Sports Administrators

A former professional baseball player, Billy Beane went on to become a front office executive, a position which he has used to apply statistical analysis called sabermetrics to baseball. This has proved to be a game-changer as teams are now evaluating players based on this statistical analysis. His career inspired the film Moneyball where he was played by Brad Pitt.

Renowned football manager and the current head coach of Leeds United, Marcelo Bielsa is best known for remarkably improving the performance of the players he coaches. As a manager, his high point arrived when he helped the Argentinean national team bag the 2004 Olympics gold medal and later guided the Chile’s national team to qualify for the 2010 world cup.

Though born into the well-known political family, Roger Goodell, the son of senator Charles Goodell, avoided politics and stepped into sports instead. The current NFL commissioner, he was instrumental in bringing about significant changes to decrease on-field concussions of players, by introducing punishments for hitting defenseless players.

Swiss sports administrator Sepp Blatter has been a well-known face in football. Once the FIFA president, he was often plagued by criticism for his controversial statements and was also publicly heckled multiple times. He has also headed the Swiss Ice Hockey Federation and has organized the Olympics, too.

Jerry Krause was a sports scout and executive. He served as the general manager of the Chicago Bulls in the National Basketball Association (NBA) for several years, from 1985 to 2003. He won the NBA Executive of the Year Award twice. He died in 2017 and was posthumously inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame later that year. 

The third-most-capped Dutch footballer, Frank de Boer was a talented defender who started his senior career with Ajax, winning the Eredivisie 5 times with them. He later also played for Barcelona and Al Rayyan, before turning to coaching. He coached the Dutch national team for a brief while.

Best recognized as the chief strategy officer of NLF's Cleveland Browns, Paul DePodesta played both football and baseball while attending Harvard University, from where he earned his degree in economics. Shortly, he began his career as baseball executive for Cleveland Indians, thereafter serving various other baseball clubs, including New York Mets, before joining Cleveland Browns as the chief strategy officer.  

Vlade Divac is a Serbian former basketball player and one of only seven players in the history of NBA to record 13,000 points, 3,000 assists, 9,000 rebounds, and 1,500 blocked shots. In 2010, he was made an inductee of the FIBA Hall of Fame. In 2019, Vlade Divac was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame.

Born in Portuguese Mozambique, Carlos Queiroz had an uneventful career as a footballer but later soared to fame as a coach. Apart from winning 2 FIFA World Youth Championships with the Portuguese U-20 team, he has also coached teams such as Iran and Egypt and clubs such as Manchester United and Real Madrid.

Initially MLB’s chief baseball officer, Joe Torre has won 4 World Series championships for the New York Yankees, as a manager. He has authored books such as The Yankee Years. He and his wife have launched the Joe Torre Safe At Home Foundation, which helps prevent domestic violence.

Known to his fans as The Mouth of the South, Jimmy Hart is a popular wrestling manage who works for WWE. As a teenager, he had joined the 60s’ band The Gentrys, which released the Billboard-charting track Keep on Dancing. He has also been the man behind many wrestlers’ entrance themes.

The first black African to be featured on the Forbes billionaires’ list, African Rainbow Minerals founder Patrice Motsepe also owns a football club. In 2021, he took over as the president of the Confederation of African Football. The mining tycoon has also signed The Giving Pledge.