An exclusive conversation with ACC Commissioner John Swofford about why he’s retiring
Long-serving ACC commissioner John Swofford announced Thursday that he would retire in June 2021 after 25 years in charge of the conference. He spoke exclusively to the News & Observer’s Steve Wiseman outside the ACC’s offices in Greensboro on Thursday.
Steve Wiseman: What made now the right time for this?
John Swofford: “Nora and I started looking at this several years ago. We had sort of set this point in time as the right time. This will be my 24th year. So we’ve had this planned for at least some time right around now. We just didn’t know it would be during a pandemic. It’s the right time for us. I’ve really enjoyed what I’ve done in this league as a student-athlete, as an AD as a commissioner. I’ve spent my entire career in the ACC and that’s a blessing because I believe it’s the best league in the country. It’s what I grew up with as a kid, so it really has been an honor, a privilege and a blessing to be part of this league for that period of time and see all the challenges and the changes and the adjustments that have needed to be made to keep the league as one of the premiere leagues in the country.”
“The best part of it has really been the people that I’ve had the opportunity to work with. The athletes I’ve had the opportunity to meet early in their young lives as athletes coming into the ACC. I’ve been around long enough to watch so many of them grow and live their lives and now I see some of their kids play in the ACC. If you are going to be in college athletics I don’t know, for someone like me that grew up in North Carolina, how you can have a more blessed career than working in this league after playing in this league.
“To have a situation where Gene Corrigan, who gave me my first job, literally, in college athletics, I end up following him in the commissioner’s chair. That’s something that’s always been very special to me because of my respect for Gene and appreciation for Gene. People like Homer Rice, who was the AD at Carolina when I was a football player at North Carolina, who was such a great mentor to me and still is to this day. He’s in his early 90s and is a great friend. You know, it’s just been something I’ve really cherished.”
SW: Is there one thing that you are really proud of from your tenure as ACC commissioner?
JS: “There are a lot of things there along the way. Whether it’s most recently the ACC Network. That only came about because of our expansion. That was very necessary in order to keep the league as one of the country’s most prominent ones during a very challenging change in the landscape of college athletics. It could have been even more extreme than it was. The grant of media rights, the start of the ACC football championship game, the ACC-Big Ten Challenge, that has been something that when we started it early on, it’s now a staple of the early season basketball.
“But the biggest thing over the years is the people, whether they are here in the conference office or in our institutions. That’s what really makes an organization ultimately. The culture that we’ve had because if you have the right kind of culture I think you can solve whatever type of problems that are ever in front of you. Those are intangibles. It’s a real mix of tangible accomplishments for the league itself and the quality of people generally speaking at the schools and who have come through our conference staff. But ultimately it’s always about the athletes and the very special marriage of top-flight athletics and top-flight institutions of higher education, which is unique to our country. It doesn’t exist anywhere else in the world.
“So it’s very much an American thing, if you will. I think right now, when we don’t have it, we understand the importance of sports and particularly, intercollegiate athletics, to our society and our culture and how much it can mean. At the same time, it puts it in perspective. But it also tells us how good it is for us when we miss it. So there’s always going to be challenges. You never reach a point in this kind of job where the last challenge is there so you walk away.
“We’ve had plenty of challenges. Hopefully we have hit them head on and met them generally successfully. While the ACC Network was a work in progress and a lot of things had to happen before we could get to the point of having that, there are certainly plenty left and plenty for the next commissioner and our institutions going forward.”
SW: You have one more year here. There are a lot of challenges facing the world right now with the pandemic, also with all that’s going on with systemic racism and also the changes that are happening with name, image, likeness. Do you have a checklist of what you want to get done in our last year? It seems like a really, really challenging time, as challenging as ever, maybe.
JS: “It’s an extraordinary time and certainly one that none of us could have predicted. No. 1 on the list is dealing with COVID-19 and what that means as we hope to play college sports in the fall in a way that is safe. We hope that it’s a reasonable thing to do. So a lot of decisions to be made there. The NIL situation could be a significant game-changer for college athletics. The issue of transfers and what to do with that in a fair and equitable way is certainly a prominent challenge right in front of us. So there are plenty of challenges there and they will be ongoing.
“That’s nothing new to our country or intercollegiate athletics. There are very significant challenges there that, I think, our league is in a very good position to address those challenges going forward because of our membership and the strength of our membership in terms of the quality of schools, the geographic footprint, the strength that those 15 schools have together going forward. I do think the league is extremely well positioned to do whatever it needs to do going forward.”
This story was originally published June 25, 2020 at 2:11 PM.