Wake Forest AD John Currie Interview

We are less than two days away from Wake Forest facing the Clemson Tigers. Got a couple tickets to give away later in the show. But right now, a lot to get to with the director of athletics, John Curry, that joins the show now. And let's start with tickets. I heard you say a couple days ago, there were still 1000 tickets available for this game.

And that surprised me. It's been sold yet. We still have some tickets to sell, Josh, but we've got great consistent demand. A new game creates some challenges for some people that have obligations with their families.

You know, youth soccer and lily football, stuff like that. But the weather is going to be perfect. We got ABC television in and we're really excited to have a great day at Truist Field. Yeah, my brother's never been to a game at Truist Field, so I've got a few tickets for him. He's heading down. Goodness. High of 75. Low of 57.

As of right now, clear skies. John Curry with us here. A lot of people thought there was a chance College Game Day could be here for this game. Were you in touch with them? We were, and I was. We knew we were one of three or four games that they were considering.

There were a couple different factors that had to happen. But there was certainly excitement about it. We had a great plan ready to go that our staff had developed. We're really excited about the potential opportunity, but, you know, they'll be back.

Just keep doing our part. Last week, Wake Forest, 37-36 winners against Liberty. The day before that, you announced in the From the Quad newsletter that the Home and Home Future series with Liberty was going to be canceled. Why the cancellation? Well, there are a lot of different factors in scheduling, and keep in mind that the Liberty series was scheduled really six or eight years ago now. In fact, the game we played last weekend was supposed to be played many years ago and got deferred a couple times, I think at their request, actually. As we look into the future, both with their conference realignment, they're moving from being an independent into Conference USA, and our needs.

It just became, in the interest of both schools, to end the series at that one game. I want to continue to prioritize playing home games, the truest feel when you've got this incredible best fan experience in North Carolina and a really nice pattern of great crowds and experiences and a lot of fun. We want to have at least six and hopefully seven home games each year.

So all things considered, it was the right thing to do, and we'll continue to work on figuring out how to build out that schedule more. It didn't surprise me when I saw the headline because we had App AD Doug Gillen on the show last week, and he said you and him had been in touch talking about some dates and maybe something could happen soon between the Mountaineers and the Demon Deacons. He was obviously excited to potentially make up that game from 2020 in Winston-Salem, and you're talking about adding home games to the slate. How close are you and Doug to making that 2025 date a reality App State going to Wake Forest? I don't have any updates on that now.

He and I traded text messages, and Doug's a longtime friend and colleague. He's done a great job in Boone with Appalachian State providing leadership there. The next game we need to change is indeed the 2020 game which we did not play due to COVID, and that's the game that is currently owed in the series. So I believe Wake Forest played at Appalachian before I got here, but it was in 2018 or 2017.

So that 20 game that didn't get played is the return game from the last time that Wake went to Boone. So we could. We do have an opening in 2025. So that is on the table, but we have not revisited it since last week, and that's simply because he was getting ready for all his stuff going on there.

We were getting ready to host a sold-out crowd for Liberty here. So I'm sure at some point we'll be back connected and continue to try to figure out how to get that game done. And you mentioned in the newsletter, it wouldn't be a return trip up the mountain the following year because you already got a couple of road games booked for 2026. But when that announcement comes, whenever it is that you're getting that remake back on the schedule, do you anticipate like Doug does that it's going to be an announcement of three games, which includes one game up the mountain?

I don't know. I certainly want to try to figure out how to get that done over time. One of the things that we've done is we do have a number of road games, a group of five road games scheduled, and we have Power Five road games scheduled. And so we've got a year where we go to Georgia State, a year we go to Yukon, a year we go to East Carolina, and those teams are all coming here as well. And we scheduled some of those games a number of years ago, and Appalachian was full a lot of those years at that time. So there's some years where we simply can't go because we already have a road game, either a P5 or a G5 road game.

So it's a bit of a puzzle. We'll see what continues to transpire as you see realignment and leagues choosing to go to nine games or eight games or whatever, all those things factor into the puzzle. John Curry's with us here, Wake Forest AD, also a Wake Forest alum, somebody who grew up in the state of North Carolina, which I think is relevant to something that you were talking about a couple of days ago. And everybody around here has been talking about the ACC headquarters moving from Greensboro to Charlotte, which is supposed to happen by the start of the next academic year.

Does it bother you at all that headquarters are moving? Josh, you know that there's nostalgia with things staying the way they always are and things staying the way they've always been. Right. Which I certainly, you know, I have some of that as you and I have talked about before. And as you alluded to in that introduction to the comment, you know, I grew up in North Carolina on Tobacco Road and, you know, the time that I grew up was a time when you were really lucky if you had a really cool fourth grade teacher who wheeled one of those AV carts into your classroom on the Friday of the ACC tournament. And you watch the ACC tournament live in Greensboro, North Carolina at noon on a Friday in your classroom with the rest of your elementary school chums. So that Greensboro feel and nostalgia is really important. Obviously, that's an important community to Wake Forest and the Triad and Carolina Court, all those kind of things.

So it's sad. On the other hand, I believe that as this conference, you know, now, you know, when the conference was founded, I think four states, North Carolina, maybe just three, actually, because I think Virginia was a was a secondary add that North Carolina, South Carolina, Maryland with the state to the conference. Right. So now this conference is 15 schools in 10 states. So the fact that we've kept it in North Carolina and continue to anchor the conference in the geographical or at least emotional center of of of of the conference here in North Carolina is that that's ultimately the most important thing. Last thing for you on that note, we saw that with the headquarters being moved, the decision was unanimous among university presidents, which tells me Charlotte had an impressive package that they put forth. We know because Mayor Von's told us on the show from Greensboro, private plane was provided, you know, affordable housing closer to downtown if they wanted to move away from Grand Over. Could you provide an example of something that Charlotte offered that maybe Greensboro couldn't match that would make it make more sense to a lot of the people here locally?

Well, to your point, Graham, Greensboro is phenomenal, and the feel of the tournament in Greensboro, the feel of going to Sedgefield, the convenience of Grand Over, all those things are our winners. And I do believe that Greensboro literally did everything it could possibly do. You know, we do stuff here at Wake Forest. There's some stuff we don't control.

We do the best we can at what we can control. And that's what we focus on. And I believe Greensboro has done that in this process. And I'm sure that there will continue to be Greensboro, Greensboro continue to host a basketball tournament from time to time, etc. John Curry, anything else to add that Deacon fans should know trying to get into the stadium and watch the Deacs face the Tigers Saturday? Well, we were facing the Tigers tonight at eight o'clock at Spry Stadium women's soccer. It's great game eight o'clock get there early for that game because we'll have a lot of fun.

That game will be on HCC Network so you can watch that on the linear channel tonight. And then we've got a lot of other sports in action tomorrow feel like he's going down to play Carolina volleyball is heading down to play Georgia Tech. We got a huge soccer game on Saturday night as our number one demon Deacons will be in in Clemson to play Clemson at soccer seven o'clock on Saturday night, but in terms of the football game, we do encourage people to get there early. Remember that we're in a moment in time where the number of people who are coming to football games at Wake Forest is as high as it's ever been the number of people who are using their tickets, you know, the yields if you will is higher than it's ever been. So, I believe we've really upgraded everything around the stadium, whether it's the Deacon walk which happens. It'll happen Saturday morning at 930 great thing to come and bring your kids to and see our team as they get off the bus and parade into the stadium.

And then it at noon, you know, sometimes morning games are a little bit harder on traffic because everybody is coming in a more contained windows. So just remember that and leave a little bit earlier and let's get in there. And when those ABC television cameras come on showcasing the Winston-Salem Triad community, let's have a full house. John Curry appreciate the time. Hope to see you on Saturday. See you Saturday, Josh. Go Deacs.