"I'm thrilled to be here. It's incredibly exciting, a great organization, a great football organization and it's a new day for this organization. Hopefully we'll have bigger and better things to come, including Super Bowl championships in the future."

On changes Tepper could look to make organizationally: "Well I don't know if I quite have 24 hours yet that I own this team, so I'm still evaluating things. In general, like I just said I like to have an open environment, a one big family environment where everybody feels safe like a family. That means you can come up and talk to people and there's going to be just openness on all sides of this organization, both the football side and the business side."

On ideas related to practice fields, training camp location, Bank of America Stadium: "I don't know who wrote the article about new practice fields - this would be one of the few places that doesn't have new practice fields. Obviously we're in need. I think a lot of these things can't be done independently. I can't talk about a practice field without talking about new stadiums, and as I said before, I view this as the Carolina Panthers in both states so we have to think about where we're putting things. One of the things that I did say is that winning is important. One way or another we can't be less than competitive with other NFL teams and at this point, given our practice field and what other people have in the league, we're falling behind a little bit. Because I do view the football side - this is a business, don't forget that - but the football side is very important, and winning is very important on the football side and I mentioned the community side, but one of the aspects is that we treat our players right and don't have any disadvantages to any other teams in the league. Top priority would be thinking about that practice field."

On competing with other organizations: "We have a law that was passed just recently and it has not yet hit the Carolinas - the whole gambling aspect. You think about the fans and you want to keep the fans in the building. Eventually it's going to hit North and South Carolina. It has to, from a revenue standpoint. You have issues with paying teachers and other things down here, and tax revenue so it's inevitable. When we're thinking about these things we have to take that into consideration because I want to make sure fans are in that building and sharing this team, and I don't want fans not in that building. Sometimes you get lucky when you don't think you're lucky, so one of the things that we're lucky is we do have an old stadium that we have to re-do. We do have an old practice field, we have to have new practice fields. Along those things with some of the changes with the gambling, we do have an advantage so we can think about what fans may want. We have to make sure they're in our building to cheer this team on, because I do think an active fan base…I do believe the fans are the 12th man on the field, and I want to make sure that 12th man is in that stadium. Some of these things are revenue producers, there is other development here. If we do move the practice field next to some place other than right next to the stadium, which makes so much sense, you do open up a lot of area for development and other development here. There is the new Amtrak station just up on Fourth Street where the Greyhound station is, if I've got that right? So I'm thinking about those sort of things. Everything goes hand in hand in this community. It's not just the business things. It's also a matter of things like high school games, and I think that high school [state] championships should be played in that stadium. That's what I think, because that is part of the community, brining in the community. I also think there should be more – I don't want to screw up the field – but I think there should be more bigger events there, like the right type of concerts in that stadium there really hasn't been. So I want to utilize the stadium for the community because I think it is as important as being a member of the community."

On changes in the employee culture: "Whatever it was, was. This is now. This is going to be an open place, so there are not going to be non-disclosure agreements no matter what in this new place and that sort of thing. That was then, this is now. That was then, this is now. This is going to be an open place where people are going to have the right people to talk to, to come up with problems. And by the way, if I do something incredibly stupid, they should be talking about me. That's what this place is going to be."

On working with government officials: "I really haven't had any extensive conversations with the governors and such. I just had a very quick greeting with the mayor, but that is about it. There's a lot of discussions to have about how we do things here. This is my view, this is a partnership. This is the logical place for the stadium, not just with Charlotte if that's what it is but also hopefully with the governor of North Carolina and the governor of South Carolina. Even though I haven't really returned their calls yet, I am happy to return their calls now. It wasn't appropriate before. I think there's a lot to talk about and I think there's some really interesting things from the development side for them and for me, for us, the Panthers to consider."

On government support of pro sports franchises: "If I go and I put a development, I bring a lot of dollars in here and tax dollars in here and F-and-B (food and beverage) dollars. If you have an F-and-B tax or hotel tax or something like that and I'm bringing that tax in there, I'm making that investment, I'm not asking for people who aren't using those facilities. So there's a lot of different ways you're talking about it. If we're talking about win-win situations, can't just be for me and it can't just be for them, so it has to be a partnership and partnerships mean win-win and that's definitely possible if you think that way. If we do development here, that does new development that keeps people here, just not on stadium day, and we open up for other things and I make an investment in MLS (Major League Soccer) and I bring that in here and I bring that many more dollars into the community, that's businesses in the community and there's more tax dollars generated then that makes more sense to split some of those tax dollars. That's not taxing people who aren't using those facilities, but they're using things that I'm helping bring here. That's the partnership."

On current employees who may have been aware of workplace misconduct: "I can't emphasize enough the openness I plan for this organization to have. That openness and team. The team of this organization. I think there's been an atmosphere where the thing, this organization, I'm talking more of the business side, wasn't allowed to be a team and they were not able to go up and talk about things. There's going to be no impediment to that in the future. There's going to be no, let me just say that again, there's going to be no impediment to that in the future. And whatever that means and whatever that brings, that will bring. And whatever falls, that will fall. That's all I can say on that."

On what he wants in a team president: "Experience running a sports team is probably number one and different types of experience like that. Some of the obvious business things like marketing, development experience of some sort and be able to do that because we talk about this, probably a lot of development here. I just want to make sure that the person here knows, there's a couple people I'm kind of pinned down on, that they'll be able to build a good team here and also understand the philosophy that I just outlined of openness and a team environment and one family. We're a family here, and I want to make sure people understand that. That family includes the football side, it includes the business side. That's the way I run my other business. You asked about my other business, it's a family. This is a family and the family is protected and the family feels safe in here, inside this building, inside this environment. So I am going to look for somebody that can kind of make sure they have that vision."