TEAMS ’26 Preview: Thought Leaders from College Sports, the World Cup and More

Perhaps no sport has seen as much change in recent years as college football, and perhaps no person has had as much to do with that change as Greg Sankey, commissioner of the Southeastern Conference.

Last week, it was announced that the College Football Playoff will expand from 12 teams to 24 starting with the 2027 season, the latest seismic disruption in a sport that has been at the center of the various issues roiling all of college athletics: NIL, the transfer portal, escalating media rights deals and conference realignment chief among them.

And attendees at the TEAMS ’26 Conference & Expo will be able to hear from one of the leaders in the space first hand. Sankey, who has led the SEC since 2015, will take the stage during the Closing General Session of the TEAMS ’26 and he won’t have to go far to do it. The conference is being held at the Birmingham Jefferson Convention Complex in Birmingham, Alabama, less than half a mile from SEC headquarters.

Sankey’s session, which will be moderated by SportsTravel Managing Editor Ted Keith, will serve as the capstone to three days of panels and education sessions featuring some of the biggest names in the industry.

“We’ve put considerable effort into crafting an education program at TEAMS that speaks to the most relevant topics of the day in the sports-events industry,” said Jason Gewirtz, senior vice president for content for the Northstar Meetings Group, organizers of TEAMS. “Attendees will be able to hear from leaders in the industry and take away valuable tools to make their sports events even better in the future.”

The conference gets underway October 26, with highlights including the TEAMS Invitational Golf Tournament at Oxmoor Valley Golf Club and the first TEAMS Rookie Reception at the Protective Stadium Club.

Education sessions will begin on October 27. Among the highlights that day: Toni Will, the general manager and governor of the ECHL Kalamazoo Wings, will address the question, “What would happen if we stopped asking how to make something 10% better and started asking what the 10x move could be?”

TEAMS is also home to the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic SportsLink program, a series of educational sessions designed to tell event management stories through the prism of the Olympic and Paralympic movements. TEAMS has been home to SportsLink since 2018. This year’s emcee is Olympic gold medal snowboarder Nick Baumgartner.

The TEAMS/SportsLink Opening General Session will include a panel that includes four of the best athletes in the world: U.S. Paralympians Oksana Masters and Declan Farmer, and the Olympic figure skating tandem of Madison Chock and Evan Bates. Masters is the most decorated U.S. Paralympian ever with 24 medals, 13 of them gold; Farmer set a record with 15 goals for the gold-medal-winning U.S. sled hockey team at Milan Cortina; and Chock and Bates have won seven U.S. championships, three world titles and two Olympic gold medals.

On October 28, eight different executives from the world of national governing bodies will offer rapid-fire updates for their respective sports, leading into the SportsTravel Awards luncheon, where winners in six major categories will be announced.

On Thursday, John Terry, vice president of events at the U.S. Soccer Federation and Tommy O’Hare, an Olympian who is now the sports and special events director for the city of San Jose, will discuss “Lessons in Activating Around a Global Sporting Event,” on the heels of a wildly successful FIFA World Cup in the United States this past summer.

And of course the TEAMS exhibit hall will be open for one-on-one appointments, as well as several networking opportunities.

The social events include a Rookie Reception for first-time TEAMS attendees; the Opening Celebration at Regions Field, home of the minor league Birmingham Barons that were once the team of Bo Jackson, Michael Jordan and Frank Thomas; the Late-Night Lounge at Fairway Social Birmingham; and the Closing Party at Back Forty Beer Co.

(For an hour-by-hour breakdown of the entire TEAMS conference, including registration information and social activities, click here. All times listed are Central time.)

Feel free to share your experiences on social media using the hashtag #TEAMSconference. See you in Birmingham!