Florida State University President John Thrasher spoke with Warchant managing editor Ira Schoffel this week about a variety of topics related to the Seminoles’ athletics programs, including the desire to invest more resources into the football program, the improvement in men’s basketball, the ACC’s television contract and more.
Here is a transcript of that conversation. (Note: Some questions have been edited for clarity or to provide context.)
Q: I wanted to start off with basketball since they’re in season. Obviously, the men and women are both doing very well. And that has to be especially rewarding with the men, since you kind of stood by Leonard Hamilton and gave him a small extension after the disappointment of last season.
A: We just kind of bumped the extension so everybody would know that I had confidence in him and Stan [Wilcox, FSU's athletics director] has confidence in him. And it’s worked out. Obviously, it’s worked out. You know, I’ve known Leonard since he was hired here. When he was hired, I was chairman of the Board of Trustees. So, I’ve known him a long time and have great respect for him.
I’ll tell you what, his kids do well in school. They graduate. Michael Ojo is a great example. He graduated, and now he’s working on a master’s. And then the outreach they do in the community -- to go to some of these schools and talk to kids and kind of be role models for them. I think it’s fabulous.
Q: That has to feel good since I know you were getting pressure at the end of last year …
A: You hear the chirping, sure. That was something I probably wasn’t thinking about when I got here, because I thought all the coaches were pretty stable, and all that. But at the end of last year, you could hear the chirping. I heard it early in the football season, too (laughing). And that turned out all right.
Look, I think we’ve got a great stable of coaches from all of our sports. They’re all doing well, they’re all dedicated. You go out and you watch these teams play, and you see [softball coach] Lonni Alameda and how devoted those girls are to her. It’s amazing. And you see [women’s basketball coach] Sue Semrau and how devoted her team is to her. And Leonard, I mean the great respect his team has for him. It’s fantastic. We’re blessed to have great coaches, no question.
Q: You guys are on an incredible run right now with all these top-10 teams in football, basketball, softball, baseball ...
A: I’m delighted, man. Let me tell you something … it doesn’t have anything to do with the president (laughing). I don’t play. I don’t do anything. But just being a fan and having the opportunity to see the kids grow and really move along in their lives, it’s a great thing.
Q: You mentioned football and how things started slowly last season before they turned it around. They just finished off another really impressive recruiting class. Do you pay attention to recruiting at all?
A: Of course. Of course. Yeah, I was over there the other night at the car museum – DeVoe Moore’s place. I saw Jimbo and the coaches, and they were all excited, particularly when they got the big guy from Texas (defensive tackle Marvin Wilson). Mr. Honey Fried Chicken, I guess we’ll start calling him. And you know, seven of the recruits are already in school, all doing well. I get reports about that. They’re participating in our [Seminole Leadership] program that we started a year and a half ago. So yeah, I’m excited about it.
And I keep telling people, if we had 100,000 tickets, I bet we could sell them to the Alabama game. I mean, the buzz about that is already big right now, with it several months away down the road. I think people are already getting ratcheted up and excited for the next season.
Q: At the bowl game, Jimbo Fisher talked about staying at FSU and why he wasn’t interested in the LSU job or any others. And he said he believed the administration was committed to devoting the type of resources he needs to stay on top. Is that …
A: I love Jimbo. I want to give him everything he wants. Sometimes it may not happen right away, and he knows that. But you’ll never accuse Jimbo of not asking (laughing). He wants an elite program. And he’s got an elite program, but it takes resources. You hear about everybody being in an arms race, and to some extent, that’s true. When you see Michigan paying three of their assistant coaches over a million dollars. LSU paying a couple of theirs over a million. I mean, we’re probably heading in that direction. But people want that, and we’ve got to come up with the resources to do it.
Q: When you say that some of these projects can be done sooner and some will be done later, how does that get decided and is he understanding of those issues?
A: We’ve got capital projects that we want to invest in. Obviously, we’ve got personnel areas that we want to invest in. You’ve got debt service that you’re paying off for certain things that you’re already obligated to and done. So I think you have to balance all that in terms of the overall resources we have and where the resources are coming from. Looking ahead, we’ve got the new TV contract with the ACC that will come online in 2019. We’re renegotiating our [multimedia] rights contracts right now, as we speak, and we think that’s going to be an advantage to us no matter how it turns out. All of those things make a difference. So it’s managing the business side of it.
And I’ve asked Stan and the boosters and the football operations folks to kind of get together and talk about the prioritization of some of the facilities that we think we’re going to need the next five or 10 years. It’s kind of what we did in the legislature. When you’re building the budget, you look at, "What are the real priorities in the state of Florida? And where do you want to put the capital resources into those priorities?" So we’ve got to come up with the priorities, and then we’ve got to come up with a funding plan for all of that.
Q: One of the things I know Jimbo has talked about, and I’m sure other coaches are interested in, is an expanded academic center to help the student-athletes. Where do you see that landing in that prioritization schedule and would that be separate from where the Moore Center is now?
A: Again, that’s part and parcel of a facilities overview. One side would say let’s build a whole brand-new football operations facility, where it’s kind of isolated for football, with strength and conditioning, an academic center, and all those kinds of things. Then there’s the other side that would say maybe we could use the Moore Center and maybe add on to it in certain ways that would then free up space and really advantage both our football operations as well as our so-called Olympic sports. So we’re looking at all of that. And that’s what Stan and that group is doing with the prioritization of these issues.
Jimbo would like an operations center, and I understand that. I get it. And before I leave [as president], I hope we can get to that point.
* ALSO SEE: The 'arms race' continues: FSU considers building new football facility
Q: Is part of the balance deciding how much of the resources should be devoted to football compared to the rest of the sports programs? Or do you have to focus on football first since that drives most of the revenue?
A: It drives it, there’s no question about it. And the other sports understand that. Football drives it, so we have to give priority to that. Look, when you bring in 80,000 people into your stands six or seven times a year, it makes a difference. And with the schedule we have -- playing games like Alabama, going to Notre Dame in 2018 -- we’re going to be on the front page for a long, long time, I think.
Q: These support staffs in football are becoming a bigger and bigger deal. And I saw where Coach Bowden was asked about how big these staffs have gotten, and he joked about how coaches back in the day could have success with just the nine full-time assistant coaches and a couple of graduate assistants. But it seems like everything has changed since then.
A: The world’s changed. Yeah, the world’s changed. It’s complex. It’s just a lot more complex. I can give you an example myself just on the political side. When I was in the Speaker’s office and I was Speaker (of the House in Florida), I had one person who did public relations -- my press person. I think the Speaker now probably has four or five. The world changes. And as you get to become an elite program nowadays, there are more demands on the coaches. The competition for recruiting is tougher, so you’ve got to have people out there. And I understand that.
Just as I support our academic endeavors, certainly the face of Florida State for a lot of folks is the football program. We’ve had an elite program for a long time, and we want to continue to have an elite program.
Q: When it comes to the revenue side, there was a lot of excitement last summer when the ACC and ESPN finally announced the new network and a planned cable channel. Are the presidents being updated on how that’s progressing?
A: Yeah, things are coming along. I think ESPN really is going to be a great partner. I think we’re all optimistic that everything they said they were going to do is gonna happen. We’ve got opportunities, right about when we come on [in 2019], to renegotiate some of their contractual relationships with some of the distributors. So I’m very optimistic about it, and for it being a good deal for all the ACC schools.
Q: Staying with the ACC, with what’s going on in North Carolina with the controversy over HB2, the state of Florida got to host the ACC football championship game this past year. Do you see Florida hosting more of the conference’s championship events going forward?
A: I don’t see that changing unless they amend that law. I think that was the consensus of the presidents. So, yeah, I think the championship game again would be scheduled for Orlando. And perhaps some other events.
Q: I know the attendance was an issue down here, and it was an issue the first time they held the game down here, too.
A: I’ve talked to Commissioner [John] Swofford about it – about the fact it was late getting started in Orlando. He said the folks in Orlando could not have been more generous in terms of their time and the support they gave it. And I think given the fact that they have a whole year to get ready for it, I think they feel a lot better about it.
Q: One other item I’ve wanted to ask you about is the plan that’s out there to create an Arena District around the Civic Center. Is that still in the works?
A: Yeah, the vision’s still there -- the hotel, the convention-type of hotel and all that. I think the key to getting it started, honestly, is going to be the College of Business. Getting that area where that building is going to be, and it will stretch out. If we can do that, and then in 2020 when the tax that the city of Tallahassee has offered up to help with the convention hotel, I think all those things can come together. That whole area is still growing.
You know, we just refinanced the CollegeTown Phase 3. We bought out some of the investors in Phase 1, so that’ll help refinance Phase 3. The Board of Governors approved that, along with our board. That whole area is just going to continue to boom down there. You go down there on a weekend -- my freshman granddaughter took me and my wife down there three or four weeks ago -- it’s amazing the amount of traffic and stuff that’s going on down there on the weekends. So I think that whole area will come along. We’ll see what happens, but it’s going to take a few years.
As always, Warchant.com would like to thank President Thrasher for taking the time to share his thoughts with our readers.
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