00:00How about your conference this year?
00:01How do you think you guys did this year?
00:03And we'll start with the hoop side of it.
00:05How do you think you guys did this year?
00:07I think we need to do better.
00:09And, you know, a year ago when I first started in the league, we had, you know,
00:14Memphis was a top 15 team the entire year.
00:17And they scheduled at a conference really tough.
00:19They beat some great teams on the road.
00:21And, you know, they really competed like a team that should be competing in our league.
00:25And I think a lot of the challenges we had with trying to elevate the profile of the league in
00:30basketball was a lot of our members were not scheduling aggressively outside the conference.
00:36More of them are doing that now, which is good.
00:38But, you know, the flip side, too, is the autonomy conferences are not playing us nearly as much.
00:44And that's a challenge that we all have.
00:46It's not like the games are just sitting on the shelf and they're out there.
00:49But in year one, we were top heavy.
00:51In my second year, what we did was we instituted some scheduling parameters.
00:56And we also made sure that inside the league, the top was playing the top more.
01:02We're also creating some events with other conferences in the future.
01:05But what happened was the bottom of the league came up.
01:07Like we had a more competitive middle and top than we've had in years.
01:11So it's not the kind of thing you turn the key on in a year.
01:13But we made progress this year, you know, which was really good.
01:16I thought USF's emergence this year is a result of not only they had a great coach who now is
01:21gone, but they also are making investment there.
01:23And, you know, there's excitement about college basketball in Tampa, which is great timing for us because we're actually bringing
01:28our tournament there for the next two years.
01:31So let me ask you about, you know, expanding the American conference here.
01:36I mean, are you looking to expand?
01:38Are you being aggressive?
01:40Are you not being aggressive when you're talking about expansion?
01:43Where do you see the American right now when it comes to that?
01:47We're, you know, aggressive, however you want to coin it.
01:51We're on offense all the time.
01:53You know, that's the best way I can answer it, whether this is about television or it's about what we're
01:57doing in basketball or what we did in football last year and how just how dynamic and deep the league
02:04was competitively.
02:05We're just getting on offense.
02:06And, you know, from day one, we've talked about private capital.
02:09It's encouraging to see a lot of people in the industry attacking that now and sort of what we're doing
02:14on the commercial side.
02:15And we created a wholly owned commercial venture inside the league called Rise Ventures.
02:20Like everything we're doing is on offense.
02:22We've gotten a lot of very interesting and encouraging phone calls about interest in joining our league.
02:27And, you know, the thing about expansion that's just changed and, you know, my own perspective when I worked at
02:33Rutgers and we we steered them into the Big Ten when I was there, expansion used to be about increasing
02:39the value for everybody in the league.
02:42But I think you see a paradigm shift going on where you see institutions that are buying their way into
02:48it's almost like you're a minor league team and you buy an expansion franchise in the pro leagues.
02:53So you see the paradigm shifting a little bit, you know, and the caution in that is everybody needs the
02:58money right now.
02:59But a buy in fee is finite amount of money that runs out over a period of time.
03:04And when you get into the market with your media rights, have you actually added more value or do you
03:08get into a situation where you dilute your league?
03:10When I started in the American, because, you know, you know, it's better than anybody like this conference is has
03:16seen many iterations of itself.
03:18But when I started, I made a promise to the members that it would not dilute the league financially.
03:25And we've stuck to that. But, you know, naturally, we take every phone call.
03:28There's some really interesting opportunities that are out there.
03:31And it's important to just continue to have the conversation and keep an open mind.
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