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NATIONAL COLLEGIATE ATHLETIC ASSOCIATION MEDIA CONFERENCE

February 13, 2007

Gary Walters

DAVE WORLOCK: Good afternoon, everyone. We want to thank you all for joining the call today. We know there are a lot of people waiting to get questions into this first of two teleconferences that we'll conduct prior to Selection Sunday with Gary Walters, director of athletics at Princeton University, and the chair of the Division I Men's Basketball Committee.
We'll start off, Gary, with an opening question. We know the committee got together last week to begin preparations for selections, and now the committee is only three weeks away from gathering in Indianapolis to begin the selection seeding and bracketing process. We'll get underway by asking you for your take on the season so far and how you see the next few weeks playing out in terms of the committee's work in reviewing teams for the championship.
GARY WALTERS: Thank you, David. I just want everybody to know that as chair of the selection committee, I wasn't responsible for selecting the introductory music. I don't know who had responsibility for that (laughter).
But on behalf of my Men's Basketball Committee teammates and colleagues, I want to welcome everyone and thank you, David, for arranging and setting up the call.
Every regular season brings with it a fresh drama of competition, which obviously is strongly enhanced by conference rivalries around the country. This year really is no different on that score.
In my role as committee chair I've been glued to the TV set, as I know the other committee members have been. For example, on Sunday I actually watched 12 games starting at noon and finishing at midnight. Sorry, that was Saturday. On Sunday I watched five games starting at 1:00 and finishing at 9:30, 10:00. Last night I had a chance to watch four or five games as well. That's the kind of commitment that I and members of the committee are making at this point to get a feel for what's actually going on out there in the world of college basketball.
We obviously still have a month to go in the gestation process before we pick the field. There's a lot of basketball to be played. It would be premature for me, or any members of the committee, to jump to any hasty conclusions I'd say at this point.
We actually, as you know, had an opportunity, the first year to have the writers conduct a mock selection about a week ago. I guess the comment I'd like to make about that is there's a saying about going to place of worship: Many attend but few understand. While it's not a stretch to say that many people liken March Madness to a religion, as it relates to the mystery of the selection, seeding and bracketing process, most people didn't understand because they didn't have access to our chamber. By the committee opening its door to our physical and mental process, everyone now has a better understanding, probably empathy even, for the challenges facing committee members and the interplay of the use of data and the subjective analysis of the individual members comprising the committee.
I really want to thank Greg Shaheen and his staff, David, who is on the call, Jeanie Boyd, LJ Wright, Anthony Dean. I don't want to leave anybody out. They just did a phenomenal job, I thought, of setting up the mock selection for the writers. In the process I think you, the writers, and the television media, were able to get a feeling for the professionalism and competence of the staff that helps our committee do what we do. We really owe them a tremendous debt of gratitude because they do an absolutely great job.
I guess finally I would say I think there are probably a number of factors that we're going to have to deal with as we go into the last month of the season and as we look back at what has happened during the regular season which, to date, has frankly been quite exciting.
The first thing I'd say is, as you know, for the first time in a while there's been an increase in exempt games. In a way, that's enhanced our ability to compare the performance of teams across conferences at neutral sites, understanding however that those comparisons derive from very, very early games in the season.
I guess the second point I'd like to make is that the parity trend continues. There continues to be a lack of differentiation among teams, and that's going to make our job even harder. I think in a similar vein, as a result of the general compression and bunching at the conference level, conference team tournaments could take on increasing significance this year in helping us to separate teams. A team can either burnish or bruise its resume in the conference tournament.
I'd also say, and this is a theme that was hit upon last year by my predecessor and chair Craig Littlepage, and that is the conference unbalanced scheduling and also the divisional alignments in some of the conferences, certainly will complicate our selection process because two teams in the same league with the same record might actually disguise significant differences with regard to their intraconference strength of scheduling. That's something we're going to have to follow. It's just another issue we're going to have to eyeball pretty closely.
I think ultimately, understand that our goal is to select the 34 best at-large teams, effectively seed a 65-team field, then bracket those teams so we have a geographically and competitively balanced national tournament spread out throughout the four regions.
Having said that, all of the members of the committee understand that old adage, that is "bonum factum numquam manet impunitum." Anybody know what that means? No good deed goes unpunished (laughter).
With that as an intro, I'm open to questions.

Q. Can you or committee members, as far as parity in the sport right now, is there a way to quantify or measure the increase in parity? Is it something like the Supreme Court and pornography: You know it when you see it? Is there a way to really look at it and say there's more parity in college basketball?
GARY WALTERS: Well, you know, I would actually have to ask our staff - that's a good question - to go back and perhaps look at some of the quantitative data just to see whether or not that would lead one to believe there has been a compression. That's certainly the impression that most of us that are involved with college basketball have. Any number of people have talked about the reason for that performance compression. Some of it is the kids going out early, the paucity in the number of teams that maybe have seniors that are playing for four or five years. The compression from those teams at the very top against those so-called mid-majors I think has had a leveling effect probably between those two groups.
Having said that, our job, as you know, is to evaluate the individual teams, bore underneath the surface to try to really get an actual handle on discerning the differences among teams.
It seems to me, this is my fifth year on the committee, my fifth and last year, and Craig Littlepage came on with me, and I'm sure that he would share the same point of view that every year it seems to get more difficult.

Q. The selection and seeding process for the committee, each year has it gotten to be where more teams look the same, difficult to differentiate when you get down to the last teams, also in the seeding process?
GARY WALTERS: I think that's the case. I didn't keep notes from four, five years ago. At that point in time maybe we were trying to shoehorn six teams into three spots. It may very well be now that we're trying to shoehorn 10 teams into four spots. It's clearly not going to be easy. That's further exacerbated by the fact you have a lot of bunching going on in the middle of the conferences at this point. Hopefully some of that bunching will become clearer, there will be more differentiation, more separating, I guess, hopefully as this month goes on. Clearly, if there isn't quite as much of that, then we'll have the conference tournaments to also help us discern what to do.

Q. For a team like Alabama, came into the season pretty highly ranked, in the SEC, struggling a bit, do you have any impressions of Alabama? Can a team like that get in with an 8-8 record and 20 wins?
GARY WALTERS: First of all, there are any number of responses to that. Let's just start with the fact that as the number of games have increased, there's always been this notion out there that achieving a 20-win season is a precursor for getting into the tournament. That's just not the case. We have to evaluate everybody separately and compare and contrast teams across the country.
I think I would be reluctant to comment specifically about Alabama because to do so wouldn't be fair to all the other teams that are in the tournament. Frankly, we have a month in the season left to go.
But I think it's clear that across the country for teams that at this point are bunched in the middle of their conference races, we're basically heading into the homestretch here. I think the committee is going to be focused pretty highly on the kind of quality of performance as we complete this homestretch.
From that standpoint we have a lot of teams across the country that both have a lot of work to do but also fortunately are pitted and competing against other teams that have a lot of work to do. For now, you know, any number of teams fall into this category where we need more differentiation.

Q. So much has been made of the need for signature wins, whether it be home or on the road. How much does the committee look at that as opposed to a team that slowly but surely earns up the necessary wins?
GARY WALTERS: I don't think there's any simple answer to any of those sort of qualitative questions or specific variables that arise. In other words, I wouldn't necessarily pick one variable against another variable because what we're doing as a committee is basically trying to evaluate all the teams. Certainly if we have certain teams that are getting stronger as the year goes on, that's something that's going to be noted by the committee, certainly not ignored. We are looking for strength of performance at the end of the year because that's the measure the team that will be entering the tournament at that time.
Having said that, we're also looking at the strength of non-conference schedule and performance against that non-conference schedule. Obviously that has an impact not only on the quantitative data and RPI of the team, but also gives an impression as to whether or not teams can compete against the teams that are in the top 50 in the country.
I don't think there's really any set answer to the question other than the fact that we will take just about all of those kinds of variables into account and then try to make the best judicious decision we can.

Q. You mentioned finishing strong. Does that seem like it's becoming more important every year because the playing field is leveling for some of these other categories?
GARY WALTERS: Well, I think that's a good question. I think qualitatively speaking or subjectively speaking it's certainly one thing we look at. Can I say that it's actually weighted more heavily? I'm not sure. Clearly it's a factor in our decision making.

Q. You have a lot of teams with very good RPIs, but six or seven losses. How is that going to be looked at?
GARY WALTERS: Well, it will be looked at individually. I mean, some teams have six or seven losses against -- let's just say they may have them at different times of the year. Some teams have six or seven losses in conference. Some teams have six or seven losses out of conference. I mean, without understanding who those six or seven losses are against, what the sequence is, where the games were played, in what sequence were they played, were there injuries as a part of that equation, were certain players suspended during that period of time. There are so many issues or factors that enter into the performance of teams at different times during the year, that it's the responsibility of the committee to have that discussion.
I think the one thing is, all our members of the committee take their jobs very seriously. As you know, everybody has conference assignments for which they report back. We'll compare and contrast teams with similar records in order to differentiate who we think those strongest teams are. It's not the easiest process, but I can assure you we have robust debate when it comes to looking at those kinds of issues.

Q. How important or significant is the RPI? Arizona has a six RPI, Kentucky a seven, Tennessee a 14, Villanova, all part of that mix, with strength of schedules very high. They played the teams, may have lost or won. The significance of the RPI?
GARY WALTERS: I've stated over and over and over again, as have other members of the committee, we've done this historically, I guess my wording has always been that the RPI as a quantitative model is a tool, it's a useful tool, but it's not the only tool. Understand that the RPI is a general indicator of relative strength, a general indicator of relative strength. It is not a precise indicator of absolute strength.
It's the role of the committee to look at the qualitative issues that are pertinent to each team and then to compare and contrast, magnify the significance of small differences, and then make decisions.

Q. Looking at a team that has recently suspended a key player, the team was perceived to be around the bubble, as we go down the stretch here, does the stretch become the more important new lens for looking at that team, so to speak? Do you view any differently what they've done when they had that player?
GARY WALTERS: Well, I suspect the school you're talking about, knowing your location. Without getting into the specifics, clearly when we evaluate teams, we want to understand the players that make up that team, the record that's achieved given what the makeup of the team is when they're actually achieving that record.
It certainly would be a factor that we will consider. It's not the only factor we'll consider. But it's something that we have to look at in context.

Q. Does what happened before, when they had that key player, does that "cheapen" that at all?
GARY WALTERS: I can't answer that question for all of the members of the committee. The reality is that there are a number of teams that are in competition for at-large selections who in the course of the year have to deal with missing players for any number of reasons. Could be an academic issue. There could be an academic casualty. There could be an injury. There could be any number of circumstances that in some way have an impact on performance.
But understand that our job is to pick the 34 best at-large teams at the time we're picking those teams. That becomes, for the committee, the ultimate criterion by which we're going to decide.

Q. Did you look at the work of the mock committee? Assuming you wouldn't call us 'mo-rons' like they did on the Charlotte radio station, I wonder if you have any reaction or thoughts about that if you were, for instance, grilling us afterwards?
GARY WALTERS: We've been called worse (laughter), so...
I actually didn't have a chance to look too carefully at the selections that were made by the writers. It seemed to me that the decisions that were made, for the most part, were in the ballpark. But I think some of the reaction may have been that some people were reacting, because I don't think they realized this, to some of the automatic qualifiers that were actually put in the bracket. So there was probably an overreaction on the part of people that didn't understand that some of the automatic qualifiers actually weren't at-large selections. That may have complicated or confused the public as it related to the work that you had done.
But I really think the most important thing is that, you know, I had a question earlier, and I think it's about the RPI. To the certain extent, and I think given the experience that you had on the committee, people succumb to this notion of the tyranny of numbers. You have to be careful about that. My wife is a CPA, and she warned me early in my career when I was in the investment business that if you torture the numbers long enough, you can get them to confess to anything.
I think probably given the experience you had on the mock selection committee, you have an understanding as to what that means.

Q. Looking at past NCAA tournaments, there was a point in time when the RPI was really a big deal. Last year it looks like you went more for the mid-majors. Do you come in this year with maybe one or two points of emphasis as far as the evolution of the tournament?
GARY WALTERS: No. That's an interesting observation. I'm sure that over time, because the composition of the committee itself my change, that you might have some slight differences. But the really change that's taken place in the committee since I've been there, and I think the alumni of the committee would tell you, they just can't believe the amount of data that we have access to. They can't believe the amount of just great competent support we get from staff, the ability to really I think make very, very well-informed decisions.
Now, I think the one caveat about all of this is sometimes we could suffer from information overload. I think those members of the writers community that participated in the process will understand what I mean by that, just given the amount of comparisons that -- the number of comparisons that you have to make, the extent to which we get so detailed in our discussions. This is an incredibly tedious process. In our case the tedium takes place over five days.
Now, it's both exhilarating and exciting, but at the same time I don't know of many members of the committee that get through that week without having a headache or two. In fact, when I have observed the chairs, I don't know that many that got through without actually being sick by the end of the process just because there's so much effort put into it.
I think the biggest change would simply be the issue related to the access to all the data we have. I think that's the biggest change. Then, of course, the other change, and this is really difficult, makes our job more difficult, is just the number of conferences that are now playing on Sunday. That means that we have to have a certain number of contingency plans in place. That makes our job incredibly difficult, both if we had, for example, an unanticipated AQ get in at the expense of what we thought was going to be an at-large. All of a sudden that has effects not only on selection but also on seeding. Now we're scurrying, trying to move people around the bracket.
I think most people are surprised when they find out that we're actually conducting the bracketing starting around 4:00 on Sunday afternoon. It's a real challenge.

Q. You look at a team like Butler, starting out the season with wins against Notre Dame, Indiana, Gonzaga, Tennessee, but play in the Horizon League, not the highest RPI. How do you handle a team like that? They can't control the conference they're in, but yet they proved themselves early in the season. With three losses, they have an RPI of 31. How do you handle a team like that?
GARY WALTERS: Without getting into the specifics of Butler, I would say, again, we have a month to go in the season. It would be premature at this point to say we would handle anybody differently, other than to say last year we had a team like Bucknell, probably at that point similar in terms of performance to a Butler this year. The critical issue is we still have a month to play. There's a lot of basketball to play. I would be reluctant to respond.
Clearly there are teams out there similar to Butler who are established, they're bona fides. My guess if they can continue to maintain their quality of play through the rest of the season, they certainly will be strongly in the hunt.

Q. Have we reached the point now where it's important for the big schools to start scheduling more of the mid-majors, with the mid-majors rising as much as they have in recent years, to answer some of those questions for you, the Dukes, North Carolinas, start looking at scheduling teams like Creighton, Southern Illinois?
GARY WALTERS: I think the important issue related to the RPI is that we now take into account where games are played. That's very, very important. Having a schedule that reflects going on the road, getting some quality wins on the road is obviously something that would enhance a team's resume and profile while concomitantly being healthy for college basketball.
When we're evaluating teams, we obviously are looking at whom people choose to play, where they choose to play. One of the issues we've talked about is the team's performance ascending, peaking at the end of the year, how have they played with or without the loss of a key player, et cetera, et cetera. There's so many variables that go into play.
But clearly this year, because of the neutral-site games, we've had more interconference play than we've had in a while.

Q. With regard to what happened last year with the mid-majors, the committee says that it takes a look at simply selecting the best at-large teams from this particular year. However, with the success that George Mason and some of the mid-major teams had in last year's tournament, will there be any kind of natural proclivity to take those teams more seriously this year?
GARY WALTERS: As someone who coached for 14 years and was in the investment business for 13 years in particular prior to coming back into college education, I can assure you that past performance does not guarantee future results. That certainly was axiomatic in the stock market and I think it's generally a fairly good rule to follow.
While one can look back last year and certainly acknowledge the fact that a number of the mid-major teams performed well, one would hope that one of the reasons that they performed well is because they were worthy of being in the tournament, and it turns out that indeed they were selected.
But this year presents us with a whole new slate. It's a brand-new year. As I like to say, it's like shaking one of those kaleidoscopes when we were a kid where you have the snowflakes. Every year presents you with a different kaleidoscope of teams. It's going to be our decision to ultimately paint that picture.

Q. Slight variation on the questions about injuries and suspensions. When a team is being considered for a No. 1 seed, how much would a loss playing without their starting point guard be? Is it any different when you're looking at a potential No. 1 than the analysis you make when a team is just trying to make the field?
GARY WALTERS: It seems to me that if we got down to selection week and we had teams that had earned certain seeds, clearly we would be taking into account the loss of a player and what that might mean. I mean, it's conceivable that you could have a team that would be so talented that they may have one or two or even three people at a position where maybe the loss of one person wouldn't be viewed being that harmful. Conversely, you may have one team that doesn't have that kind of depth, where the loss of a player would be viewed as being more significant, and thus would probably more greatly affect the thinking of the committee.
Again, it's that sort of qualitative analysis of the committee that I think would ultimately come in play. But I would hesitate to predict what we would do because what happens is every circumstance, it seems to me, always seems to be different.

Q. If the player were back, I'm talking about very few teams with a very few losses, just one loss mid-season, happened to be with a player out.
GARY WALTERS: So the player was out but he was coming back? Maybe I didn't understand your question.

Q. Right.
GARY WALTERS: So your question is the player is very good, the team has performed well, the player was out, and now that player is back?

Q. Right. If you're looking at teams with three losses, very few losses, you're looking at one mid-season game where one player was out for a game, is that something you can sort of almost eliminate from your deliberations?
GARY WALTERS: I think we would certainly talk about it. But I think that happens in the course of the year for just about everybody. You take that into account. I mean, we're obviously looking at the full body of work. If there was a situation that we felt was somewhat of an anomaly, we would take that into consideration.
I think I know what you're referring to. Those kinds of issues are discussed, the loss of a critical player in a game. That's the responsibility of the liaison to that league to bring it up. I'm pretty sure I'm aware of the circumstance that you're talking about, which just happened this past weekend. The bottom line is, we would discuss that. I can't tell you what the ultimate decision would be, but I would tell you it would be discussed.

Q. Your committee did the same mock exercise on Tuesday as the writers on Wednesday?
GARY WALTERS: We were together on Tuesday and Wednesday.

Q. The pressure in your five years, has it ratcheted up at all during the selection process in the room? As one of the writers fortunate enough to participate last Wednesday, I felt the weight of Greg Shaheen saying, Okay, that's our field, 65 teams, the door is closed, and you realized that you just slammed the door. Even though we were doing it as a mock exercise, figuratively slamming the door on X number of schools, coaches, players, fan bases, dreams. As the financial stakes have raised, the media coverage, the exposure has ratcheted up with this event, I was wondering if the weight of what you do is any greater even to the point of any discomfort now?
GARY WALTERS: That's a great question. The only thing I can tell you, as you experienced with the writers when you went through this process, and as I sort of mentioned in my preamble to my writers before you started your process, in the case of the committee, I'm in there with 10 colleagues, professional colleagues, for whom I hold -- I just have enormous respect for these guys because I know the commitment they're making and I know the quality of people they are.
The committee that's made by everybody, the sacrifices that are made to be on the committee, the amount of time that's spent in the course of a year, and in the case of Craig and I, now that we're moving off over a five-year period, you just can't help but develop this bond of friendship, respect among the people on the committee, to a certain extent I would also say real empathy because we are trying to do the best job we possibly can to put together the best field, to create a product that the NCAA and all of college basketball can be proud of. So that's a heavy, heavy responsibility, a humbling responsibility.
I know at the conclusion of our work every year I have been exhausted. I have looked with a tremendous amount of empathy and sympathy in the direction of the chair, having watched Jim Livengood, Bob Bowlsby, last year Craig, the responsibility they had to go out and represent our committee publicly, knowing that, as I said, no good deed goes unpunished, knowing that notwithstanding the fact we did what our best job was, what we thought was our best job, you're still going to disappoint three or four teams that felt they were worthy or merited inclusion.
Those are tough decisions. There's an aspect of this where we have to develop a thick enough skin to be able to withstand the criticism. But I also think we have to be sensitive enough to also conversely understand that people are going to be disappointed. They should understand that we understand that. I mean, we're walking a fine line here. We have a job to do. Some would say it's a thankless task. Frankly I find it to be a labor of love. I hope I'm speaking for members of the committee. We think we're really giving back. Again, I can't tell you how much I respect my colleagues on the committee, and I'm sure that's the feeling that they all share. I'm sure that's the kind of experience that you had. So that's what it is.

Q. Contingency plans like you talked about, how many of those can you realistically have going into the final day of this? Is that just a case of being on your toes in case an unexpected team wins a tournament? Are you still juggling 1 and 2 seeds at that point?
GARY WALTERS: It's conceivable that we could be -- you know, we're going to start earlier this year. We're actually going to submit our first at-large ballots on Wednesday, which is a change from the past. The reason that we're doing that is to give us a little bit more time to throw the sort of spaghetti up on the wall, using a Greg Shaheen term, so we can start that practice earlier. We can get a little bit of a feel for where we are. We can look at the seeding process once we've selected any number of at-large teams, get that started earlier, which hopefully will then give us a little bit more time to anticipate some of the contingencies that could occur.
I forget now how many conferences are playing on Sunday. What is it, six now?

Q. How many conferences play on Sunday?
GARY WALTERS: Yes. But the number of conferences playing their tournament final on Sunday has increased. That clearly has made our job more difficult because we have to make changes right up to the very, very last moment, understanding that we then have to go on the selection show at 6:00. In some cases there may be only literally half an hour or 45 minutes between the time we've completed our work and the selection show begins at 6:00.

Q. It's five, by the way.
GARY WALTERS: Five conferences.
I don't know whether I answered your question, but it gives you some feel for it. So clearly we could have five conferences right there. You could have, in effect, 10 teams affected from five conferences.

Q. Does margin of defeat matter?
GARY WALTERS: As it relates to the work that we do with the RPI and our overall process, the margin of defeat does not matter.

Q. So a loss is a loss?
GARY WALTERS: A loss is a loss, yup. We don't take margin of defeat or victory into account. That's not a factor in the RPI.

Q. It's not a factor in assessing games or seasons?
GARY WALTERS: In the course of the season, teams play -- when you're playing almost 30 games a year, it's not going to be a surprise that occasionally a team's going to have a clunker and occasionally a team is going to play out of its mind. If you combine the team playing the clunker with the team playing out of its mind, that can certainly give you a false impression.

Q. I know there's not a lot of absolutes in what you're doing. How do you handle a team that has done little or next to nothing on the road but yet is very good at home, figures to have a bunch of wins over ranked teams at home?
GARY WALTERS: We handle it by understanding the very description that you gave us. We have to make subjective decisions based on where a team accomplished its record. Obviously, given the importance of home-court advantage, wins on the road are more impressive than accumulating a record that's only achieved by playing at home. So clearly those are issues taken into account by the committee.

Q. How are your job and duties different as chairman of the committee from being a member of the committee?
GARY WALTERS: I guess the most obvious thing is what I'm doing right now. I become the public face of the committee as chair. That's probably the single biggest difference. Beyond that I think over the last four or five years, as we have selected a chair for the committee, we've done a pretty good job of transitioning the new chair to replace the old chair. So last year, for example, when Craig Littlepage was chairman, I shadowed Craig on all our calls and was included with all the calls with staff. This year with Tom O'Connor who will be my successor, Tom and Craig and I, along with staff, Tom Jernstedt and Greg Shaheen, have basically -- we talk to each other in conference about every two or three weeks. So in that way I am getting good constant advice from gentlemen who are highly qualified so that we're all on the same page and comparing and contrasting our own points of view. But also in the process of doing that, Tom O'Connor is getting prepared for next year when he'll take over. I think we have a really good succession process in place now which I think is working quite effectively.
At the end of the day I'm one team member with nine other guys. We do this collectively. We have a talented group of people. From that standpoint I actually stand on their shoulders. It's going to be their work that's going to enable us to hopefully produce an outstanding product at the beginning of March.

Q. What's the best piece of advice you received from a past chairman?
GARY WALTERS: Hmm. I don't know I can share that on the air (laughter). I'd have to think about that for a second. You know, I don't know that -- I've certainly gotten good advice, clearly I have. The issue for me is when I look back at the chairs that I worked with, Jim Livengood had a wonderful and positive disposition and I think set a really fun tone for the committee. Bob Bowlsby is probably as accomplished an athletic executive as anybody I've met in the business. I have just enormous respect for him. I don't know of anybody that has more class and dignity than Craig Littlepage. Hopefully as chair I'll be able to conduct myself in some way that's consistent with the kind of tone that they set.
Finally I owe so much in my life to two people, Pete Carril, who was my high school coach, best man at my wedding, and Dave Gavitt. I wouldn't be here without the role that both of those guys have played in my basketball career. We're basically the product of our relationships and our friendships, so I've been helped along the way by a lot of people.
DAVE WORLOCK: Thank you very much. We appreciate everyone listening in. We'd like to take this opportunity to remind you the next call will take place on Wednesday, March 7th. There will be an announcement forthcoming about a change in the time. We originally scheduled that for 3 p.m. eastern. We're going to move that to earlier in the day. Like I said, a formal email will go out to the media with regard to that. We thank you for participating on this afternoon's call. We thank Mr. Walters for taking time out of his busy schedule to take these questions.
GARY WALTERS: Thank you.

End of FastScripts

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