Louisville Magazine

MAR 2013

Louisville Magazine is Louisville's city magazine, covering Louisville people, lifestyles, politics, sports, restaurants, entertainment and homes. Includes a monthly calendar of events.

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11 Days in November How U of L won the battle for the ACC. By Kane Webb Photos by Gail Kamenish T om Jurich needed time. He���d promised his wife Terrilynn, whose father had just died, a vacation as soon as the calendar allowed. But this was deep into the fall, during football season, with basketball anticipation heating up, and as athletic director at the University of Louisville, Tom Jurich had about as much free time as Barack Obama or Mitt Romney with the election just days away. When the football Cardinals��� second open week of the season arrived in mid-November, the Juriches fnally got away, fying to their place in Clearwater, Fla., that weekend. Te vacation lasted until 9 a.m. that Saturday, the 17th. Which is when Louisville-based sportswriter Pat Forde of Yahoo rang Jurich on his cell phone. Forde had it from solid sources that Rutgers of the Big East and Maryland of the Atlantic Coast Conference were about to join the Big 10, which meant two things: one, the Big East, still the athletic home of the Louisville Cardinals, was further disintegrating as a ffth school headed for the door, and two, the ACC may have an opening. Had Jurich heard anything? Not until then. ���So in the process of trying to break the story,��� Forde says, ���I broke the news to Tom.��� After a brief chat about the demise of the Big East and Louisville���s options, Jurich told Forde, ���I���ll look into it right away.��� Before he sits down at a conference table outside his ofce, Jurich straightens a framed photograph on a wall flled with them, mumbles something about construction work that must have jarred it, and sits down behind a to-go cup of cofee. It���s 10 a.m. on Dec. 21, 62 LOUISVILLE MAGAZINE 3.13 nine days after head football coach Charlie Strong recommitted to U of L, and Jurich looks refreshed and spry enough to run a halfmarathon. When a visitor notes that he���s had one heck of a month, he deadpans, ���We���ve been busy.��� So how did it start? After he got the news from Forde, who did Jurich call next? He smiles. ���Everybody I could think of.��� Pause. ���Fifty calls?��� Pause. ���A hundred? Twenty-eight years being an AD, I���ve got a lot of contacts.��� Imagine Jurich at the center of a wheel, where all the spokes come together. He���s the common link to the other parts, what New Yorker pop-science writer Malcolm Gladwell once described as a ���connector,��� a person who belongs to many worlds. It may look as if Jurich belongs only to one world: University of Louisville athletics, where he has worked for 15 years. But look again: Tere���s the NFL, drafted by Pittsburgh, played for Minnesota; the University of Minnesota, coach; Northern Arizona, athletic director; Colorado State, athletic director; and four separate conferences, going on fve. Tat���s nine or 10 worlds, give or take a conference. Over the years, Jurich has stayed in touch with those worlds. He���s reached out to and been reached out to. Consider Forde���s fateful phone call. Forde knew Jurich was plugged in enough to have the scoop, but if he didn���t, that Jurich would sure as hell fnd out. Jurich felt the same way about Forde. (���When Pat says he���s got great sources, then they���re great sources.���) Relationships. Connections. In the end, they result in information, which can result, as the old saw goes, in power. After Forde���s call, Jurich sat down with a piece of paper and sketched out a strategy, a fow chart of whom to call when and about what. Besides the obvious ��� those he knew in the ACC ��� Jurich included contacts in television, at bowl games and at conferences around the country. He then dialed up Mike Slive, the commissioner of ��� no, not the ACC but the Southeastern Conference, aka the 500-pound gorilla of college athletics. Naturally, Jurich had a Slive connection: Conference USA. Slive served as C-USA commissioner when Louisville was still a member. It was a typically astute Jurich move. Slive had been on the other end of this scenario and could provide insight as to what John Swofford, commissioner of the ACC, would be looking for. A year earlier, Slive and the SEC added the Big 12���s Texas A&M; and Missouri, which opened the door for West Virginia to leave the Big East and Texas Christian University to back out of its commitment to join the Big East and detour to the Big 12. Each of those dominoes fell because of football ��� the marquee television and moneymaking sport for athletic conferences. After talking to Slive, Jurich says, ���I knew for a fact that I had to really, really get Florida State and Clemson with us, because they were so strong in football. And this was going to be a decision that had a lot of input from football.��� But in the end, the strategy was even simpler: ���I had to sell Louisville,��� Jurich says. ���T om, what can I do?��� asked James Ramsey, U of L���s president, that frst weekend when news arrived about Rutgers and Maryland. Te U of L president understood what was at stake. Te Big East, a league the university gleefully joined in 2005, was

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