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ATLANTIC COAST CONFERENCE MEDIA CONFERENCEJuly 21, 2013John SwoffordAMY YAKOLA: Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the 2013 ACC football kickoff. Before we begin, I'd appreciate if everyone would please turn off or mute all cell phones and electronic devices. As in years past, following Commissioner's remarks we will open the forum for questions. At that time, please give us a minute to get you guys a mic, and we'd greatly appreciate if you would give us your name and affiliation before asking your question. Now it's my pleasure to introduce the Commissioner of the Atlantic Coast Conference, beginning his 17th year, John Swofford. JOHN SWOFFORD: Amy, thank you very much. First of all, while we're introducing people, I have a couple of additions to our senior staff that I want to make certain you know who they are by name and face. First of all, Michael Strickland, who is now our senior associate commissioner for football, who comes to us from Florida Citrus Sports; and then Tim Lynde, our senior associate commissioner for brand marketing, who joins us from IMG College. It's great to have both of those young men with us. Amy, thank you. I want to begin by welcoming everyone to our 42nd annual ACC football kickoff. It's great to see so many familiar faces, and I appreciate those of you that have been long‑time participants of this event, and I want to give a special welcome to the many new attendees, especially those who are here covering our new member schools. We're glad to have you here. Let me sincerely thank each and every one of you for the excellent job that you do in reporting on our teams, the Atlantic Coast Conference, and college football. In addition to the media sessions with the players and coaches in today's session, I also want to encourage you to attend tomorrow's officiating media opportunity with Doug Rhodes, at least those of you who are not playing golf in the morning. That will take place from 10:30 to 11:30 in this same room. There are a number of new rules that will come into play this season, some of which you're aware of, some of which may need some explanation, and this will be a great session to gain specifics on the rules and have a chance to ask questions before we begin play. As we begin the 2013 ACC football kickoff, I'd like to take this opportunity to talk about a few topics and then leave time to answer as many of your questions as possible during the hour that we have. Specifically I wanted to spend a few minutes recapping the past year, sharing some thoughts on our strategy and vision for the long‑term future, and then looking ahead to the upcoming season. This past year has been a remarkable and I think even monumental one for the Atlantic Coast Conference. It's hard to believe the many milestones that have taken place since we were in this same room at this same event last July. On July 1st we officially welcomed Pitt, Syracuse and Notre Dame to the ACC family. This was a culmination of what began in September of 2011, when we announced Pitt and Syracuse would become full members of the ACC, bringing with them enormous qualities and characteristics, including current successes as well as storied histories and traditions. Then in September of last year, many of you attended or watched as we introduced the University of Notre Dame as a full member in all conference sponsored sports with the exception of football, which will play five games annually against our league programs, as well as participate in our bowl partnerships beginning a year from now. As has been well‑documented, the relationship with Notre Dame, Pitt and Syracuse further strengthens our league's long‑standing commitment to balancing academics, athletics and compliance integrity. Just two months after our Notre Dame announcement, we proudly introduced Louisville as the newest member of the ACC. With its aggressive approach to excellence in every respect, Louisville will be a great fit for the league, and we look forward to having them begin competition. Fast‑forward to late April, which was highlighted by the announcement that each of the current and future 15‑member institutions had signed a grant of media rights. This act helped stabilize the landscape of college athletics, and just as importantly, publicly secured our position as one of the nation's premier conferences. I commend our institutional leadership for their thorough preparation, their swift efforts, their strategic wisdom, and their actions of solidarity and commitments, which has led us to where we are today as a conference. As we look to the future, we do so with great anticipation in this league. The composition of the long‑term membership of the ACC has never been stronger. Geographically we're moving forward as a true Atlantic Coast Conference with memberships spanning the entire eastern seaboard and even into the Midwest with the addition of Notre Dame and ultimately Louisville. Within our footprint, the ACC will now have the most television households and the highest population of any conference footprint from a national standpoint. It is also projected that by 2030, 55 percent of the United States population will lie within the ACC footprint. I think the combination of the quality of institutions and their athletic programs, our marketplace opportunities, and the population numbers, both current and projected, give the ACC enormous potential in both the near and distant future. As it relates to an ACC channel, we'll continue to strategically evaluate whether this makes sense for our conference and whether it makes sense for our television partner, ESPN. We'll continue to have discussions with ESPN and focus on making sure ACC content continues to be available anytime, anyplace, anywhere. From an athletic perspective, it's going to be exciting watching the competition, both within the league and on the national stage. I'm going to talk more specifically about football momentarily, which I think has unlimited potential. But I think it's fair to say that this is the strongest collection of basketball programs that has ever been assembled in one conference, and our Olympic sports have consistently ranked second to none and will only get stronger with the addition of our newest members. Academically, and that's important in this league and to our institutions, the new membership only bolsters our league's credentials. In the most recent U.S. News and World Report's best colleges list, the ACC's 15 member institutions collectively ranked first among the power five conferences by all measures. In football specifically, I think it's important to note that our programs collectively have led all FBS conferences in APR each year that it has been calculated by the NCAA in seven of the last eight years in graduation rates, and I think that's a tremendous credit to our institutions, our coaches and athletic directors as they focus on the academic side of things. Now, let's talk a little bit about ACC football and the season ahead. We not only welcome Paul Chryst of Pitt and Scott Shafer of Syracuse to the ACC, but we have new coaches in Steve Addazio at Boston College and Dave Doeren at NC State. Each one of these individuals joins an already excellent existing group of coaches that are focused with great anticipation on the first weekend of the 2013 season. As has been the case in recent years, we're extremely pleased that every ACC controlled football game will be available to our fans nationwide on one platform or another. Our relationship with ESPN allows us to truly maximize the platforms for every fan to see ACC football. From traditional television to progressive digital and mobile platforms like ESPN 3 and WatchESPN, ACC content is truly available everywhere. In addition to ESPN, the ACC Network, through Raycom, continues to be broader than ever before, with a reach of over 65 million households and no geographic parameters on the distribution. The ACC Network also is now in every ACC bowl city, along with major markets that include New York, LA, Denver, New Orleans, Philadelphia, Seattle, Phoenix Pittsburgh, Cleveland and Indianapolis. The ACC app and the ACC Vault continue to flourish, while the ACC digital network has made monumental strides since launching in October of 2011. The 2013 ACC football schedule showcases some tremendous match‑ups, as our league is playing the toughest non‑conference schedule of any conference in college football. Our teams will play 11 games against non‑conference opponents that finished last season ranked in the nation's top 25, and nine games against non‑conference teams ranked in the final AP top ten. This also includes contests against each of the top four teams in the final USA Today poll. In total, our teams will play 56 games against 48 non‑conference opponents which had a combined winning percentage of 56 percent, by far the highest of any of the power five conferences. We will also play nine non‑conference games against six teams selected by ESPN.com in its early preseason top ten, including match‑ups with projected top‑ranked Alabama with Virginia Tech, fifth‑ranked Oregon with Virginia, sixth‑ranked Georgia with both Clemson and Georgia Tech; seventh‑ranked Florida with both Miami and Florida State; ninth‑ranked Notre Dame, which Pitt will play; and 10th‑ranked South Carolina, who North Carolina and Clemson will both play. This year's opening weekend starts strong with ACC teams in action throughout the weekend and culminates with our annual Labor Day match‑up that will feature Florida State at Pitt in the Panthers' first Atlantic Coast Conference football game. Pitt competes in the ACC's Coastal Division, while Syracuse competes in the Atlantic, and Syracuse will play its first official ACC game against Clemson at the Carrier Dome in Syracuse on October the 5th. The 2013 schedule will also feature our normal five Thursday night games, nationally televised by ESPN, and three nationally televised Friday games by ESPN. Following the regular season, the Atlantic Division and Coastal Division champions will meet in the ninth annual Dr.Pepper ACC football championship game in Charlotte. This will be our fourth game hosted at Bank of America Stadium in Charlotte, and of the previous three games, two of those three games have been sellouts, and Charlotte has just done a tremendous job of hosting our championship game. The winner, of course, of the ACC Championship game will compete in either the BCS National Championship game, and if not, it will play in the Discover Orange Bowl, which continues to be a terrific partner of ours and is the annual home of the ACC champion. This season marks the end of our current bowl partnerships, and it's been a great lineup to be associated with during the four‑year cycle that we are now concluding. We look forward to closing out this year with each of them and building off our 4‑2 record of last season, which tied the best bowl winning percentage among the power five conferences. With the new college football playoffs set to begin following next season, we have created an excellent bowl lineup for the next six years. In addition to the Discover Orange Bowl, which will annually feature an ACC team on New Year's Eve or New Year's Day against opponents from the Big Ten, the SEC or Notre Dame, we just announced relationships with the CapitalOne Bowl, the Russell Athletic Bowl, as well as the Belk, Sun, Pinstripe, TaxSlayer.com, Gator, Franklin American, and Music City Bowls. Each of these offers us more flexibility as well as improved financials, marquee match‑ups and premier destinations, and our opponents in each of those games will come from the other four power conferences. In the near future, we'll round out our lineup for the six‑year cycle, and I think that will also enhance and provide even greater depth for our 15 teams. Now, I know many of you have questions, and I'll get to as many of them as I can. I appreciate your time today, and again, appreciate the coverage that you give us throughout the year. Q. I wanted to ask you about the school whose helmet isn't up there, Notre Dame. Earlier this month Mike Krzyzewski and Steve Spurrier both spoke publicly and negatively about the decision to allow them to maintain independence while joining the league in every other sport. I'd be curious about your response to their comments, and given this precedent do you anticipate other ACC schools may approach you asking to take their signature sports independent? In other words, if Florida State football or Duke basketball wanted to be independent in that one sport, what would you say to them? JOHN SWOFFORD:  Well, number one, that was discussed when the league made the decision to bring Notre Dame in. I think bringing Notre Dame in is the right thing to do at this point in time. It was unanimous decision by our institutions and a very positive one that has already benefitted us, without question. So I think Notre Dame is a great addition. If they ever do decide that they are going to join a conference in football, through the 2026‑27 year, that conference by contractual agreement would be the Atlantic Coast Conference. But I'm really pleased, and I know the vast majority of people in our league are very pleased that Notre Dame is a part of the ACC family. Under the conditions that they're currently under, and certainly if they ever make the decision to join football‑wise during that period of time, they would be welcome with open arms. Q. (No microphone.) JOHN SWOFFORD: It hasn't been an issue, wouldn't expect it to be an issue, and that was discussed at the time, and there was an absolute and strong feeling within the room that that would not be considered, would not be an issue. Q. You mentioned Charlotte and the ACC football championship game. I know that you've had ACC basketball there once. They're building a new baseball stadium. Talk about Charlotte's potential for football, basketball or baseball moving forward. JOHN SWOFFORD: Well, it's a great city, an energetic city with outstanding facilities that are downtown and within walking distance of hotels, so it creates a very positive environment for championship type events, and now that's just been enhanced with the new basketball stadium, and plus it basically‑‑ even with our growth as a league, it's still geographically sort of the epicenter of our league geographically. That hasn't changed, either. So there are a lot of pluses there. Q. (No microphone.) JOHN SWOFFORD: We will decide that sometime around this year's game. Might be slightly before, might be at that game, it might be slightly after. Q. Has there been any discussion, I know you've mentioned a little bit about trying to change the end of season football games, the non‑conference‑‑ I think there's four or five non‑conference games. JOHN SWOFFORD: Well, I don't know that they would all be non‑conference games, but we are having some good discussions about having traditional season‑ending games. Some would be non‑conference, some would be conference. So those discussions are going on, yes, for the future. And there's some natural flow to all of our football scheduling right now in the sense that we're incorporating the five games a year that our teams will be playing against Notre Dame, and it shouldn't be too terribly long before we have who's playing whom in what years through that entire cycle. Q. Before I arrived in Syracuse I think in 2003 there was some talk about them joining the ACC if I remember right. Can you look back and tell me what happened there and why it wasn't right then but it is right now and how excited you are to have Syracuse a part of this? JOHN SWOFFORD: Well, you know, there's a whole history there the way this has evolved. Syracuse has always been, from the time we started talking about expansion when we were nine, Syracuse was always a part of that discussion and remained so, and I think for all the right reasons. You know, things happen sometimes for the best, and happen in their own time, and I think that really is what the answer is to your question. Syracuse brings a tremendous market, a great history, a quality institution, quality athletic program, makes more sense than ever geographically now for us in terms of what we've become as a 15‑member league. You know, so we're tremendously pleased that it ultimately happened. I think that each evolvement of our expansion efforts have really turned out well. Some have had some pain getting there, more recently not so much. At the beginning more controversy, more outside interferences, if you will, that impacted some of the decisions, but they ended up being really good decisions. I think that whole process over that period of time with Virginia Tech and Miami coming in first, then Boston College the following year to take us to 12, and then at the time I would tell you we didn't have great anticipation about going beyond 12, but as things evolved and turned out in the landscape and what we felt like was best for our league going forward, it just made a lot of sense to go to 14, and then when we had the opportunity to make the arrangement that we had made with Notre Dame, the five football games were critical to that. Without that we would not have taken that step, and then when the opportunity to bring Louisville in came, it just made all the sense in the world to us, and Louisville, as you know, has just had an incredible athletic year that very few programs, if any, ever have in a single year. That's why I said earlier in my remarks, I think we are as strong as we have ever been as a conference and tremendously well‑positioned for not only the short‑term future but the long‑term future. Q. One of the natural costs of expansion is playing your conference rivals in football less frequently. Florida State's closest school geographically is Georgia Tech. They're only going to play twice every 12 years now. How much if any discussion internally has there been about the current division setup and how wedded is the conference to the Atlantic and Coastal as now structured? JOHN SWOFFORD: There's been a lot of discussion about it, and for this reason. Every time we add somebody, it's discussed. So there's been a natural reason to discuss it with some regularity over the last few years. Each time our schools end up basically at the same place where they started. I think any time any league that's 14 or‑‑ as we are, that is one of the things you lose. You don't see each other quite as often as you would if you were a smaller league. But for us, the benefits far outweigh that particular fact. We've had discussions about going from eight to nine games. At one point it looked like we were going to go to nine games, and then when the Notre Dame situation arose, our schools decided rather than take that step, they'd rather stay at eight, considering that five of them would be playing Notre Dame each year, and Notre Dame would be rotating through all of our schools. But there's been a lot of discussion. One of the things that comes up from a competitive standpoint, competitive equity is one of the things that from the very beginning we wanted to try and address, and I don't know the exact numbers at this given point in time, but it's remarkable how close it is division versus division from a competitive standpoint. I mean, it's within a game or two. So our schools have continued to come back to where they are when they have those discussions. That doesn't mean it couldn't change sometime in the future, but so far those discussions have kept us where we are from a divisional standpoint. Q. I know you joined the University of Miami in Indiana this summer. What did you take away from that, and how would you like to see this resolved? JOHN SWOFFORD: Well, what I took away from it that I can share with you is that I thought the University of Miami and their personnel and their leadership in Mike Glazier handled it extraordinarily well. I would hope that whatever is coming from the NCAA will come before the season starts. I'd be very disappointed if that's not the case. Q. This is the last year of the BCS. Considering your involvement in it and once upon a time going to Washington to testify, do you have mixed feelings about the end of it, or is it good to see it go? JOHN SWOFFORD: You know, the‑‑ I was the only guy that was crazy enough to be its coordinator twice. I didn't learn the first time around. I say that in jest, because the BCS for all its issues and problems I think has been good for college football. The growth of the game during the existence of the BCS has been phenomenal. I'm not saying it was because of the BCS, but it turned the sport in a lot of ways from a regional sport to a national sport where people were interested in what was happening on the other side of the continent because it might affect who played in the National Championship game. It's had a lot of controversies, which is one of the reasons over that period of time we kept working toward making it better in the next iteration, and I think we have. That will have its own history going forward. Certainly all of the controversy will not disappear, will never disappear, but I think we've taken a major leap forward with the new college football playoff approach. But with all its controversy, I think bottom line is the BCS served college football well during its history. Q. It's been a while since the league had a lame duck member. How would you describe relations with Maryland in terms of litigation or otherwise? JOHN SWOFFORD: Well, I think it's fine. Maryland has been an excellent member of this league since 1953, and their coaches and athletes in playing their last year in our league deserve the very best of the ACC, and that's what they will receive. We don't look at Maryland any differently other than that they're short‑term, and we go from there. But it doesn't really affect anything else that we do. Litigation I really am not going to speak to. Our lawyers will handle that going forward. From our perspective what little has been done to this point, I would say so far, so good. Q. I know the other day you had lunch at Clemson with the board of directors up there. Can you tell us what that conversation entailed? JOHN SWOFFORD: Just an update on the league and where we've been, where we're going. I spent some time with the Clemson board last summer, so they invited me back. When one of my bosses invites me to be somewhere, I try to be there. Great group of people. I mean, the leadership at our schools is just tremendous with our presidents and chancellors. It was a very enjoyable lunch. I had the opportunity to honor Jim Barker, their president who is stepping out, and Jim and I have developed a really, really good relationship over the years, and he's been instrumental in a lot that has occurred in the ACC during his time. He was there with the first expansion and has been a real trusted advisor and friend, and I'm going to miss him. So it was good to have the opportunity not only to visit with the board and give them an update but also to honor Jim. Q. The Southeastern Conference football and basketball coaches recently at one of their meetings voted to offer players an expense money per game, like $300 for football games and something working out equivalent over the course of a basketball season. Is that anything that's on your radar? JOHN SWOFFORD: Well, I think specifically that approach, no. The whole idea of trying to enhance the financial well‑being of student athletes that are on scholarship is on our radar. We've been talking about this nationally for several years now without finding something that works, that agrees with enough people that works. And I think part of that is because it's more complicated than first meets the eye. Some of it is the difference in financial capability that programs have in the NCAA and the tremendous range of financial capability that programs have. Some of it I think has been processed. I'm not sure in the early goings of those discussions that enough people were engaged in that process, and when you're trying to accomplish something of that significance and that magnitude, whatever that is, you've got to have buy‑in, and one of the ways you get buy‑in is to include people in the process. I think that probably wasn't addressed in the way it could have been. But basically if we're going to enhance the financial well‑being of our student athletes, it's very difficult to look at it in terms of a sport or two sports, just from a legal standpoint and with Title IX and what's appropriate and what's moral, what's legal and how you address that. Should it be based just on need? A lot of people are supportive of enhancing the scholarship if it's based on need. Personally, and this is a personal opinion, it's not one that I can tell you that the majority of our schools support at this point in time, but the full cost of attendance as a scholarship would be helpful. I'm not for paying players. I just don't think that's what college athletics is about. But I am for looking very diligently at a way to enhance the scholarship itself, whether that's need based, whether it's based on a simple stipend that once existed. In fact, when I was playing, it existed, or some other way to approach it, whether it's going to the full cost of attendance. Need, full cost of attendance or a stipend. But you've got to be able to find something that enough people can accept and digest and support in order to move it forward, and so far collectively we have not been able to do that. Q. Your update earlier, 65 million plus households for what you call the ACC Network. In terms of the conversation about an ACC Network that would be more like the Big Ten Network, the SEC Network, more like a channel than a network, what's the most current update you have about the internal discussion about either the wisdom of still chasing that or the practical obstacles rights‑wise to put that together? JOHN SWOFFORD: I really don't have much of an update rather than what I told you, which is that we are in the process of evaluating that and analyzing it with ESPN, and that'll take a while. I mean, I don't think I'll be putting out press releases about that process necessarily on any regular basis. Just know that that's an evaluation that we're going to be looking at. The SEC by the time they launch, they will have spent I think about three years in evaluating it and figuring it out and concluding that it makes sense for us to try this. I would suspect that our process will take a similar amount of time. Q. You mentioned you're not for paying players. The O'Bannon lawsuit, however, is proceeding. Curious what the implications are for that for the ACC from a licensing perspective and also as you guys go forward, what are the implications from your perspective for college athletics in general? JOHN SWOFFORD: I really find it impossible to answer that question at this point in time. I mean, it's in litigation. I don't think anybody really knows where that will ultimately end up. That's more for the NCAA to speak to at this point in time. Obviously it could have significant implications, but who knows where it ends up. I think that's just something we're going to have to keep our eye on and watch, and when the time comes and we know something definitive about it, then I'm sure they'll‑‑ if it does change the world as we know it, then we've got to have enough sense to respond to it in a way that is positive and is good for college athletics. Q. I was just wondering with the new college football playoff coming up in 2014, what do you think of the selection process for that? What's your opinion on it? Do you think the committee is okay or should there be some kind of mathematical standing for an AQ? JOHN SWOFFORD: Well, I think the committee is good. I'm supportive of having a committee. It's a challenge putting it together, and I think it'll be a tremendous challenge for the committee when it's formed. And I also think the committee will need some benchmarks and criteria from which they are working. It's not just a blank sheet where you guys go over there and huddle for a while and figure out who's one, two, three and four. There will be some parameters and criteria involved that the committee would work within, just as the men's basketball committee and women's basketball committees. They have such parameters. But it'll be different. And hopefully it's got to have credibility, and to have credibility it's got to have a certain level of transparency. In getting to the point of deciding to go with a committee, what we were hearing back consistently from football fans was that they trusted people in a room as a committee more than they did computers. Q. What are the league's latest initiatives on player safety and concussion treatment? JOHN SWOFFORD: Well, we've had‑‑ we periodically have our medical people meet together to evaluate that, and we've got some really good people at several institutions in our league that are directly involved with that, which is helpful to have in the room, in terms of analysis that's being done, knowing what that analysis is, what the numbers mean, discussions about from a rules standpoint, what can better protect players, and in my opinion therefore better protect the game going forward in the world we live in today where athletes just get bigger and faster and stronger and the equipment gets lighter. You know, so it's an important issue for the sport going forward without question, and as someone who played the game through this level, we need to be able to adjust and keep the game as safe as it can be, knowing that it's a very physical game by its very nature. That's important, and the discussions are important and ongoing in our league. Thank you. If you need anything over the next couple days, just let us know. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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