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XFL prez
takes his work to the extreme
By Joe Donatelli
Basil DeVito pulled off
his first and — he laughs — “greatest” marketing
coup as a 21-year-old Ohio University senior.
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| Basil
DeVito, BSJ ’76 and MSA ’78, is president of the XFL. |
He co-managed a bar at
the corner of Court and State streets that had changed its name
to The Junction.
Heard of it?
Well, few had in the fall of 1975. So DeVito and partner Bob Smith
concocted a drink special that eventually evolved into the “Quad
Night” tradition.
Nowadays, DeVito is in charge of stirring the most potent mix of
football competition in sports history. As XFL president, he oversees
operation of the controversial $100 million joint venture between
NBC and the World Wrestling Federation.
While WWF founder Vince McMahon is the public face of the first-year
football league, DeVito, 47, works behind the scenes, hiring front
office personnel and coordinating television coverage. The hours
are long and the critics are absolutely brutal, but each day is
an adventure.
“What I’d like most is a day off,” DeVito says with
a laugh three weeks into the season.
So how does a guy who tended bar through college go from slinging
brews to slinging bruise? Through Ohio University’s sports
administration program.
After high school, DeVito ventured from The Bronx to Athens —
sight unseen — to play baseball. He walked on, mostly sat on
the bench, but he graduated with a journalism degree in 1976. He
went to work at Procter & Gamble in Chicago, but “the lure
of the Athens lifestyle” brought him back the next spring as
an assistant baseball coach.
That summer, he enrolled in the sports ad program, without which,
he says, “it never would have happened for me.” DeVito
graduated from the program in 1978, then landed an internship working
under NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle.
After serving as a marketing director with the NBA’s Indiana
Pacers and a TV producer in Indianapolis, he hooked up in 1985 with
McMahon, who was creating his pro wrestling empire.
“I was lucky to get in on the ground floor of an elevator going
to the penthouse,” DeVito says.
His 15-year rise through the WWF as director of marketing and television
and eventually as chief executive officer mirrored professional
wrestling’s ascent in pop culture. He left the WWF twice to
pursue opportunities in the horse racing industry but returned in
1999 when McMahon pitched him the XFL job.
In addition to spending time with his wife, Tina, and 9-year-old
twins, Alexander and Zachary, in their Connecticut home, he’s
launched a football league and penned a book, “WWF Wrestlemania:
The Official Insider’s History,” in the same year.
Modestly, DeVito asks, “How do I top that?”
If the fledgling XFL outlasts The Junction, he won’t have to.
Joe Donatelli, BSJ ’98, is a sports reporter for Scripps
Howard News Service in Washington, D.C.
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