The Voice caught up with Georgetown Athletic Director Lee Reed at Big East Media Day in New York on Oct. 22. Reed is finishing up his fourth year and is overseeing big changes for Hoya athletics.
What was your overall evaluation of the first year of the new Big East Conference and where do you see it going forward?
I thought [Commissioner Val Ackerman] and the conference office did an amazing job getting us up and running. I thought the teams performed like we would expect them to perform. There were a lot of great storylines last year. It was good to have Creighton in the league, that was a wonderful experience being able to see that part of the country, and that venue, and how passionate that the new members were about being in the Big East. They brought a lot of energy to the league. And the rivalries are the rivalries. Us playing the Villanovas, the St. Johns’s, and Providences, those are battles night in and night out. I thought it was fun. I thought it was an enjoyable year. I thought the tournament at the end of the year was great. I wish we would have been around a little bit longer but I really did think that it was a great tournament. It was a success.
Do you feel that Georgetown is integral to the league’s success?
I think we still are a recognizable name and that we got a lot of great programs in this league. Not to take away from any of those, but absolutely. Georgetown is an iconic brand. Everybody knows Georgetown and our history, and our recent success. I think we always have to look at it as ‘we have to be strong, we have to relevant, and we have to be vying for championships each and every year.’ I think it goes hand in hand.
Do you feel that the partnership with FOX Sports 1 has caused the league has caused the league to lose the exposure it once had with ESPN?
Any time you’re involved in a startup, it’s going to take time for viewers and fans to find out where we are. I think the partnership is where we expected it to be. We knew early on there was going to be some growing pains, but I think we’re right on track. I’m excited about everything that FOX has done, from hiring the talent that we have now doing the games to some of the other inventory that they’ve brought online. You heard [Commissioner Ackerman] mention earlier, that it’s the fastest growing network in the country. I think we’re going to be right back where we were. It’s going to take some time but I think people are finding us. We’re excited about the partnership. It’s a true partnership for FOX. It’s been amazing.
Do you foresee the league adding teams?
Never say never, but right now I think we’re really excited about figuring out 10 and creating and establishing those rivalries. I think we all, at this point, love the natural round robin. It’s good to have Creighton in our building every year, so our fans understand who Creighton is. It’s good to have Xavier in our building so everybody knows who Xavier is. Obviously with Villanova, it’s always good to go up to Philadelphia and play. Right now, I think everybody is satisfied, in terms of where we are. The non-conference, [Director of Basketball Operations Stu Jackson] mentioned it earlier, we have a robust non-conference schedule. I think last year our league non-conference RPI was 102, so we’re continuing to play great games outside of conference. I think right now 10 is the right number, it feels right.
You just alluded to the non-conference, you have Kansas coming in this year, you have Syracuse and re-starting a rivalry, and you have the Gavitt Challenge. What are other things do you have in the works with regards to non-conference?
[Coach Thompson], his staff, along my staff, we work together, we talk about scheduling every single day. We’re always looking at opportunities, whether they’re ideas that we generate, ideas that are brought to us by different networks. I think we’re always in the mix, in terms of talking and making conversations about great marquis non-conference games. We’ll always be at the table, and having those discussions. There’s nothing outside of the ones that you’ve heard about that we’re really talking about seriously.
That have been confirmed definitively?
Right. There’s some really conversations going on, as always. Whether they come through or not, depends on a whole lot.
The feeling with the fanbase right now, at least from a student perspective, is that there’s not enough quality home games to attend. And where there is a quality home game, it’s penciled in more for TV time than it is for student concerns. Like the Kansas game is a weeknight during the middle of final exams, Creighton will be in D.C. over winter break, and Senior Day will be when we’re all on spring break. So how do you balance that? What do you say to those concerns?
We are concerned about that. We want our students, the fans that come out to Verizon Center, we want to have attractive inventory for them. We want to have games that make sense, on nights that make sense, at times that make sense. It’s a delicate balance between that and the exposure that we get through FOX and our television partners. It’s one that we’ve been working through, the Big East we’ve been doing that for 30-plus years, the balancing act between TV and in-house attendance. It’s hard. It’s hard to fight the right balance. We would prefer the game to be on Saturday when all of our students are there. That’s exactly when we want to play games. But It just makes it really difficult. We’re working on it. We’re taking a look at it. We understand what the issue is. We’re trying to do the best we can with it.
How do you attack that trend, considering even the year you won the Big East regular season title in 2013, attendance was down from the year before?
It’s something that we’re working on through different initiatives, through our ticket office, through our marketing promotions. But at the end of the day it gets down to when games are, in terms of the Big East schedule coming out, when we can get availability at Verizon Center, because obviously we share that with the Wizards and the Capitals. So there are a lot of moving pieces to it, but it’s something that we’re working on. We’ve made a conscious effort to play more marquis games in the non-conference at home, as opposed to neutral-site options. It’s a national trend. It’s one that all of us are facing. Student attendance is down across the country, not only in basketball but in football you’re seeing that as well. You’re seeing athletic directors talking about this across the country. It’s a front burner issue for all of us. The attractiveness of a television broadcast now, with so much access, replays, high-definition televisions, it’s a double-edged sword. I don’t think anyone has found the right balance there, but we’re all looking at it and trying to find an answer to it. Who knows where it goes?
Do you attribute the lack of attendance to conference realignment and the loss of attractive opponents such as Syracuse, Louisville, Notre Dame, Connecticut, and Pittsburgh?
As you said earlier, as you were framing your question, even in the year we beat Syracuse (for the Big East regular season title) at the Verizon Center, that year student attendance was down. It’s not just because of the change. Has the change had an impact? I’m sure it might have. But at the end of the day, the decline has been going over a couple of years and we got to figure it out. We’ve got to do more on-campus to get our students engaged.
Do you support paying student athletes?
It’s a good question. Here’s what I support. I support us collectively trying to create ways to drive more revenue to our student-athletes’ bottom line. So am I in favor of revenue sharing with our student-athletes? Absolutely. Am I in favor of four-year scholarships? Yes. Am I favor of cost-of-attendance? Absolutely. Am I in favor of better, longer coverage in terms of health care? Yes. And a lot of that we already do. But when it gets down to employer-employee relationship, I think that’s when we have to, as a university, as an NCAA school, we have to have some conversations around that because that changes the dynamic. For us, at Georgetown, the collegiate model is one we still embrace. And we embrace it because it makes sense for who we are. So while we’ll always be competitive, and we’ll always be in the game, I think it would be hard for us to view our student-athletes, people you go to school with, as employees. That would be hard for me to imagine. Now will the rest of the country go there? Maybe. I don’t know. I don’t have a crystal ball on that. But for us, the collegiate model makes sense. But we are committed, as a league we are committed, certainty at Georgetown we are committed to doing everything we can with our basketball programs to keep up and do the things we need to do and drive more money to the bottom line of our student athletes. Stipends, whatever you want to call it, we’re in favor of those things.
Much has been made of the Northwestern unionization movement. If something like that were to happen at Georgetown, what would the university’s response be?
Good question. It’s hard to talk through hypotheticals. I think what we do in higher education is we try to get our students, all of our students not just our basketball players, to think critically, to be leaders, to make decisions that benefit them, and I think if that’s a byproduct of that then we would deal with it as a university. I couldn’t tell you specifically what we would do because it’s a hypothetical question. But yes, I think we would be proud that our student-athletes would be taking a leadership role in something they believe in, if that in fact were something that they believe in. We haven’t had any conversation. I talk to our student-athletes all the time and I don’t think they see this relationship as employee-employer relationship, at least not on our campus from what I hear.
What’s the university’s stance on not giving the football teams scholarships?
We’re pretty committed to our non-scholarship model of football. We still think it makes sense for Georgetown. It makes sense for who we are, where we are. We’re trying to find creative ways to remain competitive. Is it a challenge? Yes. But just in terms of who we are and what we stand for as an institution, it’s where we want to be. That’s the end of the story. While other schools have chosen to do that, we’ve decided that we don’t want to do that at this point in time.
Do you agree with that model?
Absolutely. It’s a university decision. I think it fits who we are. We manage our program not through what others do. We manage our athletics program at Georgetown University through what’s best for Georgetown University, for our students, and for our student-athletes. We’re not as quick to get caught up in all of the things that other schools do. It’s more about what’s best for us and then we figure out how to manage it from there. So that’s how we’ve always been. We’ve been leaders in that and so just because others decide to do one thing, we’re not going to do that. Because again, the balance between student and athlete, the balance between what they do academically, and what they do from an athletics standpoint, we don’t want to compromise that and we feel really good about where we are.
But what makes football different from any other sport? Why are you willing to compromise and offer scholarships in other sports but not offer scholarships in football?
Again, we have for a long time, since when we brought the program back in 1964. That’s what we were. Back in the early 90s, when the NCAA changed rules and kind of pushed schools from out of the Division-III model to a Division I-AA model, we were non-scholarship. That’s kind of been who’ve we’ve been. Until now, we haven’t seen reason to change that.
Is it a lack of money or is it just the way Georgetown views itself as an institution?
I think it’s probably a combination.
Do you feel that Georgetown loses that attractiveness to potential students and athletes, when other schools have a festive game-day atmosphere surrounding the football team?
I think that’s up to us to create that and develop that. I don’t think it’s, “You don’t have scholarships therefore you can’t have a festive attitude or atmosphere for football games.” I think that some of the things we haven’t talked about publicly, but some of the things we’re trying to do with our football program will hopefully help enhance that. We’ve got Homecoming this week against Bucknell. It’ll be a sold out game. Harvard was sold out two weeks ago. In my time here, we’ve had three or four sellouts. My priority is, can we get Multi-Sport Field, can we enhance that facility for our student-athletes, not only for football but for lacrosse. It’s in a great location. It’s in a prime spot on campus and my goal, even though we’ve been focused on the Thompson Center, is to finish that project. We’re working diligently towards that as well. I think in the future that’s something you’ll be able to see, is a football stadium, lacrosse stadium that looks really good.
Why was that project put on the backburner initially? Why was the Thompson Center prioritized over that?
We’re a small community. I think people forget that. And because our success is so large, people forget we’re a relatively small institution. As we have done projects, it’s not just about athletics, it’s about how they fit into the master plan of the University. There’s been a pretty public commitment to build things at certain times. I think President deGioia talked about it. They did the Performing Arts Center. Then they did Hariri, the Science Building. At the time, 2008, we ran into economic crisis. Things got delayed and then we said that we were going to come back and do the Thompson Athletic Center. That impacts more of our student-athletes so it made more sense, in my mind, to do that first. Doesn’t mean that we don’t need to do Multi-Sport? We have our attention toward that. We want to complete that project as soon as possible as well. But the Thompson Athletic Center was one that was targeted to be done now and it just impacts all of our student-athletes. So if we’re going to focus on one project, for me that project made the most sense because that impacts, in a positive way, 700-plus student-athletes in all of our varsity programs, so that’s where the attention should have been.
Women’s basketball has a new Head Coach, Natasha Adair. There was a lot of controversy last year with what happened under then-Head Coach Keith Brown. Do you feel that that program has established its footing and will be heading in the right direction?
I’m really excited about Natasha and what she has brought to the Hilltop. She understands who we are fundamentally because she worked here in the late 90s. So she’s had experience recruiting to Georgetown, coaching Georgetown at McDonough Arena, so she understands that dynamic. That was attractive for me as we recruited the next coach. I’m excited to have here. She’s brought a lot of energy. The recruiting piece has been right. She’s extremely positive and optimistic about the future of the program, which makes me optimistic about the future of the program. So I think we’re going to be pretty good here in a short matter of time.
The Thompson Center has been embraced as this new project that will help bring Georgetown Athletics develop in the future and be more competitive in all sports, not just basketball. What would you say to some students who have been critical of the project?
I hadn’t heard that students were questioning that. I guess you could assume that would happen, that you wouldn’t have 100-percent support for any project on campus. I’m sure when we were doing [Regents Hall], some people we’re questioning why we’re doing [Regents] then. I’m sure when we were doing the [Hariri Building], people were questioning that. That’s a natural part of any project that happens on a college campus. For us, that’s why [President DeGioia] said, it’s going to be 100-percent philanthropy. People have given to that project because that’s what important to them. We haven’t taken people or redirected other people away from other priorities on campus. These are people that had interest in this project and they’ve given. You take a Roy Hibbert, you take a Jeff Green, you take a Patrick Ewing, you take a Shaw family, the major contributors to this project have a long history in intercollegiate athletics and what they understand is that athletics is a significant piece to the University’s mission statement. It’s a big piece to who we are as a Jesuit, Catholic university. It’s cura personalis. It’s all of those types of things. For us, the project makes complete sense at this time and that’s why we’re committed to doing it 100 percent through philanthropy so that it doesn’t take away from all of the other important priorities on campus. I’m really proud of the fact that we’ve been able to do it and do it all through philanthropy so that it doesn’t take from other things on campus. I would hope the other benefit to students is that by having a training center, now that the Thompson Center (is under construction), we’ll be able to come out of Yates Field House in a big way. That weight room we have up there, we no longer need that space. That opens up more space for Yates to do whatever. It might be a tennis court, it might something else. We’ll not be in Yates as much as we have in the past so it frees up critical needs in Yates. As you know, that’s another building that’s overutilizied. I think it helps everybody on campus. I’m hoping it helps everybody on campus.
Where do you see the future of the Georgetown athletics? What are you actively trying to pursue as Athletics Director to move this program forward?
One of the things we’re trying to do is, again, try and chart our own path and understanding what’s going on nationally. There’s a conversation around governance, there’s a conversation around autonomy, there’s a conversation that’s related to football schools that give big media rights deals. That’s happening nationally. For us, we’re just making sure that for what we’re doing, in terms of the development, the overall development of our student-athletes, that all of those pieces make sense for us and that it hopefully keeps us at a very high level competitively. Our goal is to always be as competitive as we can be with our athletics programs, but we also put a heavy investment on, for example, our leadership program Hoyas Lead. I know you’ve probably heard about and talked about it with Mike Lorenzen, where that becomes more of an academic-based, intentional leadership development of all of our student-athletes. That’s at the core of who we are. Academically, making sure our student-athletes have the balance they need to move forward, have the competitive experience on campus, but also are able to get their degree and move on and do things out in the community. We haven’t lost focus about athletics and what it really means on our campus. Yes, we’re obviously in some ways reacting to what’s going on nationally, but we’re looking at it through the lens of Georgetown, and what’s best for our student-athletes. The big difference, I would say, between Georgetown student-athletes and some other campuses is our student-athletes don’t come here and see their athletics experience as the end. They see it as a means to an end. You know what I’m saying about that. It’s part of their undergraduate experience. It rounds out their undergraduate experience. Every once in a while, we’ll have in our basketball program who is able to leave early, or when they graduate, go make money in that sport. But by in large, to have 10 percent of our undergraduate population have the experience of competitive athletics and participation athletics, that is really significant. If you talk to our student-athletes, I think that they would say, ‘this is a wonderful experience.’ Either the current student-athletes or the ones graduated, this is really one of the things that was positive for them in their experience at Georgetown. For us, it make look different 5-10 years from now. I’m sure it will. But our goals will still be the same. We want to be as competitive as we can be. We want to be fiscally responsible in that approach. For example, our spending per student-athlete, everybody talks about the money that is spent on Georgetown athletics, our spending per student-athlete is near the bottom of the Big East. We spend money on athletics but the point is we don’t overspend on athletics. We keep it in the context the way it should be kept.
So glad and proud to have Lee Reed as our AD. He gets Georgotown. Go hoyas.