College Sports Information Directors of America

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Rosa Gatti – ESPN (retired)

CoSIDA Hall of Fame
Presented to CoSIDA members who have made outstanding contributions to the field of sports information in intercollegiate athletics. Minimum 15 years in the profession. Voted on by current CoSIDA Hall of Fame Members and the Special Awards Committee.

There are three categories for Hall of Fame nominations: University Division (NCAA DI), College Division (NCAA DII, DIII, NAIA, Two-year colleges and Canadian/U Sports) and Veterans (retirees/deceased/ former members who have left the sports information profession). All CURRENT professionals shall be nominated in the University and College Divisions, while all other nominees (retirees, deceased and those who have left the profession) shall be part of the Veterans nomination process.

Note: CoSIDA Hall of Fame members of the Class of 2020 and Class of 2021 were celebrated in pre-recorded awards shows during the #CoSIDA21 Virtual Convention. Click here to watch the show. Below is the full interview with Rosa Gatti with expanded answers and thank yous. 
 


ESPN Pioneer Added to CoSIDA’s Hall of Fame
 by Bill Little – retired University of Texas / CoSIDA Special Awards Committee
 
The word “respect” is one of the more interesting nouns in the world’s various English dictionaries.

“Respect,” they tell us, is an emotion that is “a feeling of deep admiration for someone…elicited by their abilities, qualities or achievements.”

It is a very special state of mind; one that cannot be demanded.  It is given, it is earned.

And that, my friends, defines Rosa Gatti.

Rosa Gatti grew up outside of the heart of Philadelphia, with a mom and dad who taught her the enduring value of three things:  Faith, Family, and Friends.

To have friends, you have to be a friend, and as Rosa takes her place in the CoSIDA Hall of Fame as a Veteran’s selection, the college athletic communications profession has never had a better friend, or a stronger advocate.

So how did this girl from Philly who grew up in a time when the SID profession was dominated by men manage to become one of the true giants of the sports media world?

This is her story.

“I grew up as the oldest of five,” she said. “Our Sunday ritual was to watch the Philadelphia Eagles before dinner. I pestered my Dad about why penalties were called. We would watch the Flyers (My Dad was one of the first to get a regional cable package) and the Big Five…particularly Villanova (my Dad’s alma mater) and St. Joe’s. My Mom loved baseball.”
 

The watching of sports was accompanied by some serious participation.

“With two brothers,” she said, “I played all types of sports in the neighborhood.”

But entering a relatively unknown field of sports publicity was not on her radar as a possible career when she headed to college at Villanova in the late 1960s.

“I had no idea the job existed. Young women didn’t think abut sports as a career unless you were a coach,” she said.

While the path may not have seemed clear, Rosa didn’t have to look very far for role models when she was growing up. The will to do the right thing never left.

“I always had conviction.  If something didn’t seem right, I would push myself to speak up. I learned to present arguments with good research, and the facts. Sometimes I had to just respond with my gut…in the moment.

“My Mom was strong and gave me good advice, and Dad provided quiet wisdom and humor. As far as female role models, I knew of many women in history and had teachers who made a difference for me.  It also dawns on me that growing up Catholic, we studied the major female saints such as Joan of Arc, St. Bernadette, St. Teresa…talk about role models!” 

But the passion never left. When she graduated from ‘Nova in 1972, she was hired by her alma mater in the sports information office. And in 1974, achieving the first of her many “firsts” she was named as the Director of Sports Information at Villanova.

“Most men supported me,” she recalls. “The late Father President McCarthy, an Augustinian, put me in the job against a few naysayers, skeptics. Frankly, I was scared. Could I do it?” 

Rosa was the first woman to serve as the head SID at a university with Division IA football, and the first in the Big Five. With two close friends who shared her gender and her passion in the late Katha Quinn (St. John’s) and late Mary Jo Haverbeck (Penn State), she pioneered the collegiate publicity field in the nation’s biggest markets at the time.

In 1976, Brown University hired her as the first Ivy League female SID over all sports, and while there until 1980, she served as president of the ECAC-SIDA and served terms as the second and first VP of CoSIDA, and was on the officer track to become the organization’s first woman president.

Destiny, as we all know, is an interesting traveling companion, and as 1980 approached, Destiny and Rosa Gatti took a brave path in a new direction.

“I had moved into the officer rotation when Rod Commons left the Northeast for Washington State, and frankly, I was both honored and scared to lead such a large organization,” she said. In 1991, the late June Stewart of Vanderbilt became the “first” as CoSIDA’s initial woman president.

“I was delighted,” Rosa said. “June had all the skills and wisdom to be in that role. And I am in awe of the many women who continue to blaze trails in the profession.”

A year or so after Rosa had stepped out of her role as an officer in CoSIDA and the SID at Brown, a fledgling new adventure was beginning.

The CoSIDA workshop in 1980 was held in the Alameda Hotel in Kansas City, and late one afternoon, a group of friends gathered in the hotel bar. Chuck Howard, the legendary producer for ABC Sports, was talking with his old friend, Scotty Connal, who was embarking on a project called the “Entertainment and Sports Programming Network.” It would soon become known as “ESPN.”

“How,” asked Howard, “are you guys going to have enough programming to make this work?”

Rosa Gatti, who had just joined the new venture, might have been wondering the same thing.

“ESPN President Chet Simmons, with feedback from founder Bill Rasmussen, wanted a woman on his team. In our senior management meetings of about ten people, we were seriously concerned,” Rosa recalls. “We lost $100 million in our first four years.”

But the cavalry was on its way.

 “It was the reaction of students and alumni that convinced us we were delivering a service in demand,” she said.

Even with the ground swell of support, it wasn’t an easy sell, even for the best in the business.

“I was intrigued and uncertain.  In the early years, I was traveling most every weekend for our college football games and other sports events. Armed  with press kits, I would meet with editors and news directors in their offices and explain ESPN. ‘Rosa,’ they would say, ‘why should we cover ESPN when not many people here get cable?”

Rosa, pulling from her SID roots, began pitching unusual, creative stories…the things people were missing on network television.

This imperfectly perfect ambassador of the trade, who could joust with the leaders of the sports world and just as easily share a lively intellectual discussion over dinner and drinks, will be the first to tell you that the road wasn’t always easy, and sometimes, things didn’t go exactly as planned.

“I made a ton of mistakes,” she says.  “But, I always tried to learn from them.”

It is important to understand that when ESPN started, the NCAA owned the rights for live telecasts of college football games, which it lucratively sold to ABC and CBS. All of that changed in 1984, when the courts ruled against the NCAA in a suit filed by the universities of Georgia and Oklahoma on behalf of other schools, claiming that the institutions themselves, and not the NCAA, owned the rights to their games.

With one fell swoop in the summer of 1984, the world of sports television changed. The industry was rapidly changing as the country accelerated its saturation of cable systems. ESPN was off and running, and so was the career of Rosa Gatti, who, in 1988, became the company’s Senior Vice President for Communications.

Rosa’s loyalty to her roots never left. For years, she was the driving force in ESPN’s continued sponsorship of CoSIDA, including the workshop’s opening reception. Along the way, she grew the company’s Corporate Outreach and Philanthropy initiatives, including multi-faceted projects for The V Foundation for Cancer Research, the Special Olympics, the Bristol Boys and Girls Club, and  Military/Veterans and disaster relief, among others.

In the 1980s, she served on the United States Olympic Committee’s public relations advisory committee, and helped develop its Crisis Communications Plan. In 2014, Rosa was honored by the USOC with the FLAME award for her contributions to diversity initiatives.

She has received numerous industry awards, and has served on many Boards of Directors, including Villanova, the V Foundation, the University of New Haven, the Franciscan Life Center, and the Association of Cable Communicators.

Rosa retired from ESPN in 2013. During her 33 years, among her varied duties in the communications field, she also served as ESPN’s corporate information liaison to ESPN’s parent company, The Walt Disney Company, contributing to public and investor relations communications and reorganized ESPN’s human relations department. In retirement, she currently serves as a consultant and on several non profit boards.

Including this induction into the CoSIDA Hall of Fame, Rosa Gatti is one the most decorated person in the organization’s history. She had already received the organization’s Jake Wade Award, given to a member of the media, the Arch Ward award, given to an SID for outstanding contributions, and the prestigious Keith Jackson Eternal Flame award for extraordinary contributions to CoSIDA and college athletics. 

In 2009, her love of her profession and her love of her friends came full circle, when she received the Mary Jo Haverbeck Trailblazer Award—named for her late friend, and given to an individual who is a pioneer in the field of sports information and who has mentored and helped improve the level of ethnic and gender diversity within CoSIDA.

What began with “pick-up” sports games in the neighborhood in Philadelphia continues to reflect an admittedly shy, yet smart, gentile and powerful woman who parlays strength and conviction and grace.

Back to the dictionary, the word “giant” is intriguing, because it has many definitions, and it is not gender specific.  Webster tells us that a “giant” is a “person of extraordinary powers….”

When it comes to Rosa Gatti, she would be the first to tell you that those powers are gifts, nurtured by faith, family, and friends.  It is a mandate for life, and it is a definition of how to live it.

And that, my friends, is Rosa Gatti.