Pitt Athletic Director Heather Lyke met the media on Wednesday to discuss a wide range of topics. In part one of her interview, Lyke talks about the culture she's building at Pitt, flipping the court at the Petersen Events Center and more.
Lyke: I thought it would be important to share a little bit about where we are and where we are headed and give you a chance to ask some questions that you may have. Obviously we’ve had a lot of news and activity in the last couple months or weeks or so, and I’ll just say that, you know, I’m about a year in and we have focused heavily on the culture here at Pitt in the Athletic Department. I’ve talked a lot about creating a culture of comprehensive excellence and just to make sure that people realize that culture’s made up of your people. It’s hard to define a culture; the people are what define your culture.
So we feel that we have really done a nice job of building the right people around the table, whether it’s on our administrative team and now our coaching staff; getting the right people who believe in what we’re doing and believe that we can be absolutely competitive in the ACC, and if you’re competitive in the ACC, you’re competitive nationally - that’s what we aspire to do across the board with our 19 teams.
You all know how important I think Coach Capel and Coach White are in that formula of belief and having the confidence and courage to come here and help us build something special and build something that sustains success. I think alignment and stability of leadership is really important, and obviously that’s why we manage Coach Narduzzi the way we do; I think it’s critical that we solidified him as our head coach for a long time. He’s on a tremendous trajectory and we wanted that to happen and obviously we expect the same thing with all of our coaches.
The people side of it is starting to fill in and starting to really get solidified. Once you have the people - once you have the right people and everybody understands the expectations and they understand the belief system and they know what we’re trying to build, then we kind of shift focus to, how do we help them - provide them with the necessary tools and resources and facilities to have success in the ACC and nationally? That is what we can and want to do here.
So I thought I’d share a little bit about the facility vision and certainly a couple things in the immediate future that will happen with regards to the Pete and then also just, you know, I can talk further about our bigger vision if you want with regards to our overall facility master plan and I’m happy to do that.
But on the near front, we have season basketball tickets, so obviously with - both basketball and football ticket sales are very strong and we’re in a very good position on both fronts, which is exciting. As soon as Coach Capel was hired, I think the ticket office - you know, the suites got sold right away that were open and there’s the demand. But what we want to share with our basketball season ticket holders and fans and people that want to be back in, next year, at the end of the 2018-19 basketball season, we will be flipping the court. What I mean by that is, obviously the ACC Network is coming and that’s a super exciting thing, but we’re on national television now anyway and when you see our games on national television, I don’t think it showcases our students at Pitt in the Oakland Zoo as well as it could.
I mean, the Oakland Zoo is one of our best assets that we have at Pitt. We have students who come out and are organized and committed and loyal and - winter, hills, darkness, whatever it is, they get to the games and they want to come to the Pete. So the Oakland Zoo is critical to our success and that gameday experience. When they built the Pete, they essentially built it backwards, as you all probably realize. So the cameras shoot at the benches, which are in front of the suites. So at the end of this season, we will redo the floor - we’ll have some fun with that; you all can weigh in on what it might look like - and we will flip the benches to the opposite side of the court and the cameras will be, obviously, on the opposite side of the arena.
So the camera angle will shoot toward the benches, which will be sitting in front of the Zoo then. We will obviously have all of our courtside seats, two rows of our courtside seats all the way around, and they will sit in front of the suites, then, the floor suites, as opposed to the team being in front of the floor suites. We wanted you to know that. We want people to understand why. I think it’s critical for the gameday environment, the experience of our students at Pitt. I can’t tell you how many people I’ve met since I’ve been here that have said, ‘You know, I was a student in the Zoo’ or ‘My dad took me to games when I was…and I saw what the Zoo was all about and I wanted to come to Pitt to be in the Zoo.’ And that’s - you know, you can’t capture that. There’s not a pricetag you can put on that. So that experience for students to be engaged with the gameday experience is really important.
We’re going to have some fun with that and we’re going to really, obviously, try to engage them at an even greater level and showcase them on TV because, in the hiring process, I think a couple things were interesting with both men’s and women’s basketball. Obviously, they know Pitt well, so many of the people we talked to had played - had coached, as in opposing coach, at the Pete against Pitt. And they were very interested in Pitt because they know what an unbelievably intimidating place the Petersen Events Center is to play, and they know what that gameday atmosphere is and they know how great of fans we have here in Pittsburgh. So that was attractive to them. They were like, ‘Look, I want to be a part of that because I’ve been trying to coach against it and I think I’d love to be a part of it.’ But I don’t know that the media or the national fan knows because, again, our camera - the actual televised cast of it does not showcase the Pete as well as it could. So that’s one of the reasons.
And then, honestly, Coach Capel and Coach White both asked - I don’t think it was actually right during the interview process, but it might have been right after we offered them the job and they accepted. It was very shortly after, it was like, ‘Hey, you do realize the court’s backwards, right? And when I watch game film on there, it would make a lot more sense if it was situated the other way.’ So both of them recognized the need to flip the court as well. And the timing’s good; obviously, we’re doing a lot of construction with the ACC Network and getting prepared for that. If you come in the main lobby area, you’ll see the McCarl Hall of Champions is under construction and that’s where the new ACC Network studio is going.
Along with the flip, one other part - we will re-seat the arena at the end of the next basketball season. So, before we got to the new layout, we will re-seat the arena. What does that mean? Obviously, a huge workload on our ticket staff, our development team, our premium seat sales; we’ve got - I would put our people up against anybody in the country. They’re the best. And they will manage all those relationships and manage the communication really effectively. But I want people to realize that. We’re not going to re-seat the arena every year. I don’t know what happened in the past, but we’ll projectively do it three-to-five years - you know, in three years we’ll evaluate it, five years we may re-seat it again. But it’s not something we’re going to do on an annual basis, by any means. But when we flip the court and flip the views and flip where the benches are, people may want to adjust, so we want to give them that opportunity. Again, I have unbelievable confidence in our development team and our ticket office staff and all the premium seat areas will be managed really well and we’ll communicate that.
So that communication is going out to our basketball season ticket holders later this week…re-seating will be at the end of this season; not right now. Not enough time. And it doesn’t make sense, because the whole point is, when we flip it, they may want to be in different spaces.
Once they see -
Lyke: Yeah, the configuration of it all. We’ll bring people to the arena, we’ll give them a chance to pick their locations and what will be available at the time - it’s a little tricky, because the demand is real, so people are, like, ‘How do I get back in? What do I do? Can I get a floor seat?’ No, we’re sold out. ‘Can I get a suite?’ No, we’re sold out now. We’re not sold out of season tickets, so come on in. But we have great expectations and we obviously had some really exciting news yesterday with men’s basketball staff, I think the women’s basketball staff is getting solidified - I mean, I know it’s solidified. Hopefully we’ll have an announcement in a day or two about all of their coaches. But we’re headed in the right direction with those teams.
So you’re going to have the Oakland Zoo breathing down the necks of the opposing bench?
Lyke: Yeah.
And hecklers and whatever?
Lyke: Again, we’ll have to manage that. I think one of the things that’s great about the Oakland Zoo is, they are very organized. They meet regularly. We have staff that meet with them regularly. And it’s about being a good sportsmanship. I want people who come here to know that it’s a tough place to play because it’s loud and it’s exciting, but we want to cheer for our team more than criticize or overly heckle the opponents.
Will the allotment be the same between the students and the general public?
Lyke: Yes. We may expand a little bit. The ACC requires you to hold 75 seats behind their bench, so we can’t completely take over that space. But yeah, we’ll set aside those 75 and kind of shift them over a bit.
Will it affect the overall capacity?
Lyke: The changes will not affect the overall capacity. We may be able to have more students down low, though. That’s a hope.
Christian Spears, deputy athletic director: We’re going to take some time to study this. This isn’t a, ‘Hey, we’re going to pull the trigger right now and make all these decisions.’ We need to talk with a lot of different people, assess the layout. We’ve already put down a model - ‘What if we flipped it?’ - and we showed where all the seats are and different locations. How can we expand premium areas? How can we expand student participation? And then obviously how do we take care of other individuals - the band, the media, the cheerleaders. So there’s a lot involved in the court flip and we’re going to take our time to make sure we do it right.
Lyke: Part of our focus has been, you know, we want coming to Pitt to be one of the most extraordinary experiences as a student-athlete in their life. Not the most extraordinary, right? But one of their most - when we meet with recruits, and I was talking to a basketball recruit two days ago, and you sincerely - I want them to know that coming to Pitt as a student-athlete will be one of the most remarkable experiences in their life. Not the most remarkable. And I think as a student coming to Pitt, we want - you know, part of their student experience, that’s where memories are made. Not that you don’t remember going to classes with your roommates or that sort of things or friends, but real relationships and things that bond for a lifetime. People come back to go to games, and it’s because they remember going to games with their brothers or uncles or friends or roommates or fraternity brothers or whatever it is. So we want, as a student at Pitt, them to have the priority and that experience that unites them and allows us to unite our campus in a really meaningful way.
What can you estimate it’s going to take financially to make all of this happen?
Lyke: Well, the ACC Network - we have that particular project covered. And under budget; thank you, Mr. Ramicone, Art Ramicone, our CFO. He will be happy to hear that and I think that the project’s running very well and under budget. There are some - it’s not a massive cost and we can plan that from the capital standpoint. These aren’t really strong fundraising opportunities; it’s more of an ongoing expense and some of this is a one-time - you know, changing the camera decks. That’s a one-time expense. We’re not going to move those again. Re-sanding your court - you’ve got to build in an ongoing plan to update your field or field space, your facilities on an ongoing basis, so that’s a part of our comprehensive 10-year plan that’s outlined as far as, when are we going to re-sand the court again? So we’ll plan for that financially.
It just seems that, when this idea has come up in the past, people have said it would be cost-prohibitive to re-wire the building and do something like that.
Lyke: I would say that, with the ACC project, that’s a part of the infrastructure that we’re building in place. We are also working on getting out an RFP at the University level for Wi-Fi in the Pete - like, in the actual arena…That is, again, just updating the building to where it needs to be. Those are amenities and, obviously now, expectations in modern-day arenas. It’s all coming. It’s all on its way.
What do you think the impact of the ACC Network will be?
Lyke: It will be significant. We are in an exciting time, really. It gives us a chance to showcase our teams on a national scale. You build the brand of Pitt, not just as an athletic department but as a university, and the exposure - I think, for all of us, it’s going to be exceptional. I think that’s certainly the - we’re not as far behind as some conferences, but we’re a little bit far behind, so it gives us a chance to catch up with some of the other conferences that have that national media opportunity, across the board with all of your teams. So I think it’s a tremendous opportunity. We’re excited about our infrastructure, our staff, our partnerships within the community that we’ve been working with that specialize in this area. I think we’ve got a lot of advantages being in Pittsburgh because there are companies that really do this well and we’ve worked with very closely.
I also love the fact that we can allow for students to do hands-on internships in our - behind-the-scenes, in media production, in television production and we’re actually working across campus with faculty creating - I don’t know that it’s a new major, a new minor -
Spears: We’re still in negotiations with what it’s going to be. Whether it’s a certificate program, a minor, a major. There are classes all over campus already that do post-production, pre-production, but we want to have a more holistic program that allows students to choose this as a career. In order to do that, we’ve got to build some infrastructure around that, whether that’s additional faculty - but we do have the studio space to be able to teach and learning, and that will be significant. And we built it with the design and the hope that we would partner with the campus. So there is a studio that’s just ready for a teaching environment while we’re running our full gameday. That will be unique.
Lyke: And I would say that our staff that lead our production and video area are tremendous teachers. Some people do their job really well but they don’t know how to teach young people how to do it. Our staff is really, really talented at that. I see it every day in their work. So that’s exciting and it’s a great experience for students to - I mean, you’re on a national broadcast and you’re sitting behind the scenes and you’re seeing how it works and it’s a great profession and we have got great relationships with companies in town that are looking for apprentices and internship opportunities, so we can funnel them there and they can get all kinds of great work experience to prepare them for life after graduation. So there’s a whole host of reasons why it’s great. But yeah, we’re excited, we’re getting ready and I think the addition of the studio to the lobby area is going to create some excitement and buzz. When you walk in, you’re going to see, it’s somewhat like the Today Show; it’s probably not as large, but there will be a window front so you’ll be able to look right in at any production that might be going on or any interview that might be going on. So for a fan and student and people that come to the Pete, they’ll get a sense of that production going on.
There is also going to be X amount of income for each school, is that correct?
Lyke: Yeah. So the incremental revenue projections are conservative and strong. We expect - and it will take a few years for it to actually increase significantly over what we get right now from television revenue from the ACC. But yeah, the long-term five-year to ten-year projections are very, very beneficial to us.
Can you quantify it for us?
Lyke: It’s hard to quantify it because I don’t know if the projections from the ACC are -
Spears: Fully-developed.
Lyke: Fully-developed or protected. But we’re not going to lose money. That’s for sure…over time, the incremental growth goes up substantially.
Are there plans for changes to or repurposing any other buildings on campus for the ACC Network?
Lyke: Not necessarily on campus. The exterior studio will be in the lobby and all the back-of-the-house will be downstairs on the very first floor of the Pete. It’s interesting: you can produce a baseball game from the Pete, so we don’t have a different production center. That hub will be here in the basement.
