John Currie Interview (5-4-20)

Heading into the weekend, Wake Forest introduced Steve Forbes as its next head basketball coach and since then we've just heard glowing praise from all across the college basketball universe, including Wichita State coach Greg Marshall who was on Friday's show. We expect to be joined by Coach Forbes tomorrow, but right now we're being joined by the director of athletics for the Demon Deacons, John Curry.

So let's start here John, and the time's always right. Who was the architect on the viral medical face mask spike video we saw Thursday night? I can't claim that I was, but it is amazing.

I think that thing has like 750,000 views now and some of my buddies sent me a note because I guess it was on like Tom Arnold and other people were commenting about the technical quality of it and all that kind of stuff. Bottom line is the Deacon fans saw the excitement and intensity of Coach Forbes. We do need to keep wearing our masks because we want to be back in the BB&T field and Joel Coliseum and Spry Soccer Stadium this fall and this winter, but I'm glad it turned out in good stead. How would you describe the relationship you and Coach Forbes shared in Knoxville and has that relationship been sustained since then?

Yeah, to some extent. Coach Forbes and I, we did work together during, I guess he came there in 2000. I believe he hired Coach Pearl in 2006.

Coach Forbes came in 2007. So we were together 2007, 2008, 2009. Tennessee won the conference championship for the first time in forever, 30 years or whatever. In 2008, we went to Sweet 16 together. We had some good times.

We also had some challenging times. We had to work together through different issues and then I left in 2009 to go to Kansas State. We stayed in touch, but we weren't like regular text buddies or something like that. We were just colleagues that knew each other and respect each other and then as time got along, we maybe connected here and there, but I've always followed his career. He's always had the ability to connect with people.

As I said before we came on the air, I think Josh, he's just one of those people that treats people the right way and truly cares about other people. We did. I do remember now that in 2014, we were at the NCAA tournament together and I remember he was scouting our game. K-State was playing. We were in the first round and we were playing, we were in the 8-9 game and we were playing Kentucky. Wichita State had the next game and so Forbes, he was scouting our game. So I remember we talked a little bit during our game that day. Oh yeah, I do remember that.

That's when Wichita State went undefeated during the regular season and you guys ran up against that Aaron Harrison team and that Kentucky team ended up going to the Final Four that year. But I've often said, Jon, whenever you're in a time of crisis, you generally lean on people you trust, people that you know. And I'm interested, during a pandemic and how it limited travel, how much did that trust that you had with Forbes, knowing him, differentiate him from some of the other candidates you considered? Certainly some, but I knew most of the candidates that we talked to seriously to some extent, some better than others. But I do, one of the things you have when you've been around for a while, like I have, in addition to having a little scar tissue, you've also got some pretty, you've known a lot of people and you've run into a lot of people. And you can triangulate relationships and attest to character and you know how somebody treats the custodians in the building and all that kind of stuff. That's all important stuff. And so certainly I was familiar with Coach Forbes.

I had a trust in his character in those things, but I had similar knowledge of others. Obviously, whenever you're trying to fill a basketball position, fit is everything. I think that's something that Jay Billis said last week on this show. So obviously, Wake Forest is a private institution, which is not something that's really been on Forbes' resume quite yet. You have to recruit Wake Forest and the ACC differently than you do, say, at East Tennessee State, where he recruited a ton of JUCO players. He addressed a lot of that in the press conference on Friday, but what stood out to you from some of the answers he gave during the interview process that led you to believe, oh man, these aren't going to be problems for Coach Forbes? Well, a big part of that, Josh, was why we had a pretty broad group of Wake Forest officials participating in the process. And I was very interested to hear how all of our candidates, not just Coach Forbes, but all of our candidates, related to the questions that Dean Gillespie or Provost Kirsch posed upon our candidates. Because we are committed at Wake Forest that student athletes are going to be part of the whole enterprise, not just the sports part of the enterprise. And so, hearing the questions and the answers of different candidates is very helpful, especially as those questions came from people that spend more of their time on the academic enterprise than the athletic enterprise.

And Coach Forbes certainly answered those questions well. I think it's important to remember as well that in a 30-odd year career, the different kinds of places you are help you understand the context in which you're competing. So, keep in mind, Texas A&M is an AAU institution, and Steve Forbes recruited at Texas A&M.

Tennessee is both a flagship institution, and certainly doesn't have the academic rating the way Forest does, but is a flagship institution and a significant public institution, comprehensive institution. I can tell you that I'm a much better athletics director. People can judge whether I'm a good one or not, but I'm better than I would be if I had never worked at Tennessee and Kansas State. I mean, those experiences, those 19 years in public education gave me a much better feel for the challenges and the opportunities that exist for Wake Forest competing in a Power 65 where, I don't know what the number is, 56 universities in the Power 65, I think, or some number like that are public universities. So, that's the world in which we compete.

So, having an understanding of that world from being inside it is very helpful. And piggybacking off of that, when he was at Tennessee, he was a point man in many of the recruits that they brought in. In 2008, they had a top 10 recruiting class, 2010 a top 10 recruiting class, and of course, for the first time in Tennessee history, at the time in 2008, they garnered the number one ranking as well. So, it is a very deep background that he has, but you were talking about some of the people at Wake Forest, some of the luminaries, some of the alums who got involved in the process last week, and I just want to follow on something that generated steam on Thursday. What details can you share with me about how Tim Duncan and Chris Paul became involved? Well, throughout the year, in assessing our program, and trying to make sure that I understood our opportunities, I did talk to lots of different people who are stakeholders, and certainly are pro athletes and pro deets or stakeholders. You know, the program exists because of players that have come through the program, and so it was important to get feedback, and sometimes that feedback over the course of the year came unsolicited, sometimes I had to solicit it. And certainly, to have input and to have engagement in our process last week with two of the greatest players, period, not just at Wake Forest, was very helpful, and I really appreciate the time and the willingness to invest time that both Chris and Tim gave us. John Curry's with us here, the director of athletics at Wake Forest. I gotta ask about this, Jeff Goodman, he had the report that Wake Forest doesn't feel it's responsible for the full extent of Danny Manning's buyout, citing failures to meet criteria. Now, out of respect for your department's policy declining to comment on contracts, I'll refrain from asking about any specifics there, instead I'll just ask you this. Do you believe Danny Manning fulfilled his duties as Wake Forest basketball coach?

Well, I appreciate the very skillful way you have asked a question that I can't ask, and I can't comment on any aspect of our contracts and otherwise, but I don't mind your responsibility to ask that question. Let's get to something that I think is obviously affecting many sports fans, something that everybody's thinking about. Based on the information you're privy to, how optimistic are you about college football being played on schedule this fall? Josh, I'm optimistic and I'll be a believer until it is said that we can't.

Obviously, no one knows for sure. We talk about what we can control, I can't control ultimately what are deemed to be the health and safety conditions in our city and our state and nationally. I do think I'm incredibly proud to be from Winston-Salem, North Carolina and have the leadership that Mayor joins has provided and Don Flo and others, the Master City Initiative, we need to take that seriously. And part of what taking that seriously is, that is one of the conditions or one of the elements that's going to be part of return to normalcy, so to speak. So I believe we got to control what we can control.

So we can control putting on a mask when we go around town, going in and out of the grocery store and all that kind of stuff. That's a help. We can help with that. And then as far as the dynamics of return to play, inside the department, that was one of the conversations.

I've been on the phone, WebEx or ZoomEx or whatever all morning and those are kind of the conversations we have. How do we do this and how do we move forward? We can do it, but we have to figure out exactly the parameters of how we're going to do it. We can't wait until a date, you know, two months from now or three months from now or whenever it is to decide how we can implement. We've got to be working on those plans right now.

And I can assure you that we are working on those plans right now, knowing that some of the variables that we might have in our calculus might change. Commissioner Swafford, he said dealing with COVID during the ACC tournament was the number one challenge he's faced in nearly 25 years as the commissioner of this league. So take me behind the scenes and give me a sense for what it's like managing all these sports that you do, trying to follow what's exactly happening when a lot of the questions right now, it seems, are unanswerable while also trying to manage a budget. What do you view to be the biggest challenge you face?

You know, there's the uncertainty of it all is a challenge, but that's why you got to compartmentalize down back into what we control and make decisions about what we can control so that we're in best position to respond to the things as they come along that we don't control. I can tell you this, after the last two months, going through the COVID crisis, going through the only Power 5 men's basketball transition during this crisis. I can tell you this, that I have unbelievable confidence in our leadership team at Wake Forest and in the athletics program, and that my confidence and I mean I already had a high confidence in President Hatch in our university cabinet but, boy, something like this just cements that confidence and our team inside the athletic department, our leadership team inside the athletics department, I believe is closer together than ever before because we've had an unprecedented set of circumstances that we've had to figure out how to deal with and that's helped us under fire, if you will, in communication and trust and teamwork.

John Curry with us here at Wake Forest AD. Tomorrow Steve Forbes is going to be our guest. On the way out, is it true Coach Forbes stayed at the Shaw Center Thursday night? That's where he slept?

I'll tell you, we had a little, we weren't quite sure, you know, but you'd have to ask him that question. At one point they were staying at the hotel and then they were just going to stay at the complex and I think Coach Forbes probably has the best answers to that question, but I do know that they're not sleeping very much. When we had him on our head coach's call on Friday morning, we had an 8 a.m. head coach's call, WebEx, and Steve Forbes was on there, but he literally had not gone to bed because they had stayed up all night texting and talking with our players and so he came right into that deal. So we need to let my man get a little bit of sleep here and there as we go along. Well I've got to give you some props, man. It's not easy to make a coaching change during the middle of the pandemic and to do it as quickly as you did and seemingly you got the guy that you wanted all along here and we look forward to getting to know him.

Maybe in the next few days he could get some sleep and hopefully, hopefully sometime soon we'll be talking about getting the stands filled at Joel Coliseum, getting the stands filled at BB&T Field and returning to some kind of normalcy. Appreciate the time, Jon. All right, Josh, thanks so much for having me on and appreciate everything you guys are doing to keep people informed and in the loop during this time of crisis. You got it. All right, coming up. How would Michael Jordan's career have been perceived if he played in the social media era? Spoiler alert, not great. This is The Drive.