Chuck Neinas, the onetime Big Eight commissioner whose media savvy and dealmaking helped turn college football into the multibillion-dollar business it is today, died Tuesday. He was 93.
The National Football Foundation announced Neinas’ death, with its president and CEO Steve Hatchell calling him “a visionary in every sense of the word.” A cause of death was not disclosed.
From 1980-97, Neinas was executive director of the College Football Association, an agency created by several big conferences that sought to wrest control of their TV rights from the NCAA.
Two key members, Georgia and Oklahoma, sued the NCAA over TV, and a 1984 Supreme Court ruling in their favor effectively made the CFA a separate business from the rest of college sports. It gave Neinas a key seat at the negotiating table.
He brought home deals worth billions in the 1980s and ’90s, and those huge contracts set the stage for today’s industry, currently highlighted by a TV deal worth $7.8 billion for the College Football Playoff.
After the CFA disbanded in 1997 — with conferences taking their TV rights into their own hands and the Bowl Championship Series, the precursor to today’s playoff, about to start — Neinas founded a consulting firm that helped schools create policies and hire athletic directors and coaches.
He was CEO of Ascent Entertainment Group, which owned the Denver Nuggets, the Colorado Avalanche and their arena when they sold to Liberty Media Group in 2000.
But his passion was college sports. He served as interim commissioner of the Big 12 from 2011-12, solidifying that conference during one of many surges of realignment by adding TCU and West Virginia.
In a 2014 interview with The Associated Press, Neinas envisioned a future that looks much like today as he pondered lawsuits against the NCAA that would eventually lead to players being paid.
“There is a need for some changes,” Neinas said. “The auto industry is always trying to improve their model. College athletics should do the same. But the basics are still sound.”
Born in Wisconsin, Neinas was a longtime Colorado resident and was living in Boulder at the time of his death.
After working as a play-by-play man for Wisconsin football and basketball, Neinas got a job with the NCAA, where he served as an assistant executive director from 1961-71. He became commissioner of the Big Eight Conference in 1971 until moving to the CFA.
During his Big Eight tenure, Neinas chaired the committee that recommended the NCAA withdraw from the U.S. Olympic Committee. That led to a major reorganization and the passing of the Ted Stevens Amateur Sports Act that governs the Olympics in the U.S. today.
