What Jeremiah Donati learned from his previous stops that led him to South Carolina

Flying into Columbia Wednesday night, Jeremiah Donati couldn’t help but notice just how vast the area is. Growing up in Pullman, WA, then working in Fort Worth, Texas, for the last 13 years, he could tell this place would be different.

In his first full day in the Soda City, Donati said he walked around the town and met 30 people, all of whom were wearing garnet and black. A few hours later, he stepped onto a stage at Williams-Brice Stadium, now donning a garnet and black tie with a Gamecock logo, immersing himself into his new surroundings.

Donati was introduced as South Carolina’s new athletics director on Thursday. He couldn’t help but share his excitement to have this opportunity to work at “the flagship institution in the great state of South Carolina,” as he put it.

“Wearing the colors garnet and black comes with big expectations across the board in everything we do and that is a great thing,” Donati said in his introductory press conference. “I welcome those expectations. I want to dream with you about what is possible here. Candidly, that is why I am here.”

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While he may be new to the Palmetto State, Donati brings valuable experience from previous stops in his career.

Donati worked for Leigh Steinberg Sports and Entertainment, which is one of the most successful sports and player representation agencies in the world. From 2007-11, he worked there as general counsel and director of player representation.

“We were dealing marketing deals before there was NIL. In fact, I always thought that it was interesting that the pros could do NIL deals, but the college students couldn’t,” he said. “When NIL started to become a concept, if you will, I was one of the first that was an advocate for it.”

Back then, he had no idea it would lead him to a path towards now being an athletics director at two different schools. But looking back on his time in sports agency, that experience was “invaluable” to him.

“At the time, I never would have imagined getting a law degree and working in a sports agency would prepare you so well for the post-Covid NIL world. But it did, hopefully and so here we are,” Donati said.

In 2011, he moved onto TCU as the executive director of TCU Frog Club, where he oversaw fundraising and helped the university record its three highest totals in overall athletics giving.

After working in two other roles in the school’s athletics department, Donati has been TCU’s athletics director since 2017. He oversaw record attendance numbers in multiple sports during the 2023-2024 academic year (including football), and TCU was one of just five programs nationally to win multiple national titles (rifle and men’s tennis).

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Since becoming the school’s AD, the Horned Frogs won eight team national championships and 11 conference titles in the Big 12. They also notably made the four-team College Football Playoff in 2022. In that same season, TCU reached the CFP national championship game for the first time in program history.

When Donati started out as the athletics director in Fort Worth, he was only 40 years old. This was also his first time in this role. He learned a lot from that first stint which he hopes to apply to this new journey at South Carolina.

“When I became athletics director, it wasn’t long after that that we had the (COVID-19) pandemic. So, I was two years into the role and we were trying to figure out what life was going to be like,” Donati said. “I think working in the sports agency probably prepared me a little bit for this job. I obviously had a tremendous amount of challenges along the way. Every athletics director does. You build on those things. You learn from those things and hopefully make you better.”

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