|
|||
|
|||
|
 |
|
|
AMERICAN ATHLETIC CONFERENCE MEDIA DAYJuly 29, 2014Curtis JohnsonNEWPORT, RHODE ISLAND THE MODERATOR: Next we welcome the third of the three new teams joining the conference this year, Tulane University. Coach Curtis Johnson is with us. His third year at Tulane. He has an extraordinary background as an assistant coach on a Super Bowl championship winning team with the Saints and then the University of Miami. COACH JOHNSON: Thank you for having me today. First of all, I'd like to thank the commissioner and his staff. I think this place is tremendous. This is an outing I could never imagine. This is a classy conference. The staff has been awesome. The food last night, if you missed the food, you really missed a treat. It was good and I'm full. I'm not going to be up here too long with you guys (laughter). I'd like to thank our new president who has a vision for this conference and our former president who just left who did a tremendous job of keeping Tulane football together. Our great athletic director, Rick Dickson, who is working hard, pounding the pavement. I have to thank him also. I think this new conference that we are in, we talk about power, this is a powerful conference. What Central Florida did last year, I thought it was utterly amazing. I couldn't go to sleep that night watching what they did to a great Baylor team. You look at all the wins we had in this conference last year, beating North Carolina, North Carolina State. Our upcoming opponents are going to be very tough. A new challenge for our team. Our team has opportunity after opportunity after opportunity this season. I love our schedule. We playing Georgia Tech, Duke, Rutgers, our young men are going to be ready to go. We also have a new stadium on campus. Finally an on‑campus facility. I love the fact that we played in the Superdome when I was in the Saints, but that's a pro venue. We have our own home. We have our own place. Our guys are proud of it. They laying down the turf right now. They tweeting back and forth. These guys here talking about the turf, it's something special. We finally being noticed. We finally have our own facility. It's going tore utterly amazing for us. First time in 30 years we'll be back on campus. This is a wonderful opportunity, a wonderful promise for us. I thank you guys. But this is awesome, a good time for us at Tulane University. THE MODERATOR: Questions. Q. Some of us are old enough to remember the old Super Bowl on the Tulane campus. COACH JOHNSON: Absolutely. Q. You talked about the value to your players of having an on‑campus building. How about the community? COACH JOHNSON: Our community has embraced us. It's unbelievable. Wherever we go, our kids are out front. The community, they can't wait. Our kids selling tickets alone, everybody want to see these young men. We keep our recruiting base in Louisiana. They want to fill this stadium. They want to be proud of a new and a fantastic product. So we've been embraced. Q. You talked about wanting to create what you call the state of Tulane when you took over there. What do you mean by that and how are you doing with that? COACH JOHNSON: We tend to draw a line from Baton Rouge east, even as far as Lafayette, and we want to go as far as the Mississippi Gulf Coast, as far as north Louisiana. We feel that we can't get all the recruits because LSU is going to do a phenomenal job. But we want to keep our guys in state. There are more players from Louisiana per capita than anywhere else in the NFL. If we can tap into that pipeline, we can do a tremendous, tremendous job in the future playing football. Q. Coming into the conference, what are the challenges and the advantages? COACH JOHNSON: This is a challenge. But I look at challenges as being an opportunity. This is just an opportunity. We have to learn our players. We have smart kids. Lorenzo, Sam, Sean Donnelly, Darion Monroe, they are very smart kids. They have an opportunity to play some people who they hadn't played before. They get an opportunity to showcase they talent in Connecticut all the way over to Ohio with Cincinnati. Then we get down to two schools in South Florida. We get as far as Texas and as far west as Tulsa. I look as the challenge being the opportunity to play against the best. These are quality teams. You look at Memphis, they got a good program. We get to go up there, they come to us. This is a great opportunity to showcase our talents, showcase where we going to and where we been. Q. You had a five‑game improvement last year. Most coaches would look at going to a new league presenting its own set of challenges. You are going to do it with some confidence. Talk about how important that is. COACH JOHNSON: You know what the most important thing is, I think last year our coaches were phenomenal. They convinced these young men that they could be winners. We hadn't gone to a bowl game in 12 years. I got away with some of these losses. These assistants were fantastic. If they kept me out of the building, we probably would have been 10‑2. These young men believed in our coaches, what we were doing. We won some tough games, some close games. Our team is relatively young. We only have four senior starters. This is a building process for us. Just the improvement, the reward. They work hard, hard in the classroom. They have an opportunity to go play in a bowl game the first time in 12 years. That was phenomenal. My shout out goes out to those young guys. That's a phrase for young people (laughter). I really appreciate you. Thank you. THE MODERATOR: Coach, thank you so much. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
|
||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
About ASAP Sports •
FastScripts Archive •
Recent Interviews •
Captioning •
Upcoming Events •
Contact Us
FastScripts | Events Covered | Our Clients | Other Services | ASAP in the News | Site Map | Job Opportunities | Links |
|
ASAP Sports, Inc. | T: 1.212 385 0297
|