Sports Broadcasting Hall of Fame 2023: Val Ackerman, Basketball Pioneer and Women's-Sports Trailblazer By Brandon Costa, Director of Digital
Wednesday, December 6, 2023 - 12:40 pm
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Leading up to the 2023 Sports Broadcasting Hall of Fame ceremony on Dec. 12 at the New York Hilton, SVG is profiling the nine inductees in this year's class. For more information, CLICK HERE.
Try to leave this world a little better than you found it.
It's a sentiment that rings more like advice given to you by your grandfather when you're too immature to appreciate it, but spend enough time on this planet, and it becomes apparent that it might just be the best mantra to live by.
Few people in the history of sports business and media have built a more successful and impactful career on making the sports world better than she experienced it than Val Ackerman.
Founding president of the Women's National Basketball Association (WNBA). President of USA Basketball. An executive behind the iconic Dream Team. Commissioner of the Big East Conference. Val Ackerman's life has taken her across the executive offices of her beloved game of basketball and forever reshaped the world of sports - for athletes, for fans, for television, for women, for all of us.
Val has helped shape men's and women's basketball at every level of the game, says NBA Commissioner Adam Silver. Her steady leadership combined with her unflappable persistence has elevated so many aspects of the sports media and has left a profound impact on the coverage and scope of the sports industry.
Born and raised in New Jersey, Ackerman was a multi-sport athlete in high school and went on to be a four-year starter and three-time captain for the University of Virginia Women's Basketball Team. In the immediate afterglow of Title IX, she was one of the school's first female scholarship athletes. When she graduated, there wasn't much available to her in the way of a professional basketball career in the U.S., so she played overseas in France for a year before returning stateside to pursue her law degree at UCLA.
After a short stint at a law firm, Ackerman knew her athletic world and her academic career were meant to unite. She was hired as a staff attorney at the National Basketball Association (NBA) in 1988.
She credits the early growth in her career to working with an impressive set of mentors, including current NHL commissioner and Sports Broadcasting Hall of Famer Gary Bettman (who first hired Ackerman), former NBA deputy commissioner and Naismith Basketball Hall of Famer Russ Granik, and, of course, iconic former NBA commissioner and Sports Broadcasting Hall of Famer David Stern.
In 1990, Ackerman became special assistant to the commissioner, working directly with Stern. That gave me proximity to the life of a commissioner, what crossed David's desk, all the things he had to manage, she recalls.
Her tenacious work ethic and intelligence had her moving up quickly through the ranks at the NBA. Her career took its first unique turn in 1989, when the International Basketball Federation (FIBA) voted to allow professional players to participate in the Olympic Games. The U.S. was reeling from a devastating loss to the USSR in 1988, and work on assembling the iconic Dream Team had begun. Ackerman was one of the NBA's original appointees to the USA Basketball Board of Directors in 1989 and served as an organizational liaison with USA Basketball during the early years of NBA participation in national-team competitions, including the 1992 and 1996 Olympics and the 1994 World Championships.
Val Ackerman was the first president of the Women's National Basketball Association (WNBA) when the league launched in 1997. She oversaw operations for its first eight seasons.
Success on the international stage spread to the women's game as Ackerman played an integral role in the success of the U.S. women's national program, which has won gold medals at each of the last seven Olympics, dating the 1996 Atlanta Games.
Growth of the USA women's basketball program and mainstream success on the Olympic stage laid the groundwork for what is perhaps Ackerman's greatest career accomplishment: spearheading the launch and serving as the first president of a new women's professional basketball league, the WNBA.
When we decided' that we would start the WNBA - and I put the word in quotes because I think Val made it clear that we didn't have a choice - she was the natural person to lead it, which she did for many years, said late former NBA commissioner David Stern in 2013 upon Ackerman's appointment as Big East commissioner. Not only lead it but launch it and lead it. The fact that the league exists is a result of Val's efforts and drive behind it.
Ackerman guided the league through its formation and to its widely successful debut in 1997, heading day-to-day operations for its first eight seasons. She says she'll never forget sitting courtside at the New York Liberty's first home game at Madison Square Garden and watching Stern sit speechless.
It was exhausting. It was exhilarating, she recalls. Those of us who worked on it - and there were many of us at the league office - felt like it was a cause, not just any old project. It felt like a cause because it was about bringing women more deeply into the game of basketball. It was very exciting, especially in the early years, because our fan support was so strong and there was so much buzz around the league. To be part of that launch was a once-in-a-professional-lifetime experience.
Today, the WNBA is enjoying unprecedented success. The 2023 season television-viewership numbers were the highest they have been in more than two decades, and the league continues to g
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Sports Broadcasting Hall of Fame 2023: Val Ackerman, Basketball Pioneer and Women's-Sports Trailblazer By Brandon Costa, Director of Digital 
