Faculty Excellence Awards: Honoring Adjunct Professor Leonard DeLuca

Because our faculty members are so critical to University goals and achievements – from attracting and retaining high-quality students, to furthering Seton Hall’s reputation in academic circles, to contributing impactful research to their respective fields – it is important that we honor our very best instructors and researchers each year at the Annual Faculty Excellence Awards.

This year the awards will be presented from 5 - 6:30 p.m, Monday, April 22 in the University Center Event Room. Those interested in attending may RSVP here. As we await the announcement of the winners, we wanted to check in with some of the faculty members recognized last year for their achievements and commitment to their scholarship and our students.

As a Stillman School of Business Adjunct Assistant Professor, Leonard DeLuca, Esquire, has more than just decades of wisdom to share with his students. He has many "chapters" of experience to draw upon when shaping the minds of his scholars. "I love this chapter," he explains. "Teaching at Seton Hall, I call this my seventh chapter."

From Law Firm to Sports Network

Long before he became known as Professor DeLuca, he was a lawyer. After earning his bachelor’s and juris doctor degrees from Boston College, DeLuca spent his first professional years working as a law firm associate for a Boston litigation firm. While he would opt not to stick with the legal profession, DeLuca emphasizes how his legal training was instrumental in helping him develop uniquely transferrable skills – research, collaboration, building a case, sticking to the facts, presenting, persuading.

These skills and his love of sports led him to CBS Sports, where he spent the next 17 years working his way up to Vice President, Programming. DeLuca would then move over to ESPN as the Senior Vice President, Programming where his focus on college sports expanded to include the professional circuits, including the MLB, NFL, four Tennis majors, and NBA. In 2001 he was a charter member of the team that created ESPN Original Entertainment and in 2007 spearheaded "ESPN on ABC." DeLuca is quick to thank all the mentors, colleagues and friends who supported him along the way and now he’s happy to pay it all forward as an instructor.

In 2010 he launched his namesake consulting business, Len DeLuca & Associates, which has allowed him opportunities to work with a broad range of sports leagues, associations, networks and more. Not content to rest on his laurels, DeLuca took on a new challenge with a role at IMG | Endeavor in New York City in 2015, where he served as Senior Vice President of Original Content.

A New Chapter on Campus

But what has given DeLuca the greatest thrill has been teaching sports management to a new generation of aspiring non-player sports professionals. Since 2016, DeLuca has done triple duty as an adjunct assistant professor with both Seton Hall and NYU, while still maintaining his consulting business.

DeLuca is naturally grateful for his opportunity at Seton Hall, thanking Center for Sport Management Director Charles Grantham profusely for his continued support and shared vision. "Charlie is brilliant and also a past winner of Adjunct of the Year before he was made full professor," he shares. "Like me, Charlie comes from the real world. He worked with Commissioner David Stern at the NBA and did incredible work on behalf of the players and the league."

DeLuca emphasizes the importance of bringing professional experience to the classroom. "I speak on behalf of the sports cabal," he says. "B.J. Schecter, who’s over in the Center for Sports Media, comes from Baseball Insider. We all come from the real world and I am so happy that Seton Hall is willing to risk giving real-life practitioners a chance to share our experience."

The Two Sides of Sports Business

Speaking of the Center for Sports Media, DeLuca is proud to collaborate with "the production guys," as he calls them. "I refer to them as the talented guys. We’re making deals, but they have to make the production happen," he explains.

"We have one set of players and personnel who handle media rights, sponsors, and so forth. With the media, they have on-air talent, production, creative, and content creators. You sell rights, you acquire or produce content, you sell content, you sell advertising. But then, you need to put it on the air, in the magazine, or online. But we do cross over. In fact, B.J. [Schechter] did my sports analytics class because of his Baseball America background."

DeLuca suggests that the launch of the Center for Sports Media has a deeper meaning in the Seton Hall community. "It was an endorsement of sports as a university-wide genre that should be exploited and should be emphasized," he concludes.

At Seton Hall, DeLuca teaches sports marketing and sports business analytics at the graduate and undergraduate levels and supervises as many as 50 interns each semester. DeLuca admits that he learns as much as he teaches at Seton Hall.

"Because I’m a teacher, I don't have to wait for other people's research," he explains. "I can get my own and it's fresh and it's authentic and there's a nice relationship going on here because I'm sharing and making them better critical thinkers, while they're making me smarter about the future."

Despite all his many career accomplishments, the accolade for which he is most proud is being named Seton Hall's 2023 university-wide and Stillman School of Business Adjunct Faculty member of the year.

"I loved winning this award," he says. "I love to teach and these students – they’re the future and I learn more from them than they learn from me. And that’s why I love what I do."

Categories: Business