Bernadette McGlade slipped quietly into the front row of the press conference room at Bon Secours Wellness Arena for a brief moment of calm.
McGlade says she hasn’t given her looming retirement much thought. But as fans began spilling into the lower bowls of the arena in Greenville, S.C., the darkened space offered the perfect place for contemplation.
“Just walking in here and bumping into just a handful of former colleagues that were on the basketball committee and folks I worked with at the ACC, I will miss that,” said McGlade, who at the end of this academic year will conclude a 45-year college athletics career that spanned from Georgia Tech to the ACC and Atlantic 10.
To understand McGlade’s impact on college sports takes more than a single story. That she held three administrative jobs over almost five decades tells at least part of the tale.
McGlade quickly climbed the ranks following a six-year tenure in Atlanta, where at age 23 she’d been hired as Georgia Tech’s first women’s basketball coach.
Georgia Tech Athletic Director Homer Rice eventually brought her on to his administrative staff full time, working alongside men’s basketball coach Bobby Cremins and baseball coach Jim Morris — the “young guns,” as they were dubbed internally.
Those in the conference office took notice.
ACC Commissioner John Swofford believed women’s basketball was an area for growth, but the league lacked the infrastructure to continue bolstering the product.
McGlade, he thought, was the perfect candidate to oversee the sport, with a caveat: Her sister, Agnes, had become the head coach at Georgia Tech.
“I sort of knew that Bernie was the person I thought would just fit that job perfectly, because of her basketball background and her administrative background at Georgia Tech,” Swofford told Sports Business Journal. “But the question mark was, ‘How could that work when her sister would be the head coach of one of our teams?’
“I just got on the phone and called all of our coaches individually in our other schools. [I asked] one question — ‘I’m very interested in hiring Bernie, and how would you feel about that in terms of her in that position at the conference office, Agnes being one of the coaches in the league that you compete against?’ Literally every single one of ’em had almost [the same] thought. They said, ‘Bernie would be fantastic. You should hire her.’
“From my perspective, I think that says an awfully lot about Bernie in terms of the trust and respect that they had for her.”
McGlade will tell you she never fixated on becoming a commissioner. She turned down the Atlantic 10 before being approached a second time. But amid interviews with the presidents, she assured those decision-makers that if hired, she would stay in the role long term.
“One of the presidents asked me, ‘You’re coming from the ACC. If you take this job, are you going to stay for longer than two years?’” McGlade recounted. “I just said, ‘Well, I hope so, and if I don’t, it’s going to be because you fired me.”
Over her 17 years in charge, the league has had its share of accomplishments. McGlade’s deftness in television negotiations saw the conference’s media deal grow from a regional agreement worth “a couple hundred thousand dollars” to the millions it’s now worth annually. That also coincided with shifting men’s basketball games from Wednesday/Saturday to Tuesday/Friday to improve exposure.
McGlade, too, helped the league bring in VCU, George Mason, Davidson and Loyola Chicago over the last 15 years; moved the conference office from Newport News, Va., to Washington, D.C.; and oversaw the Atlantic 10’s 50th anniversary celebration last year.
Nationally, McGlade’s profile included serving on the NCAA men’s basketball selection committee, as president of the Collegiate Commissioners Association and other work on the Division I Council and women’s basketball oversight committee.
“Conferences look drastically different than they did when we went into the Atlantic 10 in 2012,” VCU Athletic Director Ed McLaughlin told SBJ. “And unless you have a leader who’s confident in what he or she’s doing in terms of the product, and has a really good beat on what is happening nationally [you can’t succeed]. … She has credibility and gravitas from a national perspective, and that’s helped our league.”
As first-round action closed in Greenville, McGlade again found herself in the press room, watching as VCU celebrated an upset win over UNC. For one more day, her league would fight on into March.
Someday soon she’ll sit back and reflect on the memories. Now? The NCAA men’s basketball tournament remained front of mind.
McGlade planned to be there every step of the way.
Three questions with Atlantic 10 Commissioner Bernadette McGlade
What is your biggest concern for college sports as you retire?
“My one hope is that the transfer portal situation can get just readjusted. It’s not going to go away. I think student athletes should have the ability to transfer, be immediately eligible for sure one time during their career. But I think after that, I think there should be kind of a ‘stay in place for a year before you’re eligible.’”
What was it like to move the conference office from Newport News, Va., to Washington, D.C.?
“You know how hard it’s just to move your family in one house. Try moving an operation with 15 people and their families and all of that, and the physicals and the legal things and the taxes and all that. It’s a heavy lift. But it was important to the presidents council. They wanted me to get that finished, and I did.”
What’s it been like experiencing your last NCAA men’s basketball tournament as commissioner?
“I’ll miss the people and I’ll miss the opportunity to have a credential, be back of the house and bump into everyone. But it’s been a great run and I have nothing but appreciation for my three stops between Georgia Tech, the ACC and A-10.”
