UTD Helps Former Pro Athletes Learn a New Field

08.21.2025

An online certificate program at The University of Texas at Dallas is helping former professional athletes transition from the locker room to the corporate boardroom.

UT Dallas’ Institute for Excellence in Corporate Governance (IECG) in the Naveen Jindal School of Management partnered with two corporate board experts — a former NFL player and business executive and a former CEO — to relaunch the program.

The eight-month Professional Governance Certificate program teaches former athletes and executives with at least a decade of business experience how to help run a company as part of a board of directors, a governing group that guides an organization and protects shareholders. Public and private companies as well as nonprofits are legally required to have boards of directors.

Eight former NFL players and an ex-pro hockey player earned a certificate in the pilot year of the program — formerly known as the Governance Capital Certificate Program. Brad Oates and Don Springer, in partnership with UTD and Corporate Board Member, started the renamed program in 2024.

Organizers are now recruiting pro sports players to participate in the upcoming cohort — classes begin in September and run through May. They are looking to expand the program to include Olympic athletes and women’s professional basketball and soccer players.

Oates played for five NFL teams in the 1970s and ’80s before earning a law degree, becoming a banking executive and serving on corporate boards. Springer has decades of experience in business and on boards of directors. Both are also advisory board members for the IECG.

“Not everyone who is in their post-NFL career has an idea of what to do next,” said Gregg Ballew, executive director of the IECG and professor of practice in accounting. “They’re not necessarily prepared to look for board opportunities. This program teaches them how to become a good board member.”

Ballew also noted that the IECG’s strategic goal is to reach the broad corporate governance community across the country as the certificate program matures.

The program represents the type of nontraditional academic innovation that UTD is becoming known for, Oates said.

“This is evident with the intimate involvement of business professionals who want to be part of the greater UTD community even though they did not go to UTD,” he said.

A distinctive feature of the certificate program is that it uses Stakeholder IQ, which incorporates artificial intelligence (AI) into lessons, said Oates, who created the model with Springer.

“AI gives you the ability to see things you would not otherwise be able to see — the fragility that might be growing in a company and where the weaknesses might be,” Oates said. “AI allows us to manage complexity in a way we had not been able to do before.”

Bradford Banta

Bradford Banta, who played for the Indianapolis Colts, New York Jets, Buffalo Bills and Detroit Lions in the 1990s and early 2000s, is one of the first graduates of the pilot program. In addition to serving as an assistant coach in college and the NFL after his playing career, he helped open surgery centers in the Southeast for a health care management company and served on several nonprofit boards. Playing professional sports and coaching, he said, is like serving on a board of directors.

“You’re advising; you’re coaching; you’re enacting,” he said. “Everything seemed like a natural fit to me, and that’s why I wanted to get involved with this program.”

–Veronica Gonzalez