Roy Kramer, SEC Commissioner Who Helped Mastermind BCS System, Dies at 96

He also enjoyed a successful football coaching career at Central Michigan.

Roy Kramer oversaw a transformative era for the SEC. / Brett Davis-Imagn Images

Roy Kramer, the SEC commissioner of 13 years who helped create the Bowl Championship Series system that crowned a national champion in big-time college football for a generation, died Thursday in Vonore, Tenn. He was 96.

"Roy Kramer will be remembered for his resolve through challenging times, his willingness to innovate in an industry driven by tradition, and his unwavering belief in the value of student-athletes and education," SEC commissioner Greg Sankey said in a statement.

A native of Maryville, Tenn., Kramer won a small-college national championship at Central Michigan in 1974 during an 11-year football coaching career. From there, he transitioned into the administrative sphere, becoming SEC commissioner in 1990 after 13 years as Vanderbilt's athletic director.

During his tenure leading the SEC, the league added Arkansas, South Carolina and football's first conference championship game. His most durable legacy, however, came when he helped create the Bowl Championship Series—a college football championship system that nominally united the sport's major conferences under one title-deciding umbrella for the first time.

The BCS greatly enriched college football and featured a spate of entertaining, unprecedented matchups, though it received criticism on grounds ranging from its opaque computer rankings to its questionable antitrust legality. In 2014, the sport's power brokers replaced it with the College Football Playoff, to Kramer's approval (he was more ambivalent toward its 2024 expansion).

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