NATCHITOCHES – Longtime Southland Conference commissioner Tom Burnett, a Louisiana Tech alumnus who also was a Sun Belt Conference administrator, is the 2024 winner of the Dave Dixon Louisiana Sports Leadership Award presented by the Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame.
Burnett spent over 19 years in the Southland’s top post, and capped his tenure with the league as the 2022 chairman of the NCAA Men’s Basketball Committee that runs March Madness culminating with the Final Four. On June 22 at the Hall of Fame’s 2024 Induction Ceremony in Natchitoches, the West Monroe High School graduate will become the 23rd recipient of the Dixon Award since its inception in 2005, and will be enshrined in the Hall.
The Dave Dixon Louisiana Sports Leadership Award has been presented annually by the Louisiana Sports Writers Association’s 40-member Hall of Fame selection committee to an individual who has played a decisive role as a sports leader or administrator benefiting Louisiana and/or bringing credit to Louisiana on the national and international level.
It is named in honor of the 1999 LSHOF inductee, an entrepreneur and innovator who is credited as the key figure in bringing an NFL franchise to New Orleans, and the development of the Caesars Superdome, highlighting an array of sports-related endeavors.
Burnett emerged from a ballot showcasing 26 noteworthy nominees for the Dixon Award.
Beginning under the tutelage of Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame sports information director Keith Prince, as a student Burnett worked primarily with Louisiana Tech’s football, men’s basketball and baseball programs, and became Tech’s assistant SID briefly following graduation.
He soon accepted a communications position with the American South Conference, headquartered in the New Orleans suburb of Metairie.The American South merged into the Sun Belt Conference as that Tampa, Fla.-based league relocated in 1991 to the New Orleans area, its home ever since. Before the Sun Belt grew into a football-based conference, his duties expanded to include oversight of numerous championships, including track and field, baseball and basketball.
Moving up the ladder to associate commissioner, Burnett was involved with local Sugar Bowl game operations and served on local New Orleans host committees for Super Bowl XXXVI in 2002, and a number of NCAA basketball postseason events, including Men’s and Women’s Final Fours in the Crescent City. In 2001, Burnett helped introduce league-wide football competition into the Sun Belt, helped develop the New Orleans Bowl, and the conference’s first football-based television agreement with ESPN.
In late 2002, Burnett was selected to become the seventh commissioner of the Southland Conference, based in the north Dallas suburbs. He began a record tenure of almost 20 years as Southland commissioner, moved the headquarters to sports-centric Frisco, and expanded membership through Texas, Louisiana and Arkansas. He also restructured and resumed the long-running neutral-site Southland Conference Men’s and Women’s Basketball Tournament, started the league’s first comprehensive corporate sponsorship program, and negotiated numerous television agreements, including the 2020 ESPN Networks deal, the Southland’s first multi-million dollar broadcast contract.
He led the community effort in 2010 that attracted the NCAA’s Division I FCS Football Championship Game to Frisco’s Toyota Stadium, an event with an annual sellout now in its record 14th year at the same location. While at the Southland, Burnett also served on 10 various NCAA committees, councils and task forces, highlighted by a five-year term from 2017-22 on the Division I Men’s Basketball Committee.
During the later stages of the Covid-19 pandemic, he served as vice chair of the committee during the NCAA Tournament’s “controlled environment” event in Indianapolis, Ind., and led the administrative and selection processes as the committee chairman when March Madness returned to its traditional national playing sites in 2022, capped by overseeing operations at the Men’s Final Four held at the Superdome.
In May 2022, Burnett departed the conference office and started a new sports consulting and events firm, Southwest Sports Partners, LLC.
A longtime member of the National Football Foundation/College Football Hall of Fame’s Awards Committee, he was honored with the NFF’s Legacy Award in 2022, and in 2023 was presented a Distinguished Alumni Award by West Monroe High School.
