Looking back on childhoods spent on the campus of one college or another, Conference USA Commissioner Britton Banowsky and Valdosta State Athletics Director Herb Reinhard believe it’s natural that they found careers in collegiate athletics. In fact, it was presidentially predictable.

Banowsky is the son of William Banowsky, once president of Pepperdine and later Oklahoma, and one of four brothers who were expected to make the most of the opportunities life gave them: Try their best, work hard and become successful in life. All four brothers are now attorneys (making for dry conversations at Thanksgiving, he says), but Banowsky left the law profession after just a few years to enter college athletics.

“As a son of a college president, I spent a lot of time on college campuses and at college sporting events, and was able to just be around a university setting and intercollegiate athletics,” he said. “That created a sense of connection to college sports that carried forward.”

While president at Oklahoma, the elder Banowsky was instrumental in the early-1980s lawsuit that wrested control of football television contracts from the NCAA. His son said he was able to watch his father interact on national issues such as that, which influenced the way he approaches his job today.

Reinhard’s father, also named Herb, didn’t become a president until his son was grown. But the fact that his dad held campus student affairs positions during his childhood was a major influence on the son. The younger Reinhard was exposed to several different college communities and became comfortable on campus and with “town-gown” relationships.

Reinhard essentially grew up a “higher education” brat – moving from campus to campus as his father climbed the ladder. He graduated from high school, went to college and never left campus. After several years in sports information at Florida A&M (his alma mater), Reinhard assumed the athletics directorship at Valdosta State in 1990 and never looked back.

His dad’s career has had a “whole lot of indirect influences” on how he does his job today.

“I am able to see students when they come on campus for the first time, to help them transition to college,” he said. “I spend a lot of time talking with high school and middle school kids about not only the value of a college degree financially, but also all the other different ways a college degree is important.”

The elder Reinhard, who at various times held the presidencies of Slippery Rock, Morehead State and Frostburg State, is now retired and living not far from his son in Alpharetta, Georgia. Banowsky, too, stays close with his dad, who is also retired and living near Conference USA headquarters in Dallas.

Both sons plan to continue their careers in athletics. Reinhard says he likes the Division II approach to athletics, especially as it’s practiced at Valdosta State. He and his family are rooted in the Valdosta community after nearly 20 years at the university.

“The Division II philosophy is a good, solid philosophy in regard to how college athletics should work. But at the same time, we like to win. We tend to do that at Valdosta State – I think we do it right,” he said. “We still have work to do here.”

Banowsky, too, sees himself involved in athletics at a high level in the future.

“I’d love to continue to make a contribution,” he said. “But I don’t try to plan it too much. At one point, I thought I was going to be the best trial lawyer in the state of Texas, and you saw how that turned out. I just try to take it one day at a time and make a contribution on a daily basis.”