He is a professor of practice at Syracuse University where he was named Falk College Faculty Member of the Year for Excellence in Teaching in 2014.  He was the founding director of the sports communications graduate program at the Newhouse School of Public Communications and has created several new graduate and undergraduate level courses at Syracuse, his alma mater.

Dennis Deninger is the author of Sports on Television: The How and Why Behind What You See, published by Routledge Taylor and Francis of New York and London.  He spent 25 years at ESPN leading production teams for studio programming, live remote events and digital video platforms.

Dennis Deninger has won Emmy Awards for innovation in sports television, production on digital platforms, and educational television.  He developed for American television the digital instant review technology called “Shot Spot” which is now in use at all major tennis tournaments.

He launched ESPN’s coverage.of Wimbledon and the French Open, plus was the executive in charge of production for World Cup 1994, a dozen Australian Opens, Friday Night Fights, Triple Crown horse racing, PBA bowling and a multitude of other live events.

Deninger joined ESPN in October 1982 as the first Coordinating Producer for SportsCenter and held that position until 1986.  That was the year he created the Scholastic Sports America series, which continued for fifteen years on ESPN.  During the course of his career at ESPN, Dennis Deninger launched more than a dozen new televised series and events including the National Spelling Bee and Major League Soccer.  He also created the most successful daily sports video series in the history of the internet, SportsCenter Right Now, which was originally entitled the SportsCenter Minute.

Dennis Deninger has written and directed documentaries working with his students at Syracuse University as researchers.  America’s First Sport premiered in 2013, and it has now been seen across the US on the ESPNU network.  The film explores the history, culture and rapid expansion of lacrosse in the US and around the world.  In 2014, Changing Sports, Changing Lives was released.  The film focuses on the sports that have been adapted for persons with disabilities, and how these sports have impacted their lives.

In 2017, he began producing a series of first-person documentary films entitled Orange Immortals which tell the life stories of greats from Syracuse University sports history.

Deninger also wrote, produced and directed the biographical documentary Agent of Change: David Falk, which aired on ESPN2 in the summer of 2016.

Additionally Deninger has done consulting for China Central Television, guest lectured at Beijing Sports University, and does professional performance coaching for sports talent in the US.  His comments and analysis have been quoted in national media such as The Wall Street Journal, the International Business Times, Reuters, The Guardian, Associated Press and the NFL Network.

He is Syracuse University’s Faculty Athletics Representative (FAR) to the NCAA and Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC), teaches in Syracuse’s Renee Crown Honors Program and has served as a visiting professor at Kufstein Tirol University in Austria as well as the International Olympic Academy (IOA) in Olympia, Greece. He was selected as the Falk College Faculty Member of the Year for Teaching in 2011 and 2013.

Prior to his appointment at Syracuse in August 2009, Burton served as the chief marketing officer for the U.S. Olympic Committee at the Beijing 2008 Summer Olympics, where he directed the USOC’s partnerships for International Olympic Committee (IOC) and USOC sponsorship activation at the world’s largest sporting event.

From 2003-07, Burton was the Commissioner of Australia’s Sydney-based National Basketball League (a two-continent league with teams in Australia, New Zealand and Singapore) and was responsible for every aspect of the NBL’s development and growth, including securing broadcast rights fees, naming rights sponsorships, player and referee collective bargaining agreements and league profitability. By placing a team in Singapore, the NBL became the first western sports league to place a team in Asia.

From 1995-2003, Burton led the University of Oregon’s Warsaw Sports Marketing Center to international prominence serving as both its director and executive director (1998-03). During this time, Burton initiated Oregon’s engagement with Fudan University in Shanghai, China, and worked closely with Nike as it developed business efforts in China. While at Oregon, Burton also created the Burton Marketing Group working almost exclusively in league management and sponsorship for entities such as IMG, the U.S. Basketball Academy, Philippine Basketball Association (PBA), Japanese Pro Soccer league (J-League), National Football League (NFL), National Hockey League (NHL), Australian NBL, Visa, Oakland Raiders and Sport Accord. More recent clients have included the Buffalo Bills (NFL), the Professional Bull Riders and TSE.

In the mid-1990s (1993-95), Burton supervised numerous clients ranging from the NFL, Indianapolis Motor Speedway, Gillette, Sprint and Universal Studios while serving as a vice president for sports and entertainment marketing agency Clarion Performance Properties in Greenwich, Conn.

During his varied career, Burton has written for the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Ad Age, Sports Business Journal, SI.com, and Sport Business International. Burton began his career as a sportswriter in Syracuse before moving to Miller Brewing Company in Milwaukee, where he worked for 12 years in brand management and sports public relations. He served as national advertising manager for Miller Lite’s award-winning “Less Filling – Tastes Great” advertising campaign and also as a brand manager for Sharp’s and Lowenbrau.

Books he has co-authored include:

• The Rise of Major League Soccer: Building a Global Giant (2025, in press), Burton, R. and O’Reilly, N., Lyons Press,  Essex, Conn.
• Invisible No More (2023), Pitoniak, S., and Burton, R., Subplot Publishing, Herndon, Va.
• Business the NHL Way: Lessons from the Fastest Game on Ice (2022), O’Reilly, N. and Burton, R., Aevo/UTP Press, Toronto
• Forever Orange: The Story of Syracuse University,��Pitoniak, S. and Burton, R., Syracuse University Press, Syracuse, N.Y.
• The Sport Business Handbook: Insights From 100+ Leaders Who Shaped 50 Years of the Industry (2019), Horrow, R., Burton, R. and Schrag, M., Editors; Foreword by Krzyzewski, M., Human Kinetics, Champaign, Ill.
• 20 Secrets to Success for NCAA Student-Athletes Who Won’t Go Pro (2018), Burton, R., Hirshman, J., O’Reilly, N., Dolich, A. and Lawrence, H., Ohio University Press, Athens, Ohio.
• Sport Business Unplugged: Leadership Challenges from the World of Sports (2016), Burton, R. and O’Reilly, N., Syracuse University Press, Syracuse, N.Y.
• Global Sport Marketing: Sponsorship, Ambush Marketing, and the Olympic Games (2015), O’Reilly, N., Pound, R., Burton, R., Seguin, B. and Brunette, M., Fitness Information Technology, Morgantown, W.V.

The founding director of SU’s sport management program, Veley joined the Falk College in 2005 as department chair and was named professor of practice the following year. He has provided oversight and curriculum development for nearly 25 new academically rigorous courses, including a new master of science degree in sport venue and event management launched in 2012 and a bachelor of science in sport analytics announced in 2016. Veley has fostered experiential learning and social responsibility as signature aspects of the sport management program, which have contributed to its reputation for excellence and best practices in sport management education across the country.

Veley’s leadership and deep connections in the sports and event industries have created unique, ongoing experiential learning and faculty-student research partnerships with organizations such as the New York Yankees, AEG Worldwide, the National Baseball Hall of Fame, and the National Basketball Association Development League, among others. He has helped create an internationally regarded “Who’s Who in Sports” advisory board that consists of 26 members, including 16 company presidents, founders and CEOs.