Show notes
Ask a sitting Division I commissioner to grade the current state of college athletics and most will dodge. Dan Butterly doesn't. The Big West commissioner tells Jimmy exactly where he thinks the enterprise stands right now — and why the uncertainty around NIL, revenue sharing, and the portal is generating anxiety for everyone in the building, not just the athletes.
Jimmy and Dan go back more than 25 years, to Big Monday broadcasts and ten o'clock Mountain Time tip-offs. In this one, Dan traces a path that started somewhere unexpected: he tried out to be drum major of the Illinois State marching band and finished fourth. That rejection sent him to the basketball office, where he became a student manager — and where, at a summer camp in 1990, he met his wife Elaine.
From there: the Missouri Valley, helping launch the Mountain West in 1999, and then becoming a first-time commissioner on May 4, 2020, hired entirely over Zoom, at the exact moment the world shut down. Dan walks through the decision to sit out fall 2020 sports, what he leaned on when the calls were impossible, and why his first question when a student-athlete leaves is always "what could we have done better?"
He also shares the verse he keeps in his social media bio — 1 Peter 3:8 — and what "be humble" actually costs a leader who has to tell people no for a living. Plus, the concussion decision he made about his own daughter's cheerleading career, and why he's convinced she now understands it.
Jimmy closes the episode solo with a reflection on God's path, rejection, and what it really means to do all things through Christ.
Dan is the 2026 recipient of the NABC Cliff Wells Appreciation Award. You can follow his weekly commissioner's column, The Bold Type, at https://bigwest.org
As always, we thank our title sponsor https://onecountry.com for making this podcast possible — catch every episode on the OneCountry app — and https://konexial.com for their continued support of the show.
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Hosted by Jimmy Dykes and Chris Burke
Produced by Jared Mark Fincher — https://jaredmarkfincher.com
All audio is subject to copyright 2026 Jimmy Dykes Inc.
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