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UNIVERSITY OF DELAWARE FOOTBALL MEDIA CONFERENCE

December 14, 2016

Newark, Delaware

THE MODERATOR: At this time, I'd like to welcome the president of the University of Delaware, Dr. Dennis Assanis.

DR. DENNIS ASSANIS: Wow, what a day for the University of Delaware and for the community. Good afternoon, Blue Hens. I can't tell you how thrilled I am to be with you today, and I know I represent each and every one of you.

I'm honored to be the president of this fine university and lead it into the future, a future that will do justice to it's rich legacy of excellence in everything that we do.

We want to be dedicated to the success of all our students, that includes the success of our student athletes. We want to serve our community. We want to serve the state and the world. And we always want to do this with principles and values. Last week, we were celebrating University of Delaware. We have seen every aspect and facet of the university; we are so proud for each and every one of you.

Today we are celebrating with athletics and it is fitting to do so, because athletics is the front porch of our university. It is what brings you all to the university and it is what builds memories and it is what builds the winning spirit in the university, and UD is a community of winners. Eve and every one of you is a winner and that's why we're all here.

Football is a cornerstone of our athletics and it has been around officially for 125 years and actually a bit older than that since people started playing football, finding some, whatever, and trying to beat them, because we always were winning and we want to continue to win.

So we have went out on a relentless pursuit of excellence to rebuild our football program. This just doesn't happen automatically, you know. There is a process you have to follow. First, you need to find a wonderful athletics director and please join me (applause) in welcoming Chrissi Rawak and her family here. And of course, then you need to charge up the athletics director. Not that she needs to be charged, but nonetheless, you know, we're a team.

So I told Chrissi, get us some great coaches. We need to remember how to win. We have forgotten what it is about winning the last few years, and we are a storied program in football. You know, we have won championships. We want to do it every year. So said, got it.

By the way, I did not give her 12 days as I did with basketball. I said, "Take your time until we can find a winning coach." I would not settle for anything else than a winning coach.

And I'm so delighted that in Danny Rocco, we have a winning coach here with us today. He has a wonderful record and you're going to here each and every little bit of the detail of his profile in a minute from Chrissi.

Needless to say from me, that Danny has very strong experience as a football coach for 33 years. He's a players' coach; he's a coach's coach. He's really brought his personality and his spirit into winning in the game. He has been 11 years a head coach at the two great institutions, Liberty and Richmond, and beyond that he has worked at all kinds of other wonderful places like Virginia and Maryland and Texas and Wake Forest.

So he's amazing as a coach. But I have to tell you what sold Danny Rocco to me is not that he can win games. That's important. Obviously that's a prerequisite but for me it's the total package. I'm totally committed to the success of our student athletes. I want to see young men who share the same values that I have. I want him to be dedicated to have the highest ethics to be winners off and on the field and to sacrifice for each other and for a great university.

And I did see a lot of that in Danny Rocco. When I first saw him, I said, "Coach, I want you to always do the hard thing, because that's the right thing to do. And I want you to never give up."

And he said, "Got it, Sir." And that was it. (Laughter).

And that was really, really -- and I did say one more thing. I said, "Treat others the same way you want to be treated."

So I'm really so excited that we have somebody that's going to take our football program forward towards the relentless pursuit of excellence. So Chrissi, please come aboard.

CHRISSI RAWAK: Wow. How fun is this. It's pretty fun. Welcome, everyone. It is a great day for Delaware. It is a great day for Delaware and it's wonderful to be with all of you. I'm thrilled, thrilled, thrilled, to welcome Coach, his wonderful wife, Julie and his parents, Frank and Ann, who are here -- Hi Frank and Ann (applause). That's right. They deserve applause. Proud. Should be very proud.

Their children, David and Amy, who I'm sure are streaming and are watching us. Hi, David and Amy, can't wait to meet you, and son-in-law, Ryan; having them become a part of the Delaware family is very exciting, very, very exciting.

I obviously want to take a few minutes to take some folks, President Assanis, John Cochrane, my travel buddy and the entire board of trustees have been incredibly supportive in this entire process. Alan Brangman, Laurie Ergin, my colleagues have also been incredibly supportive. I want to thank Korn Ferry, Jed Hughes, and Andrew and Kyle, my partners in crime in really working with me to get this done the right way, the right way.

And then I also want to take a moment to thank the people that I think I feel are most important. And that is our football family, our football community. I'm incredibly grateful to the football community. Our fans, thank you for your trust and your patience.

To our football alumni, you were terrific, you were terrific. In particular, Fred Rullo, Larry Catuzzi, Joe Purzycki, Paul Brown, Bo Dennis, Dan Reeder, and my wing man, Scott Brunner and Rich Gannon. I could not have done this without you.

But finally, to our football student athletes. I'd set it to you all before and I'll say it again: I appreciate you. I appreciate you. You stayed in it with me, and I know at times that was tough. But I want you to know that I will never and did not through the process take your trust for granted. It drove me every day as I worked hard to make the right decision for you.

And I have to tell you, that I also want to say thank you to coach dot and the coaching staff here. They did a tremendous job at a very challenging time, and I appreciate all that they did for our student athletes and our community.

As you know, it's been a process, a very intentional, thoughtful and deliberate process that began almost two months ago. My focus was to find the very best football coach for our university, our program, and our student athletes.

So what does that really mean? So here is what it meant to me: A proven winner, but winning in the right way, winning with integrity. A person that not just believes in the value of the student athlete experience, but demonstrates that every day with the choices that they make; a team player that respects, embraces and embodies the values and traditions of this university in this storied program.

We had unbelievable interest, unbelievable interest. Not at all surprising. It just reinforced how special this place is and this program is. As we went through each step in the process, it became so clear to us that Danny Rocco was the right man for Delaware. Not just the right man for the job, the right man for Delaware.

I mean, have you read his resumÃ©? It's two pages long. In all seriousness, he has turned two programs around, has never had a losing season as a head coach. He's won six conference championships, been named Coach of the Year in his conference four times. His players excel in the classroom and have been All-Americans on the field. He has worked in the FBS, the FCS, the NFL, and most importantly, Frank, the dinner table conversations from a very young age centered around coaching. It's part of his DNA. It is part of who he is.

But like President Assanis, at the end of the day, what sold us was that this is a man of principle. This is a man of integrity that leads. And I cannot tell you how excited, how honored, and tremendously proud, tremendously proud, to introduce the 22nd head coach football of the University of Delaware, Danny Rocco.

DANNY ROCCO: Thank you very much. Greatly appreciate the introduction and the support and the enthusiasm in this room right now.

I want to make one thing perfectly clear: Chrissi said that this was a great day for Delaware football. She got it wrong. It's a great day for me. It's a great day for me and my family. This is an extraordinary opportunity, okay. I'm very grateful and humbled to be the 22nd head football coach here at the University of Delaware.

I'm excited and enthusiastic and I am ready to get started. So I'm looking forward to the challenges that lie ahead and getting to know everybody in the community and getting to meet my student athletes. I want to acknowledge some people and offer some encouragement and some appreciation.

President, you've been extraordinary in this experience for me. The opportunity that we had together to meet one-on-one, I thought was special. We connected, and I do think we see this the exact same way. We are committed to our young people. We are committed to the student athlete experience. We are committed to building and developing character, and we are committed to winning, and I appreciate that very much.

For Chrissi, I know that this has been a journey, and I know it's been difficult for her. The last 48 hours have been full of events and moments of uncertainty. But I'll say one thing about Chrissi: She is relentless (Laughter) you already knew that though. She is relentless and purposeful, and she has a vision. And I think the first time that we spoke, she listened, and she heard, and I think she really believed that I was the right guy. And she went on to address and answer the things that were important to me and she did an amazing job closing the deal.

The one thing I will say, is she's got great courage. She's got great courage, because she really put herself out there. And I think there was an assumption that like this was a done deal for an extended period of time and these things are never like that. We came to a definitive agreement Monday night at my house at 6:04 PM. But up to that moment, there were moments of uncertainty.

My wife, Julie, 28 years Julie and I have been married. We met when I was at Wake Forest University and she was at Salem College in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Julie and I spent the first 12 years of our marriage living in eight different states as I moved from job to job. Julie was brought up in a military family. Her daddy was West Point and she was born in Germany. So the whole reality of being on the move and being re-stationed was not all that foreign to her.

We were in the State of Virginia for the last 16 years. Five years in Charlottesville at UVA where I was the associate head coach working for Al Groh and recruiting coordinator; six years in Lynchburg, Virginia at Liberty University, and most recently five years in Richmond, Virginia. We are looking forward to moving to Delaware and we're excited about what lies ahead.

Chrissi mentioned it: Mom and Dad are here -- could be hard for me. I grew up, had the opportunity to play high school football for my dad, which was really, really cool. So I grew up in an environment whereas a little kid, all I knew was football, and I did anything and everything from ball boy to water boy. I was screwing face masks on helmets when I was ten, 11 years old.

When we got old enough to play, my brother, Frank, and I had the privilege of playing high school football for our father. And the thing that you learn, and sometimes in life, you don't learn things in realtime, as I talked to our student athletes here; it took me a number of years before I really recognized the impact that my dad had as a coach on the student athletes that he coached and he mentored.

You know, sometimes when you go through the process, things happen real quickly, and you don't appreciate that. My brother, Frank, has been coaching high school football for 26 years. My brother, Dave, has been coaching high school football. My dad was a high school football coach at Great Valley High School in Conestoga Valley. We lived in Media, Pennsylvania. He went on to Easton High School, Allentown Allen; Penn Highlands in Lewistown, Pennsylvania. We settled in Pittsburgh. He went on to Altoona High School, and then he spent 18 years on Coach Paterno's staff at Penn State University.

Like Chrissi said, this is who I am. I am a football coach. And I do it for the right reasons: Now, I want to win. I am intensely passionate about winning. The hardest thing for me guys right now, and maybe I am a little emotional, is because I just left a bunch of kids that I love. Do you understand what I just said? I just left a bunch of kids that I love to be here and to be with you.

This place has so much history and tradition; Tubby Raymond and the national championships; Coach Nelson and the national championships, six of them.

I brought a team here in 2013, one of the most amazing football games of my career. My team won kind of on the last play of the game. It was an absolute shootout.

But before the game, I walked the stadium and I looked at those banners hanging on that stadium, the six National Championship banners, and I walked around campus and I looked at the culture, I looked at the parking lot, I saw the tailgating; I saw the band; I saw the energy in the stadium, the students, the alumni, and I said: That's what I want. Now I have the opportunity to embrace that.

I'm committed to what I reference as whole-person development. I'm committed to the academic component of the student athlete experience. I'm committed to the moral component of the student athlete experience. Obviously we're committed to the social and the community component, and then the athletic component of winning.

Got a real clear vision and purpose for why I'm here. I'm here to help return Delaware football to a level of national prominence and put our brand back on the national stage. That's what I'm here to do. (Applause.)

And like your President said, I'm here to do it the right way. I'm here to do it the right way. There's only one way to do it. You win in every phase of your life. You win in the classroom. You make decisions every day when you Wake up in the morning and if you're making the right decisions, we're going to have a great program. And that's the formula right there. It's not all that hard to figure out.

I believe in the process and I'm committed to the process; the understanding that the process of winning is more important than the actual event. The reason you win is because you invest in the process. And again, if we collectively invest in the process, we will be champions. And that's what I'm here to do. It's very important to me that we are connected to our alumni; that we are connected to our community and we are ambassadors for our university. It's very important to me that our student body is a big part of who we are in athletics as we continue to build and grow together.

I've got an action plan here that I'll start tomorrow when I have the opportunity to meet with the current staff and the current coaches and then I'll start to focus in on the recruiting and the process of evaluation.

But the most important component is teamwork. Nobody can do it alone. Nobody can go it alone. We all need each other. I watched that video yesterday that they put together here -- wasn't that extraordinary? Did y'all enjoy that? Well, there's an element of passion and emotion that's attached to that. Don't we all want to return to those moments and feelings of victory and championships?

It's an honor for me today to be named the 22nd head football coach at the University of Delaware. Thank you very much.

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