CLEVELAND – The National Association of Collegiate Directors of Athletics (NACDA) announced that NACDA Past President and Hall of Famer Dan Guerrero has been selected as the recipient of the 56th James J. Corbett Memorial Award, the highest honor one can achieve in collegiate athletics administration. Guerrero, a former student-athlete at UCLA, retired as the Bruins' athletics director on July 1, 2020 after leading the athletics department for 18 years. He will be honored in conjunction with the 57^th Annual NACDA & Affiliates Convention at the Mandalay Bay Resort in Las Vegas, prior to the Featured Session on Monday, June 27 at 4 p.m.
 
"Dan Guerrero was and continues to be an incredible role model and resource for athletics directors at all stages in their careers," said NACDA Chief Executive Officer Bob Vecchione. "Following a career as a baseball student-athlete at UCLA, Dan utilized his work ethic, intelligence and interpersonal skills to climb the administrative ladder with successful stops at the Division II and Division I-AAA levels before landing back at UCLA and leading the Bruins to 32 NCAA team championships during his tenure! Through that journey, Dan's servant leadership, both locally and nationally, coupled with his passion for student-athletes has been unwavering and inspiring. Dan is truly one of the all-time great people in our business who has positively impacted everyone who has crossed his path. I am proud to call Dan a friend and so glad his peers have awarded him with the prestigious Corbett Award."
 
The Corbett Award is presented annually to the collegiate administrator who "through the years has most typified Corbett's devotion to intercollegiate athletics and worked unceasingly for its betterment." Corbett, athletics director at Louisiana State University (LSU), was NACDA's first president in 1965. Additionally, Guerrero will receive an honorary degree from the Sports Management Institute (SMI), an educational institute sponsored by NACDA and the universities of Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina, Notre Dame, Southern California and Texas.
 
"For anyone who has devoted their life's work to intercollegiate athletics, there is no greater honor than the James J. Corbett Memorial Award. As such, I am deeply humbled to be in the prestigious company of so many respected administrators," said Guerrero. "What makes this award even more meaningful is that I have been selected by my peers, whom I hold in incredibly high regard. I am extremely grateful to NACDA, the premier leadership and educational organization for our profession, and truly thankful to the devoted colleagues throughout my career who made this possible."
 
Under Guerrero's guidance, UCLA won 73 conference championships in 16 different sports, produced more than 800 All-Americans and featured 11 Honda Award winners, including the 2003-04 and the 2018-19 Collegiate Woman Athlete of the Year. In his 18 years at UCLA, the Bruins finished second five times and third four times in the LEARFIELD Directors' Cup standings.
 
Guerrero served as NACDA President in 2011-12 and was a three-time NACDA Athletics Director of the Year honoree (2013-14 and 2006-07 with UCLA and 2001-02 with UC Irvine). In 2017, he was honored by the National Football Foundation (NFF) with the John L. Toner Award, which recognizes an athletics director who has demonstrated superior administrative abilities and shown outstanding dedication to college athletics and particularly college football.
 
Over the course of his career, Guerrero had significant experience in committee work at both the NCAA and conference levels, having chaired a number of committees along the way. He served on the Division I Men's Basketball Oversight Committee, which he previously chaired for two years, and he also chaired the NCAA Division I Basketball Academic Enhancement Group and the NCAA Working Group on behalf of the Division I Men's Basketball Rice Commission. Guerrero was a member of the Rose Bowl Management Committee for 17 years and was also a member of the Board of Directors of the National Association of Basketball Coaches (NABC), the Institute for Sport and Social Justice, the UCLA Jonsson Cancer Center, REVELxp, the Los Angeles Metropolitan YMCA, the Southern California Chapter of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, the McLendon Foundation and the United States International University Sports Federation (USIUSF), where he began serving his term as president in July 2020. As the Chair of the NCAA Division I Men's Basketball Committee in 2009-10, he was involved with the negotiation of the new $10.8 billion, 14-year NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament television package, as well as the decision to expand the Tournament to 68 teams.
 
Guerrero came to UCLA from UC Irvine, where he had served as UCI's fifth permanent director of athletics for 10 years (1992-2002), helping to elevate that program to unprecedented success. Prior to arriving at UCI, Guerrero worked at Cal State Dominguez Hills, where he led that program to national prominence while serving as athletics director for five years (1988-92). 
                                                
Additional accolades garnered by Guerrero during his administrative career include: named one of the 101 Most Influential Minorities in Sports by Sports Illustrated (2003); named one of the nation's 100 Most Influential Hispanics by Hispanic Business Magazine (2004); named the Dr. Myles Brand BCA Administrator of the Year by the Black Coaches and Administrators organization (2010); received the NACDA John McLendon Pioneer Award, honoring minority "firsts" (2010); received the NABC Cliff Wells Appreciation Award (2011); and received the YMCA Martin Luther King Human Dignity Award (2020). He was inducted into the NACDA Hall of Fame in 2021.
 
Guerrero received his Bachelor's degree from UCLA in 1974 and played second base for the Bruins for four years. Known as "Warrior" during his playing career, he was inducted into the UCLA Baseball Hall of Fame in 1996. Guerrero also earned a Master's degree in public administration in 1982 from Cal State Dominguez Hills and was named to the Pi Alpha Alpha Honor Society for Public Affairs and Public Policy that same year.

About NACDA: Now in its 57th year, NACDA is the professional and educational Association for more than 22,000 college athletics administrators at more than 2,200 institutions throughout the United States, Canada and Mexico. NACDA manages 17 professional associations and four foundations. In addition to virtual programming, NACDA hosts five major professional development events in-person annually. The NACDA & Affiliates Convention is the largest gathering of collegiate athletics administrators in the country. For more information, visit www.nacda.com.