Former CAA Commissioner Tom Yeager Inducted Into Virginia Sports Hall Of Fame

4/9/2019 11:00:00 AM

Rob Washburn

RICHMOND, Va. (April 9, 2019) – Former CAA Commissioner Tom Yeager added to his list of impressive accomplishments when he was inducted into the Virginia Sports Hall of Fame last Saturday night in Virginia Beach.

Yeager was selected as the first commissioner of the CAA in 1985 and was the longest-tenured commissioner of any Division I conference when he retired on June 30, 2016.

During an era of unprecedented change in collegiate athletics, Yeager established the CAA as one of the nation’s most successful conferences athletically and academically. He transformed what was once a Virginia/North Carolina conference into a league with a presence in many of the major metropolitan areas on the East Coast.

In his tenure, the conference produced 19 national team champions in five different sports, 33 individual national champions, 16 national coaches of the year and 17 national players of the year. The league also boasted five Rhodes Scholar student-athletes, 24 NCAA post-graduate scholars and 13 Honda Award winners.

The conference garnered national attention with its success in basketball as George Mason (2006) and VCU (2011) advanced to the Men’s Final Four and Old Dominion (1997) reached the Women’s Final Four. National championships were won in football by Delaware in 2003, James Madison in 2004, Richmond in 2008 and Villanova in 2009.

Yeager was actively involved with NCAA affairs throughout his CAA career. He served as a member of the Committee on Academics, the Football Rules Committee and was a member of the Board of Directors for the NCAA’s College Football Officiating LLC. Yeager was a former chair of one of the NCAA’s most important committees, the Division I Committee on Infractions, which hears and assesses penalties for violations of NCAA rules. Previously he served as a member of the NCAA Council and chaired the NCAA Interpretations Committee for eight years, in addition to serving on numerous other NCAA committees. Well-respected by other commissioners, Yeager was also a former executive vice president of the Collegiate Commissioners Association and was the chair of the National Letter of Intent Steering Committee.

Yeager was one of eight inductees in a prestigious 2019 class, which included two other people with extensive CAA ties. Former Old Dominion women’s basketball coach Wendy Larry guided the Lady Monarchs to 17 consecutive CAA championships and 20 NCAA Tournaments, while Debbie White spent more than three decades holding numerous roles in communications and sports information at ODU. Other members of the 2019 class were former NFL stars Ruben Brown and Heath Miller, NASCAR legend Jeff Burton, Olympic gold-medal diver Mark Lenzi and former University of Richmond football standout William “Buster” O’Brien.