The Pac-12 Conference’s hiring this week of former SMU athletic director Rick Hart presents an uncommon wrinkle, given one other position Hart not too long ago accepted.
Last month, NIL-focused faculty sports activities consulting agency Altius Sports Partners introduced that it had retained Hart to function a senior advisor, alongside former Buffalo Bills chief working officer Ron Raccuia.
On Monday, barely 4 weeks later, Hart was formally named the Pac-12’s senior vice chairman and deputy commissioner. According to a press launch, Hart will lead the rebuilding league’s day-to-day operations and “oversee several key membership-facing areas.”
But he received’t be giving up his consulting work for Altius, at the least not instantly.
According to a supply acquainted with the scenario, Hart and the Pac-12 are at present in discussions about how he can handle each roles whereas avoiding conflicts of curiosity, with the expectation that his work for the agency will finally wind down.
Representatives for the Pac-12 and Altius declined to remark.
Altius is publicly identified to have consulted at the least one future Pac-12 member, Colorado State, which retained the agency final yr as a part of its effort to construct out a common supervisor division.
Altius has beforehand retained advisors and companions with different skilled engagements in faculty sports activities. Most notably, Altius chairman Oliver Luck in 2023 was employed in a consulting capability to function the inaugural govt director of the ASUN-WAC Football Conference—later rechristened the United Athletic Conference—and at present serves as chair of Clemson Athletic Properties Company, the college’s new athletic business rights holder. Gabe Feldman, one other Altius guide, is a legislation professor at Tulane and the college’s affiliate provost for NCAA compliance.
Although it’s uncommon for a full-time convention worker to concurrently keep different roles in faculty athletics, it’s not completely unprecedented.
Indeed, Hart’s try to put on two hats calls to thoughts former Horizon League boss Julie Roe Lach, who concurrently served all through her commissionership as of counsel for the legislation agency Church Church Hittle and Antrim (CCHA). When Lach, the previous NCAA vice chairman of enforcement, joined the Horizon League as deputy commissioner in 2014, she negotiated an association that allowed her to proceed operating her consulting agency on the time, JRL Consulting, which was later acquired by CCHA.
Former Horizon League commissioner Jon LeCrone told The Intercollegiate that his want to recruit Lach was so robust that he pitched her on the concept of having the ability to maintain her consulting work going, as long as it didn’t contain the league or its members. Lach finally succeeded LeCrone in January 2021 and led the convention till October 2025, when she stepped all the way down to grow to be govt vice chairman for Pacers Sports & Entertainment.
Hart, in the meantime, introduced in February 2025 that he could be stepping down as SMU’s AD on the finish of the yr, concluding a 13-year tenure throughout which the Mustangs transitioned to the Atlantic Coast Conference. According to SMU’s most up-to-date tax filings, Hart was paid $948,570 for the fiscal yr 2024.