Chris Del Conte’s Winning Strategy

Once a month at Darrell K Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium, The University of Texas holds a head coaches’ meeting. It’s a chance for the men and women who run UT’s 21 varsity sports teams to check in with each other, as well as with Chris Del Conte and the rest of the athletics staff.   

Director of Swimming and Diving and Men’s Head Coach Bob Bowman attended his first one after being hired away from Arizona State, which had just won the 2024 NCAA championship. Since Del Conte became UT’s athletic director at the end of 2017, he has almost always hired coaches who have won or at least played for an NCAA title, either as an assistant or head coach, and also inherited several more with national championships.  

“I was in that head coaches’ meeting my first day, and it was like, everybody had one!” Bowman says. “I [thought to myself], ‘Oh man. I’m glad I got that done.’ It’s definitely the standard.”  

That standard of reaching an NCAA title has always been the expectation at The University of Texas. But expectation isn’t always the reality.   

“Darrell Royal had a saying,” Del Conte says. “‘When the BBs are out of the box, it’s hard to put them back in.’”   

The aphorism is familiar to most Longhorns: It’s what DKR told Mack Brown when Brown got the Texas football job in 1997, referring to the fact that everyone involved in college sports—fans, alumni, donors, players, coaches, and administrators—must be aligned to have success. Over the next decade-plus, legendary UT athletic director DeLoss Dodds not only put the BBs back into the box but got everybody locked and loaded.   

But even before Dodds announced his retirement in October 2013, the metaphorical ammunition had begun to scatter. Steve Patterson, BBA ’80, JD ’84, Life Member, succeeded Dodds as AD but was gone by 2015, with former Longhorns football great Mike Perrin, BA ’69, JD ’71, Life Member, who’d originally replaced Patterson on an interim basis, staying two full years to steady things. The man seemingly known to all as “CDC” was hired in 2017 by then–UT president Greg Fenves. 

Del Conte came to the Forty Acres after three years at Rice and eight years at Texas Christian University; during his time in Fort Worth, he helped sustain the Horned Frogs’ success in football under Gary Patterson and also took the school from the Mountain West Conference to the Big 12 in 2013.   

That came after a very stressful sales pitch one year prior to none other than Dodds; the living legend and the up-and-comer hadn’t previously met. “DeLoss Dodds, was, in my world of administration, the DKR,” Del Conte says. “This larger-than-life figure who understood the brand of Texas and built this iconic athletic program, along with Chris Plonsky and Jody Conradt.” (Del Conte is the first UT AD to run both men’s and women’s sports, so he’s very conscious of what Plonsky, who still holds the title of executive senior associate athletics director, Conradt, and Donna Lopiano built when women’s athletics director was a separate job.)  

Little did either man know what lay ahead. For instance, that the chain of events which saw Texas A&M leave the Big 12 for the Southeastern Conference, with TCU replacing them, would take another turn a decade later, with Texas joining the SEC.   

Having started his career out west (at Washington State, Cal Poly, and Arizona) and settled in at TCU, Del Conte had previously resisted overtures from other schools, in part because his family, including two daughters, Siena and Sophia, who were high school–age back then, didn’t want to leave Fort Worth. Now one of them is a Texas Ex, and the other is about to graduate.  

Because Texas is, well … Texas. “The straw that stirs the drink nationally,” Del Conte says. “It’s one of those jobs that you know you can’t say no to. When the Longhorns call, you answer that call. You come to this place because you know that Texas has a chance to be the very best in every sport. I wanted to see if I could ride Bevo for eight seconds.”  

Or eight years (and counting).   

Between the Longhorns’ initial SEC season and both recent and upcoming changes to NCAA Division I athletics in terms of scholarship limits, revenue-sharing, and Name Image Likeness (NIL), there’s no time for a victory lap. But Del Conte—while quick to redirect the credit to his staff, the student-athletes, and of course, the iconic power of the Texas brand itself—was still required to take some anyway. In August 2023, he got a contract extension through 2030, while a $10 million endowment also made his full title “Vice President and Lois and Richard Folger Athletics Director.” In the summer of 2024, he was named Sports Business Journal’s Athletic Director of the Year.   

UT has won the Learfield Directors’ Cup, which measures success across all NCAA sports, three of the last four years. He’s got a murderer’s row of coaches. This past fall semester, all 21 teams had an average GPA of 3.0 or higher for the first time ever. And football coach Steve Sarkisian’s team has made it to the College Football Playoff two years in a row (“It’s coming. It’s coming,” Del Conte promised of the next logical step—actually winning the whole thing—at his annual town hall in February).   

As 2025 began, he was also named the Austin Chamber of Commerce’s Austinite of the Year. While that is fundamentally a business award for someone who is essentially Texas Athletics’ CEO, Del Conte’s Longhorns are also a more pivotal part of Austin’s culture than UT sports has ever been—as unmistakable a presence as C3 Presents, SXSW, or Franklin Barbecue. 

“[Del Conte] is probably the most dynamic athletic director in America,” men’s golf coach John Fields says. “And the most powerful.”   

“He truly might be the smartest guy I know,” women’s basketball coach Vic Schaefer says.  

And lest you think such praise only comes from people who are dependent on the athletic director for future contract extensions, here’s what the man who has that power over CDC, Chairman of the Board of Regents Kevin Eltife, BBA ’81, Life Member, had to say in a video celebrating that Chamber of Commerce honor: “The best part of my job is getting to work with Chris Del Conte.”  

You’ll often find Del Conte having lunch or breakfast in the cafeteria at the Texas Athletics and Nutrition Center (aka the TANC), and not just so he can tell a coach or player, “good game last night” (and mean it, too, as he tries to attend every home game of every sport). He feels at home there. It’s a daily reminder of why he does the job, but also of the way that he grew up.   

Del Conte was born in Mexico, where his father, Robert, was originally enrolled in a Catholic seminary. Then, Robert and his wife Michelle decided that their calling would be helping underprivileged youth, and the family moved to a ranch in Taos, New Mexico. There, they raised Del Conte and his two younger siblings alongside about 75 other kids who lived, played, and ate together every day, with meals at long communal dining tables, separated into three age groups. Dinner was at 5 p.m., though if you played sports, you ate together later. It was a whirlwind of community and conversation among people from vastly different experiences and backgrounds trying to get somewhere in life. So it is at the TANC, a room full of student-athletes from all over Texas, the nation, and the world.    

“The beautiful thing about sports is you have so many people from so many walks of life,” Del Conte says. “And they’re all sitting there, from many cultures and many religions. With one common goal.”  

While the job of a big-time college sports AD may be more glamorous (and lucrative) than mission-driven public service, for Del Conte it is still an extension of his father’s work, and of what both parents expected of him. Be humble. Be honest. Serve others.  

Del Conte first attended Oregon State on a track and field scholarship, then transferred to the University of California Santa Barbara when OSU dropped its program—so he truly has a first-hand perspective on both student-athlete life and the business of sports in higher education. When he began to see athletics as a possible career, his father had him write an essay laying out what he wanted to do and why. Del Conte talked about the way sports had changed society through such figures as Muhammad Ali, Wilma Rudolph, and Billie Jean King, and most of all, his belief that sports can change lives, especially when it’s hand in hand with education, with the coaches acting as teachers.   

“I always tell everyone a coach is the greatest asset we have,” Del Conte says. “They believe in someone when someone doesn’t believe in themselves. That’s what service is all about, is believing in the people around you, giving them the tools necessary to be successful, and then watching them grow and blossom. And that’s basically the tenor of the job: We enhance society by getting people to figure out who their true self is, and they can go out in the world and do great things.”  

In other words, what starts here changes the world.   

Sadly, Del Conte’s father never got to see his oldest son on national television, dressed impeccably, representing Texas and that mission. Robert Del Conte died at the age of 61 in 2000, after stopping to help what appeared to be a driver with a broken-down car by the side of the road in California. He was robbed and killed. The crime happened just after he’d been with his son at a Stanford–Arizona baseball game (Del Conte was then associate athletic director at Arizona).   

Del Conte had just shared the news that his wife, Robin Ward—a math professor at Rice whom he first met when they both worked at Cal Poly—was pregnant for the first time. “We were sitting on the bleachers, and he leaned over and he said, ‘My work is done. All you guys are doing great,’” Del Conte says. “And then the accident happened.” (That is still the only word Del Conte can bring himself to use.)   

It was the last time they spoke. “As strange as it was, I’ve taken solace in that conversation many times.”  

Del Conte’s many siblings from the ranch—some were adopted by the family, while the rest are still considered blood—now regularly turn up at Texas games, including this past year’s College Football Playoff semifinal at the Cotton Bowl. His office includes several pictures of himself as a kid with the many other kids at the ranch.  

“The chair I sit in, it spawned from my time there,” Del Conte says. “Every time I look at the pictures, that gives me great respect for the chair I’m sitting in. Because I know the chair I came from.”  

The roster of coaches Del Conte has built is not as simple as just collecting resumes with championships. They also have to be right for what Del Conte calls, “the gravitas of Texas.” For him, it comes down to the saying that is emblazoned all over the athletics facilities: The pride and winning tradition of The University of Texas will not be entrusted to the weak or the timid.  

“And we’ve interviewed coaches that said, ‘Man, I want no part of that,’” Del Conte says. “I want no part of the New York Yankees. I’m comfortable being a Cleveland [Guardian]. You have to hire to the standard of The University of Texas, because it’s not for everybody.”  

Lots of coaches have won, but “have they won with the standards that hold true to who we are?” he continues. “Are we going to graduate kids? Are we going to compete for championships? Are they going to understand the magnitude?”  

With the move to the SEC, the magnitude is even greater. For the program and its student-athletes, it was about giving them the best experience possible, and the best path to compete for championships. And it was also about that for the fans and donors, especially now that Longhorn Foundation contributions aren’t tax-deductible.  

The SEC was one piece of that. Making every game more of an event, win or lose—with things such as Bevo Blvd., Longhorn City Limits, and the in-game amenities and entertainment—was another. “We’re asking people to spend their discretionary income with us,” Del Conte says. “So we’re needing to create an environment that’s unbelievable.” For ideas, he looks not just to other schools and pro sports teams, but also companies from the Ritz Carlton to Disney. “I’m a big fan of R & D,” he jokes. “Rip off and duplicate.”  

And since the entire athletic program is essentially financed by football and basketball—Del Conte refers to them as the “revenue producers,” and the other sports as “brand accentuators”—upgrading the level of competition and the schedule was just as important as the fact that the SEC happens to be the richest, most powerful conference, with the highest-dollar potential for future TV contracts and College Football Playoff participation. As a bonus, being in the SEC honors two historic rivalries from the Southwest Conference (SWC), while also keeping Oklahoma (which was a non-conference rival in the SWC/Big 8 days) and adding even more marquee opponents.   

“Our not playing A&M for 12 years was a travesty for college athletics [and] a travesty for the state,” Del Conte says. And he also knew a lot of older alumni would welcome back the University of Arkansas, whose Frank Broyles–led teams were an inextricable part of the DKR era.  

“And then playing the brands [that] are in the SEC and in our stadium is magic,” Del Conte adds. “You saw the Georgia game. You see Alabama. We’ll have A&M this year. You’re going to then have a steady diet of Tennessee, Florida, LSU. It’s going to be electric.”  

While there are many things the AD does—budget-setting, fundraising, management, delegating—that don’t get headlines, perhaps the second-most public part of Del Conte’s job after hiring or firing coaches is serving as customer service agent. If the soda is flat at a football game concession stand, and someone feels it’s necessary to take that complaint all the way to the athletic director, through either social media or email, they can. No detail is too small.   

In the video made for the Austin Chamber of Commerce, Eltife mentioned how Del Conte will walk around the stadium at 5 or 6 a.m. on a football Saturday gameday, making sure that everything looked right. At the February town hall, the toughest topic he had to tackle was not the College Football Playoff loss or men’s basketball’s disappointing 2025, but the loss of 1,000 parking spaces for baseball and softball games due to the land being repurposed for graduate student housing.   

At one of his own initial coaches’ meetings, baseball coach Jim Schlossnagle was pleasantly surprised to see Sarkisian in the room, given the Longhorns were then days away from playing Clemson in the College Football Playoff (and at some schools, the big coach on campus, as it were, isn’t always subject to the same obligations as the other coaches). Schlossnagle says that he and Sarkisian have also discussed the way they feel both supported and insulated by Del Conte. “Everybody allows you to do your job here,” Schlossnagle says. “I don’t hear from Board of Regents members. You don’t hear from the donor base trying to have input on the program.”   

Winning also tends to quiet that—but mostly, it’s a testament to what Del Conte, Eltife, and former UT president Jay Hartzell, PhD ’98, Life Member, did together over the past few years. That’s alignment. The BBs are in the box.  

“I tell Del Conte all the time, ‘You know, I got to live in DeLoss Dodds’ good old days,” says John Fields, the longest-tenured UT coach, at 28 years. “And it feels like we’re going into Chris Del Conte’s good old days. It’s extraordinary. It kind of puts chills on your arms.”  

CREDITS: Texas Athletics