DALLAS (April 29, 2025) – One first-time winner and 10 previous ones, including West Virginia University for the third time in the past five years, 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, assistant athletic director for football communications. Nebraska and its staff led by Keith Mann, associate athletic director for communications, earned its 11th.
Other awards went to Navy for the eighth time; Pitt for a seventh time; California, Iowa, South Carolina, Tennessee and WVU each a third time; and Texas Tech, a second time. The first-time recipient in the 2024 Super 11 was Army. The Super 11 dates to the 2009 season.
WVU’s football communications unit is led by Mike Montoro, assistant athletics director for football communications, and Michael Fragale, executive senior associate director of athletics communications, who have been overseeing the publicity for WVU football since 2007.
“We are proud to have received this recognition for the third time in the past five years (2020, 2022),” Montoro said. “A lot of people need to be included in this honor and distinction, including the Mountaineer coaching staff and the student-athletes. It takes a lot of people doing their job efficiently for everything to be done the right way. Credit also needs to be given to the WVU Athletics external team, which does an outstanding job as well.”
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,” 2025 FWAA President Bill Bender of The Sporting News said. “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.
2024 FWAA Super 11 Honorees
Army
California
Clemson
Iowa
Navy
Nebraska
Pittsburgh
South Carolina
Tennessee
Texas Tech
West Virginia
Press Release Courtesy of West Virginia University Athletics Communications
