Kerry Kenny ’07 started his career with the Big 10 conference in 2008. (Photo courtesy of Sports Business Journal)

Kerry Kenny ‘07 once spent his days on the basketball court in Kirby Sports Center. Nearly 20 years later, he has yet to stray far from the college sports world, working his way up to the role of chief operating officer of the Big Ten Conference.

After a brief post-graduate internship with the Patriot League, he began working for the Big Ten in 2008 in the rules and compliance office.

“There’s one thing that’s consistent regardless of what level of college sports you participate in: that there’s a rulebook, and you need to follow that rulebook and understand it,” Kenny said.

Kenny has been at the forefront of the Big Ten’s expansion during his tenure — in 2014, he relocated from the Chicago office to the newly launched New York location to spearhead the efforts to add the University of Maryland and Rutgers University to the conference.

Kenny pivoted in 2017 to the television side of operations, where he found his way back to his beloved sport of basketball as the main television and scheduling contact for men’s and women’s basketball — a role Kenny described as a “giant puzzle.”

The job involved taking into account travel, time zones and the busy schedules of student-athletes. This is where Kenny can draw on his own experience as a student-athlete at Lafayette.

“People think that college athletics is all about who can make the most money and win the most championships, but really, it’s about taking young men and women who are stepping foot on campus … and changing their lives,” Kenny said. “Understanding what my day-to-day was like as a student-athlete — the rigor of balancing academics and athletics, road trips, study hours, final exams — helps humanize the fact that there are people on the other end of the decisions we’re making.”

According to Phillip LaBella, director of athletic communications, Kenny’s passion for the college sports industry was evident during his time at Lafayette.

“Kerry began to set himself apart and lay the groundwork for his future in college athletics with his campus work with the Student-Athlete Advisory Council (SAAC) and later as the Chair of the NCAA National SAAC,” LaBella wrote in an email.

“During Kerry’s time as an undergrad at Lafayette, it was easy to tell that he would be extremely successful in whatever career he chose,” Scott Morse, the assistant vice president for communications and marketing, added in an email. “I was of course excited to see that he chose college athletics and have followed his outstanding career progression with great pride and admiration.”

“Every year it seems like [Kerry] was asked to take on more and more very important responsibilities at the Big 10 office,” Tom Odjakjian ’76, a mentor of Kenny’s, wrote in an email. “He has gained the respect of everyone working in collegiate sports administration and national media.”

Though Kenny has moved from sport to sport, department to department and office to office, the Big Ten has remained his home. In June of 2023, he was promoted to the role of chief operating officer, the scope of which covers many of Kenny’s previous responsibilities.

“As cliche as it sounds, the best part of the job is that no two days are the same,” Kenny said.

Kenny’s day-to-day includes overseeing television and scheduling, legal and finance and the conference’s digital presence in addition to traveling to support Big 10 teams. On New Year’s Day, Kenny traveled to Pasadena, California where the Big 10’s own University of Michigan beat out the University of Alabama in the Rose Bowl on its way to a national championship.

“Everybody in America wakes up on New Year’s Day and watches the parade and then watches that game, so just to be a part of that and have it be my job to represent the Big Ten is … really cool,” Kenny said.

Kenny has seen more than his fair share of intense rivalry games, from his first trip to the March Madness Final Four in 2007 to his first Ohio State versus Michigan game in 2011, which happened to be his first date with his now-wife.

“These are rivalries that I watched and read about growing up,” he said. “You never want to get jaded by the fact that your job is, in some cases, sitting in the crowd watching a game.”