Since joining the Big Sky Conference in 2019 as its Deputy Commissioner, Dan Satter has played a prominent role alongside Commissioner Tom Wistrcill in elevating the experience that the league office provides its 12 institutions – the 10 full members plus two football affiliates – to support 3,300 student-athletes on nearly 150 different teams.

As the Big Sky’s chief operating officer and chief financial officer, Satter oversees and impacts all aspects of the conference, including but not limited to external relations, revenue generation, media rights negotiations, championship and sport administration, strategic planning, member and officiating services, and crisis management. While serving as the conference’s sport administrator for both football and men’s basketball, Satter also is responsible for all internal operations such as the league’s budget and fiscal controls, human resources, legal affairs and contractual agreements, office management, and insurance policies.

“We are very excited to welcome such a thoughtful and accomplished leader to the Big Sky Conference,” Wistrcill said in the press release announcing Satter’s hiring. “Dan brings invaluable experience from multiple Division I institutions in areas such as media relations, social media, marketing, strategic planning and financial acumen, all of which will be a huge benefit to the conference. He will be a great asset to our universities and office staff as we continue to pursue an ambitious agenda to be the preeminent FCS conference. We worked together closely for five years and I look forward to joining forces again.”

Underscoring all of the achievements since Satter reunited with Wistrcill, the Big Sky has adopted the marketing mantra, #ExperienceElevated, to speak specifically to the aspirational nature of the Big Sky and the league’s longstanding and renewed commitment to the growth, development, and excellence of those who it serves will remain his focus moving forward. Among the highlights that have elevated the Big Sky include:
 

• Completing a reorganization of personnel, reassigning various responsibilities among the conference staff to add a Director of Broadcast and Digital Media position (without increasing headcount) so the conference can create its own content for and about its membership and participants;

• Emphasizing a more aggressive and strategic approach on social media, leading to the Big Sky vaulting from among the five worst of the 32 Division I conferences for monthly engagement metrics to one of the five best on a regular basis that now regularly tops many FBS and even some Power 5 conferences;

• Creating “Big Sky U,” a professional development program, which began virtually during the fall of 2020, to provide league members with growth opportunities for current student-athletes who aspire to be coaches or athletic administrators, current assistant coaches who aspire to be head coaches, and current assistant athletic directors who aspire to be athletic directors;

• Securing a new media rights agreement with ESPN, an agreement that provides record-setting metrics among FCS conferences for both revenue and exposure, including a national linear broadcast of the women’s basketball championship game for the first time;

• Adding Scripps as an additional media partner that provides an unprecedented number of over-the-air broadcasts in all Big Sky media markets of football and basketball contests;

• Spearheading an aggressive strategic planning process that led to the creation of an overall five-year conference-wide plan that includes sport-specific plans for all 16 Big Sky-sponsored sports, with an increased emphasis on enhancing the student-athlete experience while anticipating the expected new requirements for NCAA Division I institutions;

• Extending a multimedia rights agreement with Learfield that will drive a six-figure increase in revenue to the conference over the previous existing deal;

• Renewing the hosting agreement with the city of Boise and Idaho Central Arena to retain the Women’s and Men’s Basketball Championships there for five more years while increasing the guarantee provided to the conference by 50 percent and decreasing expenses by 25 percent over the previous deal;

• Implementing a new football schedule model for the 2022 through 2027 seasons that assign Big Sky schools with two annual opponents while rotating evenly among the other teams, thus allow everyone to play each other at least twice (once at home and once away) in consecutive three-year blocks;

• Navigating the unprecedented era of COVID with creative scheduling and medical resource acquisition and usage, including playing consecutive basketball games against the same opponent in the same location to mitigate exposure and minimize costs;

• Partnering with INFLCR, the leading Name, Image, and Likeness platform that grants all Big Sky student-athletes access to photos of themselves competing, creates a marketplace to pair businesses with student-athletes, and provides athletic departments with a reporting mechanism to track this activity;

• Launching the Hall of Fame, the first in the league’s 60-year history to celebrate the best of the best Big Sky student-athletes, coaches, and administrators;

• Refreshing the design of the conference’s website, www.BigSkyConf.com, and adding a mobile app to allow for enhanced online engagement and video content consumption;

• Providing student-athletes with unprecedented access to the Commissioner and the league’s other staff members by inviting teams to visit the conference office during their travels through/near Salt Lake City airport, and hosting Captains’ Huddles per sport as Zoom meetings to engage directly on topical issues; and

• Relocating the conference headquarters to Farmington, Utah, where a new office just 20 minutes from Salt Lake City airport provides the ability to host meetings and displays a backlit Big Sky logo facing all eight lanes of traffic on busy I-15;

 
With nearly 20 years of experience on campus in intercollegiate athletics, Satter brought to the Big Sky his significant experience and understanding of working knowledge.

“We are eager to continue enhancing the world-class experience the conference provides its student-athletes, coaches, alumni, and fans while embodying what NCAA Division I intercollegiate athletics should be about,” Satter said. “I am particularly enthused to do so while fulfilling and representing the mission and values that make the Big Sky unique and exceptional.”

Before moving to Utah, Satter spent four years as the Deputy Director of Athletics at Boston University, serving as the chief operating officer responsible for the daily operations of BU's NCAA Division I athletic department with 600 student-athletes on 24 varsity teams supported by 100 coaches and staff. Satter oversaw the business office and budget, human resources, marketing and communications, facilities and operations, capital planning, community relations, analytics, and information technology. He also served as the sport administrator for six teams, including men’s basketball, women’s soccer, women’s ice hockey, women’s golf, and men’s and women’s swimming and diving.

Prior to BU, Satter spent five years at the University of Akron, where he worked under its then-athletic director Wistrcill as the Senior Associate Athletics Director for External Relations. At Akron, he was responsible for revenue generation and oversaw marketing, sports information, ticket operations, new media, social media, and the department’s multimedia rights. He was the liaison for ISP/IMG College and IMG Learfield Ticketing Solutions, and served as the sport administrator for men’s basketball while assisting Wistrcill with overseeing football. During his tenure, nine different Zips’ programs earned conference titles, and men’s soccer captured the 2010 NCAA Division I national championship -- the first NCAA team title in Mid-American Conference history.

During his first stint at BU from 2007 to 2010, Satter served as Assistant Athletic Director for Marketing Communications before being promoted to Associate Athletic Director for Marketing Communications in 2009. During his time there, the Terriers men’s ice hockey team won the 2009 NCAA Division I national title, and Satter served as the sport administrator for men’s and women’s tennis, men’s and women’s swimming and diving, and women’s golf.

Before joining the Terriers in 2007, Satter served for three years as the Assistant General Manager for the Pitt ISP Sports Network at the University of Pittsburgh. Prior to ISP Sports, Satter worked directly for the University of Pittsburgh's athletic department. He also worked for the University of North Carolina athletic department, and with Learfield Communications for one year in its Tar Heel Sports Marketing office. While at Carolina, Satter broadcast UNC men’s and women’s soccer matches on the radio and internet, including the 2001 men’s and 2002 women’s NCAA Division I national titles.

Satter received his bachelor's degree from the University of North Carolina with a double major in history and journalism & mass communication (with a news-editorial concentration)., and then remained in Chapel Hill to earn a master's degree from UNC in exercise and sport science with a concentration in sport administration.

As part of that program, he also taught various undergraduate physical education courses and interned in the Tar Heel athletic department. In December 2007, Satter received a master's in business administration from Carnegie Mellon's Tepper School of Business, with concentrations in organizational behavior, marketing, and strategy.

A native of Framingham, Mass., Satter has served as a guest speaker at dozens of sports conferences and college classes about sport administration, external relations and branding, multimedia rights, finances in college sports, and crisis management. He also has edited five books and ghost-written a foreword for Dick Vitale.