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DECEMBER 2019 | VOL. 3, ISSUE 5
GAME CHANGER An Oral History of How the CFP Foundation is Elevating K-12 Teachers All Across the U.S. BY JAIME ARON
INTRODUCTION
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n February 2013, inside a conference room at a DFW International Airport hotel, a group of people were hashing out details of a new way to crown a national champion in college football when one of them had a suggestion. This high-profile playoff system they were creating should provide more than excitement for studentathletes, coaches and fans. It should have a charitable component. Then they landed on the perfect cause: supporting K-12 teachers. Fueled by the harmony of the platform and the mission, the College Football Playoff (CFP) Foundation has become the largest
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sports entity in the country benefiting education and one of the most successful philanthropic organizations in sports. Numbers offer one way to calculate the CFP Foundation’s impact, with more than $30 million invested, 5.5 million students reached, 250,000 teachers supported HONORING TEACHERS: That’s the mission of the and 27,000 schools CFP Foundation. touched. And that’s through only five iterations of the to convey the organization’s impact. CFP National Championship. It’s better expressed by the Yet numbers aren’t the only way eyes of a student walking into
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R A E Y 5 A N N IV E R SA RY what had been a decrepit library and seeing it transformed into a state-of-the-art media center. Or on the face of a science teacher receiving a new microscope, an art teacher receiving a 3D printer or a geography teacher receiving a hightech globe. It’s Mrs. Jones or Mr. Smith being celebrated as a hometown hero in front of 100,000 fans during Extra Yard for Teachers Week in September. It’s the Teachers of the Year from every state and territory being celebrated in front of tens of millions on ESPN before the CFP title game kicks off each January. It’s drastically increasing the quality of reading being taught in Atlanta Public Schools and the expansion of STEM lessons throughout the Bay Area — and the life-changing outcomes it can have on those pupils — all because a national championship football game was played in those areas. There’s more, much more. Because as perfect as it was for the CFP Foundation to support teachers in primary and secondary schools, the rollout of the Foundation’s work has been spot-on, too.
STRENGTH IN NUMBERS: More than 250,000 teachers have been supported through the CFP Foundation.
10 Football Bowl Subdivision conferences, and most of their universities, plus the communities around each campus, plus the hometowns of many student-athletes … well, there’s hardly a place not touched by the CFP Foundation. The full story Because of the tremendous of the CFP platform of college football, Foundation’s we’ve been able to reach so many birth and rise is a sprawling millions of people — and this is tale. With more only the tip of the iceberg.” exponential BILL HANCOCK growth on the horizon, this is a By leveraging the Playoff great time to reflect on it all. Semifinals and national And there’s nobody better to tell championship game, plus most the tale than those who created it postseason bowls, plus the and shaped it.
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“Because of the tremendous platform of college football, we’ve been able to reach so many millions of people — and this is only the tip of the iceberg,” said Bill Hancock, executive director of the College Football Playoff. “People will pick up this article in 20 years and say, `Wow, this is how it all got started.’”
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PRELUDE THE ORIGIN STORY (2011-2013)
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irst, some background. After using various methods to crown a champion in college football, executives began working in 2011 to put together a multigame playoff system. In 2012, they settled on a format, a name and an executive director. Now it’s Feb. 7, 2013, and they’re hammering out more details. Gathered in a board room of the Hyatt Grand at terminal D of DFW International Airport are the members of the CFP’s Management Committee: the commissioners of the 10 conferences it represents, the athletic director from Notre Dame and Hancock. Much of the day was spent talking about choosing a logo for the new playoff system. Also on the agenda: “Community investment.”
BRITTON BANOWSKY, THEN THE COMMISSIONER OF CONFERENCE USA: “I’d been thinking more and more about, `What’s going to be the legacy of the CFP? Are we talking about just organizing games?’ I was hoping we could get a little more substantive. We had nothing philanthropic in the BCS, and that was OK. But because of the scope and size of the platform we were talking about for the CFP, I thought we could actually move the needle on something on a national scale. So I asked Bill if he would put it on the agenda.”
When Banowsky shared his
thoughts, heads nodded in agreement. After all, each bowl game has a charitable component and they were creating the ultimate college football bowl game. Banowsky agreed to take the lead on refining the idea. Joining him on a subcommittee were Jack Swarbrick of Notre Dame and Bob Bowlsby of the Big 12. Their first step was figuring out what cause to support. They sought guidance from the Richards Group, a Dallas-based branding and advertising company best known for campaigns such as the Chick Fil-A cows and Motel 6 vowing to “leave the lights on for you.” Banowsky had worked with them before on many projects, including launching the Heart of Dallas Bowl to help the local homeless population.
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R A E Y 5 A N N IV E R SA RY TAYLOR SMILEY, THE FOUNDATION’S POINT MAN AT THE RICHARDS GROUP AND FORMERLY PART OF NBA CARES DURING ITS RISE: “We do a process with all clients that we call ‘discovery.’ It’s really another way of saying exhaustive research. A big part of that was interviewing athletic directors, commissioners of various conferences and other stakeholders. We were trying to discern common areas of passion from a social impact perspective that would be natural for the CFP Foundation to embrace in a more formal way.”
HANCOCK: “I remember thinking, `It can’t be higher education. Because we ARE higher education.’”
SWARBRICK: “One of the ideas was money for post-graduate education scholarships for student-athletes and for degree-completion scholarships. Those are great causes and they would’ve helped a lot of students. But it was too close to us. We needed a target to be both education-driven at its core, but sufficiently distanced from I remember thinking, `It can’t be colleges and universities higher education. Because we that it avoided ARE higher education.’” appearing to BILL HANCOCK be a conflict of interest.” The potential causes for the CFP Foundation to support included BANOWSKY: “We got around to animal rights, environmental talking about K through 12 public concerns, health and safety, and education. That made perfect sense the well-being of student-athletes. because we’re an extension of that. Another option: education. Then someone said, `Why only
Smiley and his team came up with about 10 potential candidates. The list was unveiled Sept. 3, 2013, in a conference room at the Richards Group’s downtown Dallas headquarters to a group that included Banowsky, Bowlsby, Hancock, Swarbrick and Jim Delany of the Big Ten, with Kevin Martinez — ESPN’s vice president of corporate citizenship — joining by phone.
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public education? Why differentiate between public and private?’ … While this was going on, Jack got up and walked around the table. Bob Bowlsby was sitting to my left and Jack whispered something into Bob’s ear. Bob leaned back and nodded. Then Bob said, `I think we should focus our work on supporting teachers.’’”
A discussion broke out lamenting the challenges facing teachers and a desire to celebrate them. For everyone, the subject was personal. BOWLSBY: “My niece was working for Teach for America.”
HANCOCK: “My wife taught high school English for 30 years.” SWARBRICK: “I have three sisters who have spent their entire careers teaching elementary school — over 100 years combined experience.”
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DELANY: “My dad taught social studies and American history for 50 years. I saw him walk to school through snow to get to his class. One of my sisters is a lifelong teacher in Europe. Another sister is a biology professor
accord, whether it’s giving time or money.” HANCOCK: “Someone told a story of a teacher who had to buy supplies out of her own pocket because the district didn’t have enough funding. I remember thinking, `It’s a crime that she has to do that. We can buy those supplies for her.’”
They quickly realized they could uplift a profession that desperately needed and deserved a boost. They also knew that helping teachers would help students, and today’s K-12 students are tomorrow’s college students and student-athletes, on their way to being our nation’s future.
I’ve been here almost eight years and it’s probably one of my favorite meetings I’ve ever been a part of. The excitement and conviction walking out of that room was palpable.” TAYLOR SMILEY
at UC Davis. Another teaches grade school. So I’m totally familiar with the unevenness of resources and how much teachers do of their own
SMILEY: “I’ve been here almost eight years and it’s probably one of my favorite meetings I’ve ever been a part of. The excitement and conviction walking out of that room was palpable.” HANCOCK: “We all thought, `Bingo!’ Sometimes you walk out of a meeting and you say, `We just did something really, really important.’ That’s the way we all felt when we left the meeting at the Richards Group. We all knew it was perfect. It was an awesome moment.”
The subcommittee recommended to the Management Committee the creation of the CFP Foundation with a focus on K-12 teachers. The enthusiasm was similar to what everyone felt in the office of the Richards Group. DELANY: “We do a lot at the intersection of competition, education and entertainment. This hit the sweet spot.” CRAIG THOMPSON, COMMISSIONER OF THE MOUNTAIN WEST: “It was a great idea that gave you a warm and fuzzy feeling. It quickly grew into, ‘This is a no-brainer.’”
With the support of the FBS commissioners, all that remained was filling out the paperwork to formally establish the College Football Playoff Foundation, Inc., as a nonprofit entity. INVESTING: Today’s K-12 students are our nation’s future.
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R A E Y 5 A N N IV E R SA RY
YEAR ONE GETTING STARTED (through January 2015 title game in Arlington, Texas)
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ow it’s April 2014 and the promotional countdown clocks distributed by the CFP show less than eight months until the first national championship game kicks off at AT&T Stadium. The CFP Foundation announces that its primary focus will be education, with those efforts handled through an initiative called Extra Yard for Teachers. Its goal: “To honor, celebrate, inspire and empower great teachers.” The name for the initiative traces to the pivotal meeting when K-12 education was targeted as the primary cause, and the swapping of stories about teachers going the extra mile for their students. Only in this version, there’s a nifty pivot to a more football-friendly term of measurement. The Richards
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Group helped with the name and the logo: a shiny green apple with an upright football in the middle, evoking both the CFP Foundation logo and the CFP trophy. At CFP headquarters in Irving, Texas, a director of PLAYBOOK: Banowsky and team identified teacher community relations recruitment and retention as key focus areas. became the de facto point person for the Foundation, Funding for the Foundation but it was one duty among many. initially came from the royalties Banowsky remained the guiding of licensing and merchandising force, but there was only so much of all CFP-branded items. To he could do because his primary pump up the bottom line, the job was leading Dallas-based Foundation also decided to host Conference USA. two fundraisers during the national
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championship weekend: a 5K the morning before the game, and a dining extravaganza that night called the Taste of the Championship, modeled after the NFL’s Taste of the Super Bowl. Another big decision was to throw the majority of the upstart group’s support around DonorsChoose.org, the first-ofits-kind crowdfunding platform for teachers to list the supplies their classrooms need. Rather than write a big check and let the folks at DonorsChoose decide how to spend it, the Foundation distributed gift cards enabling recipients to tap into the allocated funds to help whatever projects they wanted to support. Everyone attending the national championship game received a $25 card to spend on a classroom. It was a savvy move as it gave up to 100,000 people a good reason to log onto the website. All told, about $500,000 was channeled into DonorsChoose through the first season of the CFP.
THOMPSON: “A school near Colorado Springs had some things listed on DonorsChoose and we fulfilled their needs. We got 20 thank-you notes from kids written in crayon. That was so neat!”
LARRY SCOTT, COMMISSIONER OF THE PAC-12: “I remember getting a donor card and deciding to explore DonorsChoose.org to see what it was all about. I found myself peeling back the layers and discovering the need in my community and surrounding communities. I found some teachers who’d taught my kids. It really opened my eyes to needs in my own back yard that I wouldn’t have anticipated.”
Two days before the title game — a Saturday — more than 600 teachers from North Texas gathered for the first Extra Yard for Teachers Summit. Between TED-style talks and performing artists, the four-hour events was equal parts continuing education, stimulating conversation, pep rally and party. In other words, it embodied the organization’s mission of elevating and celebrating teaching and teachers. Add in the 5K and the Taste of the Championship on Sunday, and the fact that five North Texas
EXTRA YARD FOR TEACHERS SUMMIT 2015 HIGHLIGHTS
teachers who were selected as regional Teachers of the Year were honored on the video board during the national championship game on Monday night, and it was clear that Foundation was well on its way to making a profound impact. SWARBRICK: “The level of appreciation was commensurate with the level of need. Both were great. You got a sense that we’d found a really good place to put our charitable energies.”
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YEAR TWO GAINING STRUCTURE (through January 2016 title game in Glendale, Arizona)
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ealizing the Foundation had the potential to be something special, CFP officials decided a dedicated staffer was needed. Banowsky was asked to draw up a job description. HANCOCK: “We were scratching our heads over the administrative part. We were thinking small.” BANOWSKY: “It was going to be grant-writer or something like that.” They soon decided they needed a more substantial role. They needed someone to take charge. HANCOCK: “I said we should have a leader who could do fundraising but also administer the operations of the foundation. Someone who was a dreamer, who would get out
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of the conventional thought processes and think creatively.” SWARBRICK: “I have a memory of discussions about finding someone who had extensive experience in a classroom — a teacher who was passionate about teaching and interested in changing their professional direction.”
Then came the big surprise.
EFFORT: More than 28,000 schools have been touched by the CFP Foundation.
BANOWSKY: “I pulled Bill (Hancock) and Bob (Bowlsby) aside and said, ‘I think I want to do this.’”
HANCOCK: “I thought, `Whoa!’ Here he is, one of the most powerful people in college sports as an FBS commissioner and he’s willing to give it up because he believes in this.”
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SWARBRICK: “Right off the bat, we were very enthusiastic. We knew how passionate Britton had become about the Foundation. It felt right. But we didn’t want to just default to giving it to someone internally. We had to have some process around the hiring.” HANCOCK: “We separated him from the interview process. He could no longer sit on our side of the table. He walked around to sit on the other side as a candidate. … We talked about a couple of other people, in concept. But when the idea of Britton in the position coalesced, we all thought, ‘This is the guy.’” SWARBRICK: “We could’ve found other people who were passionate or talented in the education space, but they wouldn’t have had any idea what the supporting enterprise was all about. You had to have someone with an understanding of both the charity and the dynamics of the CFP.” BOWLSBY: “We went from not knowing who we were going to get to run the Foundation to ramping up more quickly because Britton carried so much trust and familiarity.”
Banowsky hired Ally Wilker as operations coordinator, and Ryan Allen Hall provided support from the CFP team to the Foundation team as director of community relations. There was also tremendous buy-in from Bill Hancock, Michael Kelly and the entire CFP staff. Funding grew, too. In addition to the royalties, the host committee in
EXTRA YARD FOR TEACHERS APPRECIATION WEEK EXPLAINED | CAMPUSINSIDERS
Arizona agree to invest $1 million, with a few small corporate partners joining as well. Seeking to put a stake in the ground — a signature way of connecting conferences and campuses with the K-12 mission — Banowsky’s first big move as executive director was creating Extra Yard for Teachers Week. It’s a way to honor teachers in their local community and/ or teachers who impacted the lives of their student-athletes, all in the spotlight of a college football game. It also was a test of the Foundation’s unique way of impacting the entire country — setting up a ripple effect of going from conferences to campuses to the hometowns of student-athletes. While Hancock liked the idea, he wondered whether it could be ready in time for the season. BANOWSKY: “We were literally
making it up as we went along at that point. We started it on six weeks’ notice.” Yet with the support of ESPN and Campus Insiders, a website and video company for college sports, the Foundation sent athletic directors a box of goodies explaining the plan and encouraged them to customize the experience. BANOWSKY: “We sent out a flash drive with some videos. We said, `We’re calling this Extra Yard for Teachers Week and we’d like you to be a part of it. Please send this along to your marketing people and help us any way you can.’ We wanted the universities and conferences to realize the Foundation wasn’t just about national championship week. We wanted to engage with them during the regular season in a much richer strategic way.”
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R A E Y 5 A N N IV E R SA RY ANGELA WOODS, ESPN SENIOR DIRECTOR OF CORPORATE CITIZENSHIP: “The great thing was that there was no call to action. No one was being asked to give anything. It was really about creating visibility around the initiative and raising awareness about the dramatic needs that teachers and public schools are facing every day in this country. We worked together with our programming team to develop a public-service announcement and other content narratives and to give our College GameDay talent talking points to reference what Extra Yard for Teachers does during their broadcast.”
EXTRA YARD FOR TEACHERS WEEK TOOLKIT
It was a hit from the start.
It allowed our universities to be hometown heroes for their teachers as well.” LARRY SCOTT
SCOTT: “It allowed our universities to be hometown heroes for their teachers as well.” SWARBRICK: “The first time we used a football game to highlight the program, we did an appropriate amount of promotion around it, but not a huge amount. And, still, the embrace was so immediate and so strong — and the money raised was so significant. It again reinforced for me that this was going to make an impact.”
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“IT ONLY TAKES ONE” - TROY AIKMAN EYFT Week has grown in prominence, becoming a wonderful way for players and coaches to say thank you to the special teachers in their lives in videos that are
posted on social media, shown inside stadiums and broadcast during games. The promotional support from ESPN was extensive and served to accelerate the quota
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COLLEGE FOOTBALL PLAYOFF GOES THE EXTRA YARD FOR TEACHERS
of the platform. Since 2017, the campaign has included a series of videos around the theme, “It Only Takes One,” spotlighting teachers who were meaningful to the likes of Pro Football Hall of Famers Troy Aikman, Tim Brown, Tony Dorsett, “Mean” Joe Greene and LaDainian Tomlinson, as well as Kirk Herbstreit and Maria Taylor, both former student-athletes now known for their roles on ESPN. The second CFP National Championship was held in January in Glendale, Arizona. The Foundation stuck with the template from the initial game, a template that remains in place: EYFT Summit on Saturday, 5K and Taste of the Championship
on Sunday, and game on Monday. The EYFT Summit drew more than 1,000 teachers and administrators, including highlevel representatives from the Department of Education, the head of Teach for America and more. One of the speakers was Zachary Levine, executive director of TEACH.org, an organization launched by Microsoft and the U.S. Department of Education to help pave the path into teaching for anyone interested. He discussed the challenge of demand for teachers far exceeding supply. Without something drastic happening, the system will soon be short 100,000 teachers, impacting about 10
million students. He also talked about challenges such as reducing turnover, gaining more expertise in specific areas and a dire need for men of color in the profession. Listening keenly were two people in a position to do something about it: Banowsky and Bowlsby. BOWLSBY: “The difference between the U.S. and most of the world is the quality of education available. The thought of that declining is daunting. That creates an imperative. … We knew we could make a difference, not only by spending millions on making teachers feel good, but also by growing the teaching profession.”
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YEAR THREE SHARPENING THE VISION (through January 2017 title game in Tampa, Florida)
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y this point, Banowsky has a better feel for the reach of the CFP Foundation. He’s convinced the organization can and will have meaningful impact. He’s also humbled by the fact he didn’t know about the looming teacher shortage.
as the two major teachers’ unions, the national association of superintendents and the organization that oversees national curriculum development.
BANOWSKY: “We really didn’t have an intellectual understanding of the serious challenges facing the teaching profession.”
BANOWSKY: “We didn’t want to just be a sports organization spraying dollars around. We wanted to actually RESEARCH: The Foundation continues to learn try and understand more about the teaching profession. the profession. People were shocked that a sports BOWLSBY: “We walked into the organization would take such teacher unions saying, `We think a serious interest in supporting you’re great, we want to help teachers. `What? Really?!,’ they you and make things better.’ It would say. That was super fun.” would’ve been easy for them
So he and Bowlsby scheduled a trip to Washington, D.C., to meet with the people who could get them up to speed. Banowsky has since made dozens of visits, getting to know people such as former U.S. Secretary of Education John King, and organizations such
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to say, ‘You presumptuous bastards!’ But we received such a warm reception. Teaching is so underappreciated they were surprised that anyone wanted to recognize them and to help grow their profession.”
In May, Banowsky went to the White House for a reception honoring the National Teacher of the Year. While waiting for the event to begin, he spoke to a woman sitting next to him. She turned out to be National Teacher of the Year, Jahana Hayes, who is now a member of congress. She introduced him to Chris Minnich, then the executive director of the Council of Chief State School Officers, the group that oversees the Teacher of the Year program. That conversation led to an invitation for the Teacher of the Year from each state and territory, plus a guest, to be invited to the national championship weekend courtesy of the CFP Foundation and Dr Pepper. Paul Ferrari, CCSSO’s senior program director: “Chris sent me an email that said, `Get all the teachers to Tampa in six months.’” The teachers were celebrated at the EYFT Summit, the 5K, the Taste of the Championship and on the field at halftime of the national championship game. It’s now an annual event and a proud layer of the organization’s body of work. The timing is terrific for the Teachers of the Year, too, as it marks the culmination of their time together. As Banowsky gained a better grasp on the organization’s unique role in the world of education,
he also refined and more clearly defined the vision for the organization’s impact. For instance, one of the investments to improve K-12 schools in Arizona had been setting aside money for a new football field. BANOWSKY: “That’s good, but that’s not our deal. That’s not teachers. We needed to be clear about where we were investing.”
To make sure everyone was pulling on the same rope, he went back to the Richards Group to create the CFP Foundation’s “four pillars.” The pillars were loosely in place from the beginning. An iteration from the first year had resources, recognition and professional development, but with “inspiring a college-going culture” as a fourth pillar instead of recruitment. SMILEY: “We knew there were going to be endless opportunities to engage around teaching, and
everyone would have their own idea of what that could or should look like. So we needed to create some guardrails. You can’t go a mile wide and an inch deep. To make true impact, you have to focus and concentrate on a small number of areas and go really deep. That’s where the four pillars came from. It became a real, logical jumping-off point.”
To keep expanding, the Foundation needed more financial support. By now, it was standard for the host committee to provide a substantial gift that would be spent on teachers in its region. There also were the royalties and a growing list of corporate supporters. Now it was time to seek additional funds from internal partners. Conferences pledged a total of $2 million, all of which would be distributed back to them through Extra Yard for Teachers. Then Banowsky sought similar support from the leading bowl games.
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R A E Y 5 A N N IV E R SA RY His plan was to offer a $100,000 investment into teachers in the hometown of each bowl game, providing that the bowl match it. BANOWSKY: “We knew that if we could get one of the bowls to partner with us then the others would want to join.”
He also knew it would be even easier if he walked into the meeting with someone already lined up to be that first partner. ERIC POMS, CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER OF THE ORANGE BOWL: “Britton pulled me aside and told me about his vision. He said he hoped the Orange Bowl would be the first to engage with him. I told him, `Absolutely.’”
Everything went as hoped. BANOWSKY: “Right away, when Eric accepted, the rest of them got really excited about participating. Paul Houlahan from the Sugar Bowl pulled his wallet out of his pocket, put it right on the table and said, `We’re in!’” JEFF HUNDLEY, THEN THE ASSISTANT EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF THE SUGAR BOWL AND NOW HOULAHAN’S SUCCESSOR: “It was playful but serious at the same time. This immediately made sense to us. We really felt like this would make a
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EXTRA YARD CLASSROOM MAKEOVER PROJECT – DALLAS tangible difference. … Sometimes organizations like ours are looked at as an organization and not a group of people. This was a way to show that the Sugar Bowl has a heart.”
Another landmark piece of the organization’s success soon debuted: classroom makeovers. As part of the second annual Extra Yard for Teachers Week, a fourth-grade classroom at Victor H. Hexter Elementary School in Dallas became the first to get overhauled by the CFP Foundation in conjunction with School Specialty, Inc. A total of 10 classrooms in Dallas and Tampa were among the initial batch. Alas, the concept proved to be a bit too good. The overhauled classroom made others in the school look shabbier. Since the aim was to lift an entire school, organizers refined the program to instead upgrade a
common room that would benefit all students in all grades. These are usually libraries or, in the more modern vernacular, media centers. Because these makeovers are such a tangible example of uplifting a community, they’ve become a popular extension of the Foundation. For instance, the Orange Bowl picks a local elementary school each year to make over. After Hurricane Irma devastated South Florida, the Orange Bowl also put one into a school affected by the storm. And after the shooting at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High in Parkland, Florida, a makeover was done for that campus. POMS: “Some of these rooms haven’t been touched in 40 years. When you see the before/after pictures, it is very gratifying. When we talk to the school boards, they said this is the most impactful thing we’ve done. … When you’re
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national championship game. They saw more of the same. SCOTT: “When you’re sitting in a board room making decisions, you believe you’re making sense strategically, philosophically. But having a chance to feel it, touch it, see it — to interact personally with the young kids who are going to be the beneficiaries of it every day, and to see their teachers’ eyes gloss over when they realize they’re going to be able to do a better job of teaching these kids — it brings it to life. It makes it real. It validates the significance of what the we’re doing.”
TRANSFORMATION: The students’ reactions to their new classroom environment are full of awe and excitement. looking at the 100,000-foot view, you’re looking at the impact and measurable outcomes. But when you get in the environments of the actual recipients, it strikes an emotional chord.”
The Big 12 became so fond of the concept that makeovers have become the outlet for the conference’s annual distribution from the Foundation. The conference has done these in underfunded schools in the cities that host conference championship games. Media centers already have been installed in Dallas, Arlington, Kansas City and Oklahoma City, with plans for more this year in
Morgantown, West Virginia, and Ames, Iowa. BOWLSBY: “It’s one thing when you see third-graders getting excited; they get excited about a lot of different stuff. But when you see a teacher tear up and you know it’s because they been spending their own money and working around deficiencies, and now we’ve given them a new palate and new opportunities … well, when you see their eyes well up with tears, you know you’ve made a difference.”
Scott and Banowsky were in Oakland for the unveiling of a makeover in the runup to the
At the national championship game in Tampa, the Foundation’s focus was improving college readiness in Hillsborough, Pasco and Pinnelas counties. The reward to the host community came in the form of targeted DonorsChoose.org investments and a $200,000 investment into the FUSE program, which provided scholarships of $5,500 for lowincome students attending the University of South Florida and eight Florida state colleges, including Hillsborough Community College and St. Petersburg College. Add in matching funds from the Helios Education Foundation, and more than 54 students were given a boost toward their college education. BANOWSKY: “We learned in Tampa that if we were highly strategic and focused, we could produce evidence-based results. We were able to move the needle on the cohort of high school seniors that went to college by 10% in one year, which is really remarkable.”
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YEAR FOUR CREATING THE PLAYBOOK (through January 2018 title game in Atlanta)
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fter three years of figuring out best practices, this was the year the Foundation showed what it was and what it could do. BANOWSKY: “We went from a nonprofit sports organization to a nonprofit educational organization.”
The accumulation of experiences, relationships and partnerships blended into the realization that the Foundation could do more than impact education in the area that hosts the national championship game. They could transform it. The spark came in a 2015 meeting between leaders of the Foundation, the Peach Bowl and the Atlanta Public Schools.
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RACHEL SPRECHER, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR IN THE OFFICE OF PARTNERSHIPS AND DEVELOPMENT FOR ATLANTA PUBLIC SCHOOLS: “They asked, `What is your biggest challenge? What’s your biggest need? What would be helpful?’ We told them about our literacy crisis.”
At the time, about half of the APS third-graders couldn’t read at the expected level. This has huge ramifications on their future, from raising dropout rates to reducing opportunities for jobs and income. One of the roots of the problem was that 70% of APS teachers said they didn’t couldn’t effectively teach reading.
Thus, the teachers were asking for help. The school district’s best solution was to train teachers in the Orton-Gillingham approach, which is anchored in the connections between letters and sounds. But that was way, way beyond the district’s means. SPRECHER: “The Orton-Gillingham approach is usually found in wealthy, affluent private schools or in an upscale public school where maybe a foundation can support the training.” BANOWSKY: “Then we said, `OK, how much do you need?’” SPRECHER: “We said if we could train all K-5 teachers, it would be around $2 million.”
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Banowsky vowed to find the money. Ultimately, it came from four $500,000 donations, courtesy of the CFP Foundation, the Peach Bowl, the Atlanta host committee and the Chick Fil-A Foundation. SPRECHER: “Our jaws hit the floor. We were like, is this real? We had to pinch ourselves.”
What made this relationship transformational wasn’t the investment. It was the implementation. SPRECHER: “We had this cool, robust plan for scaling it up. We started in Year 1 with kindergarten and firstgrade teachers. Year 2 was secondthrough fifth-grade teachers. And this year, Year 3, it’s anyone who didn’t get trained previously plus training some teachers to be certified as trainers so we can redeliver this in perpetuity.” BOWLSBY: “To use the Biblical analogy, they’re teaching people to fish. They’re teaching the teachers how to sustain the kids. That’s really important.”
Think about this from the perspective of an Atlanta teacher. SPRECHER: “It’s helped their confidence and efficacy. It’s helped some of them reignite their passion for teaching. They see kids who sometimes don’t know how to say their own name start reading and coming out of their shell. They have dramatic gains in how they feel about themselves overall. It’s also helped with the retention of the highest-quality
RESULTS: Reading rates are rising on standardized tests in Atlanta. teachers and probably also helped with recruitment. When you’re interviewing a prospective teacher, it’s powerful to say, `You’ll be able to get training in Orton-Gillingham for free.” Results are already evident. Reading rates are rising on standardized tests. As great as it is to see more kids reading proficiently, it’s even more exciting to see a reduction in the number of kids near the bottom of the spectrum. SPRECHER: “The more kids we get proficiently reading by third grade, the more who will reach higher grade levels, better jobs, more career choices and will ultimately be better able to take care of their families and have really rewarding lives. So the game’s legacy is potentially changing the landscape in Atlanta in terms
of intergenerational poverty, workforce development and a ton of other, powerful implications. I’m scared to think where we’d be if not for the Foundation.”
During national championship weekend, the Teachers of the Year were again celebrated royally. JASON SICKEL, KANSAS 2017 TEACHER OF THE YEAR: “My predecessor said, `I don’t want to give anything away, but you’re going to have an amazing time.’ So I had no idea what to expect when my wife and I went to Atlanta. It turned out that we were treated like rock stars! I was in awe. I couldn’t get over it. … Everything was done to high level of exquisiteness.”
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R A E Y 5 A N N IV E R SA RY Instead of honoring the teachers at halftime, the celebration was moved up to a pregame ceremony so they’d be feted in front of a more captive audience. And as the group waited in a hallway to be honored …
make them call their first-grade teacher from 30 years ago and say, `Thank you.’”
Hours before this national championship game kicked off, drama developed in the SICKEL: “Security got very tight. tailgate area. Then the president walked by. As the culmination of That was amazing. … Then we got a season-long promotion, onto the field and were recognized Eckrich offered a $1 with a nice ceremony. When they million donation to the announced, `These are the Teachers CFP Foundation if ESPN of the Year’ and we waved, it was on College GameDay analyst the big screen. The whole thing was Kirk Herbstreit threw a magnificent. … My students thought football through a hole it amazing. People in my family were 20 yards away. stunned. It’s one thing for us to talk With hundreds of fans cheering other teachers and do workshops. him on, and a national audience But to have celebrity status like that? watching, Herbstreit — a former … I very much appreciated how we college quarterback — missed. were treated. It was obvious that a That was supposed to be it. lot of planning went into it. Someone Eckrich would instead give $25,000. really thought a lot about how to But the sponsors urged Herbstreit showcase us educators. We noticed to try again. Then they gave him a it for sure.” third try. When he nailed it, company officials huddled then announced Our job is to gift and create a donation of $500,000. opportunities for them to align Eckrich and its their corporate interests with our parent company cause and platform and to make Smithfield Foods enjoyed the event good happen from it. so much that BRITTON BANOWSKY expanded their HANCOCK: “The beauty of the involvement in 2019. It started with recognition those teachers get on becoming title sponsors of the Taste ESPN — being seen on the air by of the Championship. They also millions of people — is not only for offered each Teacher of the Year a those people being celebrating, throw to benefit their school. And but for those people who are when Herbstreit again missed his watching and seeing teachers being $1 million throw, they were more celebrated. It may make them want prepared this time. Again only to be a teacher. It may make them obligated to donate $25,000, they want to give their son or daughter’s brought out an oversized check for teacher a pat on the back. It may $100,000 that would be given if
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THIRD TIME’S A CHARM: Herbstreit successfully hits the target 20 yards away, resulting in a game-changing donation to the CFP Foundation.
he made the throw. After the ball spiraled through the target, officials decided to instead once again give $500,000. BANOWSKY: “As corporations think about how to invest in cause marketing, it’s our job to be able to give them a vision of the value proposition that had nothing to do with sports marketing. Our job is to gift and create opportunities for them to align their corporate interests with our cause and platform and to make good happen from it. … It’s a transaction, right? But when then you bring in the opportunity to change lives, it creates a synergy that makes the transaction special. I think we represent an opportunity to deliver real impact that transcends tickets and hospitality and football audience.
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YEAR FIVE FULL ‘STEAM’ AHEAD (through January 2019 title game in the Bay Area)
F
eeling good about the literacy campaign in Atlanta, CFP Foundation officials again went in early to plot their role in the 2019 CFP National Championship in the Bay Area. It’s important to note that they didn’t come there looking to replicate the literacy campaign. Their aim was working with local leaders on what mattered most to them and figuring out how the Foundation could help. In Silicon Valley, the focus was getting more teachers trained in STEM — that is, science, technology, engineering and math. (When the acronym STEAM is used, it includes arts.) The San Francisco 49ers are already leading the way with their 49ers EDU program, which blends
STEAM principles and football to better engage K-8 students. Conveniently, Jesse Lovejoy — the director of 49ers EDU — also served as the education director for the Bay Area Host Committee. LOVEJOY: “Being someone in education every day and a football fan, I’d been aware of the Foundation’s work for many years. I knew they had a great reputation and were very mission-aligned. With us, they looked at our work with STEM and said, `This is an important thing for kids and for teachers, so let’s make our focus around that.’ From that point, it was a lot
of head-nodding — `Yes, yes, yes. This is going to be great.’”
As always, the focus was on training teachers so that they could in turn spread the lessons to their students year after year. 49ers EDU already was doing it, but the support of the Foundation enabled them to double the volume, putting up to 400 teachers through the professional development program. They also held events such as “STEAM in the Stadium.” LOVEJOY: “When you spend a half day introducing teachers to project-based learning and STEM using football, you encourage creative thinking and offer roadmaps of what can be done in the classroom. Those things stick.
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R A E Y 5 A N N IV E R SA RY When you consider how many kids will be exposed to those lessons through these teachers who have this different understanding and appreciation of STEM, you’re talking about a lot of lasting lifetime impact.”
Expanded STEM training would’ve been quite a legacy in the Bay Area. Yet it turned out to only be part of it. LOVEJOY: “One day we were at a meeting in San Francisco and Britton asked me, `What’s a big issue here?’ I told him it was housing. We started talking about
teachers not being able to afford to live where they teach. I told him about a group called Landed that was working on kind of a hack, a unique way to help teachers get into homes. He said, `I love that!’”
represents. … That partnership also showed how willing they were to take a leap and do something that clearly was not what they were expecting when they came into the market.”
The Foundation and the host committee created a partnership with Landed that helped pay for homes for five teachers.
The national championship experience played out with all the usual wrinkles. Yet the Foundation continued finding ways to make a meaningful difference in the Bay Area. Because Levi’s Stadium is about four hours south of Butte County, the area of Northern California devastated by a wildfire that fall, the proverbial hat was passed to
LOVEJOY: “When you debate the scale, merit and metrics of impact, five may not look like that big of a number. But when you think about five families getting homes, you understand how much that
DOWN PAYMENT SURPRISE FOR AN OAKLAND TEACHER
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help the school system. Between funds from the Foundation, the host committee, a text-to-give campaign, former San Francisco 49ers owner Eddie DeBartolo, former 49ers greats and the AllStars Helping Kids Foundation, a check for $200,000 was presented on the field to the Butte County Office of Education. As that was coming together, Banowsky sought a way to do something special for a particular teacher or school affected by the fire. He found it in Casey Taylor. Taylor grew up in Paradise, California. She was a wayward child who blossomed once she was welcomed into St. Thomas Moore Catholic School. She showed her appreciation by becoming a kindergarten teacher there. Financial problems forced the school to close, but she found a way to re-open the doors months later, rebranding it Achieve Charter School. At first, it served K-5. She’d expanded it to K-9 and had plans to go to K-12 when the fire ruined everything.
HELPING OUT: Presenting a check to the Butte County Office of Education at the 2019 CFP National Championship. to Britton. He said, `What do you need?’ I said, `Transportation is a huge issue for us right now.’”
In August, Achieve opened It makes you feel really good a K-8 campus in Chico, about the strength and California, with generosity of humanity to lift 236 students, all people back up.” relocated from BRITTON BANOWSKY Paradise. They’ll spend two years TAYLOR: “I was while their old campus — and the tagging along rest of Butte County — gets rebuilt. with our county The day the school opened, Taylor superintendent unveiled a 10-passenger van from and Jesse Lovejoy the CFP Foundation, with the Notre promoting the Dame Alumni Association covering text-to-give insurance, registration and gas for campaign and ended up talking this school year. In October, they
received two more vans courtesy of the Foundation. TAYLOR: “It makes you feel really good about the strength and generosity of humanity to lift people back up.”
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YEAR SIX A GROWING FORCE (Fall 2019, building toward January 2020 title game in New Orleans)
A few years ago, Teach for America CEO Elisa Villanueva Beard told Banowsky that her team recruits student-athletes because they have the perfect skill set for teaching. They’re disciplined, they understand the importance of preparation, they know how to
the teacher shortage the CFP Foundation already was working to address. And think about the fact that the 129 campuses in the Football Bowl Subdivision each have roughly 500 student-athletes. That generates upwards of 12,000 people each year who will be graduating and looking for jobs.
It’s a win for student-athletes because they have a meaningful career path after they graduate…” BRITTON BANOWSKY
manage their time and they’re open to being coached. Most are also energetic, passionate and relate well to kids. Now pair that tidbit with
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BANOWSKY: “A light bulb went off.”
meaningful career path after they graduate, it’s a win for athletic departments because they have a responsibility to their athletes, it’s a win for colleges of education or other teacher-prep departments on campus that need more students, and it’s a win for the communities where they find jobs, often around their university or wherever they grew up.”
His plan: Create a way for universities to promote teaching as a career path for student-athletes.
Conference commissioners loved the idea. After about 18 months of planning, a pilot program named Go Teach was launched at the University of Texas at Austin. Other schools are targeted for next fall.
BANOWSKY: “It’s a win for studentathletes because they have a
BOWLSBY: “That’s how you make a difference.”
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of college football and the national championship game to support education. The CFP Foundation’s primary cause, Extra Yard for Teachers, supports education by elevating the teaching profession.
RECOGNITION
RESOURCES
We recognize that teachers are the real champions and key to the success of the future of our country. We provide the recognition that teachers deserve.
Teachers spend on average $500 out-of-pocket on school supplies, so we put dollars directly into classrooms and supplies teachers need.
PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT
RECRUITMENT AND RETENTION
We partner with organizations who have a strong track record in classroom preparation.
We elevate the teaching profession to inspire and attract quality future educators.
THE CHALLENGE
THE OPPORTUNITY
Across the country we are facing
Studies show that student-athletes and students that possess the same characteristics, make great teachers.
workforce of educators who also better United States student population
THE GO TEACH PROJECT By providing athletic and academic departments a platform to assist with the the teaching profession, we can make an immediate impact across the country. For more information visit GoTeachProject.org #GOTEACH
the more great teachers we will have in our classrooms. GREAT TEACHERS, CHANGE LIVES.
GO TEACH
LEARN WHAT THE “GO TEACH” PROGRAM IS ALL ABOUT
When Banowsky first told Jeff Hundley of the Sugar Bowl that he wanted to discuss the best way to target the educational needs of New Orleans on behalf of the 2020 CFP National Championship, Hundley likes to say that he broke into a cold sweat.
the public-school teacher workforce left. Play that out over a threeyear period and you’ve completely turned over your workforce. You can’t have any continuity. So we ultimately settled on a plan to focus on the three Rs: recruitment, retention and recognition.”
HUNDLEY: “I was like, `Man, oh man, am I out of my realm of expertise and comfort.’”
The Foundation has gathered $2.5 million into another multi-year program that includes encouraging students at local universities to stay in the area as teachers, offering $3,000 bonuses to experienced teachers who serve as mentors to beginners and offering $1,000 stipends per semester to studentteachers, who are often the lowestpaid educators.
It’s a funny story because of course the Foundation would be meeting with experts to both target the needs and how to address them. HUNDLEY: “Britton brought together all the major players in the city and state: the state Secretary of Education, the American Institutes for Research, the Cowen Institute, New Schools New Orleans and New Orleans Public Schools. We learned that every year, about one-third of
HUNDLEY: “We had a kickoff press conference in April at Warren Easton High School. Seeing the pride and smiles among the teachers who got shout-outs and others who were being recognized
felt so good. You got the impression they haven’t received much recognition for what they do. From being around them, I’ve come to learn and believe that teaching is a calling as opposed to a trade.”
The effort already lured 100 new student-teachers from the University of New Orleans. HUNDLEY: “That’s a quick, early indicator that we’re headed in the right direction. We’re excited to be able to brag about that and hopefully about more things in the future. … At a recent press conference, I said the CFP Foundation shows that college football has a soul. They’re serious about making a difference and not just coming in and taking advantage of a community and moving on to the next one. They want to make a difference that’ll last beyond while they’re here.”
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YEAR SEVEN LOOKING AHEAD TO MIAMI IN 2021
W
hile college football is eager to crown this season’s champion, plans are already ahead of schedule for the CFP Foundation’s work in Miami surrounding the 2021 national championship game.
have all of our work set up in Miami.”
The game’s footprint primarily covers two counties, MiamiDade and Broward. Independent meetings with each superintendent led them down the same road: We’re so much farther ahead of upgrading the facilities middle it than we’ve ever been. I mean, schools.
we’re still not even out of New Orleans yet and we almost have all of our work set up in Miami.” BRITTON BANOWSKY
BANOWSKY: “We’re so much farther ahead of it than we’ve ever been. I mean, we’re still not even out of New Orleans yet and we almost
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POMS: “We’re going into a minimum of 15 middle schools and creating what we call Integrated Learning Centers. We’ll go into areas on campus where teachers and students congregate and
completely renovate it with stateof-the-art furnishings, shelves, painting, carpet, ceiling tiles, whatever is needed to beautify the room. Then we’ll bring in technological components — computers, carts, smartboards, STEM or robotic-oriented piece, whatever each school wants.”
There’s no telling how many schools will be involved. Using history as a guide, the initial estimate could end up doubling. History also indicates that the Foundation will be on the lookout to add more value. Actually, a secondary target already has been spotted. It comes from Broward County and the campus of Stoneman Douglas High, where trauma from the school shooting
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2019 EXTRA YEARD FOR TEACHERS IN NEW ORLEANS RECAP
lingers — including among teachers. POMS: “They’re dealing with things that most parents and students don’t realize. These are human beings. They need their own outlets. Britton’s idea is that this could be a pilot program the CFP Foundation will bring to other marketplaces.”
2021: The CFP Foundation is focused on helping middle schools in Miami-Dade and Broward Counties.
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LOOKING BACK, LOOKING FORWARD
S
o that’s the story of the CFP Foundation from inception to today, with a peek into the future. Whichever direction you look — backward or forward — there’s a lot to admire.
SWARBRICK: “We had the incredible opportunity to start with a blank slate. That gave us a lot of freedom, but also a lot of room to get it wrong. It’s been rewarding to see how right the initial decision was. But this is no time for a victory lap. We’ve only just begun. If the program looks in You can have a great idea, but five or 10 years as it the idea has to have legs and does now, that will partners to help implement be an opportunity lost because there proper execution.” is so much we JIM DELANY can do from this platform. I want to And it always comes down to increase the hit rate — touching how perfectly they nailed the first more classrooms, recognizing decision, linking the spectacle of more teachers.” college football with not just K-12 education but with teachers. DELANY: “You can have a great
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idea, but the idea has to have legs and partners to help implement proper execution. What Britton did was thread the needle by using bowls, championship games and the networks to enhance impact.”
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SCOTT: “The phrase ‘doing well by doing good’ comes to mind here.” Last year, the Foundation asked the Richards Group to do a comparative analysis of the cause platforms among all major sports entities in the United States. The report showed that the Foundation was third, behind only the NFL Foundation and NBA Cares. Part of that success stems from the partnership with ESPN. Make that, its “enviable” partnership with ESPN. Because of the network’s enormous visibility, every nonprofit wants to work with it. So leadership must be selective. Its top corporate priority is the V Foundation, which ESPN started, as well as its Stuart Scott Memorial Cancer Research Fund in honor of late ESPN anchor. Next on the list is the CFP Foundation.
can appreciate and find value in education. The relationship has scaled and grown through our platforms — linear TV, digital and social — and we’ve been able to give the CFP Foundation the space to forge forward. It resonates with our talent on a personal level. People get it. It’s been a really good partnership for us.”
While the Foundation is an extension of the CFP — the charity’s might coming from the popularity of the Playoff Semifinals and national championship game — the philanthropic success reflects well on the entire organization.
HANCOCK: “You don’t give back to society to be recognized. You do it because it’s the right thing to do and because you want to help someone. But there’s no question it helps our enterprise for people to know It’s been a terrific success story. that we care I’m as proud of what we’ve done about more than with Extra Yard for Teachers as just football.”
I am any aspect of the College Football Playoff. It feels like we’ve made a difference.” BOB BOWLSBY
WOODS: “From a business standpoint, the rights deal we have with college football is as important as any league relationship we have. Beyond that, it became evident that there was a synergy between what the CFP Foundation was doing and what we do at ESPN and more broadly as the Walt Disney Company. We both value creating a pipeline to the future. … Everyone
BOWLSBY: “It’s been a terrific success story. I’m as proud of what we’ve done with Extra Yard for Teachers as I am any aspect of the College Football Playoff. It feels like we’ve made a difference.” DELANY: “We’re still sort of just at the beginning of an idea that will never get old. I think it’s one of the most important things we could do because of the continuing need. There’s no doubt we have the right
foundation in place and we’ve built the first floor. But this could be a skyscraper.”
Banowsky uses another analogy. BANOWSKY: “We went through our toddler stage and now we’re teenagers. We need to become adults next and figure out how we can ensure that this work goes on for the next 50 years.”
How much more impact can they have? The answer may depend on how much the budget grows. BOWLSBY: “We want to have a $20 million per year impact on all parts of the teaching profession. It causes Britton to recoil a bit when I throw those numbers around, but I think we will draw more sponsors and endorsers. For instance, early on, we had a good meeting with the Gates Foundation, but we didn’t get any money from them because we were too early in our evolution. Now that we have a more-established track record, I think they and other organizations will consider supporting this enterprise.” BANOWSKY: “We’ve got to figure out a way to move this work to a higher plane. With more funders coming along, we can do a better job of touching the lives of teachers and effecting more positive change. … We’re celebrating this season the 150th anniversary of college football. Our job is to make sure that when we’re celebrating the 200th anniversary, our work to support teachers is a prominent part of it.”
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