Former Hawkeye A.J. Edds has pivotal role with Big Ten at pivotal time for growing conference

INDIANAPOLIS — A.J. Edds was, in many ways, at home as the former Hawkeye linebacker sat aside a table along the east sideline of Lucas Oil Stadium.

He was on the same turf field where he played for part of his NFL career. It was a mere 15 miles or so north of Greenwood, the Indianapolis suburb where he grew up.

He was — naturally for someone who has spent much of his life around the game — talking about football.

More specifically, he was talking with The Gazette about his takeaways from four years of playing football at Iowa and seeing success as a “culmination of all those daily activities, the daily accountability, the daily commitment, everything coming to fruition.”

Edds had to pause that thought, though, as Nebraska Coach Matt Rhule walked by the table midway through the interview with a not-so-subtle request.

Rhule wants his coffee, he lightheartedly reminded Edds on the artificial turf field where strictly only water is allowed.

“We’ll get you one, we’ll get you one,” Edds told Rhule, all while not losing his train of thought in the interview.

The coffee ask is a minuscule part of Edds’ responsibilities as the Big Ten’s vice president for football administration. (As Maryland Coach Mike Locksley describes it, commissioner Tony Petitti “relies on him to run the football part of our league.”)

Rhule’s request is symbolic, though, of Edds’ “whatever I can do” mindset — one that has served him well on his relatively quick rise to the job of literally running the sport for the Big Ten.

“I try to approach these guys on their terms, on their ground, wherever they’re at and be a resource,” Edds said. “At the end of the day, we’re a membership organization.”

Coffee needs aside, Edds is involved in several different facets of Big Ten football. The exact list of responsibilities “depends on the time of year.”

He could be “working really closely with extensions of the head coach on any number of items” during the season, including game operations and officiating.

“Sundays are busy days, as they should be and as is expected,” Edds said. “Sunday is debriefing and recapping the game and however it went and being able to address questions and field feedback.”

Edds has the “most engagement and the most committed conversation” with coaches in the offseason, though. It’s when coaches have more time, and it’s when Edds and the Big Ten “can really take their feedback” and act on it.

“A great example of that is, this past offseason, coaches’ feedback on advancing technology,” Edds said. “Sideline tablets, coach-to-player communication, the incorporation of a two-minute timeout — that came straight from our coaches’ groups.”

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Petitti specifically mentioned Edds in his opening remarks at Big Ten football media days when describing how the conference has “championed legislation permitting coach-to-player helmet communication and the use of sideline video by student-athletes and coaches.”

Edds has been on the NCAA’s football rules committee since 2023 and is the co-chair with Georgia Coach Kirby Smart, giving him a “unique position” to have a “direct forum to be able to represent that feedback from our coaches.”

The Iowa alum also is tasked with managing the Big Ten’s relationships with its bowl partners, whether it be the Citrus Bowl in Orlando or the Detroit Bowl (previously known as the Quick Lane Bowl).

“The head coaches during the season — they just want to know there’s a great bowl at the end of the road for them,” Edds said. “They don’t get too in the weeds on which bowl it may be until maybe the last week of the season. … That’s an omnipresent relationship that we’re working on developing and always tweaking, if there’s an opportunity to do so.”

In the season, that entails managing “expectations for all parties — our institutions, our bowl partners.” In the offseason, that involves “ensuring that we have a robust, defined group of bowl partners in world-class cities playing in professional-grade facilities against like-minded opponents.”

His leadership comes at a key time for the conference. The Big Ten, now with 18 teams spanning from Los Angeles to Piscataway, N.J., will be competing in a landscape highlighted by a 12-team College Football Playoff and major changes surrounding athlete compensation.

Edds, who began football administration duties in 2021 and fully took the reins in 2022, has earned glowing reviews from coaches across the newly expanded league.

“He’s, from my perspective, doing a great, great job,” Iowa Coach Kirk Ferentz said. “He and Tony Petitti make a great team. So it’s been good for all of us.”

Edds, Minnesota Coach P.J. Fleck said, is “amazing.”

“You talk about somebody who has to take in a ton of information — and not information, opinions and people who believe in that opinion dramatically — and then make sense of all of it,” Fleck said. “And listen to a bunch of head coaches and then do a lot of other things in the Big Ten. He brings a lot of clarity, I think, to the Big Ten.”

Locksley similarly said the Big Ten is “really fortunate to have A.J.”

“He played (football) at the highest level,” Locksley said. “He gets it. To have a football guy that understands what we’re saying as coaches, that’s not always the case.”

From field hockey to football

Edds first started at the Big Ten in 2017 as an assistant director for sports administration — a role that was “100 percent Olympic sports.”

“Admittedly, I didn’t know much about field hockey, and I was our field hockey administrator on Day 1,” Edds said. “Swimming and diving, very much the same.”

Edds, who was in his early 30s at the time and only a couple years removed from the end of his NFL career, was in charge of field hockey, men’s and women’s swimming and diving and men’s golf.

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“I think there was some skepticism that, ‘Hey, this young professional who played football, does he really care about field hockey? Can he really handle this?’” since-retired Iowa athletics director Gary Barta said. “He quickly proved that he can. No matter what the sport, he was willing to roll up his sleeves and get busy.”

Edds, Iowa head field hockey coach Lisa Cellucci said, was a “fantastic field hockey admin for the Big Ten.”

“He asked great questions of the coaches, listened really well and was very proactive and super timely with getting us the information we needed,” Cellucci said. “He is a super personable guy, so I know the field hockey coaches all really enjoyed him as our rep.”

He then became associate director for football and sports administration in 2021. Less than a year later, he was promoted again to senior director for football administration.

His most recent promotion was in January to vice president for football administration — a move made by Petitti less than a year into his tenure as Big Ten commissioner.

Petitti’s decision to keep Edds in charge of football “was one of the best decisions he ever made,” Fleck said.

Petitti’s retention and promotion of Edds also is not something to be taken lightly, considering the nature of leadership changes in college athletics.

“I know Tony thinks very highly of him because it’s like anything else,” Locksley said. “When you come in as a new coach, you sometimes want to bring your own coordinators in. And for A.J. to withstand the change and flourish and grow in the role to where he’s taking on more responsibility — it’s great to see from him, and he’s a great young leader.”

Edds’ early initiative in college

The magnitude of Edds’ role as the Big Ten’s vice president for football administration would be hard for a young Edds to truly wrap his head around.

“A.J. would have been doing back flips to be able to work as the primary football administrator for the Big Ten as a 30-something-year-old now,” Edds said.

He might be the only one to not see this coming, though. Former Iowa linebacker (and incoming radio color commentator) Pat Angerer is “not surprised at all” at Edds’ success.

“Honestly, I thought he was going to be the athletic director or president of the United States,” Angerer said. “He’s that type of guy — well spoken, good leader, good man.”

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After all, he had the benefit of seeing Edds’ success up close during their shared tenure as starting linebackers together at Iowa in the late 2000s. (They were part of a 2009 defense that ranked in the top 10 nationally in yards allowed per game and played a large part in Iowa finishing No. 7 in the final AP Poll — the best finish of the Ferentz era.)

“The way that defense was set up was we relied heavily on him, and he did the dirty work, and then I was able to make all the tackles,” Angerer said with his usual sense of humor. “He was a huge, important piece of that defense. … As much as I want to say something terrible about him, I just can’t. I was hoping this was going to be a hit piece.”

Ferentz saw Edds’ off-the-field potential during his playing days as well.

“You could tell when you coached him, certain guys just have a maturity to them and a vision,” Ferentz said. “Seemed like he wanted to get into athletics in some form or fashion. Not necessarily in coaching, he was smarter than that.”

Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of Edds’ preparations for his current career in sports administration was not in Iowa’s football facility, but rather Carver-Hawkeye Arena. Edds, who was “drawn to athletic administration” in college, reached out to Barta — Iowa’s AD at the time.

“As a freshman, he set up the appointment, which takes a certain amount of boldness for a freshman to want to do that,” Barta said in a phone call with The Gazette.

Barta was “really impressed” with Edds’ initiative.

“Most freshmen are just trying to understand which end is up, and he was already mature enough and confident enough to set up that appointment and not be intimidated,” said Barta, who was AD at Iowa for 17 years until his retirement in 2023.

Edds wanted to “see a day in the life of an athletic director at the Big Ten level,” he said, and Barta was “more than gracious.”

Barta — a “tremendous supporter of mine,” Edds said — let the linebacker “watch and see and listen and learn” for a half-day during the summer.

“It was probably ordinary for Gary,” Edds said, recalling that day more than a decade later. “It felt like a whirlwind for me, I’ll say that. It was busy. … Calls, meetings, some unexpected stuff, folks popping in that weren’t on the schedule that Gary made time to see.”

Those few hours of watching Barta work had a lasting impact on Edds.

“Seeing his ability to digest information was really what stuck with me,” Edds said. “Hearing something and calculating the next thing, or two or three or four, that were coming. Or a series of things that might be coming in response to what he just heard.”

Edds also did an internship with the University of Iowa Center for Advancement between his junior and senior years of college. Edds does not think he “raised any funds,” but it gave him a “little taste of how that stuff works” while working for Matt Henderson, who has since been promoted to one of Iowa’s deputy AD positions.

The Hawkeye linebacker continued to glean as much as he could from Barta in later interactions as well.

“At some point along the way, I mentioned to him, ‘Boy, I’d like to have your job someday,’” Edds said. “And he said, ‘There are days you can have it right now.’ Which is pretty funny.”

Barta’s joke had some delayed truth to it, as Barta now enjoys retirement and Edds works at the highest levels of college athletics administration.

“It doesn’t surprise me based on those early interactions and then watching him as a player and as a young professional,” Barta said. “He goes that extra mile, and he’s mature beyond his years.”

At 36, ‘the sky’s the limit’ for A.J. Edds

At age 36 and already in a vice presidential role for the Big Ten, Edds has plenty of career potential over the next three-plus decades. While Edds’ preference is to keep the focus on the present, those who have seen his work up close — either past or present — are happy to hype his future.

“I’m never going to say these nice things to his face, but I think the sky’s the limit,” Angerer said. “Whatever he wants to do, he’s going to be extremely successful at it.”

Minnesota’s Fleck has an even more specific prediction for Edds’ future.

“If he wants to be, I think he’s going to be a commissioner of a league at some point,” Fleck told The Gazette.

First, though, Fleck’s counterpart at Nebraska needs his caffeine fix.

My new favorite Big Ten Media Days tradition is the excitement on Matt Rhule's face when a cup of coffee shows up at his podium table https://t.co/3keFatlNVI pic.twitter.com/xVN8IAAHwE

— Blake Hornstein (@BlakeHornTV) July 24, 2024

Comments: john.steppe@thegazette.com

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