Texas Longhorns Earn 15th National Championship of Chris Del Conte Era

Before making his way to Austin, Del Conte served as the athletic director of Rice from 2006 to 2009 and of Texas Christian from 2009 to 2017. In his time at Texas, he has prioritized the installation of winning ways, especially through the hiring of accomplished head coaches to transform programs on the Forty Acres.

Examples include softball's White, football's Steve Sarkisian, baseball's Jim Schlossnagle, men's swimming and diving's Bob Bowman, track and field's Edrick Floréal, women's basketball's Vic Schaefer and, most recently, men's basketball's Sean Miller.

With the softball national championship, Texas joins UCLA as the only schools to achieve the "big three" of women's sports -- basketball, volleyball and softball. Texas has seen its women's sports flourish under Del Conte, with nine of the 15 NCAA championships since 2017 coming on the women's side.

As part of his changes to the department's organizational structure when named vice president and athletic director at Texas, Del Conte merged its men's and womens' athletic departments, moving 15-year women's athletic director Chris Plonsky to a new role in order to consolidate both men's and women's sports under the same athletic department. Texas was the last Division 1 school to have separate departments.

"My philosophy is simple: my job is to support coaches and student-athletes in their endeavors to win championships, period," Del Conte said at his introductory press conference in December of 2017. "That's it. I have a reverse pyramid. I am a servant leader."

His philosophy has seemed to work out well. And with Texas now one of the faces of the Southeastern Conference, a move facilitated by Del Conte, the Longhorns won't be going anywhere in the world of college athletics.