Newly Appointed Southern Conference Commissioner John Iamarino, the eighth commissioner of the SoCon
Opening Statement
First off, I would to thank everybody that is here today, particularly the administrators, athletic directors and other personnel from the Southern Conference institutions and those of you from the Spartanburg community, who in such a short period of time have made my wife and son and I feel so welcome to your community; and also to the conference office staff, who I am eagerly looking forward to working with beginning at the end of this month.
Normally in sports when you have a change in the front office it means that the franchise is struggling, that there are problems. That is not the case here. The Southern Conference is one of those conferences that has all the ingredients in place to be completely successful and to insure its missions of what it wants to do for its member institutions.
You have the tradition of a league that has been around since 1921, which is I believe the fourth oldest conference in the NCAA. You have the diversity of institutions with private and state schools working together for a common goal. You have a geographical footprint that enables us to build rivalries, which are the lifeblood of college athletics. You have strong academics combined with very competitive athletics and I think that the Southern Conference is one of those leagues that prove those two are not mutually exclusive.
You have nationally competitive programs, with tremendous victories in the NCAA tournament in sports like
soccer, volleyball and oh yes, the national champion in Division I-AA football. There are a lot of appealing things and a lot of things that are right with the Southern Conference.
Of course, as in every Division I conference in the country, there are challenges that have to be met and that is what I am going to be working on with our staff. We want to do as good as we possibly can to promote the conference, to improve the marketing, get our name out there and use the tools of television coverage, the technology of the Internet and video streaming as much as possible to get our message out.
We want to make sure that we ensure that our student-athletes can continue to put the student in the term student-athlete. By that we want to make sure that our scheduling of events and our championship schedule won’t conflict with any students need so they can go to class and succeed academically.
We want to stabilize the membership. Any time you are at an uneven number you are going to get questions about expansion: certainly that is an issue that is going to come up, that has been talked about in the conference. So, we will be looking at that.
We want to provide high quality championships for all of our student athletes. The vast majority of student-athletes in NCAA sports do not reach the NCAA tournament. So, the conference tournament has to become the memorable thing for them; the thing they recall when their career is over. We want to make our championships first-class, the best we possibly can for our coaches and student-athletes.
We want to enhance the things that have already been done well here in the Southern Conference. As an outsider as one of the 31 commissioners, I can tell you that this conference has an outstanding reputation. What I am going to do is to try and only enhance that reputation, again working with our institutions, with the conference staff, with everyone associated.
We also want to promote good sportsmanship. I feel very strongly about this. It is something that we have worked on at the Northeast Conference. I think that it is an issue that the NCAA is pushing quite a bit these days. We want to make sure that our student- athletes, our coaches and our spectators understand that good sportsmanship and highly competitive programs to be exclusive, that it is all part of it.
So, those are some of things that I think that we need to work on and improve. In conclusion ... I would to like to let you know that I am truly honored by the opportunity. William (Sharbrough, President of the Southern Conference) mentioned that I will be the eighth commissioner. Some great names have preceded me as commissioner of this conference. It is an outstanding position with a tremendous group of people and I am chomping at the bit to get started.
Questions from the Media
What is the most pressing need of the conference?
I think that the most pressing need, perhaps, is to do as good a job as we possibly can in marketing the conference. I think the Southern Conference has a tremendous story to tell of how it succeeds, as I said earlier with academics and athletically. I think we just have to do as good as possible to get that word out using television. Maybe we can enhance the television package for football and for men’s and women’s basketball. I think through our marketing efforts, our merchandising efforts ? you have a very attractive logo here ? I think that we need to kind of push that and get that word out that the Southern Conference is one of those premier leagues in the country.
Is there timetable for expansion?
That is one nice thing about being 11 (members). I do not think that we feel pressured to get back to an even number. We could survive at 11 for a while. If you asked everybody they would probably prefer to be at 12... I do not see it as pressing need; I think that is something, though, that is clearly going to be on the front burner.
What is your ultimate goal for the Southern Conference?
I think that the ultimate goal is to get as much as exposure as possible, so that when student-athletes in this part of the country, or other parts of the country too, consider where they want to go to college to play athletically, they are going to say to themselves, ?You know what: that is a heck of a conference. They care about academics, but they are very competitive; they can win national championships, they can play on the NCAA level.’ I think that is what we all want. We all want the member institutions to have their athletic programs fit into the mission of what they are trying to do as an institution.
What is it that you can do at the conference tournaments to make them a more memorable experience for the student-athletes?
One of the things we are going to focus on (at the upcoming SoCon Athletic Directors retreat) is how we conduct the championships on a sport by sport basis. I think there are a lot of things that we can do. We did this when I started at the Northeast Conference; we put together a championships committee and systematically updated everything that we did, from the trophies and the awards all the way down to the gifts and the programs.
When did you decide that the Southern Conference is where you were going to go?
Actually, I have always had my eye on this conference, going back to my days at the Sun Belt Conference. My boss there was Vic Bubas, who was the basketball coach at Duke for many years and had great success; when he played at North Carolina State they were in the Southern Conference, so I heard a lot about the SoCon from Vic. I actually applied for this job in 2001 when Danny (Morrison) was named. So, I have had this in mind for a long time. I have a great deal of respect for this conference and all through this process (for the job) it was a great feeling because I see a tremendous amount of upside to this job.
The job Geoff (Cabe) did as interim commissioner?
I think that if you ask almost all my colleagues across Division I, they would tell you he is one of the most able administrators at any conference office. He has done a great job in a very difficult spot. I cannot say enough about how he has made the transition for me smooth. I am going to lean on Geoff, Bryan (Assistant Commissioner McGowan) and all of the people in the conference office a great deal because I am just part of a team. I look at this as we try in the conference office to try and provide the tools that the schools need to be successful. We work as a team, and that is how I approach it.
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Commissioner John Iamarino, his wife Mary Ann and son P.J. |