College Sports Information Directors of America

PULLMAN, Wash. - Rod Commons, who ended more than 40 years in college athletics in the fall of 2008, will receive the College Sports Information Directors of America (CoSIDA) Lifetime Achievement Award.

Commons will receive the honor at the CoSIDA Convention luncheon Monday, July 5, at the San Francisco Marriott Marquis in San Francisco, Calif.

The CoSIDA Lifetime Achievement Award is presented to members who have served a minimum of 25 years in the profession and have retired or left the profession.

Commons, who served as president of CoSIDA in 2004-05 and was inducted into the CoSIDA Hall of Fame in 2007, started his media relations career in the fall of 1966 following graduation from Oregon State University.

He spent his final 32 years at Washington State University, serving as the Pacific-10 Conference school’s director of sports information for 31 years and held the title of assistant athletic director from 1981 until his retirement. He also spent three years at Brown University as the school’s sports information director from 1973-76.

As president of CoSIDA, Commons oversaw a national membership of more than 2,000 sports information personnel at NCAA, NAIA, junior college and Canadian colleges throughout North America.

In 2005 he received the Bill Esposito NIT-CoSIDA Presidential Citation, presented at the NIT finals in New York City. He served on several CoSIDA committees, among them Committee on Committees, Gambling Awareness, Post Graduate Scholarship and Site Selection and was the latter’s vice-chair of the western corridor.

The winner of numerous publication awards during his career, he missed just two CoSIDA workshops during the final 38 years of his career and helped spearhead the drive to hold the annual convention in Spokane in 1998.

Born in Portland, Ore., the 1961 graduate of Siletz (Ore.) High grew up on the family cattle ranch near the Eastern Lincoln County community of Nashville, which was named after his great grandfather Wallis Nash.

While at Siletz, Commons played baseball and was an active member of the Future Farmers of America and an annual exhibitor at the Lincoln County Fair in Newport.

During his undergraduate work at OSU while pursuing a bachelor’s degree in agriculture with a minor in journalism, Commons served three years as a photographer for the school’s student newspaper, The Barometer. He also spent time taking photographs for the Beaver yearbook, the Oregon Stater alumni magazine, and for the athletic department. In addition he was a charter member of OSU’s chapter of the national journalism society, known then as Sigma Delta Chi.

As an undergraduate he was involved in OSU’s Army ROTC unit for two years, a Pacific Northwest regimental staff member of Pershing Rifles, and a member of the Withycombe Club and the National Block and Bridle Club.

After graduating from Oregon State in the spring of 1966, Commons spent the following fall working for the OSU athletic department as a part-time assistant to John Eggers in the sports information office.

In January of 1967 he was named editor of the Newberg (Ore.) Graphic, a position he held for 14 months. While at the paper he served as vice president of the Newberg Area Chamber of Commerce.

He then returned to his alma mater in April of 1968 as the school’s full-time assistant sports information director, working for Eggers for five years. During his OSU career, Commons also served as photographer for the athletic department and helped coordinate Beaver Boys State activities each summer on the OSU campus. In addition he served as assistant coach for Richie’s Market American Legion baseball team, including the team that won the 1970 Oregon State American Legion championship.

Following his five-year stint at OSU, Commons was named the sports information director at Brown in 1973. During his last year at Brown, the Ivy League school hosted an NCAA basketball regional, the NCAA Division I Men’s Swimming Championships and the NCAA Division I Men’s Lacrosse Championship in a four-month span.

He also served as first vice president of the Eastern College Athletic Conference Sports Information Director’s Association and of the New England Sports Information Director’s Association, while also serving on the Rhode Island Words Unlimited board of directors.

Three years later, in 1976, he left Brown and joined the athletic staff at Washington State as sports information director. During his WSU career he has served as the school’s lead public relations contact while supervising a staff that grew to six full-time members.

During his 32 years at WSU, he developed a strong undergraduate work program for students with communications or sport management interests. In all, nearly 100 students gained valuable experience working in the WSU sports information office while he was director, along with 16 graduate student interns.

At WSU he was the lead contact for football and with the men’s basketball program during the George Raveling era. In addition he worked with longtime baseball coach “Bobo” Brayton, one of the winningest coaches in NCAA history. He also handled John Chaplin’s WSU men’s track program during the late 1970’s and early 1980’s when the Cougars were NCAA runners-up four times, and was the main contact for women’s basketball during the Harold Rhodes era, beginning in 1985.

Commons has been active in several national sports organizations, including the Football Writers of America and the National Collegiate Baseball Writers of America, serving as the latter organization’s president in 1996-97. He also is a member of the National Football Foundation and College Hall of Fame, Inland Empire Chapter (charter member), and a past member of the Track Writers of America and the U.S. Basketball Writers of America.

In addition to his duties as sports information director at WSU, Commons also was an adjunct faculty in the school’s sport management program, teaching a class in media relations for 14 years. He photographed nearly every student athlete who competed at OSU, Brown and WSU during his tenure and now serves as the primary action photographer for most WSU athletic events.

Commons and wife Linda, who he met when both took jobs in 1968 in the Oregon State University athletic department, have two daughters and six grandchildren. His spare time in retirement is taken up by photography, grandchildren and genealogy research, plus maintaining their three-acre “spread,” several horses and a few brush-clearing goats.