The University of South Carolina has been selected as a 2025 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 fourth time in the past five years that the South Carolina football communications staff have been recognized with this prestigious award.

Gamecock football communications efforts are led by Senior Associate Athletics Director Steve Fink and assisted by secondary contacts David Fox and Kent Reichert.

“This is a tremendous honor for our staff to be recognized by the FWAA with this award,” said Fink.  “It is a testament to the hard work of our staff and the importance that Coach Beamer puts on building relationships with the media.”

The 11 Awards for the 2025 season with their CSC directors and their staffs went to Clemson – 13th time (Ross Taylor), Nebraska – 12th time (Keith Mann), Navy – ninth time (Scott Strasemeier); Iowa (Matt Weitzel), South Carolina (Steve Fink), Tennessee (Bill Martin) and West Virginia (Mike Montoro) each a fourth time;  Texas Tech (Matt Dowdy) a third time, and Ohio State (Jerry Emig) and San Jose State (Sky Kerstein) a second time. The first-time recipient school in the 2025 Super 11 was Kansas (Andrew Eisch). The Super 11 began with 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 2025-26 FWAA Directory.

“We’re so excited to again honor the best and brightest communication staffs in college football,” said FWAA 2026 President Shehan Jeyarajah of CBS Sports. “I’ve been fortunate enough to directly work with many of the staffers on this list and we greatly appreciate their service to our profession. I’d like to give a special recognition to the retiring Jerry Emig at Ohio State, a legend in the industry who has been a wonderful partner to the FWAA over the years. We commend him for his years of service.”

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. These are the best of the best of several communications staff we honor. There are others which are excellent and some on the cusp of making Super 11 next year perhaps.  We have a number of hard-working communications staff who make our jobs easier. We appreciate that on an annual basis.”

This is the second national award for the Gamecocks’ Communications and Public Relations staff in the past month.  In March, Associate Athletics Director Diana Koval was named the recipient of the Mary Jo Haverbeck Award for 2026 by the U.S. Basketball Writers Association (USBWA).  The honor is given to someone for distinguished service to women’s collegiate basketball.

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 83 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.

2025 FWAA Super 11 Honorees
(with all-time award count in parenthesis)

Clemson (13)
Iowa (4)
Kansas (1)
Navy (9)
Nebraska (12)
Ohio State (2)
San Jose State (2)
South Carolina (4)
Tennessee (4)
Texas Tech (3)
West Virginia (4)

2025 Super 11 Coach of the Year
Rhett Lashlee, SMU