Andrew Wevers/American Athletic Conference
Good morning, and welcome to Arlington. Thank you all for being here today.
We would like to start by acknowledging some special people.
Our entire team at the American conference office – thank you for your hard work.
This event takes incredible coordination and teamwork, and I am very grateful to you all for your remarkable effort.
Thank you to the team at Loews for hosting these two special days for the entire American community.
Thank you to our presidents, chancellors and athletic directors for the incredible support they continue to provide every day.
We’d like to recognize Vice Admiral Yvette Davids, the new superintendent of the Naval Academy, and the first woman to hold that prestigious honor.
And we’d like to extend our best wishes to President Neal Smatresk of North Texas, who is retiring next week, and welcome Harrison Keller, who begins his term with the Mean Green in August.
We’d also like to take a moment to remember the late JoAnne Epps, the outstanding president of Temple who passed away in September.
We thank Dick Englert, who returned as Temple’s president, and we welcome John Fry, who will take office in the fall.
We have three awesome new athletic directors joining us this year, Ed Scott at Memphis, Justin Moore at Tulsa and David Harris at Tulane.
We are excited to bring their accomplished backgrounds and thought leadership to the American.
It is great to see a couple of our ADs here today, Jared Mosley of North Texas and Lisa Campos from UTSA.
Welcome to our football bowl partners from the Cotton, Frisco, Fenway, Independence, Armed Forces and the Cure Bowls.
It’s a pleasure to see our officemates from the College Football Playoff – Byron Hatch and Katie Cavender, who brought along some inspiration for our student-athletes, a chance to get up close to the national championship trophy before you start chasing it this season.
Thank you to our partners at ESPN, Clint Overby who is here with us today, and welcome to everyone watching today on ESPN Plus.
The entire team at ESPN is truly dedicated to the unscripted drama of sports, capturing permanent moments in time, and telling the story of our student-athletes and institutions.
Welcome back to our 12 returning head football coaches and a warm welcome to our two new head coaches, Coach Jon Sumrall at Tulane and Coach Jeff Monken at Army.
Unfortunately Coach Poggi from Charlotte is not here today for family reasons. We are all keeping him and his family in our prayers.
I know from my own experience that the impact of a coach is a relationship for life and goes far beyond Xs and Os.
To our football student-athletes, today is all about you. It feels like yesterday that I was in your place, what I wouldn’t give to have one more year … my body would disagree
Guys, take a deep breath — think about how many young men would do anything to be in your place, stay in the moment, and make the most of the opportunities this season.
Welcome to the media, thank you for the effort to be here today. And a special welcome to our friend Steve Richardson, the executive director of the Football Writers Association, who is here with us today.
We appreciate the coverage and storytelling around all our programs and student-athletes.
It is great to see so many of our fans here for the first time at media day – and certainly not the last.
Thank you for supporting our coaches and student athletes here today and all year long. We hope you have an awesome experience.
We’d like to acknowledge my predecessor, Mike Aresco. Mike was, and continues to be, a champion of this conference.
Mike has been incredibly generous with me, sharing his time and insights during my transition. It will be an honor this December to present the first Mike Aresco Most Outstanding Player Award to the top performer in this year’s American championship game.
Today is day 50 for me as the commissioner of the American.
These days are all about developing relationships with our institutions, listening, learning and, of course, preparing to take big swings as a conference.
The team in Dallas and on our campuses have been incredibly welcoming, gracious and accommodating to me. And my colleague commissioners have done the same and been available and supportive at every turn.
When I was chosen to succeed Mike, Ralph Russo from the AP asked me why I wanted to return to college athletics when many were looking to get out … easy to answer.
Investment.
My experience as a football student-athlete changed my life. It provided me with a great education, incredible football memories, lasting friendships, and invaluable life-skills.
Thirty years later, collegiate athletics continues to be a formula that paves the way for our future teachers,
entrepreneurs, professionals and leaders. It is a model worth modernizing – and investing in. And there has never been a better time than now to invest – and no better conference than the American.
Invest in our brand, our business, and our people.
And no this is not our pitch to private capital – it’s our why.
From day one, it has been a priority to do a deep dive to understand the power of the American brand. What makes us different? Where do we excel? And how we get stronger? Because investing in our brand is not just about games; it’s about building sustainability, creating our legacy, delivering an unrivaled student-athlete experience, and capturing the hearts of our fans.
Here are some facts:
During the 2023 season the American had approximately 2.5 million fans that attended our football games, the most of our peer group.
Our brand was also the most talked about in comparison to our peers, dominating the conversation at 33%.
More than 65% of our conference-controlled linear football games aired on ABC, ESPN or ESPN2. And we averaged nearly one million fans per game watching our linear broadcasts and 16 of these games exceeded that mark.
We have powerful markets and a strong presence across the country, with influence in Dallas, Houston, Baltimore, Washington, San Antonio, New Orleans, Charlotte, Philadelphia, Memphis, Tampa, Birmingham, annually the top-rated college football market. And thanks to our newest football member Army, in New York – the number one media market in the country. And it’s just the beginning.
We are going to maximize the American brand by creating original content that goes beyond gameday and establishes a year-round conversation and engagement between our student-athletes and fans and supporters.
We believe we are the only conference – as far as we know – with our own production studio,in our building with talented, creative and hungry executives ready to take the gloves off in the studio and control room.
And, we’re happy to announce today, in support of these efforts – that we have entered a multi-year partnership with WSC Sports, a pioneer and the industry leader in AI-generated sports video content, to create and distribute real-time and postgame video for every conference-controlled football, men’s basketball and women’s basketball games.
This gives us the same tools that are used by the NBA, the NHL, NASCAR and the USGA to deepen our connection with our fans and unlock incredible creative and revenue-generating opportunities.
We all understand that growing our brand ultimately drives value for member institutions, their programs and student- athletes – and that is our goal. It is also the time to invest in the collegiate athletics model… and new business and enterprise strategies.
Yes, collegiate athletics is amid transformative change and to some extent chaos. This is exciting. Change leads to transformation. Transformation brings opportunity, and opportunity needs investment.
People have been talking a lot about private equity or private capital – me included – wanting to be involved in our space, and do you know why?
PE loves business opportunities with massive and growing affinity and tremendous upside potential that have been historically slow to adapt.
Whether it’s a private capital group, a creative corporate partner looking to break new ground, they see what we know.
College athletics has failed to modernize the enterprise until it was faced with a crisis. But they also see that it is overflowing with committed leadership who is mission-driven.
What does a crisis mean? Legislators having to pen bills to help us change, and what is potentially a 20-billion-dollar lawsuit targeted at a handful of conferences and the NCAA.
The enterprise is in this together, the finger pointing is useless. And, while this conference is not named in that lawsuit, Everyone has played a role in the failure to modernize in the past and create fairness for student-athletes.
The good news – we are on the cusp of settling that lawsuit, the largest in collegiate athletics history. A lawsuit that will completely change the way we govern and do business.
The frustrating part, at times there is a lack of transparency in sharing all the information so that we can properly plan and begin to build our future.
Listen, we are grateful for the hard work that is being done by some very smart people. And we all understand the importance of protecting the privilege but this settlement is much more than about money.
There are transformative matters at hand, like Title IX, roster limits, sports sponsorship. We need to remember that the decisions being made will impact a diverse enterprise, not just the top 1% which is why we need to work together and ensure every conference has a voice.
There are hurdles and I encourage my peers in leadership to remember our collective responsibility to work together – to consult, listen or add ideas – that will deliver a model that properly supports over 500,000 student-athletes’ ability to get a college education in the future, not just a small fraction of them, so the question is simple: Are we doing that?
In The American, our student-athletes, coaches and administrators want to understand, and they want to have a voice.
This is logical as the decisions that are being made will determine their futures and how they should conduct their business.
This potential settlement is going to shape a new enterprise, and that’s when the work begins to work together on a new model that provides sustainability in the future. We owe it to young people.
Having experience in the private sector, and on campus, I understand how to evaluate and build businesses and I can tell you that innovation starts with collaboration, choosing the right partners and having a cultural fit and alignment. It’s not just about dollars.
But today let’s not lament the state of college athletics. Instead let’s look through the windshield, not the rearview mirror. I mean if collegiate athletics is in such bad shape, do you really think we would be experiencing such accelerated growth, and outside entities would want to invest in us?
The fact is, it’s an enterprise worth investing in. The intangibles are unmatched. It fuels passion, loyalty, celebrates resilience, builds character, and most importantly… provides educational opportunities.
Despite the unknowns, at the American, we are going to jump the curve. We are going to invest in new relationships and strategic partnerships and build value for our member institutions. Nothing’s off the table. It can’t be for us.
We’ll continue to cast the net wide and meet with prospective commercial and investment partners. Conference naming rights? Jersey patches with revenue flowing directly to student-athletes? Private capital?
We will continue to explore the possible. It’s important to say, a non-negotiable byproduct for us is that each new relationship must deliver new experience and resource enhancements that our student-athletes deserve.
Okay, let’s talk about post-season play.
We’ve all read about, and I’ve spoken and gone on the record to say, we believe in more football postseason opportunities for our student-athletes. To be clear, more means additive.
The CFP is a paramount relationship to the American providing the opportunity, every year, to compete for a National Championship. We have been there before, and we will be there again. What has been established in the postseason is so meaningful. And there’s room for more.
More – in addition to – not in place of.
Four conference champions may be left out of the CFP, and the prospect of an additional playoff for these champions creates more opportunity and greater experience for student-athletes. I mean, we’re still waiting to hear the downside of more meaningful postseason football that will be a compliment and powerful marketing platform to the CFP.
Since Day 1 on June 3, growth is a daily conversation at the American. Again, it is 100% possible to break free from the status-quo, embrace innovation and preserve what is special about college sports – and that is exactly what we are doing.
We also believe in investing in people. The real power of our conference is its people. The people at our member institutions who lead, coach, teach, work and compete, most importantly, our student-athletes.
Investing in our people is not just a choice for us; it’s our job, our responsibility, our commitment to building our ecosystem of talent, growth, and success – pushing every boundary, and never taking no for an answer.
Those words in our opening video that I had the opportunity to voice is not some fictional script. It is real. It is who we are. Watching it gave me the same chills that running out of a tunnel to a packed stadium gave me as a student-athlete.
People are the heartbeat of this conference, the architects of our future, and the driving force behind every achievement.
The American has produced four NCAA championship teams, a College Football Playoff semifinalist, four New Years Six Bowl Champions, 15 NCAA Individual Champions and a Rhodes Scholar. Since 2013 we have registered top-10 national rankings in 14 sports.
In football we have been a staple of the New Years Six, with eight appearances in 11 seasons including in 2022 when Tulane delivered the biggest one-year turnaround in major college football history with a win over USC in the Goodyear Cotton Bowl.
The American has produced two national defensive players of the year, winners of the Outland, Jim Thorpe, Ray Guy and Sullivan awards and four top-10 Heisman finishes.
Our student-athletes also understand the importance of balance. This balance is on display at our annual Academic Symposium. It’s the centerpiece of research and collaboration by faculty and students at all our member institutions – the findings and presentations that are made at this event have directly benefitted our student-athletes.
We are also enormously proud of the work that our Student-Athlete Advisory Committee undertakes to raise awareness of mental health. Their program, Powerful Minds is making a difference.
Chris Paul, not the one from State Farm Commercials, a lineman for the Washington Commanders — a leading champion of this program dating back to his days on SAAC at Tulsa.
And this year we had a record number, more than 3,500 members of our All-Academic Team including 10 football student- athletes that are with us today.
Our dedicated and exceptional people are the heartbeat of this conference – and I proud to work alongside thousands of them united in our mission. Because every one of our student-athletes gives us a reason to invest, every day.
I would like to close by saying anyone who knows me knows I wear my heart on my sleeve – and I am as pumped up today for the kickoff of American football as I was 30 years ago as a 275-pound tight end from New Jersey. Being here brings to the forefront the competitive fire that we have.
I know that our coaches and student-athletes will represent the American with class, grit and determination – and I can’t wait to watch you compete this fall.
The return on our investment in you is immeasurable. This is your opportunity and your time. Show the world the American Way.
