Rob Cunningham has served as Swarthmore's Assistant Director of Athletic Communications since September 2023.
Since joining the Garnet, Cunningham has been instrumental in the athletic communications office's coverage of Swarthmore's 21 intercollegiate athletic programs, including gameday responsibilities - such as statistics and webstreaming - and maintaining SwarthmoreAthletics.com. He served as the media coordinator when the Garnet hosted the opening rounds of the 2024 NCAA Men's Tennis Tournament. Cunningham was a district runner-up in the 2024-25 College Sports Communicators Fred Stabley Sr. Writing Contest for his
recap of the Swarthmore field hockey team's upset of No. 5 Johns Hopkins.
Cunningham came to Swarthmore after five years as the Director of Athletic Communications at Thomas Jefferson University. While at Jefferson, Cunningham was the driving force behind several updates to the office's operations. He led a redesign of the official athletics website and began a new partnership with SIDEARM Sports as the web host of JeffersonRams.com. Cunningham modernized statistical entry for the department, switching from long-time industry standard StatCrew to the fledgling NCAA LiveStats by Genius Sports, a new product supported by the NCAA. He assisted the baseball team's efforts to upgrade its game broadcasts, helping to purchase and implementing new equipment to add a camera angle from center field. Cunningham was the media coordinator for the 2019 NCAA East Region Cross Country Championships and the 2023 CACC Men's and Women's Basketball Championships hosted by Jefferson.
Cunningham spent two years as the Assistant Director of Athletic Communications at his alma mater, Rowan University, from 2016-18. While in Glassboro, Cunningham was the primary contact for 10 of the Profs' 18 intercollegiate sports at the Division III level, including football. He was the lead athletic communications contact for three NCAA Tournament events as Rowan hosted the first and second rounds of the men’s soccer tournament in 2016 and 2017 as well as the first and second rounds of the women’s lacrosse tournament in 2018. In this role, Cunningham produced the tournament program, coordinated all media needs, compiled the official statistics and facilitated all postgame press conferences. Cunningham previously served Rowan as Athletic Communications Assistant from 2013-15. He was also a student worker in the Athletic Communications office for three years.
Between his two stints in Glassboro, Cunningham was the first-ever Assistant Director of Sports Information at Delaware Valley University (2015-16). While in Doylestown, Cunningham launched the first DelVal Athletics YouTube channel and produced video content featuring game highlights and student-athlete achievements. He also made numerous improvements to the DelVal Athletics website.
During his undergraduate career at Rowan, Cunningham was an active member of both Rowan Radio 89.7 WGLS-FM and the Rowan Television Network (RTN). He served as Sports Director of WGLS and also had a stint as Sports Producer of RTN. Cunningham was the Pregame/Postgame Host and Producer for Wilmington Blue Rocks broadcasts on WGLS for the 2012 season.
Cunningham provided commentary for several radio and television broadcasts of Rowan athletic events, including the Rowan baseball team’s 2013 New Jersey Athletic Conference Championship victory. He was also the producer of the RTN series Face Off, a sports talk show, for two years. In addition, Cunningham was the men’s soccer beat writer for the University’s student-run newspaper,
The Whit, for two seasons.
Cunningham’s broadcast work has been recognized by the Broadcast Education Association, Garden State Journalists Association, Hermes Creative Awards, and Society of Professional Journalists. He is a member of College Sports Communicators (CSC, formerly CoSIDA) and the Eastern Athletic Communications Association (EAST-COMM, formerly ECAC-SIDA). Cunningham is currently a member of the CSC Fred Stabley Sr. Writing Contest Committee, serving as a district co-chair, and has previously served on the ECAC-SIDA Charities Committee and the CoSIDA Young Professionals Committee. He has additional service as the men's swimming & diving coordinator for the PhillySIDA Academic All-Area program and as a voter for the D2SIDA Men's Basketball East Region Poll. Cunningham previously spent time as an official scorer for the Camden Riversharks of the Atlantic League of Professional Baseball and has been a member of the gameday operations crew for the National Lacrosse League's Philadelphia Wings and NBA G League's Delaware Blue Coats.
Cunningham earned a pair of bachelor’s degrees in radio/television/film and broadcast journalism from Rowan and received a master’s in sport science with a concentration in sport administration from Lock Haven University.
