At first glance, Kenneth Germann was an unlikely candidate to become the third commissioner of the Southern Conference. His roots were all in the Northeast. He was born in New York, attended high school and college there, and coached football in the metropolitan New York area. But he also presented an impressive sports background as both an athlete and a coach. Moreover, he displayed the leadership qualities gleaned by service in the Marines Corps and as athletic director at Columbia University, his alma mater.
Germann (pronounced GUR-man), was a talented enough running back to be invited to training camp with the original Buffalo Bills of the All-America Football Conference. He eventually taught in high school and coached football before stints as an assistant coach at Columbia and Rutgers. He also worked in the winter as a college basketball official.
When he became commissioner in 1974, Germann decided to find a more southern location for the league office and moved the operations from Richmond to 5 Woodlawn Green in Charlotte. His primary assistant, J. Dallas Shirley, continued to work out of his home in Reston, Virginia. In time, the office added John Geis as director of the service bureau.
Germann presided over seismic changes within the Southern Conference. There were members on the way out (Richmond, William & Mary, East Carolina) and those on the way in (Chattanooga, Marshall, Western Carolina, ETSU). The historic Title IX ruling of 1972 paved the way for the NCAA to supplant the Association of Intercollegiate Athletics for Women (AIAW) and sanction women’s championship sports in 1981. Two years later, at the conference’s June meeting in Myrtle Beach, Germann received approval from the membership to hold women’s championships in volleyball and basketball.
Germann was an active commissioner. He served a term as president of the Collegiate Commissioners Association (CCA). He wrote feature articles for the Charlotte newspapers. He approached Bob James of the ACC about a postseason football bowl game between the SoCon champion and the ACC’s runner-up team. (James respectfully declined.)
He continually looked for ways to improve the competitive quality of the league. “We certainly haven’t reached the level we want,” he told a West Virginia writer in 1981. “We’re striving to do better and better and better.”
Germann was the first SoCon commissioner to push the concept of television coverage and providing local TV stations in conference cities with packaged highlights they could use. He started the league office’s first service bureau to maintain accurate statistics and records.
In May of 1985 he announced his plans to serve one more year before retiring, thereby providing for “an orderly transition process.” In advance of the 1986–87 academic year, the conference created an all-sports trophy to recognize overall program excellence in women’s athletics. The award was named the Germann Cup after the outgoing commissioner, who had led the way in bringing women’s athletics under the Southern Conference umbrella.
Germann and his wife, Ruth, retired to a home in suburban Richmond. He passed away in August of 2005 at the age of 84.
Bio taken from "A Proud Athletic History: 100 Years of the Southern Conference" by John Iamarino