Mark Emmert announced his resignation yesterday, stepping down as president of the NCAA, a position he’d held since November 1, 2010.
There’s a lot we can say, and have said, about the man and all the great things he accomplished in his capacity as president. So we here at Deadspin decided to list them all for you, so we can all look back at the man who did so much to college athletics over the past two decades.
But before we get to that list, let’s look at the man and how he got here.
Mark Emmert was born in Fife, Washington on December 16, 1952, making him a sagittarius. He attended Fife High School, graduating in 1971. While he would go on to one day become president of the University of Washington, he did not attend the Seattle school straight out of high school. He first went to a Green River Community College in Auburn, Wa. where he studied for two years before transferring to the University of Washington in 1973, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1975. He got his Masters in Public Administration in 1976 and a PhD in 1983 from the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs of Syracuse University.
With all this learning, Emmert entered the collegiate life as an administrator, hopping from school to school, starting with North Illinois University then Univ. of Colorado at Boulder then Montana State and Uconn and LSU before making it back to his home state when he became the Washington Huskies’ president in 2004.
But sports fans got to know Emmert when he accepted the role of president of the NCAA, the governing body of college sports, in 2010, a position previously held by Myles Brand.
So that’s how Mark Emmert got here, so without further ado, let’s count down his great decisions as NCAA president.
