Kern is in his 35th year serving the membership. In a dual role, he serves as an historian for the Missouri Valley Football Conference, and has been with the MVFC since 1991.
For The Valley, he oversees communications for the league with his primary communications duties focused on men’s basketball. Kern also assists in building the league basketball schedule and with management of the MVC’s in-house television network. Kern is involved in strategic planning for the conference and also helps coordinate the league’s marketing and promotions efforts. He is the staff liaison for men's basketball, men's golf, women's golf, baseball, and women's soccer and in addition to MVFC football and men's basketball PR, he handles media relations for men’s and women’s golf, women's soccer, and softball.
Kern has been the Chair of the MVC Hall of Fame Committee since 2016. More than 150 former administrators, coaches, student-athletes and contributors have been inducted into the MVC Hall of Fame since its inception in 1997. Kern was instrumental in introducing a Veteran’s Committee as part of the Hall of Fame in 2019.
Kern spearheaded the launch and implementation of the league’s new #OneValley social justice initiative and served with a number of other MVC staff members on the league’s COVID-19 Working Group during the early stages of the pandemic. During the 2007 season, he engineered the league's communications efforts to celebrate the 25th anniversary of women's sports in the MVC. Kern also collaborated with staff to develop a program to recognize the 50th anniversary of the signing of Title IX in 2022-23.
This spring, Kern will serve as media coordiantor for the 2026 NCAA First/Second Rounds at Enterprise Center in St. Louis. At the conclusion of that event, he will have served as Media Coordinator for 12 NCAA events, which has included two Women’s Final Fours and the 2005 Men’s Final Four. He was assistant tournament manager for the 2008 First and Second Round NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament, and has served as assistant media coordinator for seven other NCAA basketball events. He has also served as timeout coordinator for more than 50 NCAA Tournament games. Kern has been a member of the prestigious NCAA Final Four Media Coordination Committee since 2016.
Kern has been Media Coordinator for the State Farm MVC Men’s Basketball Championship since 2004 and also served as Media Coordinator for the MVC Women’s Basketball Championship for 12 seasons prior. Counting MVC and NCAA events through 2024, Kern has been media coordinator or assistant media coordinator for a total of 78 basketball tournaments.
For more than three decades, Kern oversaw the MVFC’s merchandising and licensing program, and the in-house television package, which includes scheduling and clearances, plus the hiring of on-air talent.
For 12 years (through the 2024 season), Kern served as FCS Managing Director, and in that capacity Kern administered an FCS website, oversaw a national awards program, served as a liaison to the NCAA, and monitored FCS branding activities, including a weekly “notebook” distributed to participating FCS schools and media. In 2016 he was named to a 13-person Board of Directors charged with planning the 150th Anniversary Celebration of the birth of college football. In 2022, he served as an Ex-Officio On the Football Writers Association of America (FWAA) Board.
In 2002, Kern received the St. Louis Business Journal’s annual award for “Best Use of Technology in Sports” as he introduced the league’s on-line statistical reporting system used for the league’s Olympic sport programs.
Kern, 58, earned a bachelor’s degree in journalism from Missouri in 1988 and a master’s degree in communications management from Missouri State in 1990. A St. Louis native, Kern served as a sports information graduate assistant for two years at MoState and as a student assistant at Missouri as an undergraduate.
His publications and features have earned numerous CoSIDA (College Sports Information Directors of America) awards. He has a total of 39 national top-5 awards for his publications work, which includes 19 “Best in the Nation” citations. The league’s 2022-23 men’s basketball guide was judged as Best in the Nation.
He is a member of CSC (College Sports Communicators, formerly College Sports Information Directors of America), the FWAA, the Baseball Writers Association of America, and the United States Basketball Writers Association (USBWA). He received a CSC 25-Year Award in the summer of 2017 for 25 years of service to the organization, and in 2017-18, he served on the USBWA Board of Directors. For CSC, he has served on the Professional Development and Education Committee (previously known as Programming), and recently served on the CSC U Committee.
Kern and his wife Terri have four adult children (Ben, Hannah, Michael, and Max) and two dogs (Bingo and Dexter).