The Miami Dolphins made the most consequential front-office announcement of the Stephen Ross era on Tuesday, and it had nothing to do with the 90-man roster.
Tom Garfinkel is stepping away as team president and CEO after 13 years, the team announced, and buried inside the same release is a change that matters more to the football side than any executive title: For the first time since Ross bought the team, the general manager and head coach will no longer report to the owner himself.
That responsibility now belongs to Daniel Sillman, Ross’s son-in-law, who was named CEO of a newly formed umbrella company called Ross Sports & Entertainment. Head coach Jeff Hafley, general manager Jon-Eric Sullivan and executive vice president of football operations Brandon Shore will all report directly to Sillman going forward.
The end of a 13-year era
Garfinkel arrived from the San Diego Padres in 2013 and spent the next 13 years turning the Dolphins into something closer to a global events company than a traditional NFL franchise.
According to the team, annual revenues grew by more than 400 percent on his watch, and the organization locked in more than $3 billion in future contractually obligated sponsorship income.
He drove the privately funded $550 million transformation of Hard Rock Stadium, oversaw construction of the $135 million Baptist Health Training Complex and helped grow the Dolphins Challenge Cancer event into the NFL’s largest charitable fundraiser.
The events resume is even longer. Garfinkel played a central role in bringing Formula 1 to Miami on a deal that runs through 2041, secured a 30-year agreement to host the Miami Open at Hard Rock Stadium and won bids for the 2020 Super Bowl, two College Football Playoff national championship games and seven matches at the 2026 FIFA World Cup.
“I love the Dolphins and the people here, but after 13 years it was just the right time for me to make this decision,” Garfinkel said in the team’s announcement.
He is not leaving the building entirely. Garfinkel stays on as Vice Chairman of the Dolphins and Hard Rock Stadium and as managing partner of the Miami Grand Prix, while handing off the day-to-day operation he has run since 2013.
Who is Daniel Sillman?
Sillman, 37, is the co-founder and executive chairman of Relevent, the sports and media rights company that negotiates more than $10 billion a year in media rights for properties including UEFA, the Premier League and LALIGA.
He will keep that role while running Ross Sports & Entertainment, the new entity that consolidates the Dolphins, Hard Rock Stadium, the Miami Grand Prix, the Miami Open tennis tournament and the Precision Drive Club under one roof.
He is also family. Sillman is married to one of Ross’s daughters, and per the team, he has worked alongside Ross for nearly a decade on the organization’s biggest strategic moves, including the acquisition of a 45 percent stake in the Miami Open.
“It is an incredible honor to lead Ross Sports & Entertainment at such an exciting moment,” Sillman said in the announcement.
A new chain of command for football operations
The detail Dolphins fans should care about most sits in the middle of the press release, stated almost in passing: Sillman led the search that produced the franchise’s current football leadership.
When the Dolphins hired Sullivan as general manager and Hafley as head coach in 2026, it was Sillman running that process — which means the men now reporting to him are the men he picked.
That continuity matters, because Sullivan has spent his first offseason executing a clearly defined roster vision, one he capped by locking up the last of his three defensive “pillars” just before camp opened.
Nothing about Tuesday’s announcement suggests a philosophical reset on the football side. What changed is the org chart above it — Ross, at 86, is no longer the direct report line for his GM and head coach, and a single 37-year-old executive now sits atop both the business and football operations.
Whether that structure helps or hurts is the honest unknown. Sillman has never run an NFL football operation, and his background is commercial rather than competitive.
The counterargument is that the old arrangement, with football and business leadership running on separate tracks to an owner in his ’80s, was hardly a model of clarity either.
The succession question finally has an answer
The Miami Herald‘s Barry Jackson reported that beyond Tuesday’s announced changes, the Dolphins’ unannounced succession plan for a post-Ross era will feature Sillman and Ross’s daughters Jennifer and Kimberly, with the team set to “go to” the daughters as part of that plan.
Not announced, but per a source, the Dolphins' succession plan (in a post-Ross era) will feature Daniel Sillman and Ross' daughters Jennifer and Kimberly running the team. The team will "go to" Jennifer and Kimberly as part of succession plan. This solidifies Dolphins future for… https://t.co/ycjt6VWsFK
— Barry Jackson (@flasportsbuzz) August 4, 2026
Jackson also reported that Garfinkel’s departure was entirely his own choice, describing an executive who simply wanted a new challenge after 13 years. For a fan base that has watched other franchises descend into ownership chaos when a patriarch’s era ends, the significance is real — the Dolphins now have a named, family-based succession structure and an heir apparent already doing the job.
What it means for the 2026 season
In the short term, probably very little on the practice fields in Miami Gardens. Camp rolled on Tuesday with the roster battles that will actually decide this season, including the ongoing scrutiny of Malik Willis as he settles in as the starting quarterback under Hafley.
Sullivan and Hafley keep their jobs, their roster and their plan — they just answer to a new name. The longer-term stakes are bigger.
Garfinkel’s tenure produced a business juggernaut and a stadium that hosts the world, but the franchise never won a playoff game during it, and that gap is the first line of the mandate Sillman inherits.
The new boss gets his first game that counts on Sept. 13, when the Dolphins open the season in Las Vegas — and everything his father-in-law built will be watching how he handles the one part of the empire that has never quite worked.
