South Carolina Football Communications Earns Super 11 Award

The University of South Carolina has been selected as a 2024 Super 11 Award winner, which recognizes the best performing College Sports Communicators departments in the NCAA Division I Football Bowl Subdivision, the Football Writers Association of America announced today.

It’s the third time in the past four years that the South Carolina football communications staff, under the direction of Senior Associate Athletics Director Steve Fink, has been recognized with this prestigious award.

The 11 Awards for the 2024 season with their CSC directors and their staffs went to Clemson – 12th time (Ross Taylor), Nebraska – 11th time (Keith Mann), Navy – eighth time (Scott Strasemeier), and Pittsburgh – seventh time (E.J. Borghetti). California (Keeler McJunkin), Iowa (Matt Weitzel), South Carolina (Steve Fink), Tennessee (Bill Martin) and West Virginia (Mike Montoro) each won for the third time, while Texas Tech (Matt Dowdy) was recognized for a second time. The lone 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.

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.

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