Q&A: Northwestern AD Mark Jackson
The Wildcats' athletic director goes long with The Inside Zone as he approaches one year in his new role.
EVANSTON, Ill. — Mark Jackson’s glass-encased office looks directly into Martin Stadium, doubling as a luxury box of sorts on game days, at least for this year. Since moving in from Villanova last September, Northwestern’s athletic director has embraced his football team’s temporary home while pushing forward with its new one, as the rebuilt Ryan Field is still on track to open in time for the 2026 season.
The Inside Zone sat down with Jackson last week to learn more about those stadium plans — both current and new stadiums — in addition to picking his brain on revenue-sharing, his new general manager, his process with extending (Chris Collins) and hiring basketball coaches (Joe McKeown is set to retire after this upcoming season) and much more.
This conversation has been lightly edited for brevity and clarity.
Coming up on a year since you've been here, obviously this place has a reputation, but going through it now, how did that kind of match reality? And what have you learned about just this market, this place, this football program from being here?
Mark Jackson: Yeah, I think the things you kind of know going in and things you want to count on going in have all held true, right, in terms of academic prestige, number six institution in the world, elite facilities, highest standard of excellence in everything that we do — small, global, influential alumni base, all those things. When you make a big decision like this, you want to count on, those have all exceeded expectations. I think for me, the first time being in the Big Ten, understanding like the power of the Big Ten, and I'm a huge believer that commissioner Tony (Petitti) is the thought leader when it comes to college athletics, and I love his leadership, but I love the connectivity we have across all the team institutions and how we work together. I didn't know that, obviously, going in. So that has stood out to me.
Being a part of a project like this $850 million project, I did not know the Ryan family, and certainly I knew of their generosity and their commitment across so much not only at Northwestern but across Chicago and the country. But to get in the weeds on it and understand the thought and effort that went into the design and development, particularly directly through Ryan Sports has been phenomenal. I didn't understand that this isn't just your typical donor relationship, where it's just a generous gift. They're leading this in so many different ways: design, development, construction, timeline. We have a role to play, obviously, in the product we put on the field, in our sales process, marketing, the things that we're responsible for. But that stood out, the entire family's commitment to making sure this is a world-class project, top to bottom. So that's been exciting.
And then the caliber of head coaches across the board, 21 sports. I knew of them from afar. I didn't know them personally. When you get here and you understand what kind of people they are, there's no mistaking that, why they have success. They stay here for all the right reasons. This isn't a transient place. College athletics is so transactional now and transient; this place isn’t. Our retention rate with our student-athletes, our football team, men’s basketball team, women's basketball team, but particularly with our head coaches as well. People stay. And I think that speaks to the overall culture of the place, which 11 months in, I fell in love with it. And my wife just got here two days ago. Two of my four kids are here now. So yeah, that's kind of my assessment. I'm really, really excited for the future. I think we have a chance to do it differently, because of all the things I just mentioned. We have all the right ingredients. We're not like anybody else. It's not easy, but we have all the right ingredients. And it starts with really good people.
There aren't new college football stadiums, right? Whether it's Notre Dame or Penn State, they go through similar undertakings, but they don't tear down and rebuild. I imagine that opportunity when you're interviewing to build something new was attractive. How do you try to honor that and make it uniquely Northwestern, knowing that you're one of the few power conference schools that would ever even have the opportunity to do this?
MJ: I don't want to pretend to take any credit for it. A lot of these balls were in motion prior to my arrival. So the Ryans and Northwestern (were responsible). At USC, I was part of the early stages of the Coliseum redevelopment. And then at Villanova, we re-did the Finneran Pavilion. But both were, to your point, redevelopment projects, like a lot of people in the country. But to build one from the ground up, it doesn't happen very often, as you know. I think Baylor and Snapdragon right out in San Diego, which is kind of mixed-use like ours will be. But I think to do it with the Ryans, then I was obviously aware of their reputation, when you think about this building of Ryan Fieldhouse and all that the Ryans have done, you knew it was going to be world-class, and the amount of resources they were putting into it, but the thought and dedication and how they just wanted it done right was certainly attractive.
I think one of the concerns when you're in the Big Ten, particularly now, is your ability to go out and generate long-term viable revenue. And from Northwestern, prior to this project, there weren't a lot of levers to pull, right? We had basketball going, Welsh-Ryan, again, the Ryan family put a lot of money into that, and that has generated resources we've never had before. But we talked about it, right? The old Ryan Field, and even the new pop-up, as much as we've tried to create premium in there, it still pales in comparison to what we compete against, right? So to do this project the right way, to be realistic, to be uniquely Northwestern, this isn't 80,000 seats, it's 35,000. That's by design, knowing who we are and what we're about. But to be connected to Chicago, to be connected to the Big Ten, we know that when Big Ten (fan) bases come to Chicago, they want a great experience, we can provide that. We know we're dialed into one of the most attractive corporate bases probably in the world, a half-hour away, and that's going to be an element of this stadium, too, that was really attractive to me, to go out and get these corporate partnerships and have tremendous momentum early on with those kinds of relationships, cornerstone partners. To make it a 365-day type of event space, too, I'm really excited about. I've never done that before. We've talked about concerts, community events. We think there's opportunities for professional sports organizations to utilize the space.
We're obviously hosting the women's lacrosse Final Four for the first time here at the lakefront, but we hope that's a repetitive business where we can do not only the women's lacrosse Final Four, but the men's lacrosse Final Four. Maybe it's a soccer championship. The list goes on and on of the things that we can do. So all that combined, again, we're not trying to be like anybody else. But we can elevate so much fan experience, revenue, connectivity to a different demographic than we've ever been able to do before. So that was all really exciting to me.