CHRIS ROSE: Steve Hatchell, come on up for a couple quick words.

2008 Football Forum College Football: Today and Tomorrow

TRANSCRIPTS: MAY 15 | MAY 16

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STEVE HATCHELL: Good morning. Nice to see you all. Happy Friday. Welcome back to Dallas. I had never seen all of those runways until I looked out the window today, and now I realize why nothing is ever on time when you come in here. It's as far as your eye can see.

I'm going to take just a couple of minutes to do one thing. We gave you a book in your materials that we've never had before. It's a small book, and we call it the National Football Foundation Blue Book. We've been meeting with all of the conferences, the athletic directors and the coaches and going through, frankly, what it is the Foundation does.

So I'd like to wander through this, and I know for all of our friends here in the metroplex, when we moved here, the one area of the country that we didn't have any traction in our 61 year history is in the Dallas/Fort Worth area. You say, go figure, because football is 13 months out of the year in the state of Texas, and why haven't we done more in this area.

I'd like you to take a little time to look at the book because for a long time we were known simply as the dinner in New York, first Tuesday in December, but we've expanded. We have a lot of really cool board members, many who are here, that were architects for this, Grant and Chuck and George, just to say the least.

We put in there our mission. We started in 1947. General Douglas McArthur, the legendary Army coach Red Blake, and Grantland Rice, sportswriter, put the Football Foundation together, and when Douglas McArthur quit being the general of the Army, he moved into the Waldorf Astoria, and he had a very large suite there until the day that he died.

Our logo, if you look at it real carefully, the ivy leaves, is actually the logo of the Waldorf Astoria. If you take out the football player and put in the WA, it's the Waldorf Astoria. The beginning of his being there was to start this dinner.

The dinner has grown. Last year we had over 1,700 people. We had people in the east foyer. Keep in mind, the ballroom is set for maybe 1,000, so when you get up over 1,700, you're showing the dinner on big screens. It's going to be huge again this year.

But you can see our mission and the whole goal for 61 years is to do all that we can to build leaders through football. You can see some of the initiatives that we have for amateur and intercollegiate football. I'd like you to take a little time on the board of directors and officers because we've made a lot of changes on that, and I touched briefly on who's on the board, but many of these people played football and went on to be great leaders.

Kansas' Mark Mangino, Ohio State's Jim Tressel, TCU's Gary Patterson and Washington's Tyrone Willingham were among the panelists at the 2008 Football Forum. (Photo: Ian Halperin)

The history of the Football Foundation also includes leaders such as not only Douglas McArthur, but Dwight Eisenhower, John Wayne, Jimmy Stewart, Bull Halsey, the great Naval Admiral, to great business people such as Juan Trippe, who owned Pan Am Airlines, and it goes on and on and on.

The reason that we always embarrass him, but the reason we like to point out George Weiss that was here, that he was asked to be counsel to the foundation as a very young lawyer, and he's now been involved almost 40 years. So when you see the growth and the development of the Foundation and the whole idea of having big time leaders on the Football Foundation board, a lot of this comes with that push from George.

We're getting back to where we can now demonstrate and say that the people on the board wore helmets and have gone on to be great leaders.

We put a piece in there about key staff members, and I got to the Football Foundation. We had a lot of people who had never played football, and in fact most had gone to colleges or universities that didn't even have football. So in our offices in Morristown, New Jersey, we talked a lot of Yankee baseball, which doesn't do much for football.

So with the move we were able to bring people on board such as Matthew Sign, who was All Southwest Conference nose tackle at Rice, Ron Dilatush, who heads up our membership area. Ron has been with Pop Warner football, he was a high school All American football player, played at Delaware, football and baseball, and it goes on and on.

So if you know football and you're a part of it, it really makes a big, big difference.

We put in an action calendar, and then there's a calendar that we'd like you to take a look at. If you just get a chance when you're leaving today, this is a calendar of things that we do, and a lot of it didn't exist before.

We had a press conference in New York to announce our Hall of Fame class two weeks ago. We had 75 people there, and it was the who's who of media in New York. Try going to New York and try to get space in the New York Times. Well, they now staff our announcement. It was on TV, it was live on ESPN News and ESPN U, so the evolution of where we're going and what we're doing we believe is really catching on.

And the significance of this event, and then the big event June 5 that we're having with Eli and Archie Manning in New York continues on with this. Mitch Dorger being here from the Rose Bowl is opening doors on the West Coast that frankly we haven't been before.

As I move on, you can see under the programs that we have, events, Hall of Fame, multimedia, one big program that we started in 1998, and it's called Play It Smart. The feeling by the board members, and keep in mind, this is a powerful group of guys, and the feeling was we needed to do more to give back. So they started a program called Play It Smart.

It works this way: We identify and train and put academic coaches in the nastiest, toughest high schools in the country. Obviously they're all minorities, and it's to work with the football team to help these kids do three things. They have to perform academically, they have to learn what it is to get prepared for college, what it's like to study for tests, how to get ready for the SATs and the ACTs, how to do everything that you need to do academically to prepare yourself to get to college.

The second part is they have to go through all kinds of training relative to life skills; how do you dress for an interview, how do you fill out a résumé, how do you shake somebody's hand and look them in the eye. Keep in mind, this is just with the football team.

The third part is they have to do community service. These are kids that have nothing. Most of them don't have none of them have two parents and many of them don't have any parents at all, so they come from one different living environment to another to go to school. So the stability in that school is the academic coach that we put in there. An academic coach has to be there 20 hours a week, which means every day all year round. This isn't a deal where you bring in Emmitt Smith and he says, stay in school, don't use drugs, and then he goes away the rest of the year. This academic coach is there every day year round.

The statistics are that the graduation rates for a Play It Smart schools is 96 percent. We're in 85 cities in 35 states. 81 percent go on to college. And we've had some spectacular representatives at Play It Smart. Dwayne Jarrett who went to Southern Cal is from New Brunswick in New Jersey, and he'll tell you, it's drugs and jail for him until he gets hooked back into Play It Smart.

Not to put them on the spot, but the reason that these four coaches are here is that these are four coaches that when you call and say we need some help on something, they don't say I'll rearrange my schedule or I'll check it out; they say we're going to be there and count on me.

Coach Tressel believes in Play It Smart so much that whenever we have an issue, and we have a lot of penetration on Play It Smart in Ohio, Coach Tressel literally drops everything he does to make Play It Smart work, even to the point where his daughter Carlee is an academic coach in Minneapolis. That's how much he believes in the program.

We've got over 25,000 kids who have participated in this program. There's about 12,000 kids in it at all times.

I'll give you a real life example of how it works. We went into a school in Irvington, New Jersey, Irvington High School, that had had 23 murders in and around that school prior to us putting an academic coach in Irvington. We put an academic coach in who was a tough little guy, and within a three year span of time, not only did the murder rate drop and keep in mind to get into Irvington you've got to go through two sets of metal detectors to get into Irvington High School. They had 26 kids out for football at a school with about 2,000 kids in its enrollment, so participation rate was way down. Most of those are juniors and seniors because a lot of kids just dropped out after their sophomore year.

Within a three year span of time, the squad rate was up to 76 kids, they played for the New Jersey state championship, and we married up the Heisman Trust with them. Rob and Tim from the Heisman Trust have been here, big sponsors.

When the Heisman guys went into Irvington High School and sat down with these guys, and they lost on the last play of the game for the state championship, they asked these kids, what do you need. And I've got to tell you, there's holes in the walls, kids have to sit in the rain if they want to go to class, everything.

They thought they would get responses that we needed a new weight room, et cetera, et cetera. The football team was in a room, and the Heisman guy said what do you need. The one kid, he waits; their leader is a fullback, I think he's at Bowling Green; I'd have to look it up. The kid raises his hand, and he said, we have a real problem here that our computers don't work and they're not fast enough, and for us to compete we need better computers. So the Heisman guy said, okay, we'll help you with that. What else do you need? So there's long pause, and finally another kid raises his hand, and he said, the suburban schools have great math skills, and we don't have math skills, and we need some help in math, and we need somebody to come in and help teach math.

Now the Heisman guys, the guys that Rob and Tim have to work with, which is not easy, they were totally confused. They said, well, don't you need a new weight room? One of the other kids said, that takes care of itself. We'll get that one worked out.

So we know that this really works. It's our give back to the country in terms of football, and it's a big program that the Foundation works on.

The other one that I mentioned is the Chapter System. The Chapter System is 60 some odd years old. There's 20,000 members in the Chapter System in 47 states. Chapter System gives out $1.1 million in scholarships to high school kids who are great football players but not necessarily good enough to go on and play at this level, just to go on to college.

We now have kids that were recognized as great scholar athletes coming back into the Chapter System to help it go and grow well into the future.

We represent 4,800 high schools, and that's a little over 400,000 football players around the country through the Chapter System.

I had several questions last night about the Hall of Fame. The hall is fame is in South Bend, Indiana. It's 60,000 square feet. I have a whole separate staff there of 12 people who do Hall of Fame. It's really exciting.

We have a really fun edge with that. Because we're so close to Notre Dame, it makes it tough, especially when Jimmy Clausen announces that he's going to go to Notre Dame and he does it at the Hall of Fame. The phone call from Pete Carroll and some others was not real pleasant (laughter).

But I would say this, and not just because Kevin is here: Kevin and Notre Dame are unbelievably supportive of the Foundation. He advertises for the Hall on his NBC telecasts and at Notre Dame games, and it frankly puts a lot of life into what we do, and it's exciting.

We have a great speakers' bureau there of coaches who come in and talk all of the time. It's a great structure. Our problem is we just don't get enough people, but it is a wonderful structure.

We have two programs that all four of these coaches help us a lot on. We have a National Scholar Athlete Program that is for the top college football players in the country. Every year we get at least 200 nominees for the scholar athlete programs, and what we do is we give $15,000 postgraduate scholarships, and then we give a $25,000 scholarship to the Draddy Trophy winner, which a lot of people call the academic Heisman.

We say it's a 3.2 or better, but the truth of the matter is you have to have at least a 3.6. You have to be a real player; you can't be a guy that rides on the bench. The past winners of this are who's who of gone on to do great things in the country.

We started a Hampshire Honor Society, and just under the category of jumping right in the middle of it, Dr. Wetherell said he'd be delighted to chair our effort into an honor society.

What we learned, and this is the great thing about the business that we're in, that all of these coaches and you asked them questions yesterday about character and conduct and other things, all of these coaches and so many coaches in the country are doing marvelous things academically for their players. And what we learned was there might be 200 guys that have a 3.7 or better that are eligible for these scholarships, but there's also a lot of kids out there that have 3.2s or better that aren't going to get a scholarship.

We learned because we fell into this, I'd like to say that we have a great study on this, but we learned that if we publicized all of the names of all of the kids that have a 3.2 or better that are seniors and are graduating and they are on the honor society or they were scholar athlete finalists for the Football Foundation, that I then get 200 to 300 letters or phone calls in our office that say, you need to know I'm graduating from Ohio State, Kansas; I was recognized by you guys as a scholar athlete, or I'm in the honor society. And the group that does the honor society is chaired by Dr. Wetherell, who wasn't just a player, he was a really good player at Florida State. These kids will write and say, I got into law school, I got into medical school, I'm in the NBA program because I was recognized as being a step above just being a football player. I'm now on the honor society. I was a Draddy Scholar finalist. We just decided to publicize all the names, and it made us look good.

We put in here a lot of things that we're doing on action initiatives that we do through the Hall of Fame. We had a big salute this year with the black college football exhibit that went around the country and is still up at the Hall of Fame. Looking back and keep in mind of all it is is leadership through football, and that's what we're doing with the National Football Foundation. But we put a lot of things in here so that you know what it is that we're doing and the directions that we're going.

With that I'll conclude, but I just wanted to give you a little bit of a brief picture of the Football Foundation. To us these aren't coaches, this isn't Dr. Wetherell and the two ADs; these are friends, and we've decided that through our board and the directions that we're going on the Football Foundation that we're not going to be dictated to by the bad behavior of a few guys in the pros. There's so many wonderful things going on in the sport of football that it's up to us to expand it.

So we just wanted to go through that. Thank you all for all that you do because these are marvelous friends. Now you know what we do and why we keep so busy. So thanks, Chris.

CHRIS ROSE: And I think on behalf of all the media here, we definitely want to thank Steve and Matthew and George and the rest of the great group at the National Football Foundation for putting this together in such a quick manner. I'm sure by next year it's going to be even bigger. Thanks for giving us the opportunity. We want to thank our esteemed panelists once again.

As we get going this morning, I know people have planes to catch; everybody is going to make them, but we have some interesting topics still on the table.

This morning we are going to start with minority coaching opportunities. By the list we've put here, I still call it Division I, as well, guys, so I guess that's what we're going to stick with today, I've got six African American head coaches, one on the way to Kentucky and two Hispanic coaches, so that would be nine if you're going to include the one at Kentucky. Tyrone Willingham, is that number an embarrassment?

COACH WILLINGHAM: When you base it on the fact that we have roughly 117, 119 and maybe even 120 different universities, I would say, yes, it is. It is a shame that at this day and age that we have that number, and why does it exist in college football is the explanation that everyone is seeking. Why?

CHRIS ROSE: Why do you think?

COACH WILLINGHAM: I think there are many reasons. I think, one, there is a problem with different coaches that we still struggle with at all levels of our society. I don't think that's any new revelation to anyone out here. We're still battling those things.

One I think has to do with just control and power; some label it the good ol' boy network. But I just think we're just not as open and forthright as we should be.

CHRIS ROSE: Do you feel there's still a good ol' boy network?

COACH WILLINGHAM: No question. You've got to explain the numbers. There's more than one answer, but it's alive and well in certain places, yes.

CHRIS ROSE: Kevin White and Kevin Anderson, how do we explain the numbers from an administrative standpoint?

KEVIN WHITE: Well, I think Ty said it pretty well. I don't know that they can be explained. I know there's a lot of work to do. There's a lot of groups right now that are spending an awful lot of time and energy on this particular subject. I had the opportunity most recently to attend a bit of a summit with the Black Coaches Association in Indianapolis where Floyd Keith brought together a number of the ethnic minority NFL and college coaches, and Tyrone was there, as well, to talk about initiatives, what might we do, what can we do as a community of interested parties in college and professional sports.

But particularly at that point, college athletics. I think the NFL has really gotten some traction with the Rooney Rule. That's been pretty darn positive.

But anyway, back to college, I think the group we call NACDA, the Collegiate Directors of Athletics Association, the 1A Athletic Directors Association, and Dutch Baughman was here yesterday, as well as assorted others throughout higher education have really started to kind of think about this thing a little bit more seriously.

And I think the NFL gave us a push frankly. I think with the Rooney Rule they put some pressure on us. But it's unconscionable that we have those kind of numbers when you think about 119 schools in 1A. There is no defense point.

CHRIS ROSE: I think it's probably equally important to have something in the NFL, but even more important in college where we're talking about everybody getting an opportunity to get an education. I mean, there should be more advancement, correct?

KEVIN ANDERSON: Well, last year 12 of my colleagues who were either African American or Hispanic that are athletic directors got together, and one thing we focused on is if we don't lead the way and we don't help, then we can't expect anybody else to help us help ourselves. I think that one of the things that we have to do and we have to do better is develop a pipeline, and we have to assist people that want to aspire to be head football coaches, athletic directors. We've got to help mentor them. We've got to see these young people, choose them or have somebody tell us about them so they can help develop them and put them in a light where people can work with them and give them the opportunity to progress in this business.

I think one thing that has happened is that we've become isolated in many aspects and that we hire people that we're comfortable with, and so one thing that we really need to do is we need to put people in arenas where they can get to know one another and network, because many of my colleagues, I know that they've gotten into a network and they've been very successful in this line of business and other lines of business, and I think that's what we need to do. We're working on those kinds of things.

But there's one thing that we talked a little bit about yesterday that I think that there's a lot of African American coaches that are concerned about, and it came up in this meeting that Kevin and I were at in Indianapolis, that when you ask some of the NFL coaches why they won't come and be college coaches, because of what we talked about yesterday, all of the many things that you have to do and all the political things you have to do, and they said they weren't interested in that. They were interested in coaching football and not having to play the politics that they felt happened at this level and what we talked about a little bit yesterday.

So those are some of the issues that we have to fight, as well.

CHRIS ROSE: So there isn't an initiative on the table from what I understand from when there is a coaching vacancy at this level in college football, that it's not like the Rooney Rule where you might interview a minority coaching candidate, but you're encouraged to; is that the initiative, Kevin White?

KEVIN WHITE: Let me speak to that. The 1A Athletic Directors Association, and that was really Dutch has been the author, has put together a principle and/or professional standards, acceptable standards I think is the term he uses, and it identifies exactly what institutions should do so that there are fair and meaningful opportunities for people to seek employment when there are vacancies. And not only seek employment but also to go out and recruit representation, ethnic minority and otherwise, and I think that has some traction when I talk to my colleagues across the athletic director community, across 1A. There appears to be an awful lot of support for that.

There's actually, and I won't get into it here, but there's actually some conversation about taking that initiative, Dutch's piece, and taking it to the next level and kind of getting it approved by perhaps governing bodies at institutions as well as a university administration, not only the athletics principals.

CHRIS ROSE: Dr. Wetherell, we need legislation here is what it sounds like in order to really make it happen and go to the next step, don't we?

DR. WETHERELL: I'm not sure I agree you need legislation. I'm not sure you can mandate morality, and every time we've tried to do that in my judgment, and maybe this is a political statement, we've made a mistake. College presidents look at hiring coaches maybe a little bit different than athletic directors, and as we all know in this room, we've been involved in that process, and there's no one hiring process that comes down the same way. It happens for different reasons, for different circumstances for different institutions.

But I think you see presidents not just with the racial issue but the gender issue being more aware. The idea that you're just going to interview somebody because they're an African American or because they're female is kind of offensive, I think. If you're really serious about it, get you a list and interview people that you're serious about, but don't put them through something that there's no real intent there.

I think more and more of us are trying to look at I think Kevin or somebody mentioned, a farm system, a leader system. The difference in hiring a head coach, and I'm not a coach, but an offensive coordinator, to be a head coach, you've just got to make a transition for a different set of skill sets and you've got to do things that these folks do every day.

So we need that pipeline not to just be a coach, an X and O, but start raising money and representing the universities and doing the things you've got to do. Those are the skills that you start looking at when you hire a head coach.

I think coaches are most coaches want African Americans in terms of football and others on their staff. It's a great way to relate to students, to get rid of the problems that we've talked about here, and you need that diversity.

CHRIS ROSE: I want to hear from the four coaches on this one. Do you guys have have had over the years minority coaches on your staff where you maybe say, okay, these are guys that have the ability to be head coaches, I'm going to take a little extra interest in these guys and show them the ropes of maybe some of the things that we do maybe beyond the practice field, handling the kids away from the field, as well? Coach Tressel?

COACH TRESSEL: I think as some of the people have mentioned, there have been some good initiatives. I remember one of the guys, Donny Treadwell, who worked for Ty at a couple different places, is now on the Michigan State staff, as far back as the mid '80s, he went out on a minority coaching experience with the '49ers and we encouraged our guys to do that. Paul Haynes on our staff was just at the group out in Phoenix that had an initiative to start nurturing and so forth.

Ours a little bit is a race against time as we've talked about in those other things. We don't have a whole bunch of down time that we can grab a staff member and say, okay, let me take you over to this booster and show you how we try to help build our new facility because every bit of time we have for our coaches is scheduled to be with your players and those kinds of things.

But I think we've really made a concerted effort to try to give young people experiences. I see one of the tough things when I look at my staff, whether it's African American or otherwise, is right now, I don't think any of them would be interested in a job that I was interested in when I was an assistant at Ohio State because the difference in pay now, quite honestly, with what they're making at the 1A level as assistants and what is being paid at the what's it called now, the Football Championship Division and below, you know, I'm not sure that there's as much interest, that they want to go back into to learn how to do some of the things a head coach has to do at maybe a little bit lesser level.

To me the bottom line in the whole thing is there's probably more sportswriters in Dallas than there are head coaches in the nation. It's competitive. And if you're a president, you're an AD, you want the best person. As Dr. Wetherell said, you're not just going to interview people. We've got to work hard with our coaches and our players that have a background, that have a passion to be a coach, and hopefully we can get those numbers turned and changed. But it's highly competitive. But I applaud the NFL and the BCA and all the groups that are working hard to prepare someone for a very competitive chance to be a Division I head coach. It's tough. But I think they're working on it.

COACH WILLINGHAM: The thing I would add is that we need programs of all natures to develop a coaching pool. We need programs that teach the skill sets that are needed. But you also we must have legislation. I think it's clear. We're not changing the numbers based on how we've done it in the past. So therefore it's necessary to have something not to mandate that a president or an athletic director hire an African American or a minority, but at least they have an opportunity to sit down and then you expand the pool and can determine what young men are capable, and maybe they create another opportunity through that interview in itself.

We've gone too long with the numbers the way they are, and to sit around and explain them and rationalize them, and we could be coming up with all the different programs, they're good, they're necessary, but we have to change the face of what we're doing, and the only way to do that is legislation.

I happened to get up this morning and watch a little bit of the news, and they were awarding a lady I think from Chile, one of the TV networks did with awarding heroes of the week or something of that nature, and they gave her this award because she was teaching children to clean up in her area. But what she said was the quality of their work. What would be the quality of our work if we didn't have some type of administration and legislative body to look over that work? The world of football needs some legislation to make sure it's right.

KEVIN WHITE: I just want to underscore something that T.K. said just one more time. I don't think our problem, at least this is at least from my perspective, is not just a ethnic minority problem; I think it's a pluralism problem. As I look at this thing, maybe it's too simplistically, about 50 percent of the young men that play this game that we're here to talk about, college football, are ethnic minority. I think that's close to the numbers. So you would think that we would have at some point in time, we would have some representation in coaching that would be commensurate with the population, okay?

And when you think about pluralism, you think about an intercollegiate athletic department, 50 percent of the participants just happen to be female. And the absence of female athletic directors is not unlike the absence of minority head football coaches, and I think it's kind of a similar problem, and I think initiatives need to be put in play to get people ready.

We're not talking about having token interviews and putting people in positions to fail, but we really need to start thinking about getting representatives of both of those classes. We need to get them ready to be successful. We need to think about how do we put initiatives in play so that people can kind of move forward, because you've got a lot of high quality people in college athletics. You've got a lot of high quality ethnic minorities that are in the queue already; they just need opportunity. And the same with females as it relates on the administrative side.

I actually see them very similarly, and I don't know if you see it like I see it, but the numbers are surprisingly similar.

CHRIS ROSE: Coach Willingham, just out of curiosity, was Stanford the first head coaching interview you had?

COACH WILLINGHAM: No, the first coaching interview I had was Wake Forest.

CHRIS ROSE: Did it feel like a token interview?

COACH WILLINGHAM: No, I didn't think it was.

CHRIS ROSE: So you felt like they were serious?

COACH WILLINGHAM: Yes, because I thought I did my research on the athletic director and those people that would be involved in it and felt like it was worth my time to go.

CHRIS ROSE: Do you have a lot of assistant coaches, minority assistant coaches, that are outside of your program that call you, ask you for advice, and say how do I get through this invisible wall, if there is one?

COACH WILLINGHAM: Usually the calls that I get are the ones that are getting ready to go into an interview, and they want to make sure that they're prepared and ready to go for that interview. So I don't usually get that random call just to kind of talk about weeding through the process.

I've spoken before enough in front of the programs that are trying to develop these guys that we get those questions in that format.

CHRIS ROSE: Before we go to questions, Coach Patterson, Coach Mangino, do you guys have minority assistants on your staff that talk to you about maybe some of the frustrations they've had in not being able to break through?

COACH MANGINO: No, I haven't. We've tried to be helpful in any way that we can with them, talking about the symposium that they have in Phoenix for minority coaches, and we had one of our coaches attend, and he said he thought it was very worthwhile. He met a lot of people, he learned a lot of things, and he's a quality coach. He's a young guy but very, very capable.

You know, talking about having more minority head coaches, there is a real problem with that. I mean, it's an embarrassment to the game.

But I think that there are things that we could do to improve it for the long term. Several years back there was talk about adding a third graduate assistant, and out of your three graduate assistants, one of them had to be a minority position, would be mandated. It really never got any legs; it died on the vine. Why, I don't know. It certainly could be cost cutting measures, but graduate assistants at our place are making $9,700 a year, and we spend that on mouthpieces (laughter). So I don't think that's the issue.

I've always been a proponent, to be quite honest with you, of adding a tenth full time coach. Everybody structures their staff differently. Some have a special teams coordinator and then four on offense and four coaches on defense. I think it just makes you thin on both sides. Most people do it where they have five on one side of the ball, four coaches on the other side of the ball and one of them is the coordinator, but the entire staff absorbs special teams responsibilities.

I think for the sake of supervising kids, you want us to win, you want us to graduate kids, we have to keep up with APR, but we don't want to add anything in terms of supervision of the athletes. And I think one more coach would help in supervision, a full time coach and a third graduate assistant position. That would help supervise the kids, and I think it would create more opportunities to get minority coaches at the ground level, breaking in young kids that can work their way up to be young head coaches, and I think you can utilize I'm not saying you have to mandate that position, the full time position to be a minority position, but obviously it's going to help in that area, as well. That would be a thought.

I think we have an opportunity to do those things, but I know that there's been some talk about the position through the AFCA a little bit about creating the position. We can't seem to move it. There's barriers.

CHRIS ROSE: Coach Patterson?

COACH PATTERSON: Well, I would agree with all of the above, but I'd probably take a little bit of approach to all of it. Coach Taft, the academy with the National Football Coaches Association, I go to it every year, always have, try to tutor one of those young guys. You know, from my standpoint is this: The way we treat graduate assistants is we're going to treat them like full time coaches. They're going to be in trouble if they screw up, we're going to try to teach them, every graduate assistant that's graduated out of our place has got a full time position. I hire guys, not only graduate assistants but full time guys if they're good people and they work hard.

I think two of the problems that we have that goes on that kind of we butt heads with, we're now making good enough money that we have pro players plus some pro assistants that come back to the college ranks, which not necessarily just because they come from that level are they qualified to be great college assistants, and there's a little bit of a difference.

It was said here before from Kevin, that not necessarily do coaches want to come back to the college ranks. One of those is the work ethic because you're just not a full time coach; you've got to go on the road for three or four months and recruit, and you're not going to be around your family. You deal with the politics, you've got rules, you've got to take a test to pass it.

The last thing that I have is kids come up in a work ethic, and I think it's not just a football problem. And I'm not talking about any race, I'm just talking about the younger generation. You've got to work what some of us grew up doing, I came from Sonoma State. You washed the clothes, you cooked three meals during two a days. You did all those things that a lot of kids in this day and age don't want to do.

They don't want to get paid $9,000 for the year. They want to make more money. I slept out of the back of my car for about 30 days at Tennessee Tech when I was at a 1AA school. We're fighting more than just the one problem. There's a lot of things that go into it with just the generational growing up. They want instant gratification. I want the $70,000 full time position, not just with African Americans, but with Caucasians and anybody else. They want that full time position. I want to go on the road recruiting, I don't want to break down the film, I don't want to do that part of it.

You know, so for me, when I go in to look for it, it wouldn't matter to me if all my staff was all Caucasian or all African American. If they were good football coaches and good recruiters and I thought they represented me on a great level, then that's the way my staff would be.

But I do think because of the amount of money that we get paid that we do, as was said before, we do hire people that we trust because we know our job is in jeopardy. If one of those guys doesn't represent me in the right manner, then I'm going to get fired if they screw up. Because in my contract it says, institutional control of one of your members of your staff or one of your student athletes doesn't act the right way, then this is going to happen.

So I think there's a lot of problems out there, there's a lot of walls that we have to break through, and we have to have a little patience. I agree with Tyrone. I think we have a problem, and I think it's more than just that problem. I think we have a problem with our professionals.

We have 119 schools. I've got probably out of nine full time assistants, seven of them that want to be the head coach at TCU if they could be and then a couple graduate assistants. You have to have a little luck with all of that, also. It's just not one of those situations where you sit and you have it.

You know, I think there definitely is a problem, but I think the problem stems from both sides. The money is good enough that the pros now a lot of the pros, some of them do want to come back because of it, but also you have those, they see it but they don't really want to pay the price like a lot of us sitting at the table. How many years were you at Youngstown State, Coach?

COACH TRESSEL: 15.

COACH PATTERSON: You don't have all the bells and whistles at a 1AA school and you pay the price and you work hard, and hopefully you get a chance.

I think the biggest thing I hear from across the table is we just need to find more opportunities on how to give these kids a chance. But it's not an easy road for any of us, I don't think. I feel very fortunate to have been I thought I was just lucky. It happened to be at a time when we were No. 1 in the nation, head coach takes a job and TCU gave me an opportunity. It wasn't one of those things where I think a lot of people thought that I was the best candidate. I just happened to be in the right place at the right time and then you've got to prove that you can make it work.

That's the problem you have in any profession, there's a little bit of all of that.

CHRIS ROSE: We're going to take some questions.

Q. This is for Kevin White and Dr. Wetherell. Why do you guys feel like we've had so much success and seen so much more success at the NFL level than we have at the collegiate level? And also, I know there's some situation, it also seems like you're seeing this wave where coaches are basically getting anointed or being appointed by a former coach, and that seems to kind of smack in the face of perversity and fair opportunity.

KEVIN WHITE: Let me start with the anointment of coaches by the succession coaches, that kind of business we're starting to see. I'm not sure that that helps when you think in terms of providing opportunity, but it may be just the right move for that particular situation or that particular given institution at that particular time. So it's really hard for me to speak to that one.

I haven't had that opportunity, I haven't been in that position. But I may find myself in that position, and that may be what makes some sense at Notre Dame at some point.

You ask even, I think, a better question. You ask about why NFL and why not college, I think, is basically what I took away from your question. I find myself thinking a lot about that. The NFL, the parent organization, the NFL, is a lot different than 1A or what we're calling now the FBS, I guess. It goes back to what I tried to say yesterday, that bad analogy I used, the barroom scene from Star Wars, different sizes, shapes and colors. We're not connected to public, private. We're connected to state statutes; some are not. We have lots of different ways that we operate.

So there isn't from franchise to franchise, across all the collegiate franchises, far different than across those NFL franchises which are very corporate and a tightly held group and operating under a pretty defined set of rules and regs. At least that's how I look at it as a pedestrian. And they were able to put in place that Rooney Rule, and they felt that when I talk to Tony Dungy and others, they feel that it's Lovie Smith and whoever else was in our meeting, they feel it's had a significant impact on the NFL.

You couldn't put in a Rooney Rule in college athletics, again, because of what I just said, the lack of homogeneity across the 119 institutions and all the different rules and regs and private, public, and the rest of it, I just don't believe that that could ever happen. And if it could happen, I don't think that it would be supported.

So I see a major difference in a professional franchise, in the collection of professional franchises, as opposed to the collection of collegiate franchises. I think it's two different silos, it's two different subsectors, and I think it's vastly different.

But again, the succession thing, Dr. Wetherell just went through that and he could probably speak to it better than I could, but for some institutions I'm sure it makes sense or they wouldn't be doing it.

DR. WETHERELL: I think as Kevin said, college athletics, colleges are tough. There aren't many African American or even female presidents of 1AA institutions of higher education if you look at it.

The NFL to me, and it's a great game and I watch it every now and then, but it's a business. You go, you do the job, you don't make the catch, you don't do whatever, you don't have a job next year.

College, there are just a bunch of different mindsets that a college coach in my judgment has to exercise. You're dealing with younger kids, you're dealing with people who just have different value systems, and it's just tough.

So to try and say, well, you were a great college coach or NFL coach, you can come in here and be a good college coach, I don't think that's necessarily true. In fact, I don't know if you've looked at the numbers, but if you look at it, there's probably more college coaches that go to the pros and don't do so well and try and come back or vice versa. They don't move between those two systems; they're just totally different.

So the idea that you can go and win a Super Bowl and turn around and come into college coaching and be automatically successful, there's not many people coaching at the college level, at this level, that aren't great Xs and Os people. Everybody understands how to lead a defense or run a pathway or do whatever. But the margin of difference is how you relate to those kids and are you really willing to spend 18 hours a day, are you willing to take your wife on her birthday and go recruit a kid and are you willing to have them into your house and those kind of things are what make college special, and you've got to want to do that.

That's not what makes it work in the pros in my mind, so I don't know. I just don't see the relationship there. I think there are opportunities out there, and I wouldn't mind seeing more graduate assistants, more college coaches, not just for on the field, but to bring we've got a kid that played for us, Terrell Buckley, went off and played for I think the Packers, had a pretty good career, came back, did a graduate assistantship, we brought him into the weight room. We're trying to find a place to hire him, and we would love to hire him, but we can't get there.

Somebody is going to get one whale of a defensive back coach. If you give that kid about five years, he'll be a candidate for a head coaching job. He's just got the personality, he's got the mindset, you can see it and just feel it in the kid. That's the way I look at it. If you're going to hire a coach, we all know you hire Neinas and then get a coach (laughter).

KEVIN ANDERSON: What the president just said, he though, and I think what Rooney is all about, it's about opportunity. A lot of those guys now that are head coaches in the NFL got the opportunity to present themselves in front of people and they made an impression that they wouldn't if they didn't get the opportunity, nobody would have ever known who they were. They made a great impression and got hired and they've done a great job.

I think if you look at all the people who have jobs now in the NFL that are head coaches did a great job, so had they not gotten the opportunity to be exposed, they might not be head coaches now.

COACH PATTERSON: I agree with him. If you look on an NFL staff, you'll see about 20 coaches. I think when it comes down to budget, I think maybe not at some institutions but maybe at the ones that don't have the budget to do it, but I think it really it just comes down to financially you can only have two on the field coaches, but one of the things we do at our place is we have video GAs that learn how to do it, then once the on the field GAs move, if we had more of a budget to have more of those guys where we could actually train them ourselves, do it. But financially that's probably one of the bigger differences between maybe some Division I schools and the NFL is that they have the budget to have they have a lot of assistants.

That's where you get your opportunity. You get a chance to hire guys so you can see them and get a chance to know them and see what they're like before they do that. So probably financially it's one of the keys that we could do to help us get that opportunity.

Q. Coach Willingham, do you think that this issue has been around for a while obviously. Is there just continued talk and not just action? And the second part, do you think a Rooney Rule would work at the college level given what everybody said about the diversity and 119 different schools, that legislation might be difficult to work at all the different schools?

COACH WILLINGHAM: The fact that this issue has been around for a long time, we continue to talk, we develop programs which are good programs, I don't want anyone to think that from my perspective the programs that we're developing are not good, because one of the things you want to give any individual is as much on the field training or opportunity to learn and grow as you possibly can.

But we cannot stop with just the training of the individuals, okay? I listened slightly to our comparison with the NFL to a degree, and there's no question, NFL in many cases is one single owner or one owner that represents many owners, but he has one voice and you can do things a lot different at that landscape.

Our collegiate environment is different. The diversity of the universities is different. But regardless of all of that, somehow we need to find a way to get individuals in front of these committees and/or presidents and/or athletic directors that are making the hires. It's not about hiring; it's about creating an opportunity. And right now what we're not doing, in many cases we're not creating the opportunity for that individual to show his skill sets, because I don't think you have to be an NFL coach to have the skill sets necessary to coach in college, and I think President Wetherell said that in the sense that they may be totally opposite.

But we do have individuals now in the system that have the skill sets that are available. I've always described it this way because obviously I get asked about this issue quite a bit. I've always said when it came down to teaching my son, would I really care who taught him as long as I learned the information they were teaching. I wouldn't care. Right now for some reason we do care who's teaching the individual, and we're not getting the opportunity for the minority coach to sit in front of these committees and have an opportunity to show their skill sets.

Q. In my job as a broadcaster I get to interact with a good number of coaches, and I've had the pleasure of interacting with all four coaches up here and they've been great in everything that they've done with us, but when you also talk with their assistants and people who are trying to get jobs, one of the impressions they have, and this is more for President Wetherell and Kevin and Kevin, one of the impressions they have is that one of the stumbling blocks is it's very difficult for you at your position to sell a minority coach to your alumni, to your boosters, to the people who have the money. It's almost like Deep Throat, follow the money. And it's very difficult at closing time to make that sale, is the impression that is out there. Kevin, we know that you hired Coach Willingham, but that was after you had hired someone else and that didn't go the right way. You had a couple of African American basketball coaches in succession, President Wetherell, so this is not an indictment, this is just as people who are in that position. Do you hear that? Do you understand where that's coming from? And is it real or is it imagined, because a lot of them say I get to the interview, I talk, it seems like it goes well, and then someone will outside of that meeting say, well, I just couldn't close the deal with the people who sign the checks.

DR. WETHERELL: I'll try and speak to it from a president's perspective. I think that's totally inaccurate, and it's just the opposite, quite frankly. Florida State is in the south and probably pretty much closer to Georgia than it is Florida, whatever that means (laughter). And we have hired African American coaches and been successful and had some other changes.

Our boosters, our donors I don't think will blink one iota if we bring an African American name forward that is capable, that has the skill set that we're looking for at that moment in time. I think that era is behind us, and if it's behind us in Tallahassee, Florida, in the south, I'm assuming the rest of the country is somewhere else above us.

I'm not black, I'm not female, so I can't necessarily walk in those shoes. I can understand intellectually when I look at the numbers and things like that how people might come to that conclusion. But I'm a college president that hasn't written a book. I didn't come up through the academic ranks, I came up through the political ranks and athletic ranks, and in my own way, I think I felt prejudiced in certain other regards.

So I can understand how you feel that, but from a president's perspective, I would love to have some African American candidates that I could put forward. It wouldn't affect the boosters at Florida State University one bit, and I don't believe quite frankly if you look at the colleges in the state of Florida, and some of them I've dealt with, I think that prejudice is behind us, I really do.

Q. I live in Florida, also. Respectfully I would disagree with you. I don't think that those days are totally behind us. But from your perspective, I understand. I hope you understand where I'm coming from. I don't think that that is totally behind us at this point, otherwise we wouldn't have the same I don't think we'd sit here and have to talk about these numbers. I'm asking just as a broad thing, and I fully appreciate your answer.

KEVIN ANDERSON: I think you're a prime example. You were an outstanding administrator, and you should have been an athletic director. Now, I don't want to speak for you, but I think you became somewhat frustrated because of being passed over once or twice, and now you have a career in broadcasting and do an excellent job. But working with you and being part of that, I think you understand better than most that the opportunities for African Americans is not as great as the opportunity for other folks, unless you get into a network, unless you work hard at what you do and you're recognized. And I think that's the biggest key now is getting people opportunities and recognition and having them have the opportunity to get in front of me.

And that's what we have to develop, because I think if we develop those avenues, I think people can sell themselves. Ron Prince is a prime example of that. No one knew of Ron Prince. Ron Prince went down to Kansas State, did an excellent job at interviewing and he got hired. But had Ron Prince not gotten the opportunity to get into that interview, Ron prince would still be at Virginia.

I mean, it's breaking down those barriers, and I think we do have to do something to remove the bushes, and once we remove the bushes people will either have clothes on or they'll be naked, and that's when we'll move forward.

KEVIN WHITE: That was an analogy I wasn't going to steal (laughter). But if I might remember yesterday, I think the quote I took away from yesterday was from Coach Tressel when his dad told him you've got 1,000 opportunities to keep your mouth shut, I may take one of those opportunities at this point, but I won't; I'm not capable.

I would just say, Charles, it's a work in progress. I've been doing this a couple decades, pushing three, and I know I've got a hell of a lot to learn. But it's gotten a whole lot better. There's a lot more acceptance than there ever has been for the whole pluralism scene. I think we're close to really cracking it open. I think there's a lot of people seriously talking in earnest about these issues.

We talked about that just a few minutes ago. I think what there is is an absence of people that are at the ready. You can take NFL coordinators and bring them back. And somebody made a great case. There is some data, I've read some data, where these are silos, and the way this profession works now, it used to be in my day way back, it was a horizontal profession. If you did really well at a smaller level, you'd go to the next level; if you did really well there you had an opportunity to kind of be upwardly mobile.

Now it's a vertical profession, and people tend to kind of get ready within a specific silo, and within college athletics, within 1A, we've got to get more people ready.

You know, ethnic minorities need to be head coaches at 1AA institutions or smaller 1A institutions. We've got to get more ethnic minorities in the coordinator positions. We've just got to get more people ready. That's what I think.

And that same analogy I would say for the women in the athletic administration realm. We've got to get women, deputy athletic directors and senior associates and get them ready. We just have not done that. I don't think we've done a good job of getting people ready so that there's a high quality pool at the ready, as I guess I've struggled to say here. But there are really high quality people, but I don't think we've done a great job mentoring and putting them in position.

And I think Kevin made a great point because we heard that from the NFL coaches. There's three or four coaches in the league right now that were fourth or fifth in terms of selection options, but when they got in front of the owners, they did a great job presenting themselves and they call the call, they got the opportunity.

So unfortunately we kind of need to find a way to get people in front of people. And all the different mentoring institutes that have been created and the rest of it, they'll all be helpful. I think we're very close to cracking this thing open. That's my personal opinion.

KEVIN ANDERSON: Kevin talked about this earlier on. This is the first time that everybody has sat down at the table and talked. Dutch Baughman has been a great leader in this, NACDA, the McClinton Minority Scholarship, the BCA, everybody this year has started to sit down at the table and talk about this.

And I think the most difficult thing in this country is to talk about race. The most difficult thing is to talk about race. And now I can see open and honest dialogue, and people are uncomfortable. But you know, until we talk about this, and it's going to be uncomfortable, we won't be able to move forward.

So I think the dialogue is starting to open up now and people really want to deal with this at a level in which we see progress and we see people getting hired and getting jobs.

CHRIS ROSE: We do have to move on, but I do have a quick question for Kevin Anderson, and I don't mean to put you on the spot here, but you were talking about you're now in a position to make a difference perhaps. Somewhere down the line you're going to have to hire a new football coach. If there's two candidates that are very similar and one is a minority candidate, do you feel the inward pressure to hire that person?

KEVIN ANDERSON: My job is to hire the best person for my athletes. If it's the minority candidate, then I'm going to hire him. If it's the white applicant, I'm going to hire him. I'm going to hire the best person for my program and for my athletes because it's my job to make sure that they graduate, that they play and they compete on the field at the highest level.

But the more important thing is I want somebody who's going to develop these young people to be leaders in this country and do the right thing for this country and for their communities.

So it depends. It's going to be the best person who's going to do that.

COACH WILLINGHAM: I'm hopeful that we won't leave this issue and look at it simply as a racial issue. I say that because if you look at the collegiate landscape, we have a fair number of African American or minority basketball coaches, and yet these are the same committees, administrators that have opportunities to hire both football and basketball coaches, so there's got to be more to it than just a racial factor, and we need to identify what that is and get it out of your systems so we can get the right people.

And Kevin said it very well; it's about hiring the right people. I don't think there's an African American that wants to be hired just because they're an African American. We have great skill sets and we want the right persons that are seeking the right opportunity.

DR. WETHERELL: Coach Willingham made a good point. The prejudice out there is not racial or gender. When you're Florida State or Ohio State or any of these, people think, well, you've got to go hire the Michigan coach or the Arkansas coach or the whatever coach. There's a lot of great coaches sitting down there at I don't know, Coach Tressel, but I'm sure when Ohio State started looking, no offense, they might have been looking over at some other place, Bobby Bowden. Better not (laughter).

But anyway, the idea that you're going to reach down from Florida State and hire somebody from this other institution or hire an offensive coordinator or assistant AD as opposed to some seated AD, that prejudice is harder to overcome with boards of trustees and athletic boards than a racial or gender prejudice, to reach down and say, man, this is a hotshot. This is one that's on the way up, this guy can do the job, or this lady can do the job.

At Florida State, we sometimes think, well, we've got to go get somebody that Florida was going to hire or Miami or whatever, I don't know. So to me the prejudice is the explanation to your board of trustees, or in my case athletic board. I don't need a seated athletic coach or a seated AD to do the job under certain circumstances, and then you can reach down and pick up who you want, which may or may not be a minority at that point.

I'm more concerned with that, with looking where is this guy going to be five years, ten years down the road, or did I hire the name.

COACH WILLINGHAM: But those are some of the very things that keeps the African American out of the pool, when you talk about the commercialism of what we do. Okay, can I sell this guy, how will it represented to our board, how will it be represented to our public. That's part of the issue, that somehow we need to break that so we can get those candidates in front of the groups and let them present their wares.

CHRIS ROSE: Guys, we have to move on. Recently we found out there's no plus one playoff system in the near future, so I want to start with the coaches on this one. To play off or not to play off? I know you guys say, well, it's a system we're dealing with. I just want to know what's in your heart these days, Coach Tressel? If I remember you won some championships through a playoff, didn't you?

COACH TRESSEL: I did, and we felt that prejudice that they didn't want to interview us 1AA coaches for years. We're fighting for each other, the Frank Beamers of the world.

It's a little bit different world in the 1AA. In fact, we talked about this just sitting around with a couple of the guys. When you add more games in a playoff system for a 1AA guy, it's probably one more game that he gets to play in his life, because his career, percentage wise, is probably going to end after college. And there wasn't a Bowl system in 1AA, so we didn't have X number of guys going to get to play a postseason game. So you cherished every game you could play.

Now, fast forward it to a 1A situation, where there are so many opportunities for postseason play. After we played Miami in 2002, and I looked at the two teams limping off the field after an overtime or two or whatever it was, I thought to myself, wow, could you pick up and go play another game next week, with the reality that a lot of those guys on that field were going to have a chance to have a short professional career, maybe even some have a long professional career; what's in the best interest of the student athletes?

I think there will be a day where we move into something beyond what we're doing. I can't tell you that I have a great idea right now as to what it ought to be, plus one or this or that. But the Bowl experience is wonderful. The reality of our guys is that we played on January 7th and they had to decide by the 15th whether or not they were going out early in the NFL, and some of them left the game and went to an All Star Game.

The time crunch calendar wise of moving further into January and so forth I think affects some kids who are getting ready to go on to the next short moment in their life if they have that chance. So I'm not for a full blown playoff system if it affects the Bowls, if it pushes the calendar deeper into their postgraduate world.

And I worry sometimes that because we are interested in finding out who's first, it's like these guys are worried about is their story first is is it right, we want to make sure we get it right, as opposed to just figuring out who was first. One time in the 1AA playoffs we ended up ranked 17th and didn't get in, and we thought we were the best team in the country. We screamed and yelled and had won six in a row at the end or whatever. So you're never going to please everybody as to saying who's the best team. So somehow, some way, I think we'll inch toward improving. We've got a pretty good product right now.

CHRIS ROSE: Coach Mangino, I've got to imagine, I was with your kids after you won the FedEx Orange Bowl. I wasn't in the locker room afterward. I've got to imagine after a 12 win season and taking care of a pretty physical Virginia Tech team, you had some kids that were like, "I'll take on the winner of Ohio State and LSU. I'm ready." I've got to imagine that.

COACH MANGINO: Well, you've got to be careful what college kids say sometimes (laughter). At 12 and 1 you won the Orange Bowl; don't look a gift horse in the mouth (laughter).

I see it the way Jim sees it. I like the Bowl system. I know eventually because of public pressure and economics that we probably at some point in time are going to go to some kind of playoff system. But I hope it doesn't affect the Bowls. I think the Bowls are unique to college football, and everybody that's a college football fan just loves that period of time where the Bowls start in mid December and go through the 1st of January. It's what makes college football unique.

I wouldn't want to take those Bowl experiences away from the players because they really and truly enjoy it, and it's something that they I don't care how many Bowl games you play or are coaching, they're all special. Those are memories that the players will have forever.

I have a feeling eventually, based on economics, probably more than anything, that we will eventually have some type of playoff, but I hope it doesn't destroy the Bowl structure as we know it today.

CHRIS ROSE: Here I am figuring out a little system here to keep the Bowl system in place. Work with me, people. I've got the winner of the Cotton Bowl and Orange Bowl taking on the winner of the Sugar and the Fiesta. They can meet in the Rose in the semifinals, and then another

COACH TRESSEL: When is this, February?

CHRIS ROSE: I've got some time in March (laughter). I mean, is that really the biggest problem? Is it the time? Couldn't we move back to an 11 game regular season and start the playoffs in December or something? Am I just out there, and Chris, go back to Fox?

KEVIN ANDERSON: I think the beauty of the Bowls is three years ago you have Auburn disputing that they should have been national champions. My good friend Damon Evans tells me that he was a national champion last year. And I think that it creates this conversation that we have throughout the year, and so it keeps that excitement, helps me sell tickets, and if we go into if we go to this championship that's why they play on Sunday. I think that it gives our fans something to hope for, to live with throughout the year, and then if you go to a championship, it's first and second and that's it.

COACH WILLINGHAM: Let me ask this question: Who is the championship for?

CHRIS ROSE: Listen, the fans how many millions of fans went to games last year, almost 50 million, I think? We buy jerseys, we buy the product. We want to feel a part of what you guys are doing. I guess the games are played, but you don't play in empty stadiums. If it was strictly just for the kids on the field, then you'd play with nobody watching I assume.

COACH WILLINGHAM: Don't shoot the messenger now. I just asked the question.

COACH PATTERSON: A couple things you have to ask yourself, number one, let's go back to how we started this whole conference with the APR. You want to go have a playoff so you keep kids all the way through December. You have it so now you're not going to be there in finals and do things again. I go back to the student athlete.

But the second thing I would stick up for the Bowl progress is now we have we had 64 Bowls, so last year we had at least 32 winners. Once you go to a playoff system, now one thing, I love the basketball tournament because of the excitement. In fact, that's about the time I get a chance to watch basketball.

But you end up except for one team, you end up losing your final game. One thing about the Bowl system is there's 32 teams that end up winning the final game. You end up with a positive, you end up with something. I believe in the experience.

You know, the one thing about playing in a playoff is I don't know how it would be anywhere else, but there would only be about three hours of excitement. That would be if we won after the game on the ride home because the rest of the six days we're going to be working 24 hours a day getting ready for a ballgame. It's not going to be any fun for the kids.

If you think the playoff system is going to be fun for the kids except for the team that wins the final game, we'd all be kidding ourselves because you put the amount of every ballgame is a National Championship game, every game is going to be like the BCS final game. It's going to be because to get to the next round, so you're talking about six hard days of work, we let them take one day off, somewhere we'll work finals in between all of it, and then yeah, we'll end up as the National Championship winner, but there's not going to be anybody else happy.

COACH TRESSEL: And we're going to have an early signing day, so we've got to get those guys signed (laughter).

COACH MANGINO: One of the problems I see with it, also, and I tip my cap to the 1AA coaches, and probably nobody has done it better here than Jim when he was at Youngstown State. But I can't imagine December where you're recruiting, trying to get ready for a game each week, and then your kids have finals. And I just know that when we're in spring ball and our kids are having midterms or midterms in the fall, that week we have to really make sure that our kids are sharp and focused on the practice field.

I couldn't imagine finals week when we have some outstanding students on our team that are academic all conference and academic all American guys, their brain would fry. They would just short circuit having to worry about a game plan, practicing and taking a calculus final or economics final. I know that that's overlooked by a lot of people, especially fans who really don't care about that aspect. But I think it's a factor, a big factor.

CHRIS ROSE: Coach Willingham, did I shoot down one of my allies?

COACH WILLINGHAM: You were working yesterday. We're still working today (laughter).

COACH TRESSEL: I think there's one other issue we found in the 1AA playoffs, it's a little bit of a financial strain on the parents. For instance, we played at Eastern Washington one week and then the next week we played Villanova and then we played down at Chattanooga for the National Championship. Now, that's tough on a family to try to get to those places, and we got to the point where some of our home game playoffs even, our fans would say, you know what, I'm not going to buy a ticket for this home game, I'm going to save my money when you go to the finals. I'd say, when we go to the finals? We've got three more games to win. So we'd sit there with half empty stadiums in the early rounds.

So I think there's a financial issue, especially on the parents. If you have the ability to travel to two Bowl games, it would be hard on them.

KEVIN WHITE: You know, a lot has been said, and I agree with all of it, but let me put my bean counter hat on for just a second. I would be less than honest if I didn't say that a lot of the decision making that occurs in south Florida recently, Mitch was there and others in the room were there, as well, a lot of it had to do with protecting the regular season.

And just in rough terms, as I think about it, and Grant, you may have data to support this, I suspect the regular season college football season in 1A represents, on average, and I'm making it up, 85 percent of the revenue that we generate to support all of these athletics programs that we all have.

And the majority of it, 85 percent, almost all of it, comes from the regular season. So protecting the regular season is really important. If I think in these terms simplistically, the regular season represents this much resource, and the postseason, regardless of what we have or what we don't have, might represent this much resource.

So for me as an operator of an athletics program, that has to generate $70 million in revenue. Or Jim's program generates $100 million in revenue, so you have to protect the regular season. That's one.

Secondly, we have a playoff, we have a tournament. It starts the first week in September. I know that sounds trite, but that's what we have. Every game is important, and it ties into protecting the regular season. The Bowls are Americana; nobody wants to negatively impact the Bowls. And if you talk to the student athletes myopically, when I talk to the kids on our campus, they love the Bowls. They're not interested in a playoff.

Ty asked a great question, who is the championship for. First and foremost, it better be for the kids.

CHRIS ROSE: When you're talking about the revenue stream and protecting the regular season, I understand that, but I don't think let's say one day a billion years down the road we have an eight team playoff. Why would that make the regular season less interesting to people?

KEVIN WHITE: The economics have been impacted by the NCAA basketball tournament as it relates to the regular season in college basketball.

CHRIS ROSE: I would agree with that, but when there's 35 games, I barely watch any regular season college basketball. Maybe it would have helped me in my office pool if I had. I get that.

But when there's only 11 or 12 games, there's an immediacy to college football.

KEVIN WHITE: All respect to Mr. Stern, I don't even follow the NBA until we get to the playoffs. I don't know how everybody else is in this room. You guys do it for a living.

But I think the regular season is as strong in college football as any sport we've got in this country. I think we need to protect it.

COACH WILLINGHAM: There's another question that I think needs to be asked because right now, Kevin pointed out, 85 percent of the revenues that we generate in some cases go to all the athletic programs. I played basketball along with football at Michigan State. We couldn't raise enough money at Michigan State to pay for our own baseballs. It was football that supported us, so you need to insure that.

But the question will come, with the increased revenues and what you believe will be a playoff system, where does the money go? Who's taking care of the athlete? There's some issues there that we've got to deal with, that we have to deal with now, but will be enhanced with anything else that we do.

Q. As Kevin mentioned, I believe it was '97, I'm driving down the road and I get a call from Roy Kramer, and Roy asked if the American Football Coaches Association would consider being involved in something that would change names later, eventually the BCS, in terms of the selection process, and I told him that we definitely would. Our coaches have supported this concept of the trophy and our poll being a part of the selection process by unanimous throughout all of these years. But the other thing you said to me that relates to what Kevin has verified today is he said the purpose for this is to make the individual season the focal point for college football, and it relates back to what Kevin said, because that's where the financial revenue comes in over a period of time. Mission accomplished. You can look, and you have those statistics, too, but the game has never been more viewed nor more attended than it is right now. I'm a basketball fan, but the regular season in basketball, in college basketball, means really very little. And also one of the things we keep hearing about, well, a playoff will solve everybody's problem. I believe this year there were 65 teams selected for basketball, and I heard more people griping this year because their team didn't get in. So there's never a situation that's going to solve all of the concerns and the problems. What we do know is that we have a system right now that our coaches can relate to because we all believe in and want the Bowl system, and secondly, it is doing what it needed to be do in terms of revenue and making every game played important. From the start of the season, every game that's played is important. So that's quite an accomplishment for those guys that started this.

CHRIS ROSE: We do have some questions out here.

Q. For the coaches, do your kids enjoy playing the Emporia States, the Eastern Washingtons, the MAC schools, the Texas States, or do they want to test themselves and play Jim, you're going to play USC this year; Ty, you played Ohio State last year. Are those not the games that in addition to your conference games that your kids really want to play and really want to be able to test themselves just for the whole college experience? And I think the fact that we have the system we have now, that just takes away that opportunity because everybody is trying it's a zero sum game. You lose your chances you're not maybe totally eliminated, but it's a pretty good chance that you are.

COACH TRESSEL: I think in our case it's very important for us to have a significant number of home games. That's big. We have 36 sports, as we mentioned, a $110 budget that football raises a considerable amount of. We need home games, so we're not going to get marquee games where they only come to Ohio State.

So our philosophy is to have a marquee out of the area great experience for our players and fans like USC, Texas we just finished with and so forth, have one of those always on the books, and then try to have a lot of home games because we need that to run the comprehensive program that we choose to raise.

So do our players like that? I think they would like playing anyone rather than an open week because open weeks aren't fun. They came to play football, and they know on an open week they're going to practice, and they've had enough practice.

So going to the 12th game I think was a little bit of a burden for the student athlete just from a safety standpoint. How many times can those big bodies run into each other, and we can't prove how that's going to shorten their future careers, but you can only take so many bangs. So it's a little bit of a burden.

But I think our kids are proud of the fact that we needed to do that to run a great Ohio State athletics program, so we need to have that extra revenue, so I think our guys are okay with it.

Q. Kevin, since you're the only reigning member of the BCS Commission that's up there, I'll ask you this question. Are you familiar with the term bracket creep?

KEVIN WHITE: I am.

Q. We kept hearing that in Florida, that beer leads to heroin, four goes to eight goes to sixteen. Because you guys control this, unlike 1AA, 2 and 3 that have committees, can't you just stop? Just philosophically, I'm not particularly for a plus one, but couldn't you just stop it and say, yeah, we're going to do it, and that's all we're going to do?

KEVIN WHITE: Yeah, I guess we could, but I have to tell you, it's funny, the whole BCS has taken on its own language, double hosting, bracket creep. I mean, I sit in that room and hear expressions I've never heard before. But they've kind of become expressions.

And what we're talking about here is if you had a plus one and you had four teams, does that become eight teams, does that morph into 16 teams, and there's been some folks that have kind of expressed that as a pretty significant concern.

I would say and again, the Notre Dame perspective, that's not a concern. If we all agreed to something, we would expect that that's what we had agreed to and everything is subject to review and to be modified at that point. Nothing stays the same. I guess I would address it that way.

But the thing that I'm concerned about, protecting the Bowls, A; and B, is protecting the regular season, as we've already said. I think those are the big two keys for me.

Q. I don't know if this is a question. It's just some comments. I think the problem the BCS has in college football is that it's becoming a public relations problem. We started out, Chris asked the question about a plus one, and everybody starts talking about a playoff, 16 teams. I don't think any of us believe that a 1A 16 team playoff is ever going to happen in our lifetimes. But the problem is that the answers against a plus one that get thrown out there, I don't think it would affect the regular season. When you guys play USC this year, one of the biggest non conference games of the year, whoever wins will be the team that's supposed to win the National Championship. The team that loses can still win the National Championship, but they've got to win the rest of their games. I don't see where that affects that doesn't affect the regular season, so that argument flies out the window. And then the BCS got started by college football because the way the season was ending wasn't what y'all wanted, and now there's this Rube Goldberg way of figuring out who plays for the National Championship that doesn't satisfy it, either. So I think the fans are kind of getting duped on this deal, but they keep coming to y'all's games so there's nothing that can be done. It's like the only way that I think anything would happen is if you guys started having empty stadiums, and that's not going to happen. Coach Willingham, you mentioned what's in it for the players. Well, what's in it for the players is a 12th game because everybody has got to make more money. Nobody asked the players about playing a 12th game, but everybody needs to make more money.

COACH TRESSEL: If you went with a plus one, when would you have the game?

Q. Well, it was set up to have as soon as the presidents decided that, gee, we don't have school a week after January 1st, when that door got opened, nobody walked through it. That was when the plus one could have been set up. That's when you figure out a way to play that game when we're playing the National Championship game right now.

COACH TRESSEL: We were in school January 3rd, so two years in a row our guys have missed the first week of class, which has been an issue.

Q. Well, the two 1AA schools have both had their finals the week of the National Championship game. Both of their graduate success rates are above the national average. They had their finals on site. To me it's a little bit of an insult to 1AA that you guys say that it can't be done when they get it done every year?

COACH TRESSEL: Well, academically we had our best years when we were kept playing because that was at the end of things and you had the discipline. I get a little bit nervous about a bad start. We haven't even been to class yet.

You can do something at the end, take a test early, do those kinds of things; you're well along the path. The thing that has hurt us a little bit, and not that we're going to turn down a chance to play January 8th or whatever, but having that so let's pretend it was the 12th because it got pushed back. Now there's probably more effect. And I think you run into the other end of their calendar, East West game, the Hula Bowl, the Senior Bowl, the combine, the decision do I go to the NFL. The guys playing in that game, there's probably going to be a significant number of them that have that discussion.

KEVIN WHITE: Could I say one thing? I see Bill Hancock in the back, and not to put Bill on the spot, but Bill, do you have any observation for this group? Bill is the BCS administrator as everybody in the room I think knows, but I think he should have a word on this.

BILL HANCOCK: I just wonder if anybody has any questions for Wendell (laughter).

KEVIN WHITE: Thanks for those thoughts, Bill.

Q. For the coaches, I wonder if you guys think your fan bases, if people in the fan base, maybe there were a lot of playoff proponents in those groups until your teams had magical runs. Coach, the buildup to the Missouri game was incredible and the Ohio State Michigan game a couple years ago got built up to be this Super Bowl with the winner going on to the championship game. I wonder, do you think the fans, if they get to experience that, because the regular season is so important, looking back, has y'all's opinion changed on it, to say that was a pretty good time, we won or lost the game or whatever, but that was pretty cool and let's keep that? As opposed to let's have a 12th game, and if we win or lose, well, we're still in the top eight and we go?

COACH MANGINO: Well, I can't speak for our fans. What I would say is the way it looks at Kansas is they like the Bowl system because they're going to go to a tournament in the spring (laughter). The fans only have so many dollars to spend at Kansas. They'd like to go to one Bowl game and the Final Four (laughter).

Q. But anyone else? Do you think the excitement gets muted for a playoff? Like Coach Patterson, the year that y'all challenged the BCS, that was a huge year for TCU. Do you think, well, it's like, just getting close and didn't make it, just the downfall of the loss that year, was that still pretty good?

COACH PATTERSON: We're talking about a different subject if you want to talk about the non qualifying schools and not having an opportunity to be in one of the ten games unless you play into it. You can get me started for another 20 minutes, especially if you want to talk about financially, 55 schools that don't have an opportunity to start now. Two out of the three times those teams have gotten an opportunity to play in a BCS game, they've won.

For me, short in a short version, I think one of those ten shots should be one of the 55 schools out of 119, whether we have the top two schools of those non qualifying schools, play for that position. But I just think if you're talking about fairness, whether you're talking about having an opportunity or you're talking about financially, I think my biggest thing, and if you've listened to me here in the last two days, whether it's about the student athlete or it's about the game, at some point in time if we don't find a way to make sure that we even out financially how we get paid back everything, pretty soon we're going to look up and there's only going to be 50 schools playing Division I football because the other group is not going to be able to handle it and to be able to move on.

I think that's why we have you have the BCS system, at least from my term, you kind of have a corner on the market of how that goes, and at some point in time we're going to have to change.

If you look in the room, not all of us, at least, all came from a MAC school or you came from somewhere I made a lot of my mistakes at Sonoma State being the first coordinator. I mean, coaches have to have a place that they grow up. There's no doubt there's a big difference between the Southeast Conference or some of the conferences and a lot of the teams in I have a problem with let's just say let's pick any conference, but a team from any of the four conferences that are part of being automatic BCS qualifiers, and they've never been to a Bowl game but they receive revenue from teams going to it and they don't do anything to help be part of it. And you have teams that are in the top 25 that are in the non automatic qualifying that don't receive anything.

I mean, I'd like to go back through our records and find out where we made any money in the nine out of ten Bowl games that we've gone to at TCU, besides when we went to the Sun Bowl and we played USC and beat them back in 1998, our first Bowl game in the whole group.

So for me, I just you opened up another can of worms for me, and that's not our topic. But as far as those things are concerned, I think there's a lot of things out there that I just always, when you talk to me, I'm going to talk about equality when it comes to those things, and I think there are some things that aren't straight.

Q. For those that saw the Fiesta Bowl or were part of it, like Charles and I were talking, Boise State wanted that game over with. There's no way Boise State I can tell you wanted to go play another game after that, so for the whole concept that there's another game out there for everybody that they want, I can tell you from my perspective, they have no interest in playing any more. They'll take that victory and do videos on it. But my question is for the president on the panel. I hear so often that it's the presidents that say academically it's too much of a strain, we'll never support it, a playoff system. Is that true? And is there a number that somebody is going to bring the presidents one day that will make it possible?

DR. WETHERELL: Well, as much as Coach Willingham is a minority, I'm a minority on this issue with my colleagues. In the ACC there are probably two schools, Florida State and Boston College, that are interested in a playoff system, whatever that happens to be. In my judgment, if you take every argument that's been made here today and apply it to any other sport on the college campus, then you'd have to cancel the World Series, the Final Four, the soccer tournament or whatever it happens to be.

So if you want to do it, it can be done. But what I think all of us are concerned about is the image of commercialization and that you're using these athletes in some way or these programs to make an ungodly amount of money, because it will produce, just like the NCAA Final Four or whatever tournament, an ungodly amount of money.

The reality is we will have a playoff at some point in time in some way. It will protect the Bowl system. The Bowl system is going to have problems. Boise is going to have a problem. If gas goes to five bucks a gallon, we can't afford to come play in Boise and we've got a deal. I'd like to play in Boise because I spend Christmas at my ranch in Montana, I can drive over there. I keep telling Coach Bowden, let's go to Boise. He says, boy, they don't play football on blue rugs.

The amount of money unfortunately is going to drive the train. The 12th game right now is solving the problem, and the reason there's a 12th game in football is the money. People may not want to admit that, but that's the facts of the matter. Talk to Kevin or any of these ADs. Take the 12th game away and then ask them to balance the budget. We're not playing the 12th game because the fans get to come and tailgate in FSU stadium or they enjoy driving up there to watch us whip up on Chattanooga, Tennessee, or somebody, I don't know who they are or where they are. That's being played strictly so we can make money, and if you look at what we're having to pay Chattanooga to drive there, it's kind of outrageous to look at it.

What'll happen is we'll spend all that money. We're not going to bank it. And coaches and athletic departments, they love to spend money. If you look at how much it's costing me to run my athletic department versus percentage increase versus the university, we're going to start at Florida State University with $50 million less this August than we started last August. Now, I'm not starting my athletic department with less money in August than I started last August. They did pretty good, and we only won seven or eight ball games.

So what will happen is they'll spend all the money, and then the options will be, where do I get me some more money. You TV guys are about tapped out. You can't do much more. Some of those smaller Bowls are about tapped out. Most of us can't afford at the big schools to go to a small Bowl.

Somebody has got to make that up, usually from the BCS Bowl and the redistribution in the conference, so it's going to run out of money. And everybody is going to be sitting here, probably not in my lifetime at Florida State, saying, you know, we really could move this back, and by the way, well, we do play 63 baseball games and we play baseball through two final exam periods, not one, and somehow they all seem to graduate and do pretty good. Or them basketball players, they've got a real problem with academics in basketball, but we seem to play right on through the tournament, and everybody is pretty happy.

It will get figured out. My guess is that the small Bowls will be a part of that system, and somehow that will be worked into it and it'll work itself out. It'll start off with a plus one, then we'll go to four or eight or sixteen at some point in time, just like the NCAA tournament started off at 16 or 32, I think

Q. Eight.

DR. WETHERELL: Okay, then it went to 16 and 32 and 64 and now somehow we bought the NIT (laughter), and I've got a sneaking hunch somewhere along the line it's going to go to 84 or 124 or something.

So it's not a question of if there's going to be a playoff, it's a question of when. And it's not a question of what's going to drive it; it's going to be driven by the money, but none of us sitting at this table, and particularly my colleagues, are ever going to admit that.

But they'll have to come running up here saying, Mr. President, I've got to have some money. And that's what got you the 11th game and that's what will get you a playoff in my judgment. Now, I don't think it's going to be this year or next year or whenever, but it is going to happen, no doubt about it.

CHRIS ROSE: Unfortunately that's going to have to be the final word of this session. I know there's other questions, but as long as we don't have a playoff for the time being, just as a reminder you can watch the FedEx BCS National Championship game on Fox.

With that said, we want to say goodbye to Jim Tressel. He's got a plane to catch, and the world is safe now that you're wearing a sweater vest, so we appreciate that. Thank you for coming, and we'll see you out west at some point this year.

We have a quick break hosted by the AT & T Cotton Bowl.

(A short break was taken.)

CHRIS ROSE: We're going to wrap up at noontime. Also, there are transcripts available on collegepressbox.com, and we'd like to thank Ted Gangi for hooking us up with that, and also it's available for the first session as of right now. That includes yesterday's yelling with lots of exclamation points. We also want to thank ASAP FastScripts for their help, as well.

We're going to begin the final session I guess kind of where we left off. Dr. Wetherell was talking about the economics of the sport and kind of where we're headed. I guess we'll start with Coach Patterson since he said he could talk for about 20 minutes on this topic. Do you kind of feel like you're going into a gunfight with a knife sometimes?

COACH PATTERSON: It's not with a vengeance. My thing is that how do you know in a 64 team tournament in basketball who the team is that's going to have an opportunity to be Cinderella? You keep talking about the fans and media and everyone else, but also, people want to know about the unknowns I think is what stirs everybody's excitement a lot of times. I'd be interested to look at the ratings when Boise played Oklahoma and when Utah played Pittsburgh and see how those games and Georgia playing Hawaii as far as that's concerned.

But for me, I look at just the economy of the self preservation of the game. We keep talking about we have to play 12 games to make more revenue, and that's what the BCS is all about. It's about finding a winner, but also, there's a lot more revenue, that's part of it. I just think there needs to be a little bit more access.

I'm not going to mention names, but there was a coach that was from a non BCS conference that had strong views when he sat on that side of the table and then he moved to a BCS conference school and then he had strong views the opposite way. Then he said, no, they don't ever belong.

I think hopefully I'd be one way or the other, that I felt for the betterment of the game that you did all

CHRIS ROSE: Do you want to whisper in my ear who it was?

COACH PATTERSON: You can go back and go through the blogs (laughter). It was a couple years ago.

Q. It was for the BCS National Championship game.

CHRIS ROSE: Do you want to give me a year? I'm good at this game.

COACH PATTERSON: Well, there was another one that was besides that.

But I'm just saying to you, you know, there's a lot of good coaches, and I'd hate to see in the Big Ten, at least the way it used to be, if you wouldn't have had the MAC Conference is where a lot of those guys started and sowed their oats, and then they became now, not necessarily does a Big Ten coach just come from the MAC, but if you didn't have the lack or some schools from the Pac 10, I think there's we were talking earlier about qualifications to be a head coach or an assistant or anything else. I think one of the things you have to have is I think you have to have things in place we were talking, the officials, out at the Fiesta frolics, where a lot of people have their conference meetings the last week, and one of the reasons why they feel like there's a lot of California officials that have gone on to be part of this new coalition that they're going to do is that they have a bigger junior college system out there and they train them better. They work up through the ranks, they have a system on how they do it and they go about their business.

I think all of us, we learned that you're just trying to find a system where you can sow your oats so when you get there to your opportunity, you can be successful.

I think one of the reasons I've had an opportunity to be successful is because Dennis Franchione trained me to do the way I needed to do to be a CEO before I got a chance to be a CEO. But a little bit of the that had to do with the fact that I wanted to.

As far as the BCS and that part of it, I think you have to go back and say that all we're looking for is equality. We're just looking for an opportunity.

I mean, it's kind of like you want to date a girl. I mean, you've got to wait for ten guys to get a chance to date her, whether she likes you or not.

CHRIS ROSE: Or maybe you just jump to the front of the line.

COACH PATTERSON: Well, I was talking about the normal guy (laughter).

CHRIS ROSE: I'm curious, and I apologize for not knowing this stat off the top of my head, but how many of the 119 Division I programs make money in college football? Do we know what the exact number is, or roughly where we're at?

KEVIN ANDERSON: Kevin and I were talking about this, and Kevin thinks the number is six.

KEVIN WHITE: Well, that's not college football. Let me be more precise than that. We had Myles Brand do kind of a town meeting at our institution, let's make sure I get this accurate, it would have been last September. And the NCAA had spent a year or two collecting data from all 119 institutions, and you know, within college athletics. I'm going to say this and people aren't going to like this expression, there's a lot of gimmetry forms of financing, so it's hard to really get an apples to apples comparison.

Well, the NCAA research after they really dug down deep, Myles came in front of our audience and suggested that there were six institutions that were actually cash flowing in terms of intercollegiate athletics, which is pretty sobering, which speaks actually to T.K.'s point from the last session. We've all harvested the low hanging fruit and we've got the seat licenses and we've done all the marketing, promotions, corporate partners, we've done all that, and there's only six of us that are really cash flowing.

I think when Myles was speaking, and I don't have this verified, but as I sat in the audience and listened, I suspect when he was talking about when you kind of pull out the large institutional fees that could obviously be expended in other parts of the academy, when you pull away all of the state appropriations. I had been at Arizona State; at one point we had a pretty hefty state appropriations for women's athletics. When you pull all of that out and you cost account it out, Myles very clearly said he thought six institutions were cash flowing. Out of 119 institutions, that is sobering.

KEVIN ANDERSON: I think we had a president that called that voodoo economics. I will tell you this, with my experience, just with football scheduling and trying to balance the budget, you have to determine now what do you want to do. Do you want to give your football players the best chance to compete and to win, or do you take a game where you get paid a million dollars and help balance your budget?

And I think there's a lot of programs out there that fight that dilemma because your fan base wants you to win. But if you have to play two or three of those games in your lower Division 1A football program and you have to go into Ohio State and then go to Michigan and then go to Washington and then play conference games, I mean, it puts you in a pretty difficult situation, and we have to determine what's the balance.

So what we've determined at Army is that we want to put our young men in a position to win, and we'll find another way to balance our budget. But winning is more important and sacrificing what we can do to accomplish what we feel is a good season by going in and getting paid to play.

CHRIS ROSE: What are the other revenue streams we're looking at? All the Bowls have been sold out for years as far as that sort of stuff goes. I mean, are we going to have regular season games where there's big logos on the field? I mean, we do it on our TV screens. We'll pimp just about anything at Fox (laughter).

KEVIN WHITE: I kind of didn't go this far, but let me just say one other thing and then I'll answer your question very briefly, because I don't know the answer to that. But at the end of the day I think I'm going to answer your question first.

We're going to do what we have to do because schools are going to find a way to finance intercollegiate athletics and try not no do it institutions don't want the academy to shoulder any more of the expense than they currently are shouldering. I mean, there's some pretty interesting or pretty substantial subsidies that are already in place, particularly at some of the private institutions.

You know, a grant made at Notre Dame is $50,000 a year. That's what it costs for room, board, tuition and fees, and that's not unusual for the Northwesterns, the Dukes, the Stanfords, and those schools. So there's a lot of private institutions that are seriously financially subsidizing intercollegiate athletics, and that's not going to change any time soon.

The thing I didn't mention, there's a great book, it's called "Economics of Big Time Sport, Keeping Score." And it was written by Richard Sheehan, who's actually a faculty member at our place. He wrote it about 11 or 12 years ago, and at that point he collected the data not unlike Myles' crowd did here most recently, and at that point he felt 15 institutions were cash flowing in 1A.

So now we've gone if that's accurate, and Myles' most recent analysis is accurate, we've gone from 15 to 6, so the trending is not very positive.

So to your point again, Chris, what will we do? About whatever we have to do, unfortunately, to try to find a way to cash flow and try to make these programs continue to pay for themselves. That's typically the mandate, or live within a certain subsidy base or whatever. That's typically the mandate on a college campus.

DR. WETHERELL: A lot of times you'll find new numbers but you'll save dollars. If you're looking, and I don't know what everybody's schedule is, but all of a sudden you won't be flying the women's basketball team out to play Stanford for volleyball or something like that. So you'll go to a more regional schedule. You'll have a Christmas tournament, but each Christmas week we go for instance, in women's basketball, not to pick on anybody, you take the team someplace to get them a difference experience and that kind of thing, and all of a sudden you just won't be doing that. You'll kill most schools in their minor sports or Olympic sports try and throw in a game, an interesting type game. So all of a sudden you won't do it.

Now, you think about that and you look at it in terms of volleyball or golf or some of those budgets, and you talk about putting 15 kids on an airplane, whether it's a commercial deal or not, and hotel room and all that, and you save 50 grand. That's a lot of money to that sport. So you'll see a more regional schedule, and I'm not sure that's all that great. But it just changes. So part of it you'll find new money.

The thing that you're doing today that you would think, well, I don't really want to not do, you'll be forced not to do, quite frankly.

KEVIN WHITE: I don't want to over speak on the subject, but you not only will modify your behavior only because you have to, as T.K. certainly suggested, and I think he's absolutely right, but you're also going to be in a position where you're going to have to drop sports. That's going on everywhere. As a recovering Olympic sport coach, I find that pretty unsettling, but that's the reality of the day. That absolutely is the reality.

CHRIS ROSE: What sort of changes have we seen, Coach Willingham, over the last several years in college football, for instance? Coach Mangino, you guys just said you're opening a new football facility, as well. Salaries for coaches and athletic directors, they seem to be escalating, as well. Somewhere I guess somebody is getting crunched. I don't know what it is in the college football world. Do you feel like there's restraints on you economically at all? I guess that's for all the coaches.

COACH WILLINGHAM: Well, I think there's always trying to balance that budget, that line, okay, because it's not about just the football coach when you talk about the revenues generated from football. So you're always trying to find where can you spend, where can't you spend.

And obviously when you talk about new facilities, someone has to go out and raise the money for it. Many times that's not a state done item. You've got to get private financing for that. So there is a crunch somewhere.

CHRIS ROSE: Coach Mangino, don't you think that at the time of recession, you're going to be opening up this beautiful new facility, and there's probably people in Kansas that are saying, you know, our kids don't need a new football facility, they need something else that's going to help more of the populus there academically, right?

COACH MANGINO: Well, the thing that you have to understand is these new facilities by the way, we did need new facilities. I understand your point. But what we're dealing with is the monies that are raised are private funds. There are people that can afford to donate X amount of money for projects that they're interested in on campus. Several of the donors that have put their money forward for a new football facility have also given large sums to the business school, a new multicultural center on campus. It's not just football. But they have an interest in football, but it's not a burden to the taxpayers; it's all private money.

You have to look ahead and say, well, what are the benefits of building these new facilities for the university as a whole, and is it something that the university needs. Long term, sports is the front porch of every university. We couldn't hire a firm on Madison Avenue to give us the kind of publicity that our football and basketball teams gave the university this year at Kansas. So it's an investment by private money for the long term goals of the entire university.

CHRIS ROSE: We have some questions on the economic side of where we are.

Q. Talk about new revenue streams and trying to find them, and I think the point has been well made that you're going to end up cutting back maybe before you try to increase or there might not be any. So this time of year, the question about spring games in football tends to come up, will there ever be a time that there will be spring games where there will actually be university versus university in the spring, and is it even a possibility? And if so, is there any revenue that really can be made from doing it in that time frame, because it always comes up every year, why are we playing intersquads, why don't we play someone else, and that can generate? Can it? And if so, is it a good idea anyway?

DR. WETHERELL: That's a tricky way to say the 13th game (laughter). That will put off a playoff another ten years.

Q. We're talking about practice.

DR. WETHERELL: To be honest with you, I think everything will be on the table. I'm not sure of that one, I don't know. But I know one thing, Coach Mangino was talking about, we don't apologize at FSU for using athletics to raise money. And a number of the facilities, including the football stadium itself, is built around an academic or a multi use issue. We're going through an issue of an indoor practice facility in the south. That's kind of a monkey see monkey do deal. Everybody has got to have one now. I'm not sure why.

I was talking to Coach Bowden the other day and reminded him when I was a player, we practiced in rain, hail, sleet, snow, thunder and lightning, and his whole solution then was don't stand under a tree because you might get hit. Now he has to have a big building and everything else to be in.

But at Notre Dame you've got to have it because