Alex Riethmiller has an office with a view of one of the NFL’s most stunning venues. He rubs elbows with Roger Goodell. And each February, he attends the Super Bowl.
Not bad for a guy who entered college without much of a plan other than trying to walk on to the University of Virginia lacrosse team.
“I tried out my freshman year and got cut,” Riethmiller said from his desk in Inglewood, California, a stone’s throw from SoFi Stadium, the home of the Los Angeles Chargers and Rams. “I tried out my sophomore year and they kept me for the fall, but I didn’t carry over for the spring season.”
There’s no doubting Riethmiller’s skills any longer. The English major eventually found his niche. Beginning Thursday in Green Bay, Wisconsin, he’ll work his 13th consecutive NFL Draft as part of his role as a vice president of communications for the NFL.
The 1994 graduate keeps a miniature Cavalier football helmet in his office as a reminder of where his career started, and of the many Wahoos who helped guide him along the way. He compiled a list in preparation for an interview with UVA Today.
Riethmiller first realized the power of UVA’s alumni network when he connected with double Hoo Blair Schmidt-Fellner ahead of the summer between his third and fourth years at the University. Still unsure of a professional field to pursue, an internship opportunity under Schmidt-Fellner, a Darden School of Business product who was then the vice president and general manager of SportSouth Network in Atlanta, intrigued him.
Riethmiller runs into fellow Hoos all the time in the NFL. Here, he’s pictured with Ronde Barber on the sidelines of a 2022 Tampa Buccaneers-Seattle Seahawks game at Allianz Arena in Munich, Germany. (Contributed photo)
The experience at a regional television station, which included coverage of the Atlanta Braves, was enough to hook a 21-year-old searching for his next step.
“Holy cow, there’s this whole world out there of people working in sports,” Riethmiller said he remembered thinking at the time. “It really set me on a course of wanting to work in sports. It opened the door for me.”
Two decades later, and after working for the NFL’s Jacksonville Jaguars, the NBA’s Atlanta Hawks and serving as a vice president of communications and media relations for CBS, Riethmiller was hired by UVA alumnus Paul Hicks to work at the NFL.
Two other Hoos, Senior Vice President of Communications Katie Hill and Senior Vice President of Football Operations Kimberly Fields, are now his NFL colleagues, a pair Riethmiller calls “really strong examples of the best of UVA.”
Riethmiller is responsible for the oversight and strategy for all business, media and international communications at the NFL. He keeps framed in his office a compilation of the press coverage around the 2021 announcement of the NFL’s historic $110 billion media rights agreement with Amazon, CBS, ESPN/ABC, FOX and NBC, a deal he said is the “biggest piece of news” he’s been charged with communicating.
His draft week duties typically involve the continued promotion of the NFL Network’s coverage of the three-day event – setting up media availabilities with the on-site talent – and meeting with a variety of league business partners.
Strong showing at #NFLDraft2016 of @UVa_Football! @HMAN84 @PatrickKerney Ronde Barber @AlexRiethmiller @nflnetwork pic.twitter.com/iJMQHNgPy5
— melissa stark (@melissastark) April 30, 2016
The draft has evolved over the last decade, going from being held annually in New York City’s Radio City Music Hall to rotating among vast venues in NFL cities. In 2023, among 125,000 people outside Kansas City’s Union Station, the event began with NFL Commissioner Goodell announcing slain UVA football players Devin Chandler, Lavel Davis Jr. and D’Sean Perry as the honorary first picks.
Months earlier, the NFL made a $100,000 commitment to the UVA Strong Fund in support of the players’ families.
“Commissioner Goodell says it a lot, that football is family,” Riethmiller said. “And he really lives that every day. And so, yes, this was the University of Virginia. This was not an NFL franchise, but at the same time, I think we feel we’re in a leadership position for football overall, whether it’s college or high school or youth, and we want to be involved in all the positive ways.
