Dec. 7, 2011
ELLIOT HIRSHMAN & JIM STERK | MEMBERSHIP TELECONFERENCE TRANSCRIPT
SAN DIEGO -
SDSU President Elliot Hirshman
Opening Statement:
"San Diego State University has a long and proud athletics tradition. About two weeks ago over the Thanksgiving break, I was eating Thanksgiving dinner with (BIG EAST Conference commissioner) John Marinatto having a little turkey. He presented a proposal to me which was that we would join Boise State, the University of Houston, SMU and the University of Central Florida in the BIG EAST Conference. We conducted, over the last two weeks, an extensive review of this proposal looking at the impact on our student athletes, on our coaches and staff, on the opportunities for our fans and supporters to view games in person and on television and looking at financial and other aspects of entering into this new arrangement. As part of this process, we shared information and consulted with a broad range of university constituents and external constituents. This included the Chancellor of the California State University System, the Chair of our University Senate, Bill Snavely, who is here today. The Faculty Athletics Representative, our Faculty Chair of the Intercollegiate Athletic Council, the President, Executive Vice President and Vice President for Finance of our Associated Students. In addition, I spoke with the members of our Campanile Foundation Board and (Director of Athletics) Jim Sterk spoke with both his Director's Cabinet and our coaches and staff in the Athletics department. Following this very extensive review, I'm pleased to announce that we will be joining the BIG EAST in football as of July 2013. This change will provide extraordinary opportunities for our student-athletes, for our coaches and staff, for our alumni and supporters and for the entire university. In addition to thanking all of the parties identified a minute ago, I want to thank Jim Sterk for his efforts and leadership. I want to thank Vice President for Business and Finance Sally Roush, Provost Nancy Marlin, Vice President for Student Affairs Jim Kitchen, Vice President for University Relations and Development Mary Ruth Carleton, who is also here with us today, Mr. Bill Early, Associate Vice President Ethan Singer and Associate Vice President Scott Burns and many members of their staff. Most importantly, I want to thank all of the current and former student-athletes, coaches, staff members and supporters of our Athletics program whose efforts over many years have made our current opportunities possible. Thank you."
SDSU Director of Athletics Jim Sterk
Opening Statement:
"As all of you can realize, this is a very historic day in our history by accepting this invitation to the BIG EAST. When I came here just under two years ago, I saw tremendous potential that the Aztecs could develop into a national athletics program, (they) had a lot of the foundation to do that. The success we've had in the last couple years at a national level hasn't hurt, but it hasn't happened overnight. The names of those responsible for building the program are too numerous to mention. However, starting at the leadership level with Presidents Steve Weber and now Elliot Hirshman along with Vice President Sally Roush are a good place to start. Over the last two weeks, we want to add our wives to that list."
"That leadership as I have explained, along with the combination of the facility improvements from a university and athletics wide basis, our increased fan and donor support like our Director's Cabinet and specifically Ron and Alexis Fowler. Our high quality coaches and staff, our Carnegie-rated high research institution and a university that's attractive to so many people. An example of that is the record number of applicants for admission for next fall. I think it's reaching 70,000. This move is very important in the continued development of San Diego State as a national institution. As President Hirshman stated, it was just over two weeks ago that serious discussions with the BIG EAST started. However, we've certainly been studying it for a while. When you look and think of a coast-to-coast league, football is the one intercollegiate sport that you can take national. This year's 8-4 Aztecs that are bowl-bound played in two games in the Eastern Time Zone, two games in the Mountain Time Zone. So four of our five away games were out of the Pacific Time Zone. So with divisional play, the travel will not be realistically any more than we experienced this year. A national league captures the attention of fans coast-to-coast. With the new members, the BIG EAST Conference will continue to have the single-largest media footprint in college football. The addition of the five new members increases the number of BIG EAST potential TV households by more than six percent to a total of 28 million. The BIG EAST Conference reaches more television households than any other conference in the country. Today is a day to talk about the BIG EAST and our football program. There will be another day when we have another press conference and will announce where the rest of our programs will be located. It's really too early for me to talk about that, but you can safely say that they are multiple opportunities. In closing, I just want to reiterate that we're very excited. It is a significant day, the national level of exposure for San Diego State University allows us to play football at the highest level, the automatic BCS bid with the BIG EAST Conference and assistance and support for all our programs that we can have the resources to compete nationally."
On if the conference change was driven by TV dollars or a chance at a BCS Bowl:
"Both of those and the addition of the national exposure, the opportunity to compete at the highest level. Also, the dollars obviously help our program as we've struggled to combat the reduction in state support. We had over $1.1 million in state support for our athletics dropped this year. We were able to do it for the short term with attendance and ticket sales, but long term, we needed to help find a solution to help with that."
On how much more money the BIG EAST brings compared to the MW:
"There were six different media consultants that the BIG EAST has used and then each of the new members employed their own. So I think there's 10 to 12 media consultants that have weighed in on this. A conservative range is from 6.4 million dollars to a range of 9 to 10 million dollars we've heard from different folks. That's in relation to 1.5 (million dollars) from our current television agreement."
On how the added revenue impacts the athletic department:
"The last three years we've reduced both coaches and staff by 25 full-time and 12 part-time. Some of our programs don't have a full allotment of coaches and staff members that they can have. We have the additional challenge of increased tuition throughout the system and in California it increased significantly. Then the new Division I approval of the cost of education, that alone is probably a 400 to 500 thousand dollar number per year just to stay what we're doing right now. A lot of this will help us maintain and grow our program."