The league just e-mailed this out. Yes, it's long. I bolded areas I thought were interesting or pertained to UCF.
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Thank you, Kevin, for the very kind introduction and for hosting our third annual football media day. We appreciate the fine work you do at ESPN and we are delighted to have you with us.
I thank all of you for being here today to celebrate our student-athletes in this beautiful setting. We have 12 coaches and 35 student-athletes with us and we know you will enjoy meeting and being with them. Needless to say, we are extremely proud of them. More about them later.
We appreciate all of our guests and friends in the college community and we are pleased that so many of our friends in the media are also here with us today. We value your fair and excellent coverage of our Conference and its schools, and of college sports generally.
I want to take a moment at the outset to salute Mike Slive, the recently retired SEC commissioner, an old and dear friend, for his service to college athletics and to student-athletes everywhere over a long period of time. I have known Mike for almost 30 years, and worked with him while at ESPN and CBS and as a commissioner. He has had a distinguished career, and his vision, character, intelligence and dedication have made the future immeasurably better for college athletics. All our conferences compete vigorously, but in the end it is the friendships that endure, we are all working together to serve our student-athletes and the great schools they represent. Mike has a wonderful capacity for friendship and a great sense of humor as well. We wish Mike and his lovely wife, Liz, all the best as they enjoy a happy and well-deserved retirement. And I hope, even at this early time of day, that Mike is enjoying a good cigar on his back porch in Birmingham.
I take extraordinary delight this morning in welcoming the United States Naval Academy into our Conference as a football-playing member. The Midshipmen are the best this country has to offer and we also welcome servicemen and women from around the world to the American Athletic Conference. We welcome Admiral Ted Carter, Superintendent of the Academy, Athletic Director Chet Gladchuk and Coach Ken Niumatalolo and his staff. I also want to recognize and thank Admiral Mike Miller, the prior Superintendent, for his role, along with Chet, in bringing Navy into our Conference. I want to recognize and thank Chet for his outstanding day to day work in making this a smooth transition after 134 years of independence in football and for his support of our league. Admiral Carter is a former Top Gun pilot with an extraordinary military record, and we thank him for his outstanding service to our country. He also happens to be a Rhode Island native, hailing from Burrillville, and was recently inducted into the RI Heritage Hall of Fame. I know Navy will have a great experience competing in the Conference and our teams will enjoy playing Navy.
To me, the Army-Navy game epitomizes why having Navy in our Conference is so special. The poignancy of that game, which transcends sports, derives in large part because these young men will be in harm’s way defending our country and its freedom soon after their Academy careers are over. Theodore Roosevelt was the first president to attend the Army-Navy game in 1901 and began the tradition of crossing the field at halftime to be on both sides during the game. The singing of each other’s anthems after the hard-fought game personifies the spirit of college sports. We are honored to have Navy in the Conference, and proud of the great football tradition they bring, which includes Heisman Trophy winners Roger Staubach and Joe Bellino.
I also want to take this opportunity to thank my fellow FBS Commissioners and CFP Executive Director Bill Hancock for their outstanding cooperation in working out a CFP protocol which will keep the Army-Navy game in its current place on the sports calendar as a great season-ending American tradition. Bill has done a wonderful job with the CFP, and its tremendous success in its inaugural year is a tribute to Bill and his staff.
I want to recognize Gerald Turner, President of SMU, our immediate past Board Chairman, for all he has done to help build a strong foundation for this Conference. He has shown an unwavering commitment, has been extraordinarily generous with his time and has been a huge support to me personally.
I also want to recognize Susan Herbst, President of UConn, who succeeds Gerald as our Chair. Susan has also demonstrated a strong commitment to our league as our Vice Chair the past two years, and will be a great leader. Stead Upham, President of Tulsa, highly respected and experienced, is our new Vice Chair and also serves on the College Football Playoff Board of Managers as the American Athletic Conference representative. Our Board is comprised of a brilliant group of presidents whose support and guidance have assured the success of our collective enterprise and of their individual institutions.
I want to than Lisa Zanecchia and our outstanding staff for their fine work in planning our media days. Scott Draper and Mike Costa do a great job organizing our Conference’s football and Megan Morgan, Chuck Sullivan and Chevonne Mansfield have done great work organizing the media aspects of this event. My capable staff make it a pleasure to come to work each day. I regret that I do not have the time to mention all of them.
We have a group of athletic directors and a roster of football coaches who are the envy of any conference in America. To the athletic directors group we welcome Hunter Yurachek of Houston, Pat Kraft of Temple and Coach George O’Leary at UCF. Chet Gladchuk has already been part of our group but we now welcome him officially. I want to recognize Jeff Compher of ECU, who ably chairs our AD’s group and Mark Harlan of USF, our capable vice chair. We welcome Tom Herman of Houston, Chad Morris of SMU, Philip Montgomery of Tulsa, and Ken Niumatalolo of Navy to our coaching ranks. They bring new energy and excitement to our conference and join a distinguished incumbent group led by our deans, Tommy Tuberville and George O’Leary, and which includes Bob Diaco, Justin Fuente, CJ Johnson, Ruffin McNeill, Matt Rhule, and Willie Taggart.
Terry McAulay oversees our outstanding officiating crews and does it with an unmatched authority and competence. Terry has refereed three Super Bowls during his distinguished career and makes sure our officiating is first-rate. Officials are unsung heroes, we know how important good officiating is, we owe it to our players and to the game of football to provide the best officials, and ours are the best. We embraced using an 8th official last year on an experimental basis, and will use eight officials in all of our games this year.
We have some distinguished guests with us. Steve Hatchell, head of the National Football Foundation and College Hall of Fame, addressed our Athletic Directors as he did last year. Steve is a thoughtful and forceful advocate for the sport of college football and a staunch defender of the game of football, he has made us acutely aware of the threats to this great game and therefore has made us better able to deal with them.
As you know, we have phenomenal TV exposure for our Conference, and I want to thank our TV partners, ESPN and CBS, the best media companies in the world, several of whose representatives are here with us today. They enjoy great leadership in John Skipper at ESPN and Sean McManus at CBS. ESPN provides us multiple platforms and valuable broadcast windows, we have three ABC national telecasts, Thursdays and Fridays on ESPN, and ESPN2, games on ESPNU and other ESPN platforms. ESPN televises six of our seven bowl games, and Pete Derzis, who is here today, does a great job organizing ESPN’s many owned and operated bowl games. CBS Sports Network televises an American Conference Game of the Week and will televise the inaugural AutoNation Cure Bowl from Orlando, in which we are a participant. Virtually all of our games are nationally televised and this affords us a unique opportunity to build our brand.
We have many bowl representatives here today, too many to mention without omitting someone, and we value our tie-ins with their bowls and what they do for college football. We have a terrific bowl lineup, 7 tie-ins this year, 8 tie-ins in three of the next four years, as well as several back-up arrangements. We have met our goals for the bowl season by playing good teams, we played a very tough bowl schedule last year – all games against the Power 5 and BYU, and acquitted ourselves well. And we have locations our teams and fans want to visit. We had an immensely successful debut for our Conference-owned Miami Beach Bowl and we also have games this year in St. Petersburg, Orlando, Boca Raton, Hawaii, Washington, D.C. and Birmingham.
Navy will play in the Military Bowl in Annapolis if they are bowl eligible and if they are not playing in a New Year’s Bowl. We are excited about adding the Boca Raton and Cure bowls to our lineup this year. The latter will support breast cancer research and we are proud to be associated with such a worthwhile cause.
Although I will provide a brief look backward at some of our achievements as a conference, our focus is on the future. This is an exciting time as our composition is now complete with Navy joining as the 12th team in football. We had an excellent 2014 season, three worthy tri-champions in Memphis, Cincinnati and UCF. We narrowly missed appearing in a New Year’s Day game.
This conference has already done some outstanding things, played some remarkable games and that is only a warm-up. The best is yet to come. All of our teams are building top programs. As I said, we are focused on the future, but an occasional peek in the rear-view mirror is worthwhile and shows that our recent past merely prologue.
We have had top NFL draft picks, two in the first round this past year. UCF won the Fiesta Bowl in convincing fashion two years ago. We had perhaps the greatest catch in college football history in J.J. Worton’s catch against Temple two years ago. Brian Williams of NBC said on the evening news that night, “This is the catch you make in your dreams.” The Memphis-BYU Miami Beach Bowl and Houston-Pitt Armed Forces Bowl were among the most exciting games of last year. The latter was perhaps the greatest comeback ever, a 31-6 fourth-quarter deficit, two onside kick recoveries, a gutsy two-point conversion and a final defensive stand to win it. These two games, plus the incredible UCF Hail Mary to stun East Carolina, were included in ESPN’s top 25 games of last season. Several of our other games easily could have been included as well.
Last year, Justin Hardy of East Carolina set the NCAA FBS career receptions record and teamed with Shane Carden to create one of the greatest quarterback-receiver tandems ever, and we know the tough schedules East Carolina played last year and always plays –defeating Virginia Tech after Virginia Tech had just defeated Ohio State in Columbus and soundly defeating a good North Carolina team and narrowly losing at South Carolina.
Our players do outstanding and commendable things off the field and in the classroom as well. Today you will meet, among others, Andreas Knappe of UConn, a native of Denmark and a member of our All-Academic team who participates in youth football clinics and mentors middle school students. Adrian Witty of Cincinnati, who has already earned a bachelor’s degree in criminal justice, is working on a masters in health education. Adrian McDonald of Houston works with the Houston Food Bank, Star of Hope and Boys and Girls Clubs. Wynton McManis of Memphis teaches children about manners and respect, reads to them at a school and is a youth camp counselor in Mississippi. Mattias Ciabatti of USF, is a candidate for the Wuerfell Trophy for his community service efforts and Myer Krah of Navy, nominee for the Allstate AFCA Good Works team, visits local homeless shelters and has started, with a high school teammate, a scholarship fund at his former high school.
Also with us today I would like to acknowledge 12 who young men who, aside from competing at the highest level of college football, are also among the 321 football players in the conference who were named last week to our All-Academic Team, for earning a grade-point average of at least 3.0 last year: from UCF, Thomas Niles; from Cincinnati, Gunner Kiel; from UConn, Andreas Knappe; from East Carolina, Zeek Bigger and Isaiah Jones; from USF, Mattias Ciabatti and Sean Price; from SMU, Zach Wood; from Temple, Kyle Friend, Matt Ioannidis and Tyler Matakevich; and from Tulane, Arturo Uzdavinis.
I would also like to recognize George O'Leary and the UCF Knights, who, in addition to winning a share of the conference championship, won the American Athletic Conference Team Academic Excellence Award - as the football team with the highest combined grade-point average this past year. A total of 52 UCF players earned at least a 3.0 last year, which speaks volumes about the commitment to high achievement both on the field in in the classroom. Congratulations to you George, and to the entire UCF program.
This year our conference embarks upon Divisional play in football. We will have exciting divisional races which will draw attention, and we will have an exciting and competitive inaugural football championship game televised nationally by ABC or ESPN, a huge promotional vehicle for us.
We are extremely excited about this game, which will be played on Saturday, December 5, at noon, and hosted by the team with the best record. Our champion will be decided on the field in what will be a hard-fought game. Our championship trophy will make stops at our various stadiums during the season. We will once again be in the mix for a College Football Playoff New Year’s Bowl, which we narrowly missed last year.
I am very excited about our nonconference and conference schedules. We have some highly anticipated games, and based on last year’s results, they will be incredibly exciting and will go down to the wire. As I mentioned, our national TV exposure on ESPN, ABC, CBS Sports Network, and other networks as well, will once again be outstanding.
Temple will host Penn State on September 5 on ESPN and will host Notre Dame on October 31. Miami visits Cincinnati on Thursday, October 1 on ESPN and Ole Miss visits Memphis on October 17.
Our Thursday and Friday schedule on ESPN is outstanding and is another huge promotional vehicle for our league. For example, Cincinnati and Memphis, two of our preseason top teams with dynamic offenses, square off on Thursday, September 24.
We have three games at BYU – UConn, Cincinnati and East Carolina. That is no small task against a veteran Cougar team. Navy at Houston on November 28th could have west division championship implications, as could Navy at Memphis and Memphis at Houston earlier in the season. In the east, games to watch are Cincinnati at UCF, Temple at Cincinnati and UCF at Temple, among many other really good games.
The arrival of Tom Herman, Chad Morris and Philip Montgomery – arguably the three best offensive coordinators in the country – will add energy and excitement to our offenses and to our league. It will be important to watch our exciting conference as we compete for College Football Playoff spots. We have innovative offensive coordinators, we have great players and exciting skill players, and we also play some pretty good defense. Temple has 10 starters back from an outstanding defense that includes All-America candidate Tyler Matakevich, who could be just the seventh player in FBS history with four seasons of 100 or more tackles. We have a terrific group of quarterbacks, four of whom are here today: Gunnar Kiel of Cincinnati, Keenan Reynolds of Navy, Matt Davis of SMU, and Tanner Lee of Tulane.
There are 15 players nationally who are on the watch lists for the Maxwell Award, Walter Camp Trophy, Davey O’Brien Award and the Manning Trophy. Three are from our conference (Kiel, Reynolds, and Paxton Lynch). Two are in the room (Kiel, Reynolds). Only the Pac-12 has more.
We have, without question, one of the most distinguished rosters of head coaches in the nation. Collectively, our group has served as the head coaches in 40 bowl games; they have a combined 14 top-25 finishes and four top-10 finishes. They include four men who have won national championships as coordinators, two who are past winners of the Broyles Award as the top assistant coach and one winner of the AFCA National Assistant Coach of the Year award. All of our veteran coaches return, and their presence, along with our promising new coaches, reflects the commitment to win by our institutions.
Our teams will play seven teams that were ranked in the final top-25 poll last year, including four of the top 10. Among notable nonconference opponents are Penn State, TCU, Florida State, Baylor, Georgia Tech, VA Tech, Duke, Missouri, Ole Miss, Maryland, South Carolina, Louisville, Notre Dame, Stanford, Air Force, BYU, Miami (Fla.) and Oklahoma. Quite a roster. I hate to let go of summer, but I can hardly wait for the season to begin in late August and early September.
What are our goals in football, as a conference? I consider us a challenger brand. We continue to be unafraid to take on big challenges. As you can see we are again playing many games against the best of the Power Five. The combined winning percentage of those teams is 61.4%, but we will not back down. We are energetic, enthusiastic, competitive, and are having fun. We are also friendly, we care about our fans, we value our media coverage. We are already building a memorable brand. As I mentioned earlier, we have done extraordinary things and we will continue to do extraordinary things. We know we have to be extremely efficient, work extremely hard and compete smarter than our competition in this challenging new world of top-level college athletics. America is about upward mobility and opportunity and that is what the American Athletic Conference represents. We will not accept limitations, we will determine who and what we are.
We have close relationships with the five so-called power conferences and, as I mentioned, we are scheduling many football games against them. I spent almost all of my television career at ESPN and CBS working with the so-called Power Five, negotiating TV deals with them and programming their games. The people in our Conference know them well and have worked with them. We respect them, their traditions, their success on the field, their fan bases and national popularity, their TV ratings. But we also know that our schools look very much like many of theirs, and that we can compete with them. We have generated impressive TV ratings and have strong traditional programs as well as up-and-coming programs.
Having said that, I do not like the perceived divide that has developed in college sports, especially in college football. I would like to see more media attention, which influences public attention and public opinion, focused on us, not simply on the so-called power five.
We have schools the country knows, schools with traditions and schools with emerging programs, we have schools in big markets, we have great coaches, we have several new stadiums, we are committed to providing full cost of attendance and other items that promote student-athlete well-being, we are in rich recruiting areas, scholarship limits were preserved in the NCAA Governance redesign; all this means that we will compete at the highest level.
The NCAA Governance redesign, affording as it did autonomy in certain legislative areas to the five big conferences, can be viewed as problematic for us because we are not in the autonomy group. It was essentially a self-selecting process and we are not currently in large part because realignment changed our membership significantly.
Although this situation now poses challenges for us, we have no intention of surrendering to it. How do we deal with this state of affairs? We will be a leader, we will have a vision, we will fight, we will turn perceived problems into opportunities. Nevertheless, we must be careful in articulating our goals. Yes, we would like to be officially in the autonomous group, but we cannot control that at the moment. Therefore our goal is to be in the Power Five conversation as the sixth power conference. That we can control by our performance on and off the field. We can gain respect by competing, by winning our share, by the quality of our teams, by our game attendance, by the things we are doing to promote student-athlete well-being. If we look and act like the so-called Power Five, we will be in the conversation and eventually Power Six will enter the media and public lexicon and perceptions. As I said, the autonomy designation is legislative and bureaucratic, it does not mean automatic superiority on the field or on the court. That has to be earned.
Nevertheless, the autonomy legislative structure is permissive, meaning we can do what the autonomous five do, we can adopt whatever legislation they adopt. Although I cannot stand here and guarantee entrance into that group at the moment, I can stand here and tell you that we will be in that group competitively, that we will continue to earn respect the old-fashioned way, that in the meantime our aim is to be a de facto member of that group by virtue of how we compete on the fields and courts and how we treat our student-athletes off the fields and courts.
Student-Athlete safety and well-being are our highest priorities, they are job one. Our injury and concussion protocols, the results of months of work with medical experts and all of our schools, will be among the best. I believe our educational efforts in this regard with our officials, our coaches and all those who are responsible for player safety, are unprecedented. Our schools are providing full cost of attendance for their student-athletes, as well as many other important benefits.
And in the end we will not succumb to what my old friend and wonderful gentleman Glen Tuckett, the former long-time athletic director at BYU, calls the tragedy of “success unattended”. We will promote our successes and build on them.
We will never stop selling our Conference or its brand, which we have strived to make a prominent and respected brand. We have high expectations, but we recognize that there are no short cuts and we will pay attention to every detail. I have not promised our schools anything but hard work, there is no substitute, but I am confident that it will lead to the success we envision. And we will compete with sportsmanship and class, we will respect our opponents. We will be fierce competitors on the field, friends and colleagues off it.
We also must do our share to further our vision of what we believe college football and college sports should be. We must protect the game of football and we must promote, value and cherish the student-athlete experience, which is unique. As for the challenges to the college experience that we face from the various lawsuits you have read about, although we have sound economic arguments, in the end we cannot simply argue economics, we must preserve the student-athlete experience for its own sake.
As for protecting and nourishing the game of football, which we all love, I take great pride today in announcing a partnership between the American Athletic Conference and USA Football. We thank Scott Hallenbeck, the executive director of USA Football, for joining us today to make this announcement. Together with our coaches and staff at the American, we are thrilled to partner with this exceptional organization whose mission it is to spearhead the game’s development, inspire participation, and create a better and safer experience for all youth participants.
This partnership will occur at a grassroots level in the 12 communities where our teams play football, our coaches and their staff will work with USA Football to encourage youth football participation, to promote proper training for youth football coaches with respect to safe tackling and heads-up football, and to provide education for parents of youth participants.
November will be Youth Football Month in the American Athletic Conference, our coaches will appear in a nationally televised PSA on behalf of USA Football, and youth football participants will be celebrated at games throughout our league.
This new initiative is an example of how the American Athletic Conference takes seriously its stewardship of the game of football to insure that it remains a vibrant part of our society. And as I alluded to earlier, no one is a more diligent guardian of the game of football than Steve Hatchell, CEO of the National Football Foundation. We salute Steve and his colleagues for their efforts.
Now let me turn to our vision for college athletics. We simply cannot surrender to an approach that would professionalize and destroy the college experience. College student-athletes are not employees. To create an employer-employee relationship and professionalize the sport by paying players would change our mission forever, and not for the better. The Supreme Court in its 1984 Regents decision supported the notion of amateurism in college sports. It is something unique and real. TV deals generate more money than ever before, although some of that is due to inflation. However, most of that money is plowed back into better facilities, better nutrition, better student-athlete benefits, better academic and life skills counseling, better training, better coaching, better practice facilities, and a better student-athlete quality of life.
College football is immensely popular. The second most popular sport next to the NFL, it is fun, it energizes a campus and its community and region and brings attention and resources, it binds alumni to their schools, and it excites our country. If done right, college sports and college football make a unique contribution to the national social fabric, we would be a poorer country without them. We need to be vigilant and make sure they are done right, but the NCAA and the schools (and the NCAA is its schools) have strived for a procompetitive and ethical environment and should have discretion to run their programs.
In order to help preserve the college experience for our student-athletes, our conference is a prominent member of the Coalition to Protect and Improve the Student-Athlete Experience, formed by the Division I conferences to communicate our goals and mission and to address misconceptions about who we are and what we trying to accomplish. The collegiate experience is threatened by the lawsuits to which I alluded. I believe we will prevail if we recognize that education and sportsmanship are the bedrock principles of our conference and collegiate sports, if we fight for a system that has delivered us, even with its lingering problems, far from the Wild West days of old, that has, ironically, in these days of the “power five”, created more competitive equity than ever before, that has afforded hundreds of thousands of student-athletes the ability to obtain a valuable education, to learn life skills, to enjoy the best facilities and counseling, to compete at great venues, to enjoy the equity and good will that these universities have taken decades to build in their communities and nationally.
College sports are not pro sports and despite some similarities that may not have existed in former times, we recognize that college sports are unique. Pro sports have their place, but attend a college football game or other collegiate event, and you will know that they are not and should not be pro sports. Our mission is to educate young people to provide them with exciting and rewarding competition that builds character and a sense of sportsmanship, values and fair play. We develop leaders, we develop our student-athletes emotionally and intellectually to live fulfilling lives. We do not always succeed, we have work to do, but that is not to denigrate the core values of our mission.
Most of our student-athletes will never play professional sports, but they enjoy a wonderful opportunity which creates lasting memories for them and for their families, friends, and fans. I am confident that we will meet the external challenges that threaten us and that would change the college experience forever.
In closing, I recall the words of my high school football coach, Larry McHugh, who incidentally, is the Chair of the UConn Board of Trustees. You never forget your high school coach. He, like all coaches, was also a teacher and often said that no matter how big you are, no matter how good you are, you are going to get knocked down from time to time, you must get up each time with renewed determination. We as a Conference had some growing pains, faced early adversity, but we never quit in the corner, we have kept fighting. There is no quit anywhere in our Conference. Our teams embody the qualities of sacrifice, dedication and fearlessness. They know that the test of quality competition makes them better players, and better people as well. As SMU senior football player Jonathan Yenga said recently, “Everything is possible for one who believes.” Our players believe they play the best competition in order to be the best, they are striving mightily. Paraphrasing the great Vince Lombardi, if you strive for perfection, knowing it is unattainable, you will achieve excellence.
I am proud of our players and coaches and congratulate them on their determination to compete successfully at the highest level. I love being able to fight hard for them and for this Conference as its Commissioner, to give them a voice. That is a privilege I do not take lightly. I believe in our student-athletes, in the American ideal of upward mobility which is their goal and I take inspiration from their efforts, which will outlast the victories and defeats. I also take inspiration from the kind words of those who believe in this Conference and in our mission to educate outstanding young men and women.
College football is a great stage, and we are privileged to be on the cusp of another golden autumn, to witness again the brilliant fall afternoons and evenings, the excitement, the memories of great exploits flooding back and anticipation of more great exploits to come. We look forward to the pageantry, the crowds, the bands, the exciting plays, the spirited work of our players and coaches, the quality of their preparation.
As I have said, our student-athletes are tough, and do not back down. One of my favorite quotations is from Edward R. Murrow, who once said, “Difficulty is an excuse history never accepts.” Difficulty does not daunt us and is an excuse we will never accept in this Conference.
Thank you for your presence here today and best wishes, one and all, for an enjoyable summer and a rewarding year ahead.
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Thank you, Kevin, for the very kind introduction and for hosting our third annual football media day. We appreciate the fine work you do at ESPN and we are delighted to have you with us.
I thank all of you for being here today to celebrate our student-athletes in this beautiful setting. We have 12 coaches and 35 student-athletes with us and we know you will enjoy meeting and being with them. Needless to say, we are extremely proud of them. More about them later.
We appreciate all of our guests and friends in the college community and we are pleased that so many of our friends in the media are also here with us today. We value your fair and excellent coverage of our Conference and its schools, and of college sports generally.
I want to take a moment at the outset to salute Mike Slive, the recently retired SEC commissioner, an old and dear friend, for his service to college athletics and to student-athletes everywhere over a long period of time. I have known Mike for almost 30 years, and worked with him while at ESPN and CBS and as a commissioner. He has had a distinguished career, and his vision, character, intelligence and dedication have made the future immeasurably better for college athletics. All our conferences compete vigorously, but in the end it is the friendships that endure, we are all working together to serve our student-athletes and the great schools they represent. Mike has a wonderful capacity for friendship and a great sense of humor as well. We wish Mike and his lovely wife, Liz, all the best as they enjoy a happy and well-deserved retirement. And I hope, even at this early time of day, that Mike is enjoying a good cigar on his back porch in Birmingham.
I take extraordinary delight this morning in welcoming the United States Naval Academy into our Conference as a football-playing member. The Midshipmen are the best this country has to offer and we also welcome servicemen and women from around the world to the American Athletic Conference. We welcome Admiral Ted Carter, Superintendent of the Academy, Athletic Director Chet Gladchuk and Coach Ken Niumatalolo and his staff. I also want to recognize and thank Admiral Mike Miller, the prior Superintendent, for his role, along with Chet, in bringing Navy into our Conference. I want to recognize and thank Chet for his outstanding day to day work in making this a smooth transition after 134 years of independence in football and for his support of our league. Admiral Carter is a former Top Gun pilot with an extraordinary military record, and we thank him for his outstanding service to our country. He also happens to be a Rhode Island native, hailing from Burrillville, and was recently inducted into the RI Heritage Hall of Fame. I know Navy will have a great experience competing in the Conference and our teams will enjoy playing Navy.
To me, the Army-Navy game epitomizes why having Navy in our Conference is so special. The poignancy of that game, which transcends sports, derives in large part because these young men will be in harm’s way defending our country and its freedom soon after their Academy careers are over. Theodore Roosevelt was the first president to attend the Army-Navy game in 1901 and began the tradition of crossing the field at halftime to be on both sides during the game. The singing of each other’s anthems after the hard-fought game personifies the spirit of college sports. We are honored to have Navy in the Conference, and proud of the great football tradition they bring, which includes Heisman Trophy winners Roger Staubach and Joe Bellino.
I also want to take this opportunity to thank my fellow FBS Commissioners and CFP Executive Director Bill Hancock for their outstanding cooperation in working out a CFP protocol which will keep the Army-Navy game in its current place on the sports calendar as a great season-ending American tradition. Bill has done a wonderful job with the CFP, and its tremendous success in its inaugural year is a tribute to Bill and his staff.
I want to recognize Gerald Turner, President of SMU, our immediate past Board Chairman, for all he has done to help build a strong foundation for this Conference. He has shown an unwavering commitment, has been extraordinarily generous with his time and has been a huge support to me personally.
I also want to recognize Susan Herbst, President of UConn, who succeeds Gerald as our Chair. Susan has also demonstrated a strong commitment to our league as our Vice Chair the past two years, and will be a great leader. Stead Upham, President of Tulsa, highly respected and experienced, is our new Vice Chair and also serves on the College Football Playoff Board of Managers as the American Athletic Conference representative. Our Board is comprised of a brilliant group of presidents whose support and guidance have assured the success of our collective enterprise and of their individual institutions.
I want to than Lisa Zanecchia and our outstanding staff for their fine work in planning our media days. Scott Draper and Mike Costa do a great job organizing our Conference’s football and Megan Morgan, Chuck Sullivan and Chevonne Mansfield have done great work organizing the media aspects of this event. My capable staff make it a pleasure to come to work each day. I regret that I do not have the time to mention all of them.
We have a group of athletic directors and a roster of football coaches who are the envy of any conference in America. To the athletic directors group we welcome Hunter Yurachek of Houston, Pat Kraft of Temple and Coach George O’Leary at UCF. Chet Gladchuk has already been part of our group but we now welcome him officially. I want to recognize Jeff Compher of ECU, who ably chairs our AD’s group and Mark Harlan of USF, our capable vice chair. We welcome Tom Herman of Houston, Chad Morris of SMU, Philip Montgomery of Tulsa, and Ken Niumatalolo of Navy to our coaching ranks. They bring new energy and excitement to our conference and join a distinguished incumbent group led by our deans, Tommy Tuberville and George O’Leary, and which includes Bob Diaco, Justin Fuente, CJ Johnson, Ruffin McNeill, Matt Rhule, and Willie Taggart.
Terry McAulay oversees our outstanding officiating crews and does it with an unmatched authority and competence. Terry has refereed three Super Bowls during his distinguished career and makes sure our officiating is first-rate. Officials are unsung heroes, we know how important good officiating is, we owe it to our players and to the game of football to provide the best officials, and ours are the best. We embraced using an 8th official last year on an experimental basis, and will use eight officials in all of our games this year.
We have some distinguished guests with us. Steve Hatchell, head of the National Football Foundation and College Hall of Fame, addressed our Athletic Directors as he did last year. Steve is a thoughtful and forceful advocate for the sport of college football and a staunch defender of the game of football, he has made us acutely aware of the threats to this great game and therefore has made us better able to deal with them.
As you know, we have phenomenal TV exposure for our Conference, and I want to thank our TV partners, ESPN and CBS, the best media companies in the world, several of whose representatives are here with us today. They enjoy great leadership in John Skipper at ESPN and Sean McManus at CBS. ESPN provides us multiple platforms and valuable broadcast windows, we have three ABC national telecasts, Thursdays and Fridays on ESPN, and ESPN2, games on ESPNU and other ESPN platforms. ESPN televises six of our seven bowl games, and Pete Derzis, who is here today, does a great job organizing ESPN’s many owned and operated bowl games. CBS Sports Network televises an American Conference Game of the Week and will televise the inaugural AutoNation Cure Bowl from Orlando, in which we are a participant. Virtually all of our games are nationally televised and this affords us a unique opportunity to build our brand.
We have many bowl representatives here today, too many to mention without omitting someone, and we value our tie-ins with their bowls and what they do for college football. We have a terrific bowl lineup, 7 tie-ins this year, 8 tie-ins in three of the next four years, as well as several back-up arrangements. We have met our goals for the bowl season by playing good teams, we played a very tough bowl schedule last year – all games against the Power 5 and BYU, and acquitted ourselves well. And we have locations our teams and fans want to visit. We had an immensely successful debut for our Conference-owned Miami Beach Bowl and we also have games this year in St. Petersburg, Orlando, Boca Raton, Hawaii, Washington, D.C. and Birmingham.
Navy will play in the Military Bowl in Annapolis if they are bowl eligible and if they are not playing in a New Year’s Bowl. We are excited about adding the Boca Raton and Cure bowls to our lineup this year. The latter will support breast cancer research and we are proud to be associated with such a worthwhile cause.
Although I will provide a brief look backward at some of our achievements as a conference, our focus is on the future. This is an exciting time as our composition is now complete with Navy joining as the 12th team in football. We had an excellent 2014 season, three worthy tri-champions in Memphis, Cincinnati and UCF. We narrowly missed appearing in a New Year’s Day game.
This conference has already done some outstanding things, played some remarkable games and that is only a warm-up. The best is yet to come. All of our teams are building top programs. As I said, we are focused on the future, but an occasional peek in the rear-view mirror is worthwhile and shows that our recent past merely prologue.
We have had top NFL draft picks, two in the first round this past year. UCF won the Fiesta Bowl in convincing fashion two years ago. We had perhaps the greatest catch in college football history in J.J. Worton’s catch against Temple two years ago. Brian Williams of NBC said on the evening news that night, “This is the catch you make in your dreams.” The Memphis-BYU Miami Beach Bowl and Houston-Pitt Armed Forces Bowl were among the most exciting games of last year. The latter was perhaps the greatest comeback ever, a 31-6 fourth-quarter deficit, two onside kick recoveries, a gutsy two-point conversion and a final defensive stand to win it. These two games, plus the incredible UCF Hail Mary to stun East Carolina, were included in ESPN’s top 25 games of last season. Several of our other games easily could have been included as well.
Last year, Justin Hardy of East Carolina set the NCAA FBS career receptions record and teamed with Shane Carden to create one of the greatest quarterback-receiver tandems ever, and we know the tough schedules East Carolina played last year and always plays –defeating Virginia Tech after Virginia Tech had just defeated Ohio State in Columbus and soundly defeating a good North Carolina team and narrowly losing at South Carolina.
Our players do outstanding and commendable things off the field and in the classroom as well. Today you will meet, among others, Andreas Knappe of UConn, a native of Denmark and a member of our All-Academic team who participates in youth football clinics and mentors middle school students. Adrian Witty of Cincinnati, who has already earned a bachelor’s degree in criminal justice, is working on a masters in health education. Adrian McDonald of Houston works with the Houston Food Bank, Star of Hope and Boys and Girls Clubs. Wynton McManis of Memphis teaches children about manners and respect, reads to them at a school and is a youth camp counselor in Mississippi. Mattias Ciabatti of USF, is a candidate for the Wuerfell Trophy for his community service efforts and Myer Krah of Navy, nominee for the Allstate AFCA Good Works team, visits local homeless shelters and has started, with a high school teammate, a scholarship fund at his former high school.
Also with us today I would like to acknowledge 12 who young men who, aside from competing at the highest level of college football, are also among the 321 football players in the conference who were named last week to our All-Academic Team, for earning a grade-point average of at least 3.0 last year: from UCF, Thomas Niles; from Cincinnati, Gunner Kiel; from UConn, Andreas Knappe; from East Carolina, Zeek Bigger and Isaiah Jones; from USF, Mattias Ciabatti and Sean Price; from SMU, Zach Wood; from Temple, Kyle Friend, Matt Ioannidis and Tyler Matakevich; and from Tulane, Arturo Uzdavinis.
I would also like to recognize George O'Leary and the UCF Knights, who, in addition to winning a share of the conference championship, won the American Athletic Conference Team Academic Excellence Award - as the football team with the highest combined grade-point average this past year. A total of 52 UCF players earned at least a 3.0 last year, which speaks volumes about the commitment to high achievement both on the field in in the classroom. Congratulations to you George, and to the entire UCF program.
This year our conference embarks upon Divisional play in football. We will have exciting divisional races which will draw attention, and we will have an exciting and competitive inaugural football championship game televised nationally by ABC or ESPN, a huge promotional vehicle for us.
We are extremely excited about this game, which will be played on Saturday, December 5, at noon, and hosted by the team with the best record. Our champion will be decided on the field in what will be a hard-fought game. Our championship trophy will make stops at our various stadiums during the season. We will once again be in the mix for a College Football Playoff New Year’s Bowl, which we narrowly missed last year.
I am very excited about our nonconference and conference schedules. We have some highly anticipated games, and based on last year’s results, they will be incredibly exciting and will go down to the wire. As I mentioned, our national TV exposure on ESPN, ABC, CBS Sports Network, and other networks as well, will once again be outstanding.
Temple will host Penn State on September 5 on ESPN and will host Notre Dame on October 31. Miami visits Cincinnati on Thursday, October 1 on ESPN and Ole Miss visits Memphis on October 17.
Our Thursday and Friday schedule on ESPN is outstanding and is another huge promotional vehicle for our league. For example, Cincinnati and Memphis, two of our preseason top teams with dynamic offenses, square off on Thursday, September 24.
We have three games at BYU – UConn, Cincinnati and East Carolina. That is no small task against a veteran Cougar team. Navy at Houston on November 28th could have west division championship implications, as could Navy at Memphis and Memphis at Houston earlier in the season. In the east, games to watch are Cincinnati at UCF, Temple at Cincinnati and UCF at Temple, among many other really good games.
The arrival of Tom Herman, Chad Morris and Philip Montgomery – arguably the three best offensive coordinators in the country – will add energy and excitement to our offenses and to our league. It will be important to watch our exciting conference as we compete for College Football Playoff spots. We have innovative offensive coordinators, we have great players and exciting skill players, and we also play some pretty good defense. Temple has 10 starters back from an outstanding defense that includes All-America candidate Tyler Matakevich, who could be just the seventh player in FBS history with four seasons of 100 or more tackles. We have a terrific group of quarterbacks, four of whom are here today: Gunnar Kiel of Cincinnati, Keenan Reynolds of Navy, Matt Davis of SMU, and Tanner Lee of Tulane.
There are 15 players nationally who are on the watch lists for the Maxwell Award, Walter Camp Trophy, Davey O’Brien Award and the Manning Trophy. Three are from our conference (Kiel, Reynolds, and Paxton Lynch). Two are in the room (Kiel, Reynolds). Only the Pac-12 has more.
We have, without question, one of the most distinguished rosters of head coaches in the nation. Collectively, our group has served as the head coaches in 40 bowl games; they have a combined 14 top-25 finishes and four top-10 finishes. They include four men who have won national championships as coordinators, two who are past winners of the Broyles Award as the top assistant coach and one winner of the AFCA National Assistant Coach of the Year award. All of our veteran coaches return, and their presence, along with our promising new coaches, reflects the commitment to win by our institutions.
Our teams will play seven teams that were ranked in the final top-25 poll last year, including four of the top 10. Among notable nonconference opponents are Penn State, TCU, Florida State, Baylor, Georgia Tech, VA Tech, Duke, Missouri, Ole Miss, Maryland, South Carolina, Louisville, Notre Dame, Stanford, Air Force, BYU, Miami (Fla.) and Oklahoma. Quite a roster. I hate to let go of summer, but I can hardly wait for the season to begin in late August and early September.
What are our goals in football, as a conference? I consider us a challenger brand. We continue to be unafraid to take on big challenges. As you can see we are again playing many games against the best of the Power Five. The combined winning percentage of those teams is 61.4%, but we will not back down. We are energetic, enthusiastic, competitive, and are having fun. We are also friendly, we care about our fans, we value our media coverage. We are already building a memorable brand. As I mentioned earlier, we have done extraordinary things and we will continue to do extraordinary things. We know we have to be extremely efficient, work extremely hard and compete smarter than our competition in this challenging new world of top-level college athletics. America is about upward mobility and opportunity and that is what the American Athletic Conference represents. We will not accept limitations, we will determine who and what we are.
We have close relationships with the five so-called power conferences and, as I mentioned, we are scheduling many football games against them. I spent almost all of my television career at ESPN and CBS working with the so-called Power Five, negotiating TV deals with them and programming their games. The people in our Conference know them well and have worked with them. We respect them, their traditions, their success on the field, their fan bases and national popularity, their TV ratings. But we also know that our schools look very much like many of theirs, and that we can compete with them. We have generated impressive TV ratings and have strong traditional programs as well as up-and-coming programs.
Having said that, I do not like the perceived divide that has developed in college sports, especially in college football. I would like to see more media attention, which influences public attention and public opinion, focused on us, not simply on the so-called power five.
We have schools the country knows, schools with traditions and schools with emerging programs, we have schools in big markets, we have great coaches, we have several new stadiums, we are committed to providing full cost of attendance and other items that promote student-athlete well-being, we are in rich recruiting areas, scholarship limits were preserved in the NCAA Governance redesign; all this means that we will compete at the highest level.
The NCAA Governance redesign, affording as it did autonomy in certain legislative areas to the five big conferences, can be viewed as problematic for us because we are not in the autonomy group. It was essentially a self-selecting process and we are not currently in large part because realignment changed our membership significantly.
Although this situation now poses challenges for us, we have no intention of surrendering to it. How do we deal with this state of affairs? We will be a leader, we will have a vision, we will fight, we will turn perceived problems into opportunities. Nevertheless, we must be careful in articulating our goals. Yes, we would like to be officially in the autonomous group, but we cannot control that at the moment. Therefore our goal is to be in the Power Five conversation as the sixth power conference. That we can control by our performance on and off the field. We can gain respect by competing, by winning our share, by the quality of our teams, by our game attendance, by the things we are doing to promote student-athlete well-being. If we look and act like the so-called Power Five, we will be in the conversation and eventually Power Six will enter the media and public lexicon and perceptions. As I said, the autonomy designation is legislative and bureaucratic, it does not mean automatic superiority on the field or on the court. That has to be earned.
Nevertheless, the autonomy legislative structure is permissive, meaning we can do what the autonomous five do, we can adopt whatever legislation they adopt. Although I cannot stand here and guarantee entrance into that group at the moment, I can stand here and tell you that we will be in that group competitively, that we will continue to earn respect the old-fashioned way, that in the meantime our aim is to be a de facto member of that group by virtue of how we compete on the fields and courts and how we treat our student-athletes off the fields and courts.
Student-Athlete safety and well-being are our highest priorities, they are job one. Our injury and concussion protocols, the results of months of work with medical experts and all of our schools, will be among the best. I believe our educational efforts in this regard with our officials, our coaches and all those who are responsible for player safety, are unprecedented. Our schools are providing full cost of attendance for their student-athletes, as well as many other important benefits.
And in the end we will not succumb to what my old friend and wonderful gentleman Glen Tuckett, the former long-time athletic director at BYU, calls the tragedy of “success unattended”. We will promote our successes and build on them.
We will never stop selling our Conference or its brand, which we have strived to make a prominent and respected brand. We have high expectations, but we recognize that there are no short cuts and we will pay attention to every detail. I have not promised our schools anything but hard work, there is no substitute, but I am confident that it will lead to the success we envision. And we will compete with sportsmanship and class, we will respect our opponents. We will be fierce competitors on the field, friends and colleagues off it.
We also must do our share to further our vision of what we believe college football and college sports should be. We must protect the game of football and we must promote, value and cherish the student-athlete experience, which is unique. As for the challenges to the college experience that we face from the various lawsuits you have read about, although we have sound economic arguments, in the end we cannot simply argue economics, we must preserve the student-athlete experience for its own sake.
As for protecting and nourishing the game of football, which we all love, I take great pride today in announcing a partnership between the American Athletic Conference and USA Football. We thank Scott Hallenbeck, the executive director of USA Football, for joining us today to make this announcement. Together with our coaches and staff at the American, we are thrilled to partner with this exceptional organization whose mission it is to spearhead the game’s development, inspire participation, and create a better and safer experience for all youth participants.
This partnership will occur at a grassroots level in the 12 communities where our teams play football, our coaches and their staff will work with USA Football to encourage youth football participation, to promote proper training for youth football coaches with respect to safe tackling and heads-up football, and to provide education for parents of youth participants.
November will be Youth Football Month in the American Athletic Conference, our coaches will appear in a nationally televised PSA on behalf of USA Football, and youth football participants will be celebrated at games throughout our league.
This new initiative is an example of how the American Athletic Conference takes seriously its stewardship of the game of football to insure that it remains a vibrant part of our society. And as I alluded to earlier, no one is a more diligent guardian of the game of football than Steve Hatchell, CEO of the National Football Foundation. We salute Steve and his colleagues for their efforts.
Now let me turn to our vision for college athletics. We simply cannot surrender to an approach that would professionalize and destroy the college experience. College student-athletes are not employees. To create an employer-employee relationship and professionalize the sport by paying players would change our mission forever, and not for the better. The Supreme Court in its 1984 Regents decision supported the notion of amateurism in college sports. It is something unique and real. TV deals generate more money than ever before, although some of that is due to inflation. However, most of that money is plowed back into better facilities, better nutrition, better student-athlete benefits, better academic and life skills counseling, better training, better coaching, better practice facilities, and a better student-athlete quality of life.
College football is immensely popular. The second most popular sport next to the NFL, it is fun, it energizes a campus and its community and region and brings attention and resources, it binds alumni to their schools, and it excites our country. If done right, college sports and college football make a unique contribution to the national social fabric, we would be a poorer country without them. We need to be vigilant and make sure they are done right, but the NCAA and the schools (and the NCAA is its schools) have strived for a procompetitive and ethical environment and should have discretion to run their programs.
In order to help preserve the college experience for our student-athletes, our conference is a prominent member of the Coalition to Protect and Improve the Student-Athlete Experience, formed by the Division I conferences to communicate our goals and mission and to address misconceptions about who we are and what we trying to accomplish. The collegiate experience is threatened by the lawsuits to which I alluded. I believe we will prevail if we recognize that education and sportsmanship are the bedrock principles of our conference and collegiate sports, if we fight for a system that has delivered us, even with its lingering problems, far from the Wild West days of old, that has, ironically, in these days of the “power five”, created more competitive equity than ever before, that has afforded hundreds of thousands of student-athletes the ability to obtain a valuable education, to learn life skills, to enjoy the best facilities and counseling, to compete at great venues, to enjoy the equity and good will that these universities have taken decades to build in their communities and nationally.
College sports are not pro sports and despite some similarities that may not have existed in former times, we recognize that college sports are unique. Pro sports have their place, but attend a college football game or other collegiate event, and you will know that they are not and should not be pro sports. Our mission is to educate young people to provide them with exciting and rewarding competition that builds character and a sense of sportsmanship, values and fair play. We develop leaders, we develop our student-athletes emotionally and intellectually to live fulfilling lives. We do not always succeed, we have work to do, but that is not to denigrate the core values of our mission.
Most of our student-athletes will never play professional sports, but they enjoy a wonderful opportunity which creates lasting memories for them and for their families, friends, and fans. I am confident that we will meet the external challenges that threaten us and that would change the college experience forever.
In closing, I recall the words of my high school football coach, Larry McHugh, who incidentally, is the Chair of the UConn Board of Trustees. You never forget your high school coach. He, like all coaches, was also a teacher and often said that no matter how big you are, no matter how good you are, you are going to get knocked down from time to time, you must get up each time with renewed determination. We as a Conference had some growing pains, faced early adversity, but we never quit in the corner, we have kept fighting. There is no quit anywhere in our Conference. Our teams embody the qualities of sacrifice, dedication and fearlessness. They know that the test of quality competition makes them better players, and better people as well. As SMU senior football player Jonathan Yenga said recently, “Everything is possible for one who believes.” Our players believe they play the best competition in order to be the best, they are striving mightily. Paraphrasing the great Vince Lombardi, if you strive for perfection, knowing it is unattainable, you will achieve excellence.
I am proud of our players and coaches and congratulate them on their determination to compete successfully at the highest level. I love being able to fight hard for them and for this Conference as its Commissioner, to give them a voice. That is a privilege I do not take lightly. I believe in our student-athletes, in the American ideal of upward mobility which is their goal and I take inspiration from their efforts, which will outlast the victories and defeats. I also take inspiration from the kind words of those who believe in this Conference and in our mission to educate outstanding young men and women.
College football is a great stage, and we are privileged to be on the cusp of another golden autumn, to witness again the brilliant fall afternoons and evenings, the excitement, the memories of great exploits flooding back and anticipation of more great exploits to come. We look forward to the pageantry, the crowds, the bands, the exciting plays, the spirited work of our players and coaches, the quality of their preparation.
As I have said, our student-athletes are tough, and do not back down. One of my favorite quotations is from Edward R. Murrow, who once said, “Difficulty is an excuse history never accepts.” Difficulty does not daunt us and is an excuse we will never accept in this Conference.
Thank you for your presence here today and best wishes, one and all, for an enjoyable summer and a rewarding year ahead.
