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BIG TEN CONFERENCE MEDIA CONFERENCEOctober 16, 2014Jim DelanyJIM DELANY: We're on a great trajectory. There's, I think, a lot of good news for Big Ten basketball, both men's and women's but before we get into the substance of the basketball, where we've been and where we hope to go, there's a lot of talk about the college experience, and part of the college experience is going to school and graduating. The Big Ten men's basketball is No. 1 and has been in APR, No. 2 in the GSR, so they're going to school and they're graduating. That's notwithstanding the fact we've had 17 kids drafted in the last three years, 12 in the first round, so we have kids leaving early. But overall, these teams are going to school and they're graduating at the highest rate in their peer group, the FBS 10‑member peer group, and overall the Big Ten is No.1 in that peer group for all sports. It is college basketball. The kids are going to college, and they are graduating both by the real‑time measurement of APR and GSR, No.1 for women, No.2 for men, and then GSR No.2 for men and No.1 for women. That needs to proceed, because this is college basketball. Now, having said that, there are a lot of indicators of success, and I think the Big Ten has been on a good upward trajectory. I don't care what metric you look at, if you look at the ACC Challenge, which I think is the most important breakthrough November‑December programming there is. I mean, we've tied or won it for five years. We lost it for 10 years thereafter, so we talked about that, so we think that that has been a good indicator against another very powerful, proud conference that we've had some success. We're establishing the Gavitt Tip‑Off next year. We think that will be more breakthrough programming, helping them and help us. We believe in those kinds of competitive partnerships. As far as attendance, five years in row of growth. Everyone worries about regular season basketball being minimized by the success of the postseason. For us, maybe we're the anomaly, but we've grown in attendance for five years in a row and last year had almost 3 million people and had 101 sellouts, 18 more than the previous year, largely directed at Nebraska had a new facility and had tremendous response. My expectation if you look out east in basketball as an example this year, our attendance is going to go down because of the capacity of Maryland and Rutgers, but it's also true they sold out, so their percentage of capacity is up. Both Maryland has got a sell out for the Ohio State game and Rutgers sold out Penn State and Michigan, so I expect to see more sell outs out there as long as those teams remain competitive. On the TV side last year‑‑ the year before we set records. Last year we had a 13 percent higher on ESPN1, 12 percent higher on ESPN2 than the average telecast, and 9 percent higher on CBS. So the television reflects it. We've had really great tournament play. We've won 24 games in the NCAA Tournament over the last two years, 10 last year, 14 the year before. We put five teams in the Final Four in the last six years, eight in the last ten years. Only the Big East has done something similar. Whether you look at the academics, whether you look at the attendance, whether you look at the efforts to schedule high‑quality opponents, we think we're in a great place. Our coaches have done a great job of recruiting student athletes, not only having great talented kids but also developing players. People like Trey Burke and Oladipo didn't come in as five‑star recruits. They came in as talented kids with a dream to play probably at the highest level. They all left in good academic standing. They'll probably come back. As you know last week we announced what I'd consider to be a very square deal. We've been talking about what we can do for athletes for five years. I think in 2010 or '11 I talked about the cost of education. That's going to pass in January, so that's going to come to be. We also have had rule changes that allow us to extend anyone who's offered a scholarship to go to a Big Ten institution, that scholarship will not be withdrawn or reduced during enrollment. Moreover‑‑ that's if you keep your nose clean, so there's a mutual at here. Make progress, be a good person in the community and follow the rules, and if you do that, our commitment to you is that during your enrollment we will neither withdraw nor reduce your aid. Moreover, if you leave school in good academic standing, as a good member of the community for bona fide reasons‑‑ someone says what's bona fide reasons. Well, if you want to go strong, that's fine. If you want to go pursue another career or really if you leave in good academic standing and you just want to do something else, you come back, and with scholarship assistance we'll help you pursue your degree. There's a lot going on, but the most important thing I would say, this is college basketball, and college implies going to school and making progress. I think that our programs and our schools are keeping faith of that. We want a squarer deal. I think we're delivering on that, and so I think that there should be a change. If there's not a change in there, then there should be, because the coaches are doing what they say that they want to do, which is developing players athletically. The schools want them to develop academically as social citizens as well as academic, and student athlete citizens, and we want to continue that commitment beyond the time that they're eligibility expires or they decide to leave. So we think it's a good place. Would we like to win a championship? Yeah, we haven't won since 2000, but the way I look at it, there are national champions and there are winners other than those teams that win that championship, because if we're graduating our kids and our kids are getting the full experience in college athletics, and if we're doing everything that we're able to do under the rules to promote that experience, I think we're winning. We're winning big. We're winning player by player, student by student, and I think that's a commitment that we can improve on, that we're proud of, but that can get better, and I hope that over the coming years we'll be able to do that. Let me stop here and open it up for some questions. Q. Talk about adding Maryland and Rutgers. JIM DELANY: Well, basketball‑wise, Maryland has got a really proud tradition. They won a championship, I think, in 2005 or 2006. They've got great attendance. They've got great capacity there at the Comcast Center, 17,000. They average 12,500, and I hope they average 17,500 this year and grow. Rutgers has really not been to the tournament I think since the early '90s. They were in the Final Four in '76, but I'll tell you, if you look at Rutgers and Maryland, the kind of institutions they are, they fit. We talk the same language. It's high graduation, it's great research, it's comprehensive education. I believe that in all sports but in particular in football and basketball, because of the great students in that corridor, because of the great high schools in that corridor, we're going to get our fair share of athletes. They're going to get them, our schools are going to get them. We've been pleasantly surprised about by putting events out in the East, by developing relationships with Johns Hopkins as an example, the Yankees as an example, moving the basketball championship there in '17 and getting some distribution, we've got some traction. I've said from the beginning this is the most competitive corridor in the world, and it's a real challenge to be in it because it's professional sports. It has been for a long time. There hasn't been‑‑ there's been some good basketball, but basically it really hasn't been developed the way we think it can be developed. It means Maryland and Rutgers have to be competitive, but it also means that we have to be competitive. But we've seen early signs, both with viewership in Philadelphia and in Washington, D.C., and in New York that there's an audience here that's interested in Big Ten sports. Getting a lot of comments, have a lot of people remarking, when Michigan comes in or Ohio State comes in, it's a place for the many hundreds of thousands of Big Ten ex‑patriots to come to the game. We don't know where we're going to be in 2018. We're talking to people, but we know we're here this year for the tournament. We're in Indy next year. We're in D.C. the next year. '18 is open, and then we're back here. So we're going to be out there, and we're going to be here. We're going to live there and we're going to live here. It's a two‑region conference, and I think they're excited, we're excited, and we think that those early signs of traction have an awful lot of work to do yet to become truly integrated. That'll take cares, but we've got off to a pretty good start. Q. Will you consider New York and New Jersey as potential spots for the basketball tournament? JIM DELANY: Yeah, we're talking to people. We may have an announcement in weeks or months, but we're definitely talking to people in the region and outside the region. Q. What do you think the chances are you get there? JIM DELANY: What are the chances? To be determined. We're in discussions. I never like to predict the outcomes of negotiations. I think we'll do well wherever we end up, though. Q. You mentioned the lack of basketball national championships. Do you think that has affected the perception of the league at all? JIM DELANY: I think it always does because, you know, in America if you're not No.1, sometimes you're considered a runner‑up. My wife has been the runner‑up in her golf club championship two years in a row, and we just call her "two." She said, why do you call me two? I said, you've got it three years in a row. Sort of like Marv Levy, when I was at Carolina we lost in three Final Fours three years in a row, so we couldn't win the big one. But the reality, there's a lot of ways you measure success. This is college basketball, so check us first on who we recruit, the kind of people we have, how they move through the system. Check out our winning. Check out our attendance 38 years in a row. Five years in a row attendance growth, it's pretty remarkable. 101 sell‑out last year. I think John Beilein mentioned last year when I was talking to him that they hadn't played in front of anything but a sellout crowd for three or four years. So I think that there's grass‑roots support. I think the kinds of players we're getting are making progress. The great players are having a chance to be drafted and play at the NBA level. We have a lot of four‑year players. You look at Wisconsin, the kind of team they've built. You look at what's going on at Nebraska. I think that it's very healthy. Are there areas we can improve on? Yeah. You know, you get to the Final Four, and sometimes it's a call and sometimes you don't play well. Generally you get beat by a better team, okay. That's what happens. I don't care if it's basketball or football or tiddly‑winks. You don't predict‑‑ you kind of described the state of where we are, and I think we're in a very good place as a college basketball experience. Q. What did you think of Rick Pitino's comments about shoe companies? JIM DELANY: Hey, that's not a new comment. I mean, he said it may be worse than it's been. I'm not on the front lines. I'm not doing the recruitment. I know the coaches have always been concerned about it. And I thought the shoe companies actually, about five or six or seven years ago, sort of came around the table and backed off a little bit to help with us and USA Basketball and development. I'm hearing, but I don't have any facts, that there's maybe more engagement in the recruitment process, and it matters which‑‑ who you're with. I like to look into it a little bit and have some conversations with people and see if they are doing that, and I don't know that they are, that they would take a step back and let the recruitment process play out. They're supposed to be providing gear, providing sponsorship dollars, but they shouldn't be involved in the recruitment process. That's not right, and if it's happening and it may be obvious as some have suggested, I think they should take a step back. Q. When cost of attendance passes, do you think it'll be a league‑wide thing or will it be up to individual schools? JIM DELANY: No, it'll be permissive legislation. It will not be required. I think that based on your resources, you'll do it, based on the competition you'll do it. If you don't have the resources, you can't spend what you don't have, so it's not going to be required, just as scholarships, full scholarships, are not required. Some people are on half scholarship and some people are on walk‑ons, and some people have full scholarships. So it'll be permissive. I expect that we would do it on an equitable basis, and there would be no requirement that we would do it, but from what I have heard, I think it, A, will pass, and B, I think our people will do it, and I think it'll be available to any of the 351 schools, but I don't expect everybody will be able to do it, and that just is what it is. Q. Given basketball scheduling, is 18 the right number of conference games, and is five double‑plays and eight single‑plays‑‑ JIM DELANY: I heard Bo. Bo wants 24 or 26? I love conference games. I will tell you, though, that they don't make January or February longer except in a leap year, so you're trying to get a certain number of games into that January and February. We've got the challenges early, we've got the Gavitt Tip‑Off coming, we have the ACC. We're going to have to find places to put those games, and schools have different philosophies sometimes they're trying to build a program and maybe get to postseason play, however you define it. Some people are trying to get to the NCAA. Some people are trying to gear their team for the Final Four. If our coaches said to us we'd like to have 20, we would have it. 18 is good. We're going to go to nine in football, as we expanded. 18 is not an expansion, so as a percentage, we're reducing the number of games we're playing against each other. If we continue to have this discussion and dialogue, it would probably mean that 20 would have to move back into December because really there's just not the place for 20 conference games unless you play some in December. So I wouldn't be opposed to 20, but I think that we'll just see how this works out with the five and the eight. Q. When it comes to TV negotiations, are you still in the preparatory phase or have you reached active status? Do you anticipate it going earlier rather than‑‑ JIM DELANY: I would say when it's over, I will tell you exactly where we are. But when we're in the preparation, we've been in preparation for three years, and when we enter into negotiation, you probably wouldn't know it, and I probably wouldn't describe it. Q. Do you anticipate it happening earlier than the expiration date? JIM DELANY: Before the expiration date, yeah. The expiration date will probably be in February of whatever it is, '17, so it will happen before that. But I wouldn't tell‑‑ I'm not reporting on the status of when it starts, when it's going on and when it finishes. Sorry. Just proprietary business information. Q. Any of your schools express any hesitation to do the cost of attendance, like significant? JIM DELANY: No. Q. Is everybody on board in your league? JIM DELANY: Everybody is on board, yeah. Yeah. Q. Tim Miles talked about the possibility of maybe wanting to go from 13 full scholarship players because of the way kids are transfers these days left and right. Has there been any thought put towards that? JIM DELANY: Never heard that comment before. Q. Just today‑‑ JIM DELANY: Yeah, first time I've heard of it. Q. Is there any concern over kids transfers? JIM DELANY: So if you go from 13 to 12, I guess I haven't given a lot of thought. Q. Tim wants to change the scale (inaudible.) JIM DELANY: I'd have to give it some thought. I don't know what the connection would be between reducing scholarships and lowering the transfer‑‑ I think the amount of mobility in college basketball has been a challenge for a long time. I mean, I did a study in the '90s where half the kids that we recruited brought to our campuses on scholarship transferred in the period from 1990 to 1997, and that was like an astounding number. You felt like a lot of people were leaving, but you really didn't‑‑ until you counted it up, you didn't realize it. Everybody else was shocked, and then everyone else did their own studies and they saw 50 percent transiency rate. These are at schools we have a transiency rate of students of 9 and 10 and 12 and 13 percent. So when you have 50 percent in a sport, it really raises concerns. You know, it's not all coach runoff, it's not all players wanting more touches, it's not all people going to the NBA, it's not all people being disinterested. It's a variety of factors. But there's no doubt about it, when I was in school, which is a long, long time ago, I remember one player in a decade who transferred out of North Carolina. One player. And I remember one player who transferred in in a 10‑ or 20‑year period. So now you go forward from 1960s, late '60s, early '70s, to 1990. That's only a 20‑year period, and you're at 50 percent transfer rates, and today I think those have maintained, the amount of movement. It's not healthy. It's not healthy because most of these transfers are not really academic transfers, even though some of them are couched that way. They're playing time, competitive issues, and that makes it hard for the coaches, hard for the players, hard for the families, and hard to build college programs because of the discontinuities. Q. And with all that, is it also hard for the sport looking for faces of the sport, they end up becoming coaches because they're the ones who are staying and not transient? JIM DELANY: Well, I think college sports has always been a situation where coaches can stay if they're successful for two and three and four decades, and athletes are there for 48 to 60 months, and most of them aren't ready to play as freshmen or even as sophomores. There are a couple players that do play as freshmen, but most of them don't. They all think they can, but few of them can, and so it's always the institution and the coach, and that's what we sort of argued that really the value, the equity, the history, the programs and the institutions and their fan base, and the players get a chance to get an education, to learn some skills, to go‑‑ 99 percent of them don't play professional sports, so our objective is when they leave to make sure they have a great athletic experience, a great academic experience. If they wanted to go professional out of high school, I have no problem. Any time in college, I have no problem with that. I know when we are here, our thing is about education, getting out the full experience academic and athletic, and we pride ourselves‑‑ we think that we do that as well as any conference in the country. There are programs and there are individuals maybe who don't do it as well as others, but by and large, we're No.1 in our peer group in graduation success rate and APR, and our basketball on the men's and women's side is either one or two in both those counts. I think we're doing what we should be doing, and we're proud of it. Q. As far as full cost of attendance and then the four‑year scholarships, how much of that does each individual school have to pay for? How much of that can the conference help pay for, say out of Big Ten Network? JIM DELANY: Well, if you look at it this way, our schools pay $200 million a year in scholarships, broadly, to men and women's scholarships. As we distribute dollars back, you could say all of our broadcast media goes to scholarships, okay. Some of it goes to operations, some of it goes to college scholarships, but if someone says, what happens to the media dollars, well, there's $200 million that goes right into scholarships if that's the way you want to look at it. All of the cost of education will come out of dollars derived either at the gate or from the conference. So you know, all of the equity that we're able to achieve for men and women comes out of the broadcast revenues, okay. All of the stadium improvements come out of broadcast revenues or the gate. So we're fortunate that we're able to basically not rely very much on subsidies or student fees. It comes from revenues that are derived by the institutions and is able to fund broad‑based programs, including cost of education, including the return to finish your degree, and also to be competitive in terms of facilities, coaches and that kind of thing. I mean, it doesn't come from anyplace other than the public's interest in college I can't tell athletics. What's interesting is we take it and share it, so we allocate it among men and women and coaches and facilities. Quite honestly, now there's an argument that it should be much more narrowly allocated, and we disagree about that. We think that the reason we do cost of education is‑‑ because that's what it costs to go to college, and the reason we give lifetime grants is because we want kids to graduate, and we want them to be full‑time students because it's about graduation. It's college basketball, just not basketball. Q. What's your thought on Mike Slive retiring and his legacy? JIM DELANY: Well, number one, I talked to Mike yesterday. He's optimistic and he's feeling pretty good. So Mike had a great run. I mean, they dominated college football for a period of time in a way that no one else has done in the modern era. So that's one. Two, I think he's had a really good effect and impact not only on the SEC but on the college community generally. Our teams compete, Mike and I sometimes disagree, but we have really worked a lot together on a lot of issues, whether it's the BCS or College Football Playoff or creating bowl games against each other, with each other. So he's about college sports, as well, and he believes in college sports, and I believe in college sports. These are two important conferences, and when they agree on things, you're able to actually move the agenda forward, and a lot of the things that we've been able to do in the restructuring of the NCAA, the College Football Playoff is because we've found common ground on which to move forward. So A, I want to congratulate him on a fantastic career, not only 13 years there but also as a founder of our conference, at working as a judge, as an athletic director. He's had a tremendous effect on the SEC, positive, and he's also made great contributions to the athletic community in general. Q. How would you describe his personal style? He doesn't seem very loud or bombastic. What's he like behind the scenes? JIM DELANY: Mike is low key. Mike is a judge. He's got kind of a judicial temperament. He's very savvy politically, and he was a judge and a practicing lawyer before he was an athletic administrator. So he's a very thoughtful guy, and he's an advocate for his conference. Regardless of style, he's a powerful advocate for his conference, at all of us are for our own conferences. That's what we do. And there are stylistic differences, Larry Scott, his style, and Mike has his and John has his and Bob has his, but everybody basically has got to keep two things in mind: What's good for their own conference and what's good for the community of universities that make up college sports, and I think Mike had a narrow advocacy view, but I also think he had a broader view, as well, which I've always appreciated. Q. With the autonomy now for the power five, you expect full cost of attendance to pass, what is the next thing on the agenda that you guys would really like to get done? JIM DELANY: Yeah, there's variety. I think probably, first of all, conferences are doing some of their own things. First it was Maryland and Indiana announcing their commitments, their assurances. Then our conference did it. I think you'll see some other conferences do some things that are allowable, not waiting for the NCAA to do it, things that are permissive. I do think the cost of attendance will occur in January. I think there are a number of initiatives in and around insurance that will happen, but it's going to require a deeper, what I would describe as investigation discussion by consultants to really dig down. That's not something that laymen, athletic directors and commissioners can really get sort of their hands around. Time demands, each sport is a little bit different. That's going to take a little bit of time. So I think January of '16 you'll see more detailed proposals. I think you'll see a lot of study from January '15 to January '16 to get at that. Those are two. I think the insurance issue and I think the time demands issue. I think there's also a broad series of what I would describe as welfare proposals, and I would not identify any single one, but whether it's transfers or oversigning or when kids begin enrollment or what happens in the summertime, we have regulations, but if you really look at those regulations, there's usually like three components to them. There's kind of an institutional academic component. There's a competitive coach component, and there's a student athlete welfare component, and you're balancing the interest of those, and I hope we can, as a group, look at student athlete welfare legislation from transfers to early enrollment to summer improvement to when signing occurs, and come out at the end of that assessment that things are more balanced in favor of the student athlete and the prospect, less concerned about level playing field and competitiveness, and also directed at the collegiate experience and the importance of education on our campuses. So that's broadly defined. There's probably a half a dozen to a dozen area. We haven't inspected it all. But I do think for a long time level playing field has dominated. I think welfare and the educational aspect and maybe a little bit less focus on the level playing field and the competitive effect so that we can‑‑ when we look at it, we've got the educational opportunities assured, the return to school, the basic costs of education covered, fairer transfer rules and better balance between institutional interests, competitive interests and student athlete interests. Q. The 2018 tournament, have cities approached you or have you approached cities? JIM DELANY: We've been approached. We have been approached, and we have both approached and been approached. Q. Omaha included? JIM DELANY: No, you know, we've had‑‑ I've mentioned Omaha, and I've mentioned Detroit, and I've mentioned Minneapolis because those are cities that have approached us. But there have been others, as well. Those are sort of public. We're focused in a little bit in our discussions right now, and I hope over the next six weeks before the new year, and I told Teddy before the summer, so I say that advisedly because some of my predictions, it's like saying when are we going to start the negotiation, when are we going to end the negotiation. I don't know, and I'm reluctant to give time frames of when you begin, when you end, when in fact, my predictions have been wrong before, then Teddy will call me and say you're going to make an announcement this week. I said, I said we're going to make one this summer, and we're not making one now because we're not really knowing when that negotiation would end. So we've had some discussions, we've had some negotiations, and my hope is that we would be able to have our tournaments through '22 tied up before the first of the year. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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