The longest-serving commissioner in Southern Conference history, Lloyd Jordan was a three-sport athlete at the University of Pittsburgh. He entered the coaching ranks in both basketball and football, eventually concentrating his efforts on the latter. After a stint as an assistant at Colgate, Jordan became the head football coach at Amherst College, spending fifteen seasons interrupted by military service in World War II. His teams won six conference championships and nearly 70 percent of their contests. His success earned him the head-coaching job at Harvard, where he spent seven unremarkable seasons before being released in January of 1957.
Jordan’s appointment as commissioner was announced in late August of 1959, with speculation that his annual salary would be $10,000. “I have always had the greatest respect for Wallace Wade as a coach and as a person,” said Jordan of his predecessor. “I am delighted to have the privilege of following in his footsteps.”
Jordan took over on the first day of a new decade, January 1, 1960. He immediately moved the league offices to the prestigious Virginia Building at 1 N. Fifth Street in the heart of downtown Richmond. Built in 1905, the building was for many years the tallest in the central district of the city. Today it is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Shortly after setting up his new office, Jordan sat down with a local TV sportscaster and was asked what his initial impressions were of the Southern Conference. “I think they’re doing one of the finest jobs with less to work with than any group I know of,” he said. “If they all work to make progress, nothing can hold them back.”
Mindful of the history and tradition of the organization he was heading up, Jordan took steps to preserve the official record of the Southern Conference. In 1967, he hired J. Dallas Shirley, a long-time basketball official and clinician, as assistant to the commissioner. The Washington, DC, native had been working as a high school principal. Shirley collected and organized all the league minutes dating back to 1921 and became the recording secretary at meetings and special events until his retirement in 1988.
In basketball, Jordan put an end to the dubious practice of allowing a two-thirds majority vote of head coaches to blackball an official from working SoCon games. “It is gratifying to report that Commissioner Lloyd Jordan will end this privilege,” said Sports Illustrated in September of 1964.
In 1966, Jordan oversaw the introduction of the first new sport (soccer) in the conference in ten years. He initiated the Commissioner’s Cup, emblematic of broad sports excellence among member programs. He also worked to strengthen ties between the SoCon and the Orlando-based Tangerine Bowl, resulting in six Southern Conference teams participating from 1964–71.
Initially, the institutional lineup Jordan inherited remained the same. East Carolina was added in 1964, but a year later Virginia Tech departed, followed soon thereafter by West Virginia and George Washington. The once twenty-three-member SoCon was reduced to seven members by 1970. A year later, the conference added Appalachian State, a Division I independent, and again stabilized.
The membership appreciated his efforts. “In the face of many difficulties and numerous problems,” read a resolution from the athletic directors to Jordan at the annual meeting in 1971, “Lloyd Jordan has performed his duties as commissioner with great competence, absolute integrity, complete fairness and profound wisdom.”
Upon leaving the position in December of 1973, Jordan remained in the Richmond area, where he still kept up with the Southern Conference. “My real interest was then, and is now, the welfare of the student-athlete,” he said in 1979. “Some positive steps have been taken in that direction and I’m glad of it.”
His coaching accomplishments earned him induction into the College Football Hall of Fame in December of 1978. He died on February 24, 1990, at the age of 89.
Bio taken from "A Proud Athletic History: 100 Years of the Southern Conference" by John Iamarino