in the history of the Mountain West, which formed from a breakaway from the Western Athletic Conference in 1998. The MWC hopes to position itself as the strongest Group of 5 football conference after the American Athletic Conference undergoes realignment next year and loses Cincinnati, Houston and UCF to the Big 12. The MWC is also a strong men’s basketball conference, with four NCAA Tournament participants last year. But realignment is always in the air, and San Diego State is a candidate to join the Pac-12 if that league opts to expand following the completion of its media rights deal later this year. — Vannini
“In the western region, geography has lended a level of consistency and stability over the last couple decades, and only recently have we seen this kind of mass fluctuation,” Nevarez said in a Zoom news conference Friday. “So it’s incumbent on me to keep open communication with all the members of the Mountain West Conference and also keep an eye on the horizon and the pulse of what’s going on and constantly convene our membership to be talking about and thinking about membership, even if we are or are not under threat of losing schools.”
What they’re saying
“I am honored and humbled to be trusted to lead one of the nation’s elite athletic conferences, and I want to thank the Board of Directors for their belief in me and in my vision,” Nevarez said in a statement. “We are well-positioned as a league thanks to the incredible legacy of Commissioner Thompson, but we cannot—and will not—rest on our success. We will be aggressive, we will be innovative, we will be inclusive and we will keep our focus on the student-athletes who call the Mountain West Conference home. I cannot wait to visit our campuses, our Conference staff, and our fans, and to begin the work ahead.”
Required reading
(Photo: Kyle Terada / USA Today)
