SIOUX FALLS — For 40 years, Patty Viverito has been the only commissioner in the history of the Missouri Valley Football Conference. But her successful tenure ended with her retirement after last season, and in her place the football-only league has appointed a new leadership council.

Jeff Jackson, who is the commissioner of the Missouri Valley Conference (a separate entity), succeeds Viverito as commissioner, while Summit League commissioner Josh Fenton will serve as executive advisor. Kyle Grooms rounds out the conference's leadership as chief operating officer.

Monday's Missouri Valley Football Conference media day in Sioux Falls gave the league a chance to honor Viverito for her four decades of leadership while passing the torch to Jackson and his staff. Jackson spoke with Matt Zimmer and Marcus Traxler about his new job and some of the top priorities for the conference in the first year of the post-Patty era.

Q: How have the first few weeks on the job been?

JJ: Well, the fact that we're able to do something like (Media Day) today has just made it great. It's kind of given us a focus. You know, you kind of come into something the first month, 'What are you thinking about?' And, you know, schedule was already done. You're just kind of following the template that Patty's laid out.

But this was something that's a little bit new. So between myself and Josh (Fenton) and Kyle (Grooms) and (historian and media coordinator) Mike Kern, it kind of gave us a point of focus, which kind of made it fun. And then to see the success that we're already having with it today, it's pretty cool.

Q: So there were a lot of different sort of possibilities, I guess, knowing Patty was stepping down and how they wanted to fill that leadership void. How did the decision come about to kind of put together the leadership group the way it ended up?

JJ: You know, one, I think the board. And when I talk about the board, it's the presidents and the chancellors who make up the conference. I think they did a great job of working among themselves. But I also think a lot of it was probably organic. It was just good common sense.

You know, you've got half the teams that play in a league in one conference and almost half the teams that play in a league in another conference. Why would you need anybody else to come in and help manage that circumstance? Because even though it's football, it has such an impact on all the other sports and all the other parts of what we do. We need to have that knowledge. We need to have that tether. So to me, it was just nothing more than good common sense.

Q: Well, but the reason they might bring in someone else would be because it's a lot more on your plate, you're already a busy guy.

JJ: Well, commissioners dealing with football is more the norm than not the norm. So, and again, we all have great staffs.

And the great thing about this is that we can throw two entire staffs. Like, if you look at this, Josh has his entire staff here. We've got Kyle and Mike and people here.

So we actually have more resources than the normal circumstance, I think, in order to try and figure out how to make sure we're serving our student-athletes correctly.

Q: Well, at the highest level, football is obviously the juggernaut. It's what funds other programs, these power schools that get thousands and thousands of people to come to the games.

In the Valley, it's not quite that. There are some programs that are sort of like that and others that aren't. And, you know, not to get too far off it, but you worry a little bit sometimes about the future of football at places that aren't printing money, you know, because of what's happening with power schools potentially breaking off and what's going to happen to the FCS level, the Division II level, football where it isn't making money like that.

What I'm getting at is, I guess, what are the goals of the Missouri Valley Football Conference, of your leadership group in trying to kind of reinvest in football or try to make football as big and as good as it can be?

JJ: You've said it well. It is exactly that. You're just making it as good and as efficient and as effective and as much of a positive student-athlete experience as it can be, knowing that you're competing for FCS championships.

I think the qualifier to that is we don't know two or three years from now what that's going to be. Because, look, one, it's not a bunch of power schools. Let's be candid. It's about 25 schools. And then there's 30 schools in the A4.

I'm not sure they are very comfortable right now. And then when you start getting to the group of six, I would venture to say that we may have a better conference than two or three group of six conferences, especially at the top in terms of how competitive those schools would be if they got on the field and they played a 60-minute football game.

So I think there's a lot still to be determined because of the house settlement, because of a new governance process, because of the transfer portal, because of NIL. And we all kind of have to be nimble over the next two or three years to figure out what's going to be the best way to position the MVFC to take advantage of that.

Q: Well, you've got these schools, like the Dakota schools primarily, who have nice facilities. They have big fan bases. They're fully funding their programs. They're doing cost of attendance, opting in, all those things, trying to almost emulate FBS programs if they can.

And then you've got some have-nots in this conference that are struggling to keep up with those. What kind of things can the conference do to help those programs move up to where the whole league is kind of doing what SDSU and NDSU are doing?

JJ: I think the one nice thing is, look, everybody in the conference is opted in. So being able to take advantage of NIL is a positive thing.

But it's just like anything. In my other job, we have a basketball league that's extremely vibrant. And everybody has a different path, a different approach to how they want to cut that cake, so to speak.

I don't think it's going to be any different in football. But I do think the more that programs, the more that institutions feel that they have an opportunity to be successful, that may be more the chicken egg that leads to how much they want to invest and how much time and energy they want to put into something. And so the key is, to me, is putting programs in a position where they feel like they have something to play for. And I think that's what we're hopeful we can do.

Q: A lot of times when we talk about the Missouri Valley, people have said it's the Big Ten of FCS or it's the SEC of FCS.

Along those lines, the SEC and the Big Ten have become these gigantic super conferences. What are there, 18 teams in both of those leagues? It's been a while since the Valley has expanded, and I know most commissioners always say we're open to expansion.

What would you say about the current Valley's attitude towards expansion? Is there any pie in the sky someday becoming one of those major power conferences like what the Big Ten and SEC have done? Is it better to stay regional? Is it better to stay at 10? What kind of things go into deciding what you want this league to look like as far as membership?

JJ: Well, we're open to expansion (laughs). One of the things that I think helped emerge is that when you have the two multi-sport conferences, part of the expansion conversation is going to be what exists in those two separate conferences.

And I think we look at the MVFC as a vessel to help improve those conferences and thus improve the MVFC. So I think there's a lot of moving pieces there. I don't think, speaking for myself, don't want to speak for Josh or the Summit League, I don't think I'm going to bed at night thinking, hey, we need to expand.

But I think I am going to bed tonight thinking, look, if there's an institution, if there's a program that's out there that can help us in terms of our ability to be successful on the field, our ability to go to market when it comes to our multimedia rights, that's going to be the thing that leads us to a decision about expansion, way more than just trying to reach a number, so to speak.