By TEDDY ALLEN, Written for the Louisiana Sports Writers Association
There are several people to blame for the Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame’s 2024 Dave Dixon Louisiana Sports Leadership Award being presented to former Southland Conference commissioner and NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Selection Committee chairman Tom Burnett, not the least of which is Tom Burnett.
We’ll get to that.
Burnett, still surprised by his pending turn in the spotlight, is part of the 12-member Class of 2024 soon to be honored June 20-22 in Natchitoches. For participation opportunities, visit LaSportsHall.com or call 318-238-4255.
The reason a once-unlikely Dixon/Burnett pairing has come to this starts with Keith Prince, Louisiana Tech’s Hall of Fame sports information director from 1969-1993, who saw in the mid-1980s a kid from West Monroe by way of Houston — we’ll call him Tom Burnett — show up “in our office at a time when he was still searching for something,” Prince said, “maybe just something to care about … or even a reason to be in school.”
Prince let him hang around, and soon Tom was enjoying his new responsibilities, looking for more and even taking ownership of the job — a full-time assistant on a student assistant’s pay.
After graduation, Burnett dipped his toe into the sports writing waters in Monroe, felt a chill, and retired back to the safety of Ruston, where he pestered Prince for more loose change so he could hang around the SID office a bit longer. Things might have ended there, with Tom replacing a retiring Prince in 1993, had the next culprit not appeared.
Enter the new American South Conference and commissioner Craig Thompson, who found Tom on either a Ruston street corner or the baseline at Thomas Assembly Center — accounts vary — and offered him 20 bucks plus dental to manage communication and media services from the New Orleans-based office.
Over time, the “other duties as assigned” clause came into play and Burnett was overseeing staff, formatting league schedules, managing championship events, dealing with coaching issues, helping birth the New Orleans Bowl, hosting NCAA hoops gigs at the Superdome and, well, “through all that,” Burnett confessed, “I guess I became an administrator.”
“During those early days, I saw his passion for doing things the right way,” said Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame writer Dan McDonald, the sports information director at then-USL when Burnett was just getting his young administrative feet wet. “He was ‘old-school’ like me, and we did a lot of things at conference championship events that were special at the time — things that are taken for granted these days.
“He was dedicated to making events special for the student-athletes and coaches, but he also appreciated and understood the job that the media did and their importance at the time to making those events successful.”
The snowball was rolling. Roughly a dozen years passed and Burnett, at this stage with the Sun Belt Conference, still in New Orleans, was constantly spotted telling sportswriters where to sit and when to shut up at this Sun Belt event and then that, at this NCAA event and then that, until one day the next perpetrator, the Southland Conference Board of Directors, stepped in and made him, at 38, the commissioner of the entire SLC. A fellow named Greg Sankey had left for a job with the Southeastern Conference.
Now Burnett was telling not only sportswriters, but also coaches, where to sit and when to tap the brakes. Same with athletics directors, ditto with the oddest species on the entire college athletics food chain, the university presidents.
But instead of weeping and gnashing of teeth, there was an air of respect for the young man in the necktie and helpful smile, a steady stream of gratitude for a guy who was proving himself a leader in an ego-heavy business because he was “mostly a great friend and a constant presence for many like me who have benefitted from his years of insight, experience and humor,” Herb Vincent, associate commissioner for communications for the SEC since 2013, said.
“Tom carried the weight of being a leader and its responsibility — a responsibility which directly impacted as many as 12 universities and thousands of student-athletes — with a steady, caring and passionate approach for over 20 years,” said former Northwestern State athletic director Greg Burke. “He was a communicator with the conference board of directors, presidents, athletic administrators, coaches and many others, always with the goal of making decisions which were best for the overall good of the membership.”
Sadly, everyone asked about Burnett’s LSHOF honor ultimately points to the No. 1 culprit: Burnett his ownself. So does his ‘commissioning’ record. It’s a long list of high points, from nationwide impact to influence around the Southland’s regional footprint.
“The conference was a trendsetter nationally among its peers,” former NSU sports information director Doug Ireland said, “because Tom was an innovator and bold enough to give new ideas a chance.”
Then in 2021-22 — and who knows where the blame lies here, maybe with the NCAA? — Burnett became just the ninth commissioner and first since 2009 to chair the NCAA Division 1 Men’s Basketball Committee, the first FCS commissioner to serve in the role. A lot of work for many months wrapped up with him handing the Final Four championship trophy to Kansas coach Bill Self and his Jayhawks, right there, appropriately enough for Burnett, at the Superdome in New Orleans.
Cinderella story is all it is. A happy ending for a necktie-wearing but purposeful blend of an i-dotter, t-crosser, dice-roller, smile-wearer, and problem-solver, the longest-tenured commissioner in the SLC’s history.
“I’ve never been surprised by Tom’s career success,” Prince said. “He’s a natural leader, and his vision for things that are needed and will work has always been exceptional. He proved that many times over as a conference commissioner and as chairman of the NCAA basketball selection committee.
“No doubt he deserves to be in the Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame. He’s been in mine for a long time.”
Contact Teddy at teddy@latech.edu