Clemson Extends Record with 12th FWAA Super 11 Honor
The Football Writers Association of America announced today that Clemson has been named one of 11 recipients of its annual Super 11 Awards, presented to football programs and sports information departments that exemplify excellent media relations.
This year’s honor marks Clemson’s 12th all-time selection, further extending its record for the most in the award’s 16-year history. The selection for the 2024 season also represents the 10th consecutive year Clemson has earned the honor, the longest streak in the award’s history.
The 2024 season was Clemson’s second operating full-time out of the Smart Family Media Center, a best-in-class media workspace on the ground level of the Clemson Athletics Branding Institute.
“We remain incredibly grateful for the continued recognition from the Football Writers Association of America,” Clemson Associate Athletic Director for Football Communications & Strategic Initiatives Ross Taylor said. “For generations from Bob Bradley to Tim Bourret to our current team, our football program has firmly believed that a positive working relationship with professional media is woven into Clemson’s DNA, and I am grateful to Head Coach Dabo Swinney, Director of Athletics Graham Neff and so many others for their roles in prioritizing our media operations with their speech, their time, their actions and their support of allocating resources to projects like the construction of the Smart Family Media Center.”
The full press release from the FWAA is included below:
DALLAS (FWAA) – One first-time winner and 10 previous ones comprise the 16th Super 11 Awards, presented annually by the Football Writers Association of America to the best performing College Sports Communicators departments in the NCAA Division I Football Bowl Subdivision. The awards announced this week are for the 2024 season.
The 2024 Super 11 Award is a record 12th for Clemson and its staff led by Ross Taylor, Associate Athletic Director for Football Communications & Strategic Initiatives. Nebraska and its staff led by Keith Mann, Associate Athletic Director for Communications, earned its 11th.
Other awards with their CSC directors and their staffs went to Navy (Scott Strasemeier) for the eighth time; Pittsburgh (E.J. Borghetti) for a seventh time; California (Kyle McRae), Iowa (Matt Weitzel), South Carolina (Steve Fink), Tennessee (Bill Martin) and West Virginia (Mike Montoro) each a third time; and Texas Tech (Matt Dowdy) a second time. The first-time recipient in the 2024 Super 11 was Army (Eric Szczepinski).The Super 11 dates to the 2009 season.
This year’s winners were deemed to have had excellent accessibility during the week of their games and after the game with a program’s players, coaches and coordinators/assistant coaches. Other criteria regarding beat reporter access, interview requests, and decorum and protocols in the press box and locker room are listed in the 2024-25 FWAA Directory.
“Access is required to write the best examples of story-telling in our business,” said 2025 FWAA President Bill Bender of The Sporting News. “These departments set a standard with a friendly working relationship in an era where access is in some ways more difficult to come by. That professionalism helps create an environment where we can tell those behind-the-scenes stories about their players and coaches. We are grateful to these 11 schools for promoting that model.”
The FWAA is also presenting a Super 11 Coach of the Year Award to Ryan Day of Ohio State. Day’s consistently positive demeanor with the media never flinched. He is the seventh head coach to win this award and it comes during a season when the Buckeyes won the national championship after a disappointing end to their regular season.
“All you have to do is watch the press conferences when it comes to Ryan Day,” Bender said. “He takes questions from all outlets on arguably the largest beat in college football — and they often stretch well past what would be an acceptable amount of time to get those questions in. Day also answered any remaining critics with an unprecedented national championship run, and he did that with an unrivaled level of class and respect toward reporters, players and the game of college football. He is an easy choice for this award.”
Previous recipients of the Super 11 individual coach award since its inception in the 2018 season have been Herm Edwards (Arizona State), Chris Klieman (Kansas State), Tom Allen (Indiana), Jeff Hafley (Boston College), Sonny Dykes (TCU) and Mike Norvell (Florida State).
In addition, the FWAA is presenting the Allstate Sugar Bowl a special award for its outstanding handling of the tragedy in New Orleans when the Jan. 1 game was postponed for a day to accommodate security in and around the Caesars Superdome when Georgia met Notre Dame in CFP quarterfinal game. The Sugar Bowl staff, including Media Director John Sudsbury, did an outstanding job minimizing the overall effects of the one-day delay for the media.
FWAA members provided input during the season when press boxes were judged on how well they were run and maintained in terms of neutrality, pool reporters, noise level and accessibility to the press box that could affect a media person’s ability to do his or her job.
“We once again honor some programs who have provided great assistance to writers for many years and have demonstrated a culture of excellence in what they do in their pressbox and in terms of accessibility to players and coaches,” said FWAA Executive Director Steve Richardson. “We applaud those programs as well as the newcomer program.”
In January of 2009, the FWAA released the first Super 11 Awards – a concept supported by the College Sports Communicators (formerly CoSIDA). The FWAA has now awarded at least one Super 11 Award to 82 FBS different programs.
Founded in 1941, the Football Writers Association of America consists of journalists, broadcasters, publicists, photographers and key executives in all areas of college football. The FWAA works to govern media access and game-day operations while presenting awards and honors, including an annual FWAA All-America Team. For more information about the FWAA and its program and initiatives, contact Executive Director Steve Richardson at 214-870-6516 or tiger@fwaa.com.
2024 FWAA Super 11 Honorees
(with all-time award count in parenthesis)
Army (1)
California (3)
Clemson (12)
Iowa (3)
Navy (8)
Nebraska (11)
Pittsburgh (7)
South Carolina (3)
Tennessee (3)
Texas Tech (2)
West Virginia (3)
2024 Super 11 Coach of the Year
Ryan Day, Ohio State