Chris Del Conte, University of Texas, Vice President and Lois and Richard Folger Athletics Director
About the Program
An overview of the current state of college athletics, including NIL, revenue sharing, transfer portals, current facility projects at Texas, building resilient teams, and servant leadership in athletics.
About the Speaker
Chris Del Conte is a proven, well-regarded, and nationally recognized athletics administrator with a long history of leading highly successful athletic departments. Now in his eighth year at UT and his 20th year as an athletics director overall, Del Conte has strong ties to the Lone Star State, having spent a dozen years at TCU and Rice before taking over leadership of Texas Athletics on December 9, 2017. His 31 years of experience as a collegiate administrator are wide-ranging and far-reaching, with previous stops at Arizona, Washington State, and Cal Poly.
Texas Athletics has achieved tremendous success during his tenure, winning 15 NCAA team titles and recording 15 NCAA runner-up finishes, for a total of 30 NCAA Championship top-two finishes. During his time at UT, the Longhorns have also posted an additional 12 third-place finishes, along with 60 top-five and 86 top-ten team showings at NCAA Championships. The program has also captured 82 conference championships (73 Big 12, 8 SEC, and 1 CSCA).
In their first year in the SEC (2024–25), the Longhorns won a league-best eight conference championships—twice as many as any other SEC program. Team accomplishments during Del Conte’s tenure include back-to-back College Football Playoff semifinal appearances in 2023 and 2024 (the only school to advance to the CFP in both seasons), a Women’s Basketball Final Four appearance in 2025, Elite Eight appearances by both men’s and women’s basketball, a Women’s College World Series championship in softball in 2025, and three College World Series appearances in baseball. Volleyball, Women’s Golf, Women’s Tennis, and Rowing have all earned back-to-back national championships during his time at UT.
These accomplishments were capped by Texas claiming the prestigious LEARFIELD Directors’ Cup as the nation’s top all-around athletics program in back-to-back years (2020–21 and 2024–25), making it four of the past five years overall. UT snapped Stanford’s 25-year streak in 2020–21, joining the Cardinal as the only programs to win the Directors’ Cup in consecutive years when Texas repeated in 2021–22 and again in 2024–25. After a narrow runner-up finish in 2022–23, the Longhorns reclaimed the nation’s all-sports crown in 2023–24 and repeated again in 2024–25. Including the runner-up finish, Texas has placed in the top five of the Directors’ Cup standings in each of Del Conte’s eight years leading the program.
Del Conte has also redefined fan engagement and the game-day atmosphere at Longhorn sporting events through initiatives such as Bevo Blvd., Longhorn City Limits, and Smokey’s Midway on football game days. He has spearheaded numerous facility upgrades and development projects to keep Texas at the forefront of college athletics. The state-of-the-art South End Zone project at DKR–Texas Memorial Stadium opened in 2021, followed by the opening of the Moody Center for men’s and women’s basketball for the 2022–23 season. Texas also broke ground on a new Football Indoor Training Facility in the fall of 2024 and is currently undertaking additional renovations and upgrades at DKR–Texas Memorial Stadium.
Agenda:
6:45am - Coffee & Networking
7:10am - Breakfast Buffet
7:25am - Introductions & Announcements
7:50am - Speaker Introduction
8:20am - Q&A
8:30am - Leave inspired or curious!
