00;00;01;26 - 00;00;19;06
Joe Carr
Welcome to the Providence College podcast. My name is Joe Carr, and our guest today is Bob Driscoll, a transformative leader and inspirational role model to many who is retiring this month after 21 years as the athletic director here at Providence College. What's going through your mind these days, Bob, as you prepare for what's next in your life?

00;00;20;05 - 00;00;40;01
Bob Driscoll
I'm excited, Joe. We couldn't have had a better year. You know, better to be lucky than good sometimes. But if you asked me to lay this thing out, go to the Sweet 16 the cross-country team has had a great year. Hockey just missed the NCAA tournament. Kids are graduating at a higher level. It's great to see everybody's faces again and receptions and parties.

00;00;40;01 - 00;00;53;23
Bob Driscoll
What do we have? 3000 strong the other night out there at the ticket party. So I'm very happy about that. I'm happy Steve is going to be the next A.D. So there's some continuity there for our coaches and staff. And yeah, there's some good things happening in to time.

00;00;53;28 - 00;00;59;16
Joe Carr
And your family, I'm sure, is looking forward to having you around a little bit more. Or at least I guess that's what they're saying for now, right? I.

00;00;59;20 - 00;01;14;24
Bob Driscoll
Do you believe that, Joe? I'm not sure I do. I don't think my wife spent more than 10 minutes with me the last year, so we'll see how that works out. But yeah, I'm excited to spend some time, especially go down to Florida with a weather. It's nice and warm and I'm going to still be involved up here. And so I'm excited about it.

00;01;15;15 - 00;01;26;02
Joe Carr
I'd like to start by by talking about coaching, which it seems to me that's your real calling in many ways. Who is a coach who influenced you early in your your days playing sports?

00;01;27;05 - 00;01;44;11
Bob Driscoll
Yeah, I had a couple, but the one that stands out is a gentleman named Walter Carew. He was my high school football coach and ironically, he was also my English teacher. And I wasn't a great student at the time. I was more interested in sports, but he actually taught me that you could be good at both things and held me accountable for both.

00;01;44;11 - 00;02;02;16
Bob Driscoll
And, you know, I was a little bit of a wild man growing up and did some things that he held me accountable for that if it wasn't for him, I'm not sure I'd be sitting here. I had an incident where we got in trouble one day and he called me in the office and basically said I was going to start you as a running back when I was a sophomore in high school.

00;02;02;16 - 00;02;17;19
Bob Driscoll
And he said, But, you know, if you're not willing to make the commitment to do the things the right way, I'm not going to play and that just, you know, stuck with me. And then he said, Hey, you have an opportunity. God bless you. With enough athletic talent, you could be the first person in your family to get an education and you want to be a coach.

00;02;17;19 - 00;02;32;24
Bob Driscoll
And a teacher. This is your your way kind of out, if you will. And it stuck with me. And I was like 14 years old. And I remember when I was at the University of California when the the Citrus Bowl, and we finished like seventh in the nation. And they gave me this really cool watch. And he was in his eighties at the time.

00;02;32;24 - 00;02;45;04
Bob Driscoll
So I went to visit him and I gave him the watch and thanked him for taking interest in a young kid that could have went the other way. So I would say Walter Karolyi was a Korean War veteran and a hero. And so I still think about him.

00;02;45;25 - 00;02;48;20
Joe Carr
Do you think you've had that influence on some other people around you, too?

00;02;49;16 - 00;03;12;29
Bob Driscoll
You know, I don't think of it consciously, but what's been ironic is, you know, I've kind of model him and my dad who I love dearly and was a great athlete as well, but didn't have the opportunity to go to college because he fought in World War Two. But that was my goal. And it's been fascinating because I've had people call me from 20, 30, 40 years ago that I coached and just said, Hey, I was thinking about you.

00;03;12;29 - 00;03;25;27
Bob Driscoll
I saw you retire. I just want to say thank you. We had this conversation. You may not remember it, but it really made a difference in my sports, like paying it forward. I'm an old guy now, so maybe that's what happens when you touch enough people, but that's been the fun part about.

00;03;26;02 - 00;03;37;08
Joe Carr
Well, I can tell you from my experience, you do have that effect on a lot of people, and a lot of people around here would would say the same thing. Speaking of coaches, by now you've hired dozens what do you look for.

00;03;39;24 - 00;03;59;11
Bob Driscoll
I look for somebody that has energy and passion. I get attracted to that and people who have almost an obsessive belief that they can be successful at mindset. Right. It has that innate, has it? I mean, I think I've figured out people that have that because you're not going to go right to the top of the mountain or you're going to stay there.

00;03;59;20 - 00;04;17;23
Bob Driscoll
There's going to be probably more challenging days and than good days. And you have to have the grit and toughness to get through it. And I think energy and optimism is contagious. And if you have it naturally and some people do, you're ahead of the curve. But if you don't, you have to figure out how do you walk in the door and have your game face on.

00;04;17;23 - 00;04;26;26
Bob Driscoll
So we have these wrist braces. Every day is game day. If you teach yourself that it's game day, after a while it becomes a habit and people want to follow people that are trying to do something bigger than themselves.

00;04;27;08 - 00;04;33;22
Joe Carr
Is it an oversimplification to say that picking in hiring coaches is the most important part of an athletic director's job?

00;04;35;06 - 00;04;48;15
Bob Driscoll
Well, I think it's the most important part of the job, and it's really hard you know, I've done it for a long time. I've made a lot of mistakes, but you really never know what somebody is going to be like until they they do the job. But the best indication of the future is what they've done in the past.

00;04;48;15 - 00;05;05;24
Bob Driscoll
And you look at Nate, who was up in Union College where I coached, and he actually took a job that was a Division three school and a Division One program with no infrastructure and not a lot of resources and, you know, made it to the Frozen Four. And I thought, well, if he can do that there, imagine what he can do here with support.

00;05;05;24 - 00;05;11;10
Bob Driscoll
So, you know, there are clues like successful leads, clues. And if they can do it someplace else, they can certainly do it at Providence.

00;05;11;15 - 00;05;22;15
Joe Carr
Success leads clues like that. Like back when did you realize that you had struck gold with those two hires and Ed Cooley and Nate Lehman just, you know, really a few months apart, a little more than ten years ago.

00;05;23;17 - 00;05;47;21
Bob Driscoll
I guess when we won one of the average, I think about a week when a Vegas championship in 14 and the national championship in 15. And, you know, once you do that, I mean, they're iconic figures forever, right? And I think they'll be able to do that again. It gets harder. But yeah, once somebody has success, it creates this credibility that attracts other people want to be part of it.

00;05;47;21 - 00;06;05;00
Bob Driscoll
I mean, look at the national coach of the year. Did I ever think that was possible? He first came here even, even my big dreams and his big dreams probably never thought that was possible. So they both continue to surprise me, as does the gentleman out there with his name on the track where Tracy keeps producing Olympians, all Americans.

00;06;05;00 - 00;06;08;20
Bob Driscoll
And I mean, think what he's done over his career. Stunning. All right.

00;06;09;00 - 00;06;30;03
Joe Carr
And we're talking on Thursday and tomorrow, two of the track athletes will be participating the NCAA in 1500s and one man and one woman. So competition's not quite done yet. This school will drop after that's all happened. But that's a good indication that that that program is incredibly strong and it's, you know, dangerous to start down this list.

00;06;30;05 - 00;06;39;02
Joe Carr
We don't want to do that. But Ed Cooley and Lehman are the most famous of your coaches. But, boy, what a group of coaches you really have assembled here that leads to sustainable success.

00;06;39;13 - 00;06;57;26
Bob Driscoll
Yeah, I think one of the things I'm most proud of is we collectively created a culture where people want to stay and coaches coach each other. I my my most enjoyable meeting is we meet once a month and we sit around the table and we have conversations of possibility. How do we get to the next level and what are the things that somebody is doing that's transferable to somebody else?

00;06;57;26 - 00;07;03;10
Bob Driscoll
And it's it's a fun thing to do. Watch what's the best of the best. Sit around a table and talk how to get better.

00;07;03;20 - 00;07;13;09
Joe Carr
Let's go back to talking a little bit about your days as an athlete. A very good one. You're in halls of Fame, both your high school and at Ithaca College, your high school in Concord, Massachusetts. What was your best sport?

00;07;14;23 - 00;07;15;27
Bob Driscoll
It's it's interesting.

00;07;19;02 - 00;07;38;10
Bob Driscoll
I think the one I loved the most was hockey because it was the most fun, the one that I think I learned the most was playing football because there weren't many days you weren't dinged up or injured. And I really liked hitting people by just what I liked. But as a kid, the thing I really loved was baseball.

00;07;38;10 - 00;07;53;24
Bob Driscoll
I was a big baseball fan. I was a call. You Scram ski fan. My dad was a big Ted Williams fan. And growing up 12 miles from Fenway Park, I'd go all the time and I just loved it. So I loved them all. And so as soon as football is over, I'd go to hockey. Hockey, I going to baseball.

00;07;53;24 - 00;08;09;14
Bob Driscoll
And so I was hard. People used to ask me all the time, but the one that was the most fun probably was ice hockey because it's fun to skate, it's fun to score goals. It's there's a culture around it that is really inspiring and that's why it was such a great thing. We won the national championship. It was like it all come full circle.

00;08;09;19 - 00;08;11;07
Joe Carr
Hockey people are great, that's for sure.

00;08;11;07 - 00;08;13;01
Bob Driscoll
Phenomenal people. Yeah, you know that.

00;08;13;10 - 00;08;20;13
Joe Carr
That's right. You told me a story once that you found yourself in the dugout at Fenway Park with was it with Ted Williams or Yaz or what was that story?

00;08;20;18 - 00;08;46;22
Bob Driscoll
It's kind of ironic. I was a freshman in high school and my aunt, who lived across the street from his boyfriend, was the equipment manager for the Red Sox and the Patriots. And it was in the World Series. 1967. They were playing the Saint Louis Cardinals when the great Bob Gibson was pitching. And so we would go with a truck and pick up their equipment at the airport bring it in the locker room.

00;08;46;22 - 00;09;06;02
Bob Driscoll
And I got to sit in the dugout in 1967 during the impossible dream and met Bob Gibson and you know I always knew I wanted to, I thought I wanted I could be a professional athlete, there wasn't enough but that was my dream. And when you're around those kinds of people, I mean that was a transformative transformational moment for me as a 14 year old kid.

00;09;06;19 - 00;09;13;22
Joe Carr
So you found your way into coaching at the college level. When did you get the idea though that you might like to transition to becoming an athletics administrator?

00;09;14;10 - 00;09;33;26
Bob Driscoll
You know, it came out of the frustration that I wasn't as successful. I wanted to be early on in coaching, like I was a head coach at 24 at baseball and I took over a hockey team at that point. And I still was as good, if not better than anybody that I was coaching and never understood why they didn't have the same sense of commitment and passion for it that I did.

00;09;33;26 - 00;09;53;23
Bob Driscoll
So I got frustrated as a coach because I was immature. So I did that until I was I only coached for about eight years. And then one day I thought, could I be doing this when I was 15 and 50. And when you're 2850 is a million years off. And I was also an assistant aide and I loved the idea of visioning and growing.

00;09;53;23 - 00;10;10;01
Bob Driscoll
And how does your job get bigger so you have an imprint on more people. And so I just one day decided I'm going to be an aide and I applied for a job at a women's college in Oakland cause I went to live in California because of the weather, packed everything up in the back of a van and just drove to California.

00;10;10;04 - 00;10;29;12
Bob Driscoll
And what's ironic about that is I wasn't crazy enough to do that. I never would have got the job at the University of California. I wouldn't be here today. But I was just following kind of my dream, and I think I could have been a really good coach because I've become a really good athletic director. But I like the job that I have because I get to be involved in all sports in all sorts of ways.

00;10;29;22 - 00;10;32;29
Joe Carr
And as we said a couple of minutes ago, you're still coaching. I am.

00;10;33;12 - 00;10;43;11
Bob Driscoll
Again, I have a different way. That's a really good point. I get to coach, everybody gets a coach, coaches, student athletes. So I just have a broader band of people I hope that I can impact.

00;10;43;20 - 00;10;48;21
Joe Carr
Who were some of the people who taught you how to do this job in California? Were you even before you moved out there?

00;10;49;12 - 00;11;06;27
Bob Driscoll
Well, my first boss at the University of California was a guy named Dave Magritte. He was an Olympic shot putter, was a great football player at the University of California. And he gave me that opportunity to go to a big time school and he was all school. He was a tough, gritty guy. You know, if he shook your hand, his word meant something.

00;11;06;27 - 00;11;28;14
Bob Driscoll
He had integrity at it. And he was he was wasn't afraid to confront difficult situations. And so I learned a lot from him, and he became my mentor. And to this day, we still talk. And he was almost like a father figure to me at one point because I never wanted to let him down. You know, I always looked at him as my coach and I wanted to make him proud.

00;11;28;14 - 00;11;53;02
Bob Driscoll
So that's a pretty cool relationship. And then when I came here, I had a gentleman named Rolland Todd, who has been my life's coach for the past 30 years. He was the first basketball coach for the Portland Trailblazers, great college player, and he taught me the concept of a conversation of possibility about being open, honest and active, about just really being a great teammate.

00;11;53;08 - 00;12;02;06
Bob Driscoll
And relationships are the keys to success. So I brought him here a lot and I learned a lot from him. Then I took what I learned from him and then applied it in the way I do my.

00;12;02;06 - 00;12;23;07
Joe Carr
Own work earlier this week and on June 7th, in fact, Wednesday, June seven, a big reception here on campus in honor of you on the occasion of your retirement, a standing room only crowd and a big room in the American Center for the Humanities. It was really, really great to me. The highlight was you telling you this telling everybody the story of your your arrival at PC.

00;12;23;08 - 00;12;29;23
Joe Carr
What brought you here? What made you realize this was the right place for you? Can you take us through that well.

00;12;30;01 - 00;12;43;24
Bob Driscoll
You know, I had gone through a very disappointing experience at Cal where I wanted to be the aid I or the acting aid. And they ultimately gave the job to one of my teammates who was the crew coach, who was on the committee. And it was you know, I liked it. It was kind of like a political coup.

00;12;43;24 - 00;13;02;26
Bob Driscoll
And, you know, I was not a real political kind of guy. I just put my head down and did my work and thought it was my job. And then when that happened, I realized that I wanted to be at a place where your word meant something that you didn't have to cover your butt with emails and be looking over your shoulders because other people had different agendas.

00;13;03;16 - 00;13;29;00
Bob Driscoll
And I kind of went back to my roots. I'm a small town guy, I'm a guy that if you tell me I'm you tell me you going to do something, I expect it and vice versa versus and that teammates. Right. And that whole story about my friend that I've had since I was five years old walked into a restaurant and he had a Cal jersey on and a guy with a Providence jersey introduced himself and long story short, he said, where'd you get the jersey?

00;13;29;00 - 00;13;50;19
Bob Driscoll
He said, my best friend is the acting aide at Cal. He said, well, tell him the Providence job is open. So he picked up the phone, called me and then I thought, hmm, gives me a chance to come back home, be with my mom and dad. Providence has big time hockey. I have to deal with the nightmare of football and so I picked up the phone call a headhunter, and I had to sell him on wanting to actually bring me in because of that.

00;13;50;19 - 00;14;09;14
Bob Driscoll
Then closed the application so I was able to convince him to fly me back. I told my pay for my own flight. I'll go visit my parents. So they had me sequestered off campus and got a cab came on to campus because I wanted to walk around want to go to the rink, met a woman walking outside and ask her to show me, and she took me.

00;14;09;25 - 00;14;31;13
Bob Driscoll
And during the walk, all she did was tell me how she loved Providence College, how Joe that place didn't look like it did today. I, I used the term it looked like a bad high school and almost got fired by Father Smith when I came. But I was so impressed with the kind of people and then I met this really cool Dominican priest, Father Morris, who said to me after my interview, he said, I did a good job.

00;14;32;06 - 00;14;46;29
Bob Driscoll
And I said, thank you for this. We'll see you again. I said, Why do you say that? Is said that God brings those people to Providence College when it's their time. And I told my wife that story, and I said, I've met this real cool Dominican prison. Who knows God personally? And he said, I'm going to Friar Town.

00;14;46;29 - 00;15;14;25
Bob Driscoll
Wasn't Friar Town of Time. I coined that later on. It just felt like the right fit and that I could take everything I learned at Cal and bring it here. And it was small enough and relationships building enough that maybe we could do some great things and I was a little naive. I didn't realize what it would take, but it was the best decision I've ever made because just like you both sitting here, you're my friends and family and we'll be there for life.

00;15;14;25 - 00;15;21;12
Bob Driscoll
And I had lost that at Cal when my mentor, Dave McGrady left. They lost what was important.

00;15;22;05 - 00;15;29;17
Joe Carr
It's a great story about what's special about this place. I many people have experiences along similar lines, and it's an amazing thing for sure.

00;15;31;24 - 00;15;53;24
Joe Carr
Changes and facilities, championship student athletes graduate. And these are things that are all well known about your accomplishments here. There's another thing, though, that is maybe a little less noticeable, but I think really, really important, and that is the identity and brand of the Providence College Athletic Department and Friars Sports and the effect that has on the college's identity and brand.

00;15;54;08 - 00;16;14;17
Joe Carr
And a couple of things come to mind. The moniker Friar Town that you just mentioned, you came up with that you came from Oakland, where you had been around the Raiders, and that had something to do with kind of the color scheme, the use of a little more silver. So take us through that, if you would, and your thoughts about identity and profile and what that means to the athletic department in the college.

00;16;15;23 - 00;16;39;20
Bob Driscoll
Well, I learned that early in life. It's like following the Red Sox, the Celtics, the Bruins, the colors, the uniforms, the traditions that was powerful to me as a young boy. And then I really had that experience at Cal. They were called the Golden Bears. And if you walked anywhere literally in the world, if you saw somebody with a golden bear hat on, you'd go by them and say, go bears.

00;16;39;26 - 00;16;57;28
Bob Driscoll
Right and they used to call it bear territory. And they had a little saying, you know, you tell a story, you tell the whole damn world, this is bear territory. And you'd have 80,000 people chanting that and your hair would stand on it. So when I came here, they didn't have any of that stuff. They didn't have pictures on the wall.

00;16;57;28 - 00;17;08;29
Bob Driscoll
The color that's the schematics were different. Sometimes they were blue and not blue and gold. They were, they were gold and was white or white and black, and it was all mixed up.

00;17;09;02 - 00;17;09;20
Joe Carr
Complicated.

00;17;09;29 - 00;17;27;11
Bob Driscoll
And I lived in Oakland and I was a big Raiders fan at the time, and I loved the colors of the Oakland Raiders, a black, white and silver. So I changed it to black, white and silver. And then I was sitting there one day. I said, it's not it's not Fire Nation, it's not Fryer Country, and it's a small place like Boystown.

00;17;27;11 - 00;17;49;25
Bob Driscoll
And I said, Well, how about Friar Town? Just kind of popped into my head and I thought, that's that's a good kind of fix. I do my best thinking in the shower and then change the colors. And then I came up with this concept. I had a good friend. Bruce Snider was a head coach at Cal, and he used to have a saying one of the time when played a time, one quarter at a time one game at a time.

00;17;49;25 - 00;18;06;23
Bob Driscoll
You play that down and then you move on, unless was good or bad. And I thought, Well, how do you create something as the same thing? So I said, Well, every day is game day as an athlete, if you have a competition, you're fired up, right? So let's create every day's game day. So and then it started to build and grow.

00;18;06;23 - 00;18;23;08
Bob Driscoll
And I would and every speech would go friars. And at first people thought it was crazy. But what's cool about it now you walk around this campus and you see people with black, white and silver. I'm in California, I'm in Florida. I see people all the time when I have McGwire go Friars. That has always been my dream.

00;18;23;08 - 00;18;41;24
Bob Driscoll
And now there's a culture around it that's important. But it took some doing early on and some buy in, or Ed Cooley walking around, seeing somebody with ABC shirt, taking them to his office, make them take the shirt off and give them another should they walk away like so. But you know that you're a marketing branding guy, but it's cool when it just gets sticky.

00;18;41;24 - 00;18;42;03
Bob Driscoll
Right?

00;18;42;03 - 00;19;02;27
Joe Carr
Right. A perfect word for it. That's exactly what we're looking for. And what we found was Friar Town and everything that goes along with it. What a juncture in college sports name, image. And like this leadership change coming at the NCAA talk of the big time football schools breaking off on their own. What do you see when you look out to the future?

00;19;02;27 - 00;19;04;18
Joe Carr
What what could be happening here?

00;19;05;08 - 00;19;31;24
Bob Driscoll
I see uncertainty but I see opportunity as well. I sat in Big East meetings and this is a completely seismic shift in the history of the of the NCAA and there's new leadership there. And this name, image and likeness is really going to change the dynamics and pay to play. I see it coming. The thing I worry about is I think we can keep pace in the handful of sports we choose to.

00;19;32;12 - 00;19;55;02
Bob Driscoll
But I worry what's going to happen to the non-revenue sports because in order to keep pace, money is going to have to come from someplace. And there's going to be a cap, particularly a small school like Providence College and maybe some of the non-revenue sports, maybe they end up not having scholarships. And it's a Division three model. Maybe you have a regional competition when you're not getting on planes flying across the country.

00;19;55;16 - 00;20;19;09
Bob Driscoll
So they'll be there'll be certain programs and student athletes I think will be hurt by that in the long run. But I also think calmer minds may come to the fore and maybe, you know, Congress will come up with a standardization that will say, here's what we're going to do in college athletics. We we've lost the narrative. I don't think we did a good job in the NCAA in terms of just managing this at all.

00;20;20;01 - 00;20;43;26
Bob Driscoll
You know, football schools are still going to get richer. I read an article the other day said the SEC is going to double their income they're paying out $100 million to every single school this year, and it could be as much as 200 million. They'll have too much money. They won't even know how to spend. But I think we created the monster when you pay coaches the kind of money we pay them, and then you tell student athletes, we can't give you a pair of sneakers, you know, we've lost that, you know, the court of public opinion.

00;20;43;26 - 00;21;02;06
Bob Driscoll
So that's that's on us. But I still think there's a place for a school like Providence College where you sport to educate people to actually be good human beings get get jobs. I mean, you got a better chance of being a neurosurgeon they do. Being a professional athlete. So the focus externally is all on that. That's group, but it's a small group, Joe.

00;21;03;09 - 00;21;14;02
Bob Driscoll
And eventually people are still going to play sports and people are going to want to watch it. But we have to make sure men's basketball continues to be successful because that's the window to the world. Right. Getting back to the branding and marketing of the institution.

00;21;14;07 - 00;21;26;08
Joe Carr
And the culture as you've defined it here can still work, right? Because you can still compete for championships, be the most respected program around and graduate all your student athletes. These things can can continue and still apply. Right?

00;21;26;15 - 00;21;33;14
Bob Driscoll
And we need it more now than ever. If everything is just a transaction, you kind of lost the whole purpose of why have college athletics.

00;21;33;26 - 00;21;49;02
Joe Carr
Wait to talk about something that happened a few years ago is critically important, especially as it relates to basketball. And you and Father Shanley were right in the middle of it and it kind of happened. We all appreciate it, but I think it is worth going back to you, and that is the creation of what this Big East has become.

00;21;50;03 - 00;22;03;04
Joe Carr
How challenging was that? How what were the the what was the possibility that it wasn't going to work out like it did? Was this a pretty fraught time for colleges like P.S. when looking at putting the Big East back together after everything that had happened?

00;22;03;21 - 00;22;21;15
Bob Driscoll
You know, it's a really good question. Joe, because where we are today was radically different than we were, you know, back in 2013. I remember sitting in meetings and there was football and and basketball schools and we would meet collectively. And then the football schools would ask us to get up and leave so they could talk about football issues.

00;22;21;15 - 00;22;45;26
Bob Driscoll
And I picked that up right away. Like, you know, they're going in a different direction. So we I started having our own meetings with just the basketball schools, planning the next scenario. And it's kind of ironic that a young man named Wayne Colton, who's at Richmond right now, one of the volunteer as a lawyer. So I asked him to put together a list of schools that if we ever separated would they want to come?

00;22;45;26 - 00;23;08;04
Bob Driscoll
And what did their academic and athletic profile look like? So when it started move in that direction? I had a binder of all the possibilities, so we weren't blindsided by it. And then you saw the school start Domino with B.C and Syracuse and Pittsburgh and Yukon and everybody else wanting to go their separate ways. And we had a plan.

00;23;08;04 - 00;23;28;27
Bob Driscoll
And we also that I would say a little bit lucky because Fox was starting their Fox Sports Channel to go against ESPN. So they were looking for programing. We were looking to kind of go back to the future with the basketball centric schools and I guess Father Shanley and the President's great and Jack Dejoy, who was kind of the visionary around this thing, and Fox Sports.

00;23;29;09 - 00;23;52;20
Bob Driscoll
And we put it together and then circumvented the whole football deal and went the other way and signed a big time contract. And now it's the most basketball centric program conference in the nation. Longest running at Madison Square Garden, big time conference and won two national championships. And so we had a plan, but we also got pretty lucky.

00;23;53;02 - 00;23;55;06
Joe Carr
What's the future for the Big East? What do you see?

00;23;56;02 - 00;24;13;07
Bob Driscoll
I think more of the same. I mean, I was a proponent and actually worked hard to get you come back in much to the chagrin probably of our fans. But it has a great, great band brand. And if you want to be the best, you have to play the best. And so it's helped us financially. It's helped us selling out game and such.

00;24;13;10 - 00;24;34;25
Bob Driscoll
Sure. We've talked about possible expansion and you can kind of figure out who that might be, but I'm not sure that's going to work out at this point. So I think we do more of what we've done. We need to sign a new contract with Fox or someone else, but I'm hoping as Fox for more money and we're going to have to sign a long term contract with Madison Square Garden to protect it and continue to hire the best coaches.

00;24;34;25 - 00;24;49;26
Bob Driscoll
You look at a new coach who just came in, and with that being the national coach of the year, I think we're going to be fine. And even if the football schools decide to do something different, they need the Big East and they need the St Peter's of the world. You know, they need the ones that make the NCAA tournament what it is today.

00;24;49;29 - 00;24;55;15
Joe Carr
And certainly one thing about UConn is that that elevates the women's basketball part of the conference massively.

00;24;55;26 - 00;25;05;28
Bob Driscoll
And we need to be better at women's basketball. There's money to be made there and there's no reason we can't be one of the best women's basketball conferences as well. And what Geno has done has been off the charts.

00;25;06;23 - 00;25;36;13
Joe Carr
Speaking of the Big East, I can't recommend Dana O'Neill's new book, The Big East. Enthusiastically enough. I've read I know Chris has read it. You may not have had time yet, but if you do in the coming months, it's just tremendous. And it really shows the Providence College fingerprints all over the founding of the Big East, not only Dave Gabbert, but a lot of Mike Trageser and even Dave Duffy from Duffy and Shanley, who, you know, Father Shanley's father, his business partner who is a 1961 alum, who is still actively involved in things.

00;25;36;13 - 00;25;45;21
Joe Carr
So it's a wonderful book and really, really paints a story of an incredible, the incredible development of the Big East from the early 1980s on.

00;25;46;00 - 00;26;00;15
Bob Driscoll
What's cool about that too is the fact that our fingerprints are on it again with what Ed has done and what Father has done and what we have done to, you know, be a major competitor of the Big East. I mean there was while we had kind of lost our way, but I think we're back right in the fray again.

00;26;01;00 - 00;26;20;09
Joe Carr
You mentioned at the beginning or when we started talking here a few minutes ago, Steve Napoli. Well who will succeed you as athletic director? He's been at your right hand for many years, and we're all excited for him to take over and to to be his partners in what's coming. But it's a great team, too. Joel Lapointe, Arthur Parks, John Rock.

00;26;20;09 - 00;26;32;05
Joe Carr
The list goes on and on. You have built a team here that can really carry things forward, and we think everybody feels feels great about the direction how do you how do you feel about turning it over to that group of people?

00;26;32;27 - 00;26;47;17
Bob Driscoll
Well, I have great confidence in them. You know, we've all been together for a long time. And as Chris is sitting here, you know, 20 years later, look what he's doing. And they're all great teammates and Steve will do a great job. I'm going to continue to help coach him and some other people. So I may be living in Florida.

00;26;47;19 - 00;27;06;13
Bob Driscoll
I'll be coming back and forth because I have a love for Providence College. I want to provide whatever support I can because really is all about people and I always want to. Providence College should be a destination and not a stepping stone. And we've had some amazing people but because we didn't create the culture and give them the tools to have sustainable long term success, people left.

00;27;06;20 - 00;27;29;26
Bob Driscoll
Well, that's not the case. People want to come to Providence and come to Friar Town, and I think the school recognizes the value that Providence College basketball and athletics brings to the institution. So rather than fighting against it like a lot of schools do, we're all kind of on the same page from top to bottom. And because we're small with SWAT, like we're like a startup, we can make decisions, get start stuff done quickly.

00;27;30;24 - 00;27;48;20
Bob Driscoll
So I think the future is even brighter, to be honest. It's like I've always used this analogy. You're running in a marathon and you pass the baton on to the next person. You run as long as hard as you can and then let the next younger, fitter, brighter person take it to another level. Right? You just kind of a cog in the bigger picture.

00;27;48;29 - 00;28;05;26
Joe Carr
Incidentally, we mentioned Father Shanley and you talked about the future, and a lot of that relates to the leadership of the college. And, you know, we have Father Sicard is the president in a very short period of time. You turned him into an avid sports fan. Nice job there. And also so many trustees and others who who really play a big role in making this a success.

00;28;06;19 - 00;28;24;19
Bob Driscoll
It's a fascinating place. Because I could pick up the phone now and call Chris Riley, who's the chairman board of trustees, and we can talk about sports. And he's good with that. Or, you know, Mike for Wayne, who's a major donor. And so it's a small world. It's all about relationships. And father's a card who had the greatest experience ever this year.

00;28;24;19 - 00;28;37;16
Bob Driscoll
And so if you have a president talking about the value of that, and then you have Ed Cooley, who has this personality that's contagious, and there's just some really special people here, and that's what makes it great. And everybody wants to be good at what they do.

00;28;38;12 - 00;28;51;09
Joe Carr
You haven't quite retired yet, so this may not be fair, but I suspect you may have begun to spend a little time reflecting what is some of the things that you're you're most proud of or most pleased to think about as you as you reflect on the past 21 years.

00;28;52;28 - 00;29;13;20
Bob Driscoll
The people, the relationships like say to my two friends here that are my teammates sense of family community leaving in a better place than I found it, that my crazy dreams actually came through and were far exceeded. I got to spend time with my mom and dad, particularly as they as they passed and my son went to school here.

00;29;14;13 - 00;29;33;17
Bob Driscoll
Yeah. There's a great feeling, I guess, of peace. That's the best word. Like I feel I'm at peace now. I couldn't have done this two years ago, like during the pandemic. I just couldn't leave during that time. It's like you're letting your your teammates and family down. I wanted to get us through that and then to have this amazing year, which was beyond what I thought was possible.

00;29;33;17 - 00;29;52;19
Bob Driscoll
The dunk was the most amazing I'd ever seen it ever. And I think all that stuff culminated in the whole year that I was just not trying. It's like some days I wake up, I say, How lucky, how lucky I am. I and I really feel that way. It's like I feel like a very, very lucky man and have a wife and a family that that loves me, that I have friends.

00;29;52;19 - 00;29;57;07
Bob Driscoll
I feel lucky. I guess that's job peaceful and very, very lucky today.

00;29;57;14 - 00;30;00;13
Joe Carr
That's beautiful. 16 and one at home and Taylor Swift to boot.

00;30;00;14 - 00;30;03;17
Bob Driscoll
How about that? Pretty funny. And she sent us a bunch of gear recently, too.

00;30;03;29 - 00;30;27;18
Joe Carr
That's pretty funny. How you just use the phrase leaving a place better than you found it. That's, I think, a pretty tidy definition of success and a job well done. And you've certainly done that and I'm grateful. We all are. And we are so excited for you and your family to be able to take these steps to doing some some different kinds of things and delighted that you're going to continue to be part of our Providence College family.

00;30;27;18 - 00;30;32;23
Joe Carr
So congratulations. Thank you. Thank you for your time today. And and best wishes to all of you.

00;30;33;01 - 00;30;41;21
Bob Driscoll
Thanks. I've always enjoyed this. This is always fun for me and I appreciate it. And you guys are great teammates and friends and yeah, I'm going to be around. You'll see me.

00;30;41;24 - 00;30;42;06
Joe Carr
Awesome.

00;30;42;07 - 00;30;43;21
Bob Driscoll
Go, Friars, go friars.

00;30;43;21 - 00;30;54;10
Joe Carr
For Chris Judge, our producer there. Chris, we've referred to several times in the past little while. I'm Joe Carr. Thanks for joining us. And Bob just said it is as well as we can in two words. Go Friars.

00;30;54;12 - 00;30;55;12
Bob Driscoll
Friars. Thanks, man.