Dan Coonan took over as Commissioner/CEO of the ECAC in January 2017. He has enjoyed a multifaceted career spanning college athletics, law, politics, fundraising, nonprofit leadership and writing.
Dan spent a dozen years as Athletic Director at Santa Clara University after serving as Assistant Commissioner of the Pac-12 Conference and Executive Associate Athletic Director at Cal. At Cal, he led the football head-coaching search that brought Jeff Tedford to the school; Tedford went on to become the winningest football coach in Cal history. Coonan has also practiced law, run a Congressional campaign, taught law as an Adjunct Professor at the University of San Francisco, overseen all fundraising for the Catholic Church in Los Angeles, and served as Chairman of the Board of Life Moves (formerly InnVision), the largest homeless shelter network in the Bay Area.
In 2020, he released a novel, Presidential Spirits, published by Goose River Press, which attracted some media attention and critical acclaim. He followed it with a sequel, Another Round, in 2022, and in 2026 co-authored Second to None, about El Segundo Little League’s recent World Series title.
Coonan grew up playing baseball in a large, close Irish Catholic family in El Segundo, California, and attended the University of Notre Dame. He graduated from Loyola Law School, where he wrote for the Law Review, and performed a judicial externship for Judge Cynthia Holcomb Hall of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals before practicing law in Los Angeles for seven years.
He initiated a comprehensive esports program at the ECAC in the spring of 2018. The program has grown from 12 schools in its first year to more than 300, and now includes roughly 2,000 teams and 10,000 competitors playing 24 different titles. In 2019, he collaborated with the National Collegiate Equestrian Association to create a national equestrian conference under the ECAC banner. In 2025, he partnered with the New York Jets and the Betty Wold Johnson Foundation to create the largest intercollegiate women’s flag football conference in the country. ECAC Women’s Flag Football now includes 29 collegiate teams, with its championships held at MetLife Stadium.
Coonan lives in Newtown, Connecticut, with his wife, Donna. They have three children.
Linked In: Dan Coonan | LinkedIn
Dan Coonan (dancoonanauthor.com)