Jim Schaus is in his fourth year at the helm of the Southern Conference in 2022-23. He was introduced as the ninth commissioner in league history on July 1, 2019.
Throughout his tenure, Schaus has maintained conference solidarity during unprecedented conference transition, increased the league’s television coverage, overseen sustained excellence in men’s basketball nationally and championed the growth of the conference’s academic programming. The league has also celebrated its 100th anniversary and navigated the COVID-19 pandemic under Schaus’s leadership.
In his first year as commissioner, Schaus spearheaded the creation of a new long-term strategic plan for the league and led the effort to partner with JMI Sports to serve as the SoCon’s official multimedia rights holder.
Schaus also negotiated the SoCon’s entry into the Southeastern Conference’s officiating consortiums for both men’s basketball and football, moves that allow the member conferences to collaborate on all officiating matters related to recruitment, education and training, scheduling and evaluation of officials.
Also aimed at enhancing the league’s men’s basketball success, Schaus implemented a new right-size scheduling model designed to bolster the top teams’ national profiles and put them in position for better seeding and potential at-large bids into the NCAA tournament.
In addition, Schaus shepherded the league through its response to pandemic and ensuing sport season cancelations and cost-cutting measures.
In year two of Schaus's tenure, the league began its year-long celebration of its 100th season of competition. It also successfully navigated the COVID pandemic, as every season was completed.
Also in his second year at the helm, Schaus signed historic television contracts with ESPN and CBS Sports, guaranteeing the most linear national coverage the SoCon has ever enjoyed over the next five years. Schaus also successfully negotiated a contract extension to keep the league’s basketball tournaments in Asheville, North Carolina, through 2026.
The league continued to flourish on the national landscape in the second year of the Schaus era, with the SoCon finishing ninth in the RPI and 10th in the NET rankings in men's basketball. The SoCon had a pair of football squads finish in the top 25, marking the 38th time in 39 years that multiple league schools finished the season nationally ranked. That success persisted in Schaus’s third year on the job, with men’s basketball finishing 12th in the NET and 11th in the RPI and ETSU football finishing in the top 10 nationally and earning the No. 7 seed in the NCAA Division I Football Championship.
A point of pride for Schaus and the league continues to be the SoCon Academic Exchange, a cooperative educational program designed to provide collaborative learning activities and opportunities to benefit students, faculty and staff of the member institutions. The SAE’s inaugural entrepreneurship competition took place in February 2022, joining the SoCon Undergraduate Research Forum (SURF) and faculty workshops among the SoCon Academic Exchange’s program offerings.
Schaus came to the SoCon after an 11-year run as the director of athletics at Ohio University, where he led the Bobcats to unprecedented levels of success in athletics and academics.
Under Schaus’s leadership, Ohio University’s football program was bowl eligible in all 11 years, the most in the Mid-American Conference, and participated in 10 bowls in that time. The Bobcats’ men’s basketball team made a run to the Sweet Sixteen in 2012 and their women’s basketball program won three MAC East Division titles in his last five seasons. Ohio University’s volleyball team won seven MAC Championships and appeared in five NCAA Regionals during Schaus’s tenure, while the baseball and softball teams earned two MAC titles apiece.
In the classroom, Ohio University boasted an impressive graduation rate of 88 percent, and the athletic department’s federal graduation rate regularly exceeded that of the general student population. Bobcat student-athletes posted a cumulative grade point average of at least 3.1 in all 11 years of Schaus’ tenure.
Prior to his tenure at Ohio University, Schaus served as the athletic director at Wichita State from 1999-2008, where he was named the Division I Central Region AstroTurf AD of the Year in 2007.
With more than 30 years of experience in athletics administration, Schaus has also had stops at Oregon, Cincinnati, Texas-El Paso and Northern Illinois. He also has experience in the NFL, having worked as an intern for the New England Patriots and as the director of marketing for the Washington Redskins, and served as a publicity assistant for the LPGA Tour.
Schaus has a familial connection to the Southern Conference, as his father, former Los Angeles Lakers coach Fred Schaus, was the men’s basketball coach at West Virginia from 1954-60, earning SoCon Coach of the Year honors four times in that six-year span and still ranking in the top 20 in career wins by a league coach.
Jim Schaus earned his bachelor’s degree from Purdue in 1983 and a master’s in athletics administration from West Virginia University, where he has been honored as a distinguished alumnus.
Schaus and his wife, Priscilla, have three grown children: Kevin, Diane and Laura.