SSAC Administration
Dr. Kurt Patberg
Conference Commissioner
(770) 447-5700

Kurt is excited to be back in the leadership role of a conference which began with the SSAC in March of 2008. He has spent over nine years in the role of commissioner of the Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference and the Northern Sun Intercollegiate Conference. During his tenure as commissioner, his primary accomplishments have been advancing the exposure of the league through various medians such as television, radio, and online marketing. These projects have been possible by Kurt's ability to secure working corporate partnerships with businesses that benefit from partnering with small college athletic conferences and its member institutions.

Immediately prior to joining the SSAC, Kurt spent seven years as the general manager of Competitive Resources which he helped build into the leading career and placement service in the country for persons with competitive athletic experiences. During that time, Kurt was not only in a management capacity but also assisted in the areas of career development and placement and recruiting of mostly collegiate athletes. Kurt was one of the primary designers of the SCORE programs which is a seminar that assists student athletes in preparing themselves for their professional careers after their days as a student-athlete.

Kurt received his bachelor's degree in business administration from the University of Evansville before continuing on with his masters in sports administration from Ohio University the following year. He recently completed his PH.D. in kinesiology with emphasis on higher education and sports administration from the University of Minnesota.

He has served on multiple committees and associations, including the Chick-fil-A Bowl Selection Committee, the Southern Catholic University Athletic Consultation Team, the Colonial Athletic Association Basketball Championships Tournament Committee, the Colorado Springs Sports Corporation Board of Directors. The Commissioner is serving on several NAIA committees. One is the study of the possible need for a National Letter of Intent program and the other two committees are both Conference Commissioner Association committees relating to national marketing programs and championship sport sponsorship requirements, respectfully.


Greg Black
Sports Information Director
(334) 799-3147

Greg has been served as the conference sports information director since July 2001. He is employed by eSolution Architects and is the creator of SIDHelp, a content management system for athletic sites, which is used on the conference website. Greg is a member of NAIA-CoSIDA and has served as the chair of the Computer Services committee as well as been a technical consultant for many NAIA computer related projects.

Greg attended Faulkner University and later transfered to Troy State University - Montgomery where he received is BS in Computer Science in 1997. Later He received his MS-Computer Information Systems from The University of Phoenix. Greg has married to Rayla Black since 2000 and has one son (Tucker) who was born in 2005. Greg and his family reside in Montgomery, AL.

Dr. Richard Cowan
Eligibility Chair
(706) 233-7207

Richard has been a faculty member at Shorter College for 35 years and counting. He is currently a full professor of mathematics. Richard has been involved continuously in eligibility at the District and Conference level for the past 30 years. In this capacity he has presented numerous eligibility workshops at District and Conference meetings and at member schools, while also attending the NAIA National Convention on a regular basis. Recently for the NAIA Richard has served on six site visit teams. These teams are set up by the NAIA to visit colleges and universities who have applied for NAIA membership. Richard currently serves on an NAIA task force investigating five years of eligibility in a sport.

Ricci Lattanzi
Business Manager
(706) 233-7347

Ricci is a full-time employee of Shorter College, but willingly donates a significant amount of time to the SSAC. In 2007-08, Ricci served as the interim commissioner capacity for the SSAC, and since the hiring of Commissioner Patberg, has retained the responsibilities of business manager. As the Director of Operations for the Shorter Athletic Department, Ricci is involved in many of the hands-on operations of the athletic department, including game day operations, facilities management, concessions and community relations.