By Wilton Jackson / APSE Diversity Fellows
Big South Commissioner Sherika Montgomery said Friday that she remains committed to creating equity for student-athletes while governing the shift in college athletics policies due to NIL (name, image and likeness), the transfer portal and the future of revenue sharing.
Montgomery recently finished her first year as commissioner of the conference based in Charlotte, N.C. However, she is no stranger to the Big South. Montgomery played basketball at Gardner-Webb before transitioning to athletics administration, working in multiple roles in the Big South from 2010-17, including a stint as associate athletic director at Winthrop.
However, Montgomery’s passion lives in investigating athletic scandals, violations and compliance, things that she learned as the assistant director of enforcement at the NCAA’s national office and as the Summit League’s associate commissioner for governance and compliance.
With the NCAA recently approving a proposed settlement of three antitrust lawsuits — including the House v. NCAA — that would result in the monumental change of athlete revenue sharing and the House Committee on Education and Work Force approving a bill to avoid athlete employment on June 13, Montgomery said the landscape of college sports will not be the same going forward.
“It’s a very transformative time in intercollegiate athletics,” Montgomery said Friday during a Q&A session at the APSE Summer Conference in Charlotte. “I always tell coaches it won’t look like it did 18 years ago. We will always have intercollegiate athletics, but it will just look vastly different.”
As the latest changes unfold, most leagues outside of the Power Five — ACC, SEC, Big 10, Big 12 and Pac 12 — and the Group of Five are still feeling the ramifications from NIL, conference realignment and the transfer portal. Despite the rat race in programs seeking power, money and national prominence, Montgomery believes the Big South’s fundamental purpose is still providing quality experiences for student-athletes, including those transferring from other schools.
“We have very different challenges and areas of emphasis to what [Commissioner] Jim [Phillips] may be worrying about in the ACC,” Montgomery said. “How can we recruit and attract student-athletes who might be 12 or 13 on an ACC team but can come to the Big South and be that man or woman. … I still think that level playing field is important.”
Montgomery also touched on other topics, including the expansion of the men’s NCAA tournament by four or eight teams in 2025-26. However, in that expansion, she said it was important for her league to keep access “across the board” to the postseason event.
“Access to [tournament], access to revenue and access to governance,” Montgomery said. “Those three things, regardless of the changes, we’ll make it work.”
When Montgomery became the Big South’s fourth commissioner following Kyle Kallander’s retirement after 27 years, she also became the league’s first female and Black commissioner. But to her it is “all she knows.”
“If I was to name my top four to five mentors, it would be the previous stops that I’ve been, and they have mostly been male, and out of those [stops], five were Caucasian males,” Montgomery said. “ … But I tell my female athletes, ‘If you can see it, you can be it and when you can’t see it, you have to imagine it.’ ”
