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Joe Mitch – United States Basketball Writers Association, Retired Executive Director/Missouri Valley Conference, Retired Associate Commissioner

CoSIDA Hall of Fame Class of 2020
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 Joe Mitch with expanded answers and thank yous.
 


by John Akers, Publisher of Basketball Times

Every one of Joe Mitch’s 50 years in college athletics was Hall of Fame-worthy.
 
Proof of that came when CoSIDA named Mitch to its Hall of Fame last week – the third of his career and his second selection since February. All three of those honors – by the Missouri Valley Conference in 2015, the U.S. Basketball Writers Association (USBWA) in February and now CoSIDA – covers a portion of Mitch’s illustrious half-century in college sports.
 
“My priority as executive director of the USBWA was to work with the media to improve working conditions for writers covering basketball,” said Mitch, who served the media as the USBWA’s longest-running executive director, from 1983-2019. “I think that attitude traces back to my days as an SID.”
 
Mitch and five others will be inducted into the CoSIDA Hall of Fame on June 8 during the annual CoSIDA Convention at Mandalay Bay Resort and Conference Center in Las Vegas.
 
 
Mitch attended journalism school at Michigan State with the intent to get into newspaper work. He had an offer after his 1968 graduation to cover prep sports at a Rochester, N.Y., newspaper before Michigan State sports information director Fred Stabley suggested that he apply for an opening as the SID at the school then known as Illinois-Chicago Circle.
 
“I thought it would be cool to be in Chicago,” Mitch recalled with a laugh, “with my favorite sports teams being the Cubs and the Bears.”
 
He got the job and was hooked.
 
“It was just a joy for me to be able to work with writers and to serve them,” he said.
 
That began a 20-year stretch of working directly with the media. He continued with jobs at Southern Illinois, Dayton, Saint Louis and the Metro Conference and Missouri Valley Conference. The common denominator was their strong basketball programs.
 
Mitch was at Dayton when the Flyers went three overtimes with Bill Walton and UCLA before losing a 111-104 thriller in the first round of the 1974 NCAA tournament. The number 13,458 – the size of a UD Arena sellout – is forever etched in Mitch’s mind. At the Metro, he experienced the great rivalries between Louisville, Cincinnati and Memphis.
 
Mitch was hired by the Missouri Valley Conference in 1985 and was promoted within three years to associate commissioner, a title he held for nearly 25 years. He was the director of the conference basketball tournament from 1985-2012, including the first 22 Arch Madness events in St. Louis. Mitch was tournament manager of seven NCAA Tournaments (1993, 1998, 1999, 2004, 2007 and 2010 Midwest Regionals and the 2002 Midwest First/Second Rounds), local media coordinator for the 1978 NCAA Final Four in St. Louis and three Midwest Regionals (1975, 1979 and 1982) and worked numerous other NCAA basketball tournaments as a media relations specialist.
 
He also was the MVC’s administrator of baseball and the primary staff contact for MVC Sports Properties, which handles television advertising and sponsorship sales.
 
During that stretch, Mitch also served the media as the USBWA’s longest-running executive director, starting in 1983 through his retirement in May of 2019.
 
His decades as an SID and with the Valley and the USBWA are now all accounted for by one Hall of Fame or another. He was inducted into the MVC Hall of Fame in 2015 in the Lifetime Achievement category.
 
Fittingly, Mitch also will be inducted in April, during the NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Final Four in Atlanta, to a USBWA Hall of Fame that he helped create.
 
Mitch was five years into his 36-year career as the executive director of the USBWA when he went to the board with an idea about how to honor members.
 
That was just one of Mitch’s many accomplishments with the USBWA.
 
Under his leadership:

• The USBWA multiplied from roughly 200 members to today’s membership of more than 800.
• The USBWA gained financial stability through Mitch’s fund-raising experience.
• Pool reporters gained access to officials and breakout sessions were provided for players during NCAA tournaments.
• Seminars and scholarships were provided to high school and college students at each Final Four over the past two decades.
• The nation’s top player, coach and freshman were honored annually at a postseason gala, currently in St. Louis.
• Hall of Fame inductees and winners of the Katha Quinn, Most Courageous and Rising Star awards are honored at a luncheon on the Monday of each NCAA men’s basketball championship game, though it took no small amount of trial and error to transform what began as a poorly attended annual breakfast.

 
“I asked (past president Bill) Brill how we could get members to attend, and he said to serve beer,” Mitch recalled. “The next year, we got Coors Light as a sponsor, and we had beer and scrambled eggs for breakfast.”
 
Mitch paused for effect.
 
“It was well attended.”
 
It can safely be said that no member has cared for – or worried about – the USBWA more than Joe Mitch. Or likely ever will.
 
Modestly, Mitch credited past presidents too numerous to mention for aiding him during his nearly four-decade run with the USBWA.
Fittingly, tributes from these past presidents rolled in when Mitch announced in May 2019 that he was retiring as the USBWA’s executive director.
 
“The USBWA would have curled up and died years ago without you,” wrote Pat Forde, now of Sports Illustrated.
 
Noted author and Washington Post columnist John Feinstein wrote of Mitch’s “remarkable decency.” Bob Hammel, longtime sports editor of the Bloomington, Ind., Herald-Times, said Mitch lifted a “good organization to heights none of us could have imagined way back when.”
 
Mitch was leaving the USBWA at its apex, according to Dave Dorr, a former columnist for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
 
“Back in the day, the USBWA was a feel-good organization,” Dorr said. “Presidents’ roles were largely honorary. Your management style of patience, sensitivity and ability to find sponsors carried the day. You transformed the USBWA. Members will long benefit from your legacy down the road.”
 
Add them to a long list of athletic communications professionals and Valley coaches and administrators who were also touched by Joe Mitch’s Hall of Fame-worthy half-century of service and commitment.