In their sorrow, they told stories.
Of his love for golf and vanilla ice cream. Of how he handled so many different challenging situations over the years. Of his near encyclopedic knowledge of the history of the Southeastern Conference and how he always seemed to know the right thing to do that wouldn’t disrupt what made the league so special in the first place.
When you lose someone like Mark Womack, the long-time SEC executive associate commissioner, you want his stories told. It’s why long-time friends Larry Templeton and Pete Derzis traveled to the SEC’s Birmingham headquarters to sit in Womack’s office and reminisce over their decades of friendship. They started trading photos with Scott Ramsey, the CEO and president of the Nashville Sports Council, of all their trips and events together with their friend. A photo of Womack in front of a huge bowl of ice cream at an SEC basketball tournament brought a smile to everyone’s face.
It’s why you step out of a restaurant while on vacation as Sugar Bowl CEO Jeff Hundley did to spend a few minutes talking about your friend.
“Mark Womack was interwoven with the SEC,” Hundley said. “He loved that place, and the place loved him back.”
Womack loved it until the very end before passing away Monday at the age of 70. Even just recently, he hoped to get back into the office soon even as his health worsened and friends encouraged him to retire.
You may not know Mark Womack but his fingerprints are all over so much of what you’ve come to know about the SEC. He spent 47 years working for the conference — his entire adult life — and built close relationships with all the commissioners he worked for but especially Roy Kramer, Mike Slive and Greg Sankey who all viewed him as a trusted confidant. He was heavily involved in bowl game partnerships, football scheduling, TV rights negotiations, conference expansion and so much more over a storied career.
Overseeing the annual football schedule was an arduous and largely thankless task knowing he could never make everyone happy no matter how hard he tried. In the age of technology, Womack did it all by hand on paper and was able to remember all the parameters and scheduling quirks to avoid any mishaps. That even included having to figure out how to build a schedule with 13 SEC teams after the SEC extended an invite to Texas A&M but was still weighing what to do with Missouri.
“He worked his butt off putting the 13-game schedule together,” says former Mississippi State AD Larry Templeton,” and then (Mike) Slive walked in one day and said, ‘Boys, y’all got a 14-team schedule?”
Templeton, who worked closely with Womack on the scheduling among many other things, said his long-time friend was so good at knowing what every institution did and didn’t want with their schedule. He’d listen to the politicking from athletic directors and others, but it never dissuaded him from what he had to do.
“In some of those decisions he would have to tell a dumb athletic director at Mississippi State it wasn’t best for him, and you just admired and respected him because he treated everybody equally,” Templeton said. “He was so honest and fair that you couldn’t get mad at him.”
It’s something you hear over and over again about Womack. There was a firmness but a fairness from him on everything from the big to little decisions. The Alabama native had an amicable way about him where he could deliver bad news but never make it personal. “He was a tough Southern gentleman,” Hundley said. “He was unflappable.”
Said SEC commissioner Greg Sankey: “Mark had many friends across the world of college athletics and was deeply respected for his ability to build strong relationships, navigate complex challenges, and communicate with strength, trust and empathy.”
Scott Ramsey, one of Womack’s closest friends, was on the receiving end of plenty of calls that didn’t go his way as the CEO and president of the Nashville Sports Council. Maybe it was for an SEC event that Nashville wanted to host or a specific SEC team the Music City Bowl wanted. But even when Ramsey didn’t get the news he wanted, the two would still grab lunch and golf as they did hundreds of times over their friendship. In both golf and business, Womack would joke he was just looking for “a fair advantage.”
Ramsey, Hundley and so many of the other bowl partners knew Womack was doing his best with tasks destined to upset people. It says everything about him that he managed bowl game assignments and football scheduling so well in the light of guaranteed criticism.
“He agonized over getting it right for everybody,” says Pete Derzis, a former ESPN executive and long-time friend. “He wanted everybody to feel good about their bowl lineup. He wanted everybody to feel good about their football schedule. I use the word agonized because it deeply affected him. He wanted everybody to feel like they got a fair shake and they got the right outcome in these areas where it’s impossible to please everybody.”
Womack was twice the acting commissioner and later passed over for the permanent job. Not getting the job stung Womack, his friends say, and yet he never left the conference he loved so dearly. He had opportunities to become an athletic director at different schools, but they couldn’t pull him away from the league’s Birmingham headquarters. He’s the ultimate rarity in the transient nature of athletics now working his entire career all at one place. It’s what made him such a valuable member of the conference and so respected throughout the industry.
“That’s just an incredible person that can kind of be that humble to be able to say, ‘Hey, the conference is more important than what role I have,'” Ramsey said.
Womack kept his health issues largely to himself. Partly out of pride and partly out of never wanting to be in the spotlight. He just wanted to do the work and keep to his routine. His dream was to make it to 50 years and then retire.
Imagine that: 50 years all working at the Southeastern Conference. Think about all the people Womack got to interact with and the things he saw. From when he joined the conference in 1978, he played a role in the conference exploding nationally as a result of football success (20 national championships during his time) and brilliant TV partnerships with CBS and ESPN. From Bear Bryant to Bo Jackson to Tim Tebow to Nick Saban and everyone in between, Womack was there. He was there when the SEC first expanded to 12 schools with Arkansas and South Carolina and then 14 with Texas A&M and Missouri and finally 16 with Texas and Oklahoma. He played a significant role in the schools the SEC didn’t take during those expansion periods, too.
In all of those situations, he was brilliant about helping the conference grow (literally and financially) without losing its soul. Womack, who graduated from the University of Alabama, was always great at managing that fine line of keeping the business partners happy, especially the TV ones, while not giving up too much control. The schools loved him for it.
You could write a book about everything Womack did and experienced in the SEC. There just won’t be another one like him and the impact he had on one place over nearly five decades.
“I’m sad losing one of my best friends, but I’m sad for him that he wasn’t able to retire and then have a celebration party and put him up on the dais almost like an old roast,” Ramsey said. “We could have had so much fun and been such a celebration.”
Womack didn’t make it to 50 years but his impact on the SEC will be felt for the next 50 years.
It’s why in the immediate aftermath of the tragic news, his friends and colleagues are telling his stories over laughs and tears and keeping his legacy alive.
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