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3 Guys Before The Game - Wren Baker Visits (Episode 466) · 3 Guys Before The Game

• 0:10
  Hey, and away we go. Welcome in everybody. It's the show you've
• 0:15
  been waiting for. I've been waiting for. Everyone has been waiting for.
• 0:21
  It's episode number four six six of three Guys Before the Game and our special
• 0:25
  guest as our summer series continues, is WUVU Athletic director Wren Baker. Baker,
• 0:35
  You're ready for this? I am. I've been waiting for this.
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  I know, I know I have to do a lot of media stuff that
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  I don't enjoy. I was looking forward to this. We hope, he
• 0:45
  says that when he walks out right. That's why. Good to get that
• 0:48
  on record early. Yes, checked piece. Three Guys Before the Game brought
• 0:52
  to us by the fine folks at Comac's Business Systems. They happen to keep
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  you walk in and your employees look at you and go, we got a
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  big problem. We thought we were safe. Called Comax Business Systems. Visit
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  them at Comax WV dot com. Three guys brought to us by the Burdette
• 1:19
  Camping Center, the only warranty Forever RV dealer in all of West Virginia.
• 1:23
  You can visit them at Burdettecamping dot com. And as you well know,
• 1:27
  I don't need to tell you, we're in the midst of recreational vehicle season.
• 1:33
  So whatever it may be, they got you covered and that deal continues.
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  Ten thousand American dollars off. The unbelievable Forest River travel trailer and toy
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  haller. You know, Wren just drove seventeen plus hours from Texas. He
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  made the move probably at some point which he could have gone in the back
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  and laid down a little bit. You can do that, and that travel
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  trailer make a little food there, to make a little food. You got
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  the awning. He just probably want to pull around the interstate and just kind
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  of power on him. It's got power on him. I have ten thousand
• 2:07
  dollars off. Visit them and for Detcamping. Three guys also brought to us
• 2:08
  by the folks that sell Family Fund. Lou Wendell Marine Sales in Saint Albans,
• 2:15
  the number one pontoon boat dealer in the state of West Virginia. You
• 2:19
  ever pontoon boat. I have been on a pontoon boat. Yeah, just
• 2:23
  saying, I mean family fund, family family fund. Of course, visit
• 2:28
  lou Wendell Marine Sales dot com. Pontoons are fun. You could probably get
• 2:31
  him on yours. Well, sure yet, Yeah, he's got it.
• 2:37
  Efforting. Three guys also brought to us Bike three guys also brought to us
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  by the fine folks at Gomart. Go for good times, Go for Gomart.
• 2:46
  Save money on your gas and on your food by getting a Gomart rewards
• 2:52
  card. Go to gomart dot com. Slash the number three guys. That's
• 2:55
  gomart dot com. Slash the number three guys. Let's do this thing they
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  send more reesis. Since you ate all this, I'll tell you that I
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  came down the other night before sports Line and there was some that had been
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  sitting out there and I was waiting. The package was open, so I
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  didn't have to be the one to open it, but there were still some
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  left. Thought about it all day long. They're now gone. Came they
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  were gone. Oh my gosh. She shot down like four or five within
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  a twelve minute period. I'm still working on one pack of pieces. Yeah,
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  because I like get a few out, like I have six ran favorite
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  candy reess cups for sure, Yes, and I wouldn't like Tony knows.
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  I am never shy to criticize Tony Good. In fact, I'm on a
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  whole bit that we do on the caravans in the summer. There's just me
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  going in on Tony. But but I will not criticize a man for eating
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  ess. That is my tax. I'm introducing my children to tax kind of
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  my tax on Halloween candy, Easter candy is the ess. I love a
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  traditional cup or do you go the shapes? Um shapes have a great ratio
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  more of a traditional cup guy. But uh yeah, but but I do
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  like the shapes too. Variation is good, you know, in the spice
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  of life, so to speak. Yeah, Well, as you travel around
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  the state, what you've been doing with great frequencies. You know, there's
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  a bunch of go marts all over the place and they have they sell fly
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  rod slim jims about six foot about a six foot slim jim. You can
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  just take it out, get a whip going, and then while you're doing
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  that, eat a re season. It's a good day. It's a it's
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  a real good day. Yeah. Absolutely, So it's nice to have you
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  here. With us. You've been busier and uh I was. Can you
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  say this anymore? Can you say busier than the one armed paperhanger with an
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  itch? Can you say that? I'll defer to that. I don't know.
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  I mean, if you made can you say this? Probably shouldn't So
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  I just know, just probably just defended all this, Probably just defended all
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  the one out again. Sorry, he's been busier than a cat trying to
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  cover poop on a marble floor. Welcome to the shell red Yeah, here
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  we go. So here's my boy. So here you're talking about poop on
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  the marble floor. He's been He's just been at the Greenbrier last week.
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  Big twelve a fishionados, the highest level of Big twelve, and you're talking
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  about poop on the marbek. I was just trying to bail you out.
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  Appreciate that. How the other fellows like the Greenbrier. They had a love
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  they enjoyed it. And we got an activity out one day, and so
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  I choose the old casting blast, did a little fly fishing and some power
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  target shooting. Oh did you do that too? Yeah? I saw you
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  holding your fish. Yeah. I thought maybe I shouldn't take a picture with
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  the shotgun. And I'm trying to stay away from controversial topics, but there
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  were plenty of clay targets hurt. But some escape people are glad to know
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  that there's still some clay targets left there in Greenbrier County. So, um,
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  just like, offhand, how many of those folks that came in for
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  the Big twelve meetings had never been there before? Probably eighty five? And
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  so what was what was the general theme when they came Just give it nice,
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  no, just gorgeous. Yeah, people were amazed at how beautiful it
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  was. We uh Gordon and and uh yeah, there we are with the
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  fish. I mean, listen, admittingly the state record is safe. Okay.
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  Uh. And what's bad is I could see bigger fish right and they
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  would swim up to my son and then swim off. I'm like, you
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  know, that's that's ran no fence, that's pretty small fence. Well,
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  I mean, how did you tell did you tell those folks like we all
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  live at the Greenbrier? What you say is like, we all live like
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  this, this is West Virginia. What do you want? Yeah, yeah,
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  exactly. I mean listen, the Greenbrier is a special place. But
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  the beauty is all across the state. I mean, even driving through with
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  my wife yesterday, I would call her because we came up through Huntington.
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  Uh we drove over from Lexington and uh, you know, I would tell
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  I've driven that stretch enough now, I know, like, hey, up
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  around this curve like it'll take your breath away. So uh, that is
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  one of the really cool things about the state is it's it's a gorgeous place.
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  Um and you know, you find yourself just wanting to pull over and
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  just take a road, not knowing where it's going, just see where it
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  leads. So have you met have have you met Don Neil? And yet
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  I have? And what Neilan used to say when he was a football coach,
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  he'd say, you know, you fly over West Virginia, you see
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  trees. You don't see players. Players are just to me, trees.
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  You've heard. His line used to be, I fly over New Jersey,
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  all I see his roofs and inside of those houses or players. I fly
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  over West Virginia, How I see it's a tree? Somebody? Who?
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  I mean, I need our coaches to recruit, but I don't actually recruit.
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  I kind of like the trees. But I understand the I certainly understand
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  the concern there. So you guys made the big move this week. This
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  was you were waiting for school to get done, for the for the two
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  kids, and now you guys made the long seventeen hour treks. So did
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  you like the blackjack dealer? Like you've done with this with with Denton,
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  Texas, you went out, We are done. So it was it's been
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  a weird transition. I took the job. We made the decision after a
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  lot of discussion. We've done it both ways. But my daughter, my
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  oldest daughter, has Type one diabetes, and that diagnosis happened last summer,
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  and so she's been through a lot of change, and so we made the
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  decision to go ahead and let them finish the school year out. She was
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  the one that was the most really wanting to She was in fifth grade,
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  so that's a transition period to have an end of the year party. You
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  know. I think she would have got over it eventually, but I didn't
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  want her at nineteen to be coming back to me and like, you screwed
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  up my life when you didn't let me finish out fifth grade in Texas.
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  So and even though it's hard to be away from your family. You know,
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  it does give you a chance to get out and see people, and
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  you and I've been on some of those paths together without the guilt of knowing
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  you're leaving a family at home that you just moved. And so so we
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  were gonna wait and sell our house. April May, North Texas made a
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  change at football coach. The new football coach comes in without me listing my
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  house. He says, hey, can I take a look's your house and
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  bought it. Um so, so all of our belongings are still in storage
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  in Texas. I found a rental house. They're just down the street.
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  Put the girls in the rental house. I rented a place here, uh,
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  temporarily. It's a condo in the Holiday Inn actually on pine View,
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  very very very close. I didn't know that. Yeah, they have some
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  condos on the fifth floor. So I went from no, HG points to
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  like, I am multi platinum, I'm in, I'm in, I'm the
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  Rihanna um and uh and so uh where they have moved. We made the
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  move with everything except our belongings. We close on a house um tomorrow actually,
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  but there's gonna be some renovations happen, so we don't to be fully
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  moved in. I think we'll need to be in the house with our belongings
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  where we're now all in this condo, but we're all here in West Virginia
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  except for our oldest who's at a camp. But she'll be joining us here
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  a little later in June. But for all intents and purposes, the dogs,
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  one of the daughters, the wife, all of my bosses are now
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  here in West Virginia. It's hard, man, I mean, it's a
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  transition. Those are difficult. Those are difficult, and plus throwing all that
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  where the families separated. And then at the same time, there have been
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  a few things going on since you took over. Oh yeah, I mean
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  it's not it hasn't been just like study cruise. I mean it's just been
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  it's circle the bases, let's let's touch them all here. In the first
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  year on the job, have you yeah, exactly, Like, have you
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  had that moment? I remember one we talked not all that long ago where
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  you said one of the things that surprised you was just a constant movement of
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  travel. In other words, you got this meeting, you got that meeting.
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  Now you're at the big twelve. Now we're gonna go here. Now
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  we're gonna come here. So that's kind of been the surprise. Yeah,
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  you know, most of the job is the same. Um. You know,
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  the Steve Urius who works for us always says, Hey, different logo,
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  same same job, And for the most part that is the case.
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  It's the job that I've been doing for two decades now. I think the
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  difference here is this is the first time that I've had this position at an
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  institution that is the state's pro team, that is that. And so just
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  the travel request, appearance request, UM, expectations in that regard is different,
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  UM, and it eats up a lot more time. So when you
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  when you're looking at trying to think strategically about how you want to move parts
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  and pieces around the department and how you'd like to structure this and UM starting
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  to try to roll out a strategic plan, there's been less time to do
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  that these first wee must now part of that is the transition in the middle
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  of a school year as opposed to this time of year when you kind of
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  come in there's not a lot of events to go to. UM. Uh
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  so uh, you know, I think the best thing about this job is
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  the statewide interest and the passion of the following. But there is a responsibility
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  that comes to that to be visible and to be present and to be active.
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  And certainly, um that's been an adjustment for me. It's one I
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  think we've handled as well as as can be handled, but certainly one that's
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  been adjustment. Stay on that line for a minute. You may have answered
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  this partially, but so when you take these kind of jobs, you don't
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  have the time to dig in like you would probably ideally like, So you
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  have to make a move knowing what information you have. Then you gotta hop
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  the thing that surprised you the most to the positive other than what you just
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  said there has been what the practice facilities for football men and women's basketball are
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  as good as anywhere in the country. Those operations facilities are are incredible,
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  and you know, you can always update a graphic here or there, or
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  switch out some more modern technology here or there, but those were really really
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  good. I knew that, you know, I knew football and went through
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  some renovation, but until I saw it in person, I really didn't realize
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  just how incredible, how functional both both of those facilities are and so I
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  thought, I think that's very positive because a lot of times those are the
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  things that people fix last there's no real return on revenue. Now. On
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  the flip side of that, I wish we had more premium spaces and more
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  clubs and and things like that that we could monetize into revenue, and we'll
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  be looking at that moving forward. But uh, those are very hard projects
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  sometimes to get done. And coming in here now some of our Olympic sports,
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  um are we we have work to do. They're not in as good
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  as shape. But but football, men, women's basketball having incredible facility,
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  which probably gives you a little sense of relief. Right for what you just
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  said, there's two big ticket items that that are good for right now.
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  Yes, and generally when you go to raise money for let's just say you
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  were going to do some stadium improvements and you were looking at building club seats
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  and suites, Well, um, you can leverage those to get the gift.
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  Um. You know there there have been people we have a waiting list
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  of people who want premium seating now and if they knew we were building,
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  um, really modern facilities, I think that that would be more and they
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  have to pencil. It is enough to pay for the uh the improvements and
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  hopefully add to your your budget a little bit. Those will be things will
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  tackle this next year. But um, you know those facilities that where people
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  are just giving for philanthropics say, those are sometimes a little tougher to raise
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  money for. Man, I don't think the university has said too much since
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  the hugging situation, and I do need to ask you some questions about that.
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  First of all, when that came down, Huggin City pledged to do
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  better. That included meeting with wv's LGBTQS Center and other organizations to learn more
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  about what faces that community. Also, those financial commitment, is he following
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  through and dotting eyes and crossing teas on those? On those he is?
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  I don't know the exact count today, but I think he's had over a
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  half dozen meetings already with different constituencies and different organizations and individuals associated with with
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  the LGBTQ plus community. So he has been very aggressive in trying to get
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  those meetings scheduled. You know, a summer people are traveling, but he's
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  been all over it. M Steve Urius helps is helping schedule those with him.
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  And he's a sport program admen. I met with Steve briefly today to
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  check in see how those how all those were going. But but coach has
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  been really diligent and making sure he was falling through with that. UM.
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  So he is doing the quote was doing better. So he is doing better.
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  Yes. When all this was going on, and there were a lot
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  of I'm sure you heard from alumni, faculty and staff, some were saying,
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  you know, get rid of Huggins. Some were saying, you know
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  what he did, it was nothing wrong with him. Sure you had a
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  range, were there a number? Was anybody? Were any alumni saying fire
• 15:28
  him? And at any point was his job on the line. Yeah,
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  I think all viewpoints were expressed and considered UM, and so we definitely heard
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  from all ranges of that continuing, you know, of what people thought should
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  happen, UM. And I think as we entered those discussions it was with
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  an open mind and and UM no predetermined outcome. So so all options would
• 15:52
  have been on the table. So so firing was on the table when you
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  began those discussions. I think all options were on the table when we began
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  those discussions. One more question is that he his contract now it's a renewal
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  for one year, right, yes, so and you know, look,
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  you're you're hired because you're expected to handle the day to day, the week
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  to week and also be looking ahead. So do you how long how much
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  long would you expect coach Huggins to be the coach? And do you have
• 16:18
  that list in your back pocket? And are you thinking about the next coach?
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  We? Uh so, I'm pretty diligent about keeping a list for every
• 16:27
  sport. And it's not the proverbial list in the ads top drawer, um,
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  but it is a spreadsheet of every and every year I'll have the sport
• 16:37
  program administrator go back and kind of refresh that. If our job was to
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  open, rather coach retired, you know, rather a coach moved on like
• 16:45
  we had in women's basketball at their own decision, rather we had to make
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  a decision. I think you always have to be prepared if you start that
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  process only after you know the openings come in. You just especially in this
• 16:59
  re rooting environment with the portal, you're just every day that goes by,
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  you're you're opening up some liability there. So I always keep a list like
• 17:07
  that, UM and usually about mid season, I'll start refreshing it because people
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  who would have been on a list this year would have gotten many of them
• 17:15
  would have gotten jobs. So that list looks different a year from now.
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  But but I try to never be caught off off guard because you just never
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  know. Take women's basketball, for example, we had a women's basketball list.
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  I would have never thought that we would be using that list, you
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  know. Um, but um, that's the way that this business is.
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  The Only thing that you can do is be prepared for whatever may come.
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  And say, how did that meeting go? By the way, with the
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  women's coach when she said, hey, listen, i'm hiding out, I'm
• 17:48
  leaving. We all of our conversations were cordial. I try not to take
• 17:52
  that stuff personal. That's hard, but in this job, whether it's criticism
• 17:57
  from fans, whatever, UM, I tried to to not take that personal
• 18:03
  and just to do the job to the best my abilities. She let me
• 18:08
  know that Minnesota expressed interest. I want to say, a day or two
• 18:12
  before the Big twelfth Tournament, and I said, well, I'd like to
• 18:15
  talk to you. We think you've built some momentum here, you know,
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  I think this can be really special. Um. You know, we've seen
• 18:22
  h an increase in NIL activity for women's basketball players. WHI should be helpful?
• 18:26
  Um and UM, she said, yeah, I'm not even sure how
• 18:30
  sincere their interest is. You know, I'm just focused on winning. And
• 18:33
  I said, well, when you're ready to have the conversation, I'm ready.
• 18:36
  So if that's today, if that's when the you know, Converence tournament's
• 18:40
  over, if that's when the season's over. By the time that we had
• 18:42
  the next conversation, it was pretty far down the road with Minnesota. UM,
• 18:48
  and she was going to sleep on it and think about it, but
• 18:52
  I made it clear to her that we would love a chance to to sit
• 18:55
  down and have an opportunity to counter m What she articulated to me was that
• 19:00
  there were some reasons for going back there, but most of them had to
• 19:03
  do with family. It was close to where both she and her husband were
• 19:07
  from. There'd been health challenges, not to get too specific, with her,
• 19:11
  folks, that's more hers to share the mind, and so, you
• 19:15
  know, geography was something that I can't change. We're in Morgantown, We're
• 19:19
  not moving campus, you know, anywhere closer to where she's from. And
• 19:23
  so, UM, you know, I have to take that at face value,
• 19:26
  and ultimately, you know, things happened the way they're supposed to.
• 19:30
  I think coach Kellogg has done a great job on boarding and connecting with people,
• 19:33
  and and I'm excited about what he's building here and wish her nothing but
• 19:37
  the best. I don't have any ill feelings towards her. Just one other
• 19:41
  awkward but relevant question, with football season right around the corner, what do
• 19:45
  you will constitute success that that will mean? Yes, coach, we want
• 19:52
  you to stay. You're building something. Where's the line there? I mean
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  hobbies giving me these fastballs inside he's dusting me off the plate a little bit.
• 20:00
  Yeah, And I'm clearly afraid he's not gonna talk because he's firing them
• 20:03
  all at once. I was gonna suggest now I'm gonna come back to the
• 20:07
  question, but I was gonna suggest hockey. You know, I've watched this
• 20:11
  and Tony talks a lot. I mean, you know, and like I
• 20:15
  was a Bulls fan in ninety five ninety six, I mean, Coo Coach
• 20:18
  was a good player, Pip Pippin was a good player. But you gotta
• 20:22
  get Michael Jordan the ball. We have Michael Jordan. Yeah, I was
• 20:26
  wondering, like I just got the ghost. He's got the ball. Now
• 20:30
  he's got the Okay, early Jordan, he's holding the ball like this.
• 20:34
  It's only just like this, you know. But in all fairness, I
• 20:37
  mean, you know, you're, you're, you're a big guy. You
• 20:41
  can, you can, you know, you know, you know very well
• 20:44
  when you know, you know that these are questions that everybody has. So
• 20:48
  that's all I mean, listen, uh you you are. I get one
• 20:52
  thing about West Virginians. They care about this program, but they're not bashful
• 20:55
  to ask the same questions in the ale at the grocery store, right,
• 21:00
  That's true. So I'll let it go after the after this one. Uh.
• 21:04
  I never and I know this gonna sound a little bit like a cop
• 21:07
  out and there'll be fans against it. I have never once talked about expectations
• 21:12
  in terms of a win total. I just think there's too much that can
• 21:15
  be influenced by that. You can hit that win toll and not feel good
• 21:19
  about where the program is. Um, you could miss it by one or
• 21:22
  two and feel like that was because of a catastrophic injury or set of injuries,
• 21:26
  and that really, um, you know, the coach, the coaching
• 21:29
  staff did a great job. So I think for me, I want to
• 21:33
  look at um, are we doing things the right way? Are we recruiting
• 21:37
  and retaining players? UM? Do do we play football that's disciplined football?
• 21:44
  UM? And do we feel like that the momentum is there for us to
• 21:48
  continue to build and we know that that wins matter. I get that fans
• 21:52
  are going to focus on you know, that's what makes coaching tough. You
• 21:56
  work three hundred and forty days a year. I mean, it's like sixty
• 22:00
  five day of year job, but it's a it's a it's a lot of
• 22:03
  a lot of days. UM. And you and people judge you by twelve
• 22:07
  of those saturdays that scoreboard. And that's the only thing that most fans care
• 22:11
  about. And you know that when you sign up for the job. So
• 22:14
  I'm not hiding from that. I've been pretty clear that we know we got
• 22:17
  to win more games. UM. Coach Brown knows that he's not hid from
• 22:21
  that. I've seen him numerous times saying, you know, hey, I
• 22:22
  know we gotta win. UM. But I think as an a D you're
• 22:26
  paid to be thoughtful, deliberate, analytical in your approach to assessing that and
• 22:32
  not be emotional. Uh, that's just focused on on a win total.
• 22:36
  And so we'll be looking at the totality of the program, from recruitment to
• 22:41
  retention to onboarding, to how we're growing them as people, how they're progressing
• 22:45
  academically, while understanding that athletic success of matters and that that is also factors
• 22:51
  into the the into the metrics that we look at. Okay, stay there,
• 22:55
  stay stay football for a second. The part of that is scheduling,
• 23:00
  and this program is in a very difficult scheduling spot. Right. I need
• 23:03
  to tell you that thanks to your predecessors. If I'm Neil Brown, I'm
• 23:07
  not real thrilled. If we're gonna be evaluated on wins and I've got that
• 23:08
  schedule, how do you manage that going forward? When from a fan perspective
• 23:14
  that I love this, This is great having those teams back on, but
• 23:15
  that really has put the football program in a difficult spot when it comes to
• 23:19
  wins and losses. Almost every program that has ascended, from whether it's back
• 23:26
  of the pack or mill of the pack to the upper eche line, has
• 23:29
  done so with being very careful with picking and choosing the games that they schedule
• 23:34
  that allow them to have some success and build some momentum, but they're also
• 23:37
  challenging at times. And so when you're in a league as good as the
• 23:41
  Big Twelve from top to bottom, and you have nine conference games, I
• 23:45
  think that you have to have a group of five opponent in those three non
• 23:49
  conference opportunities. So I would probably do Power five, a group of five
• 23:56
  and or another group of five or FCS. The difference is the FCS allows
• 24:00
  you to always ensure that you're going to have seven and sometimes eight home games,
• 24:06
  whereas those group of five teams occasionally you can buy them, but they're
• 24:07
  really expensive, so you're looking at a two for one, and the math
• 24:11
  becomes problematic when you're if you're on a year where you have five road conference
• 24:15
  games and then you're on it you have a road Power five non conference game,
• 24:19
  like it puts you in a bind, and so there's a lot of
• 24:22
  intricacies that go that go into that. But yeah, in my mind,
• 24:29
  having the two Power five non conference opponents coupled with the nine conference games makes
• 24:36
  it very very difficult. And if I could change that in one magic wind
• 24:42
  wave, I would. I was rooting for the SEC to go to nine
• 24:45
  conference games that may have given us an opportunity to shell get rid of a
• 24:51
  game or two. But you know, I think moving forward, we're going
• 24:55
  to always look at probably a model that allows us to have a good chance
• 25:00
  to come out of non conference at a minimum of two and one and maybe
• 25:03
  even three. And oh, how would you characterize where the Big twelve is
• 25:08
  right now? Based upon last week's meetings, based upon all the turbulent conversations
• 25:14
  that are going on in regard to reorganization, What was the consensus field that
• 25:18
  you took out of those meetings last week, Because, as you know,
• 25:22
  there was so much well Arizona flew in can I to get flew and there
• 25:26
  was everything everything about the truth oftentimes, what was your consensus? Yeah,
• 25:30
  so I've been in those meetings where nobody says anything. That's the worst situation
• 25:34
  to have. That tells you that people aren't on the same page, that
• 25:37
  the people are are not sharing, not being forthcoming. Our meetings, there
• 25:44
  was a great amount of debate and conversation and um and robust discussion about a
• 25:51
  variety of things, about these events we're putting in Mexico, about um,
• 25:56
  you know, data and the potential to share data about conference membership up.
• 26:00
  All of those things were discussed, but people were really open um the dialogue
• 26:03
  was flowing. I think Commissioner your Mark has been great for the league because
• 26:07
  he he thinks differently and sometimes that is uncomfortable. I mean, he comes
• 26:14
  from it from a very pro mindset and and we're very much root in higher
• 26:18
  education, academia collegiate mindset. But but the byproduct of that is I think
• 26:26
  he learns and adjust his opinion on some things based upon the experience in the
• 26:32
  room, and we've definitely grown from his perspectives and thoughts. So the league
• 26:36
  is in a very strong place UM, probably the strongest it's been in a
• 26:40
  long long time, despite the defection of two members that that are historically successful,
• 26:45
  and I thought we were pretty aligned coming out of there with we have
• 26:49
  a great league. We're happy with the members we have today. We're excited
• 26:52
  about UM the growth and development potential with these new additional members UM. But
• 26:57
  at the same time, if the ride op comtunity to take additional UH members
• 27:02
  that that expanded our footprint and and made sense for us in the future UM
• 27:06
  that we would be open to that, and the commissioner is pretty clear about
• 27:10
  that, UM and and he had support in the room from US to do
• 27:12
  that. How important do you think getting a fourth time zone is. Do
• 27:17
  you think that is a golden egg? It's a good question. UM.
• 27:22
  I would not offer a solid opinion on that because I'm not the expert in
• 27:26
  the room when it comes to assessing that value to tv UM. I can
• 27:30
  tell you traveling teams crossing time zones is hard. You do that with us.
• 27:34
  UM, it's hard when you play a game at eight o'clock in the
• 27:38
  Central time zone and you're getting home at three or four in the morning,
• 27:41
  and that's you know, that's if you're one of our teams that are on
• 27:45
  a charter flight, right UM and so UM, there's some issues with it.
• 27:49
  But if the if the right value is there and you have to rely
• 27:52
  on on UM you know we uh, we have consultants that help, say,
• 27:56
  help determine that value, UM, then than that makes sense to do.
• 28:02
  I also think through scheduling you can be creative to limit how many times
• 28:06
  one of your easternmost teams goes to your western most team, and certainly in
• 28:11
  sports, in Olympic sports, we would want to limit that as much as
• 28:15
  we as we can, and I voiced that in the room that hey,
• 28:18
  we're at WU, We're about what's best for the Big Twelve. We're proud
• 28:22
  members, We've enjoyed our time here. But anything that stretches us geographically,
• 28:29
  we want to discuss the scheduling part of that. But sure it's important for
• 28:33
  us to have an opportunity to not take something that is a little bit of
• 28:37
  a disadvantage and make it a bigger disadvantage. One quick point. The big
• 28:41
  announcement came today about Big twelve Mexico and starting that process. What really made
• 28:47
  me go like wow when I read the release was I think it's said four
• 28:51
  Texas schools are to within four hundred miles of the Mexican border. We're seven
• 28:55
  hundred miles from Iowa state. Yeah now fortune now right, So Cincinnati and
• 29:00
  now Central Florida are coming. But at this point we've been seven hundred away
• 29:06
  and their four hundred. I went like, yeah, there's a difference there,
• 29:08
  There's no doubt. Okay. So along those lines, that's what I
• 29:11
  was gonna ask you there is that the biggest challenge as the West Virginia AD
• 29:15
  in this league where sometimes geography doesn't make a whole lot of sense of balancing
• 29:18
  that you may need to expand west to get more TV dollars versus for this
• 29:22
  particular institution, that may not be the best move. Is that your biggest
• 29:26
  challenge with reorganization. Yeah. What I shared, and I don't think that
• 29:30
  I'm sharing anything that the conference or the commissioner would not want me sharing here
• 29:37
  is this is a fact. When you take out travel and in our case,
• 29:41
  debt service, which that's not the conferences issue, but we take those
• 29:44
  two things out, what we have left to spend is less than anybody in
• 29:48
  the Big twelve. So that's a fact. So anything that drives up that
• 29:52
  travel cost, even if it helps the aggregate conference number, like, I'm
• 29:57
  gonna have an eye on that because we're all getting the same distribution. Check.
• 30:03
  Um. But but if my travel expenses are going up, I'm being
• 30:06
  disadvantaged by it, and so um but also get we need the league to
• 30:11
  be vibrant and healthy, and we need to have the best teams in the
• 30:15
  best locations. And so we're not just competing in the Big twelve with the
• 30:21
  other institutions, we're also competing with the ACC and the Big Ten and the
• 30:23
  SEC, so you're balancing all those factors. But I believe there's a play,
• 30:27
  there's a path to, Like, moving a football team is hard any
• 30:32
  period. You know, going to Virginia Tech is costly. We spend money
• 30:36
  doing that, So take football out for a second. Um, I think
• 30:38
  there's a there's a way to schedule with the remaining teams and a divisional type
• 30:42
  format where you're really reducing the number of trips you're making, you know,
• 30:47
  all the way across the country. And that would be what I would be
• 30:49
  an advocate for. Now. I don't know that we've gotten far enough in
• 30:52
  those discussions to know exactly how that would land, because there's no no sense
• 30:56
  in having a scheduling conversation about how patheticals. But but I've expressed that pretty
• 31:03
  consistently in our meetings that that would be something that I would want to make
• 31:07
  sure was on the table if we were to expand our geographic footprint. Yeah,
• 31:11
  are there things you can do or are going to do to draw in
• 31:15
  more private dollars to the athletic department, which you're obviously going to need.
• 31:18
  And I think that's one of the reasons you were brought here Frankly, Yeah,
• 31:22
  we have to. You know, I use this term sum. It's
• 31:26
  a biblical term. But there's an unquenchable thirst for more money and resources,
• 31:32
  and so we've got to find a way to grow revenues. And so I've
• 31:36
  challenged our staff, whether it's as we build and renovate facilities, like let's
• 31:41
  take the Coliseum Club for instance, we're building now because it was tied on
• 31:45
  budget. We'd cut out some restrooms out of there, and we'd cut out
• 31:48
  a staging area where we can change out setups. And when I came in,
• 31:52
  I was like, Hey, if we do that, we're limiting outside
• 31:56
  events, right, because I think we should be able to host parties and
• 32:00
  birthday parties and wedding receptions and anniversary events whatever the case. If you if
• 32:07
  you've limited bathrooms, you also would limit Hoppies opportunity to go there because incredibly
• 32:12
  weak bladder two shot he didn't need to put in there. WHA Has he
• 32:17
  ever walked off this sat before the show's over to go to the bathroom?
• 32:21
  Yes or no? Is the question? Yes? Thank you, go ahead
• 32:23
  and go ahead. You know there's discrimination laws against you you doing that,
• 32:29
  Tony, No, I know him he's fine anyway, So we would have
• 32:31
  been able to still have restrooms. You just would have had to go into
• 32:35
  the coliseum and then I would have had everybody emailing me about how I need
• 32:37
  the air conditioning in the coliseum. You know, I'm trying to eliminate the
• 32:43
  headaches that I have. But um, so anyway, we put those things
• 32:46
  back in because I do see outside events, whether that's bigger things like concerts
• 32:52
  or wrestling or boxing or whatever, or smaller things like a birthday party.
• 32:55
  Um, you know those are those are things that we need to do more
• 33:00
  of. Um, and we need to host more outside events and um and
• 33:04
  uh, that's just one example of of things that we're looking at. But
• 33:07
  um, some things you we may do may bring in six figures or even
• 33:14
  high six figures. Some things may bring in fifty thousand dollars over the course
• 33:17
  of a year. But you add those things up. I mean, it's
• 33:20
  just like baseball. Not ever hits a home run, but you want to
• 33:22
  get runners on base and then try and get them in scoring position and then
• 33:25
  get them across the plate, and those things at up total travel for the
• 33:29
  athletic department as what, oh don't get me started lying, it's it's a
• 33:32
  lot. Uh, I would I would have to validate that, and we
• 33:37
  just went through our budget exercise, so I'd have to go back and look
• 33:38
  at the basketball alone as seven figures, right, yes, oh yes,
• 33:43
  yes, So think about that, guys. Now that's one sport. Think
• 33:45
  about that. That's the thing. And I think you your point earlier,
• 33:51
  you're totally fair. I just think the big twelve. I mean, you
• 33:52
  just need to recognize, Hey, guys, you know this from being at
• 33:55
  Oklahoma State. Those cats can get in the bus sometimes right down the hill
• 34:00
  and they're playing a bunch of games where that never happens. I think as
• 34:05
  long as they have the league understands that, yes, just be fair,
• 34:09
  that's all. Yes, just be fair. And I think you can kind
• 34:12
  of, you know, work through it because I've often said that this league
• 34:15
  is a perfect fit for West Virginia. People kind of kind of look at
• 34:17
  me with one raised eyebrow, and I say, because those schools are West
• 34:22
  Virginia, Hey State, Oklahoma State, you can start reading them off,
• 34:24
  Kansas, Kansas State. Those are our people. I always state those are
• 34:29
  us and we've never been in a league. When we were in the Big
• 34:30
  East. It was no, there wasn't. They'd look at us like we
• 34:34
  were the you know, hill billy blah blah. You hear all that,
• 34:36
  BS, You don't get that when we're in this league because they're us.
• 34:40
  Yes, and that's the Oh, the only thing is the geography. Unfortunately,
• 34:45
  now we've got in two Eastern schools joining us. It gets better,
• 34:49
  now, you know, that's right, It gets better by the way along
• 34:52
  that line, right. I may have sent you an email or a text
• 34:55
  last week when you were down at the Greenbrier. This has been a issue
• 35:00
  that we've been trying to fix. He might need to step out of the
• 35:04
  room here. Yeah. No, I texted him and I emailed him,
• 35:07
  and I just wanted to let him know not to get blindsided that I had
• 35:10
  contacted one of the lead guys at the Big Twelve about this Eastern time zone
• 35:15
  thing. I just got totally pissed off last week when that football schedule came
• 35:19
  out and they listed all the games in Central time. I mean, the
• 35:22
  anticipation is, he said, BS, and then he used another borderline curse
• 35:28
  for I mean, well, it's in fairness, it has been an ongoing
• 35:31
  issue here at an ongoing discussion point, and we just quite frankly, don't
• 35:36
  understand it. He got the eastern team in the league, put the Eastern
• 35:38
  time zone on eleven years? Did you put rent in a position where they're
• 35:44
  talking about should we add teams to the league? What about Arizona? What
• 35:47
  about Colorado and ring Goes? What about the tires? I just have said,
• 35:52
  n I'm almost to the point now where I don't want to change now.
• 35:55
  I mean, Cincinnati and UCF need to have like a ten year waiting
• 35:59
  period. Forget that we've had to wait here for ten years. Here,
• 36:02
  here's the deal man, let's get your mark on the phone. Well,
• 36:05
  I think he would fix it, to be quite honestly, because he's he's
• 36:08
  an Eastern Eastern guy. I just think list like when it comes when it
• 36:12
  still comes out in central, I want to go like, this is where
• 36:15
  you guys used to be. You used to be a Midwest league. I
• 36:17
  get it, I get it. You're no longer that you have to spread
• 36:22
  your wings. Well, how about this? The next time the four time
• 36:24
  zone comes up in a meeting, just please say, let's at least get
• 36:28
  the two taken care of first. Then you're on board. Discussing the fo's
• 36:32
  a hard no for this expansion into another time zone until you recognize the second
• 36:37
  thank you. I mean, it's not like we're asking like Bermuda. Like
• 36:42
  bermudas in the Atlantic time zone, they're ahead of an Now, I'm not
• 36:45
  asking for Atlanta. Just give me Eastern or give me death. That's all.
• 36:49
  That's it anyway, mate, or at the very least both, Yes,
• 36:52
  seven pm Eastern. Sim I would honestly rather go back to Hoffey's hard
• 36:58
  hitting question. I'm just just just be bamboozled over this time zone that we
• 37:06
  just wanted you to be aware since we're having to discussion where you're here.
• 37:08
  We didn't want it mention that we didn't bring it up while you were here.
• 37:10
  So keep in mind that he has He was a Central time no.
• 37:14
  But I think he's starting to. I think he's now he's an Eastern times
• 37:17
  better about being in the East now than he ever did, perhaps more than
• 37:21
  he ever thought he was. He's all in on the Eastern times. Are
• 37:22
  you enjoy Eastern I do like Eastern time zone. Here's why. So I'm
• 37:27
  not an early morning guy. I don't like night guy. Yeah, so,
• 37:31
  but I can call people back in the Central time zone and they think
• 37:36
  I'm up at the crack of dawn just on the on the grind, you
• 37:38
  know, they don't really even think about it. So for that reason,
• 37:42
  I'm big, big Eastern time Zone supporter. We just all we want just
• 37:45
  went just fair, Just recognize us. That's it. How bothered, concerned,
• 37:52
  worried verklemped are your fellow ads about the current status of the transfer portal?
• 38:00
  Can I get a definition of her? Clint just like bummed out,
• 38:06
  just like anks Hanks, like, what are we doing here? Was that
• 38:13
  a You're talking to an old native Oklahoma in here? I don't know if
• 38:15
  that was tied in for clips more of a northeast I saw Joyce and she
• 38:22
  was very very northeast exactly. Um, listen, I think we understand that
• 38:29
  we're in a in a time when student athletes UH their rights and abilities and
• 38:36
  and UH have expanded, and they're young adults, but they're adults. And
• 38:40
  when coaches and ads and other people can can leave and and student athletes can't.
• 38:46
  UM, that's a problematic um issue. However, like many things in
• 38:54
  college athletes, we swung so far the other direction to where we now have
• 38:58
  people that are playing at four institutions to use up their four years of eligibility.
• 39:04
  There's no way they're getting a quality education in doing that. There's just
• 39:07
  no way. Maybe they're getting a degree, but it's a degree that they
• 39:13
  were able to get just because they could transfer a huge amount of hours that
• 39:15
  were into like some general studies degree. And so I think, and I
• 39:22
  also believe one of the special things about college athletics is it still teaches young
• 39:30
  people to grow and develop through being a part of a team, having your
• 39:36
  personal goals, but having to mess those with team goals, taking constructive criticism
• 39:40
  and feedback and making changes and all of those things. And when it's easy
• 39:46
  to just hit the reset button, I think you're losing one of the true
• 39:51
  benefits of college athletics. There's a reason so Northwestern Mutual I was talking to
• 39:54
  one of the main guys there a few years ago and he told me Northwestern
• 39:59
  Mutual, who there's a ton of advertising with NCAA championship events, does not
• 40:02
  do that to gain customers. They do that to brand in front of nca
• 40:07
  athletes because um, their individual reps UH they have found have a much higher
• 40:15
  almost two to one success rate. If former athletes do over, non athletes
• 40:20
  don't quit, they don't quit. And so, I you know, I
• 40:22
  do worry, um, more than anything else, that that we're allowing people
• 40:27
  to not have to battle through adversity. We listen, everybody who has a
• 40:30
  job has bad days at the job. Just think about if you could just
• 40:32
  hit a button and make same or better uh and hit hit how many times
• 40:37
  would you change jobs? Sure? Probably every time hoppy you know comes at
• 40:40
  you. I manaches often. UM, but uh so UM, I would
• 40:45
  like to see some refinement to that. UM. Certainly that combined with the
• 40:50
  U n IL in illegal tampering and recruitment into the portal becomes really problematic.
• 40:58
  UM. And I'm or listen, I'm four in IL, I'm four young
• 41:02
  people having opportunities. I do worry about the people that we're empowering to kind
• 41:10
  of operate under the table in this whole arrangement and how much they're benefiting versus
• 41:15
  what the student athletes are benefiting. And that's where we really need to clean
• 41:19
  some of that. Senator, the thing I've heard that before, now,
• 41:22
  don't you know, Brad was twenty plus years in athletic administration. I do,
• 41:28
  so you want to share him your theorem on how you think eventually this
• 41:31
  gets brought back in the house. Well, I've said read many times to
• 41:35
  echo your point there is that it seems for these billion dollar entities, the
• 41:39
  schools, to have others in control of the decision doesn't make a whole lot
• 41:43
  of sense at some point. And I know there's a thousand hurdles to get
• 41:46
  to this point, but at some point it makes sense for this to be
• 41:50
  in house. If there's going to be payroll or paying of athletes, to
• 41:52
  have it within your foundation or your fundraising arm so that you all the school
• 41:57
  can control what's happening much more than an outside density. Well, and I
• 42:00
  would I don't think that's a very controversial statement. And I would argue the
• 42:04
  cleaner way to do that is to figure out as we have new revenues coming
• 42:07
  in with CFP, the the NCAA basketball contract, some type of benefit system
• 42:14
  or revenue share whatever that looks like that is separate from nil. But then
• 42:17
  N I L is dialed back to where it's actually nil. Um. You
• 42:22
  know, but true you should be yes, you should. I mean,
• 42:23
  listen, Tony is the N I L king This guy doesn't pay for anything,
• 42:28
  Like it's the most amazing thing. Like, I mean, he drove
• 42:31
  here in a car he doesn't pay for it, and he's wearing clothes he
• 42:35
  doesn't pay for. He's probably drinking some high level soda over there. So
• 42:45
  I mean I told Tony like he's the he's probably should lead sessions nationally on
• 42:50
  NIL development, be able to talk with the kids a little bit. Yeah,
• 42:52
  But so so to your point, what we have now is is an
• 42:57
  under uh belly of the players disguised as INNI all through these collectives. I
• 43:02
  think we need to clean up NIL to where it's really NIL and then figure
• 43:07
  out at the same time is there going to be the benefit structure and system
• 43:10
  and what that looks like. And we know that there's more money in the
• 43:14
  future coming into the system. I think we can figure this all out.
• 43:17
  Um. But what we have right now, and I know a lot of
• 43:21
  media will will scoff at it, and that's fine. Um, they don't
• 43:24
  they're not dealing with it every day. And what we have right now is
• 43:27
  in my mind, not a system that benefits the student athletes. Um,
• 43:31
  like it should. But can you but can you? Can you figure it
• 43:35
  out? Because One of Brand's points always is, which I think is excellent,
• 43:37
  is you have all these different schools with different ads and different contributors,
• 43:43
  with different ideas of what it should be. So, yeah, it would
• 43:45
  be nice to think there could be some standardization. But is that even practice?
• 43:51
  Is it possible to think that could happen? Well, Listen, there
• 43:52
  has always been schools who did things the outside of the system. So it'd
• 43:59
  have been from the state when you just came from that was unnecessary respect,
• 44:06
  with all due respect, um. But the one movie is where you say
• 44:12
  where you say you can't. It's The Office where he says you can't just
• 44:15
  say with all due respect and to say whatever all the time. But yeah,
• 44:19
  but yeah, I forgot. I was trying to thank you. I
• 44:23
  mean, this is standardization, which I think would be healthy, even possible,
• 44:29
  Um, not without congressional help on a on a very narrowly focused and
• 44:32
  skinny and eyel bill. But if you had that and then you had the
• 44:37
  revenue sharing, are there gone going to be players who would still operate outside
• 44:43
  of what they're supposed to do? And yes, but that's always existed,
• 44:47
  um. But what we have right now where it's just wild, wild,
• 44:51
  West and the NCAA. He really has little teeth to do any enforcement.
• 44:55
  Um um, that's problematic. And you know, I honestly a question the
• 45:04
  market for that in the future, only because we have seen semipro league to
• 45:09
  pro league after pro league fail other than the major ones. But I mean,
• 45:16
  how many secondary football professional leagues have we seen that's come forward and fail?
• 45:23
  So I don't know that it being fully professionalized makes sense, But I
• 45:28
  think that there is a way to provide much greater access and opportunity and benefits
• 45:34
  to the student athletes in the forms of various incentives and benefits, but certainly
• 45:40
  revenue share that makes sense and then and then ultimately still have in IL,
• 45:46
  but it really be about in IL. So that was interesting. A moment
• 45:52
  ago you said you could see Congress doing a narrow an i L bill because
• 45:57
  I think you probably Congress has got more to fry then saying hey, we're
• 46:00
  gonna do a big DEBI So you just think a little bit from them could
• 46:04
  be helpful. Yes, Listen, I would love to see more robust things
• 46:08
  addressed, because I think there's a lot of things that could be fixed.
• 46:13
  But the more things you put in there, the less chance there is for
• 46:15
  it to get any traction, and so I think probably that I'm more narrowly
• 46:21
  focused, UM bill would would be more likely, if if any, to
• 46:25
  get through. How old were you when you were a principal element twenty six?
• 46:31
  Did you know that hop twenty six years old? He was a principal
• 46:34
  elementary school, middle school principal, and then athletic director for the high school.
• 46:38
  And I think about that, Dude, that's that is amazing. That's
• 46:43
  young. I was young. How'd that happened? So? I had went
• 46:47
  to Oklahoma State as a Yeah, I had went to Oklahoma State as a
• 46:52
  graduate assistant working for Eddie Sutton a basketball program. I was GA there for
• 46:57
  two years and then I started looking at jobs into public schools. And then
• 47:00
  coach Sutton come to me and said, why would you leave? And I
• 47:04
  was like, Coach, I graduated, you know, like my GA ship
• 47:08
  is over. And he said, uh, he goes, well you need
• 47:12
  to stay here. So he created kind of a full time job there that
• 47:15
  kept me there for an additional two years and then but it was um lower
• 47:20
  paid and he actually was paying my benefit package out of camp, so I
• 47:22
  wasn't on university benefits. And I was getting old stream and so I,
• 47:30
  uh uh, I was getting married. Heather and I were getting married,
• 47:32
  and so I was thinking, hey, I probably need to get a job
• 47:36
  where I can have a spouse with benefits as well, you know. And
• 47:38
  so we're looking at those with my student council advisor from when I was in
• 47:43
  school, she had worked her way up, she had become principal and then
• 47:45
  superintendent. Oh so I grew up my role. Small town Oklahoma, not
• 47:49
  a lot of people get out and do things, you know, like it's
• 47:52
  probably like a lot of rural West Virginia, right like. And so she
• 47:57
  was just adamant that she that I needed to come back and be the principal.
• 48:00
  And so I had been teaching adjunct introductory health courses at Oklahoma State to
• 48:04
  make a little more money for just for fun and um. And so they've
• 48:08
  counted that as my teaching experience and they certified me to be a principal.
• 48:13
  Um. And so I had to go before the state board actually, and
• 48:15
  there was a hearing and uh it was a unanimous vote, and so I
• 48:19
  ultimately took the job and went back home. And uh, and I think
• 48:22
  to this day I was probably I'm probably the youngest principal and say here because
• 48:25
  most time you would have to be a teacher for a minimum of three years,
• 48:29
  right and have your masters and so um, so I think that record
• 48:34
  probably still stands. That's super interesting. Man. How did you meet your
• 48:37
  wife? We met in undergraduate school, uh college, she was friends of
• 48:43
  a friend. We did not date there. I think, Um, she
• 48:46
  thought I was bossy and I thought she was a little strange at the time.
• 48:50
  M beautiful, but you know, strange. Yeah. Um. And
• 48:53
  then we saw each other a few years later at a mutual friend's wedding and
• 49:00
  and we end up staying up talking till daylight. Um. And uh.
• 49:05
  Then that turned into a few more uh kind of friend excursions. And next
• 49:12
  thing, you know, I kind of looked at each other and said,
• 49:14
  are we dating? And we kind of were so awesome. How do you
• 49:17
  how do you do the family balance? Because you're the ad, you got
• 49:22
  to go a lot of night action, a lot of games, a lot
• 49:24
  of weekend stuff. How do you balance in early on? Um, I
• 49:29
  didn't involve them a lot. Um, but and I and you know,
• 49:32
  the job is so stressful sometimes and there's so much pressure associated with it.
• 49:37
  That I kind I had convinced myself that I was protecting them from this life
• 49:42
  I have. That's not all sunshine and roses every day. Um. But
• 49:46
  the truth of the matter was, at some point Heather set me down and
• 49:52
  she goes, hey, you have this whole life that's away from us,
• 49:54
  and it takes a lot of your time and energy, and we don't know
• 49:58
  anything about it. U. This is probably we were at Memphis and maybe
• 50:01
  twenty twelve ish thirteen ish, and she said, you know, I think
• 50:07
  it would help us to know more about what you do. And so I
• 50:14
  took that to heart and and after that, as I became the idea at
• 50:17
  North Texas, I would have tea the teams over to my house and stuff,
• 50:21
  and I really incorporated my family into it more so that they can see,
• 50:24
  oh, Dad had to miss my Christmas program. But he's also not
• 50:29
  dad to this other group of young people. But but he's important in their
• 50:31
  lives too, and he has a job that requires him to be there,
• 50:34
  and so I really do try and have them around. I'd try and bring
• 50:37
  them to games, bring him to the office. Now we end up arguing
• 50:40
  some of the times because I'm hanging on every play and they're back on their
• 50:44
  iPads. So I always have this this. My wife loves to go to
• 50:50
  games, she loves our teams, but she gets caught up in visiting with
• 50:53
  people. She's a people person. And so even when I coached, I
• 50:57
  remember I'd be in a time out and I would see catch her out of
• 50:59
  the corner of my eye. I'm like, she doesn't even know what to
• 51:00
  score is right now? Like she just over there talking. But that's good
• 51:04
  as you well know that's good, right and so uh so you know they're
• 51:07
  they're around, they're involved. Um, you know, I don't think any
• 51:12
  of them understand the magnitude of probably the job. And that's actually a good
• 51:15
  helpful, it's helpful. Yeah, I go home. My wife did never
• 51:19
  ask me about, you know, anything that's going on with work. Yeah,
• 51:22
  you don't need two people. You don't need two people in a relationship
• 51:24
  living and dying with it. That's right. You need one to be off
• 51:28
  so that it helps you you realize that not everyone lives and dies. Yeah,
• 51:32
  that's now. My wife has learned to not say it's just a game,
• 51:35
  and you know that's that's like, that's that is my non negotiable.
• 51:38
  We lose a big game if I go home and I'm like kind of depressed,
• 51:42
  Like, don't come in and say it's just a game, you say,
• 51:45
  it's a mortgage paper. How did you or when did you know that
• 51:49
  it wasn't going to be the coaching path but the administration path. When I
• 51:52
  was at Roger State, which is a D two in Oklahoma, they were
• 51:55
  in AI at the time. I was doing both UM and UM. I
• 52:00
  always felt really confident as an athletic director. UM. Not that I didn't
• 52:06
  make mistakes, but I was when there was a decision to be made,
• 52:08
  I would look at the problem and fairly confidently make it. I was successful
• 52:14
  in terms of wins and losses as a coach, but it was a tortured
• 52:17
  life. I questioned every decision. I never felt confident, and maybe that's
• 52:23
  because I wasn't a great player. I went to college on academic scholarship,
• 52:27
  so UM, I wasn't an athlete in college, and so I no,
• 52:30
  I don't know what the reason were, but I there was just one of
• 52:34
  those jobs that I was successfully doing, but one where I felt a calling
• 52:38
  M and so eventually UM Roger State gave me a choice to pick one or
• 52:45
  the other and UM not lose any pay. But this president had told me,
• 52:50
  He's like, hey, I'm only gonna be here another year or two,
• 52:52
  so that could have went away with him. And so I was walking
• 52:54
  with Heather and I told us I think I'm I'm just gonna be a d
• 52:58
  were we were in our neighborhood walking and she goes, and I'd been pushing
• 53:00
  to have kids at that time, and she had been resisting. She goes,
• 53:05
  I would never have said this until you acknowledge that you may pick one.
• 53:07
  She's like, as long as you're coaching, I don't know that we
• 53:12
  can have children because you're you're crazy after these games. And so you know,
• 53:15
  that was validation really at the time of UM, that was probably the
• 53:21
  right decision. And once I focused in on one, UM and uh,
• 53:25
  you know, I my career is really taken off, and uh so it
• 53:30
  was the right decision, but it was one that I wrestled with for those
• 53:32
  first three or four years for sure. So we coaching wise and you were
• 53:37
  a sideline floater. So she said you were crazy coaching. Will you just
• 53:39
  one of these guys? Yeah? I So I coached two years one season,
• 53:44
  Um and uh. I don't remember the exact number of technicals, but
• 53:49
  it was more than it was definitely more than one. It's probably three or
• 53:52
  four. So you get after I and I and I actually was ejected once,
• 53:54
  but that was not like the referee said, don't say another word,
• 53:58
  and I did not say an other words? What else in my bench did
• 54:00
  and he turned around and tossed me bad bedhole bread bole happens, happens.
• 54:06
  I mean, that's a shame. Sometimes you got a voice your displeasure.
• 54:07
  Now, I had said a lot of words before that too. When you
• 54:10
  get when you get the but when you but when you get deserved, when
• 54:13
  you get yeah, when you get the ziggie though, that's a lonely walk,
• 54:16
  it is. That's a lone LANs like everyone's looking out there. You
• 54:20
  go off, you off the floor, you go, Especially in Shawnee,
• 54:22
  Oklahoma. I was, it was in Shawnee, Oklahoma, sitting in the
• 54:24
  gym locker room by myself, listening to the action. You know, this
• 54:29
  is before they were live stats, you know those staff broadcasting. I'm wondering.
• 54:32
  Okay, so that's that's interesting. That's interesting. The whole deal is,
• 54:38
  Um, you're a wrestling guy, yes, both both amateur wrestling and
• 54:45
  pro wrestling. So thoughts thoughts about the passing to the Iron Chic all,
• 54:49
  like Listen, one of the greatest of all times. But but even greater
• 54:52
  than his wrestling ability was his Twitter unbelievable. He was hilarious, Like I've
• 54:55
  that's what was he doing? That though, had to be something. Somebody
• 54:59
  had to be helped there that it was so good regardless great. I think
• 55:02
  the Iron Chek had peoples, I mean probably, so you don't think the
• 55:07
  Iron Cheek had some people in there helping. I mean he took a lot
• 55:09
  of shots at Hulk Hogan. You think it's people, So I think it's
• 55:14
  two things. I think he could still say those things and direct it.
• 55:16
  But someone was helping manage the technology part of that. They're probably in that.
• 55:21
  There was a hybrid situation. Yeah, he really despised Hulk Cogan.
• 55:24
  He really really did the Iron Cheek that it was. Yes, it was
• 55:29
  the Iron Cheek and Sergeant Slaughter. Sergeant Slaughter, yeah, I leg yeah,
• 55:34
  I happened. I happened to be. Yeah, the Iron Cheek in
• 55:36
  the car at any point, Yeah, yeah, yeah, did you find
• 55:38
  Sergeant Slaughter. What kind of car were you driving at the time. Oh,
• 55:42
  no, I didn't drive them. But I'll tell you this. We
• 55:44
  had pro wrestling at the uh what was called the Grip Pavilion in west Over.
• 55:47
  They took the old end zone seats from old Mountaineer Field moved him over
• 55:51
  to the west Over in west Over group and we had this wrestling card and
• 55:54
  they were like, there were dudes it was. It was Sergeant Slaughter was
• 55:59
  here and big boys and all of the guys drove up that afternoon about four
• 56:04
  the event was going to start like seven. They all pulled up and this
• 56:07
  was like dirt, you know, gravel and dust kicks up. It's this
• 56:10
  time of the year. They come up in them old you know, those
• 56:13
  old Cadilacs that seated about seventy two people. Here they come pulling into group,
• 56:20
  all together, all together like the guys that we're gonna work against each
• 56:24
  other. I thought that was a great listen. I have a lot of
• 56:27
  pro wrestling trivia knowledge, but the Iron Cheat. The interesting thing about him
• 56:32
  was back in the days of Kfebe. You're familiar with kfee terminology, are
• 56:38
  you so? KFABE was when they didn't admit that it was choreographed. Okay,
• 56:44
  I hear you, so like they weren't. If you were in a
• 56:46
  few and I were in a battle, we didn't go be seen together ever,
• 56:51
  Okay, so um, I believe it was hacks All, Jim Duggin,
• 56:53
  one of the great and Uh the Iron Cheek got pulled over. They
• 57:00
  had some a few drinks and they also had some illegal substances in the car
• 57:05
  and they were both arrested together, which broke k faith. So they were
• 57:08
  in a fight at the time. You had the all American hero Hacksaw Jim
• 57:12
  Duggan and the Iron Cheek and and Uh. And because they were arrested,
• 57:16
  people knew that it was a ruse, that they was fixed. And they
• 57:21
  both and they both got fired WWF fire booted him out. Yah. My
• 57:24
  roommate, my roommate from college. His first job, his first job out
• 57:29
  of college, was he was the announced. He was the interview er of
• 57:34
  the wrestlers for w W. What was it? What do you mean?
• 57:37
  Like pre Gene Okerland? No. Jeane would throw it to him. He'd
• 57:40
  say, now let's go down. That's got check in with Craig. Who's
• 57:45
  your friend? Craig did George. Craig Craig did George. It's still out
• 57:47
  there. Yeah, Craig did George. That was his mom's maiden name.
• 57:51
  Or Craig Roberts. The thing was might have been Craig Roberts SAE name stage
• 57:53
  name. And then he would he would interview him and he would do this.
• 57:55
  You know, you'd have to you'd have to go like you'd have to
• 57:58
  throw your head back a little bit when they would say something outraged. That's
• 58:02
  like one of those thing he had that down. You go, you go
• 58:05
  camera and then you pull back, you go. So the announcers had to
• 58:07
  work as well, exactly. You still have won't name them here. You
• 58:10
  still have some current staff members that at one time were huge wrestling guys.
• 58:15
  We'll maybe talk about that, lady. Yeah, I'd love to listen.
• 58:17
  I used to hide from my finest pro wrestling. I'm all like, I'm
• 58:22
  kyl of SAMs, a massive Rick Flair fan, but like I could,
• 58:25
  I've got one liners, you know, Like I mean, if I have
• 58:30
  a hard day at work and I go home head, there's like how's your
• 58:31
  damn? Like there's hard times when we mec and dream Dusted rillers that was
• 58:36
  pretty good. You know. Rick Flair has been here, of course to
• 58:37
  a football game all time. Great picture, I don't I can't find it.
• 58:42
  I've looked for it many times. It was on my phone. Flair
• 58:45
  in the suite next to Billy han You talk, you talk about you say
• 58:51
  we lost we lost Hopey on pro wrestling, but Billy Hanta together Mike was
• 58:59
  being with pro wrestling. Is I'm too old? Like I go back to
• 59:01
  Bruno, Sam Martino great right up the road in Pittsburgh and the Golden Boy
• 59:07
  Arnold Scolden. I mean, I've been too far. That is Ernie,
• 59:10
  a big cat lad obviously, Andre the Giant. It was North Texas stone
• 59:15
  Coat Steve Austin wasn't alarm oh really? And two of the von eric U
• 59:21
  brothers both went there. So great wrestling tradition, Uh their unt. Would
• 59:27
  it be crazy to think that we might get wrastling inside the Kyle Sam.
• 59:30
  At some point I have given my my green lighting. Oh that's awesome.
• 59:35
  Gotta have a van. So he just said in it he wed lean to
• 59:37
  raise some cash. I mean do the thing. You know, it comes
• 59:39
  on like I'll flick when I'm flicking, and I'll land on it and if
• 59:44
  you know, then if they're wrestling, I'm not watching it. But if
• 59:45
  they're talking, oh I am drawn to I think they are so good.
• 59:51
  They are so good, and my wife will come in and go, what
• 59:52
  do you watched? I say, listen, this is the best listen.
• 59:58
  If I say this all the time politicians have adopted they cut wrestling promos,
• 1:00:04
  they don't. I mean, like literally, like they figured out how they
• 1:00:07
  motivate people and they just cut wrestling promos. And the greatest marketing organization in
• 1:00:10
  the history of marketing, quite frankly, I mean where most of us knew
• 1:00:14
  it was fake and we're still going up there, standing in line buying the
• 1:00:16
  T shirts, buying too rabbit. You knew it was fake, and you
• 1:00:20
  tuned in every week, bought the pay per view. It's it's the greatest
• 1:00:22
  marketing organization ever. That's why people watch soap operas for decades and decades.
• 1:00:25
  And it's the same thing, only a different style, is all it is.
• 1:00:29
  We wasted so much time with Hobby asking me tough questions that we could
• 1:00:34
  have been talking about wrest Yeah, absolutely, yeah, absolutely. You see
• 1:00:37
  why we had to go hard questions first though, because this gets off the
• 1:00:39
  off the rest. Yeah, we're gonna take it. We're gonna do a
• 1:00:42
  beverage break here in a second. But yeah, So in the world of
• 1:00:45
  ad stuff, in the world of ad stuff, you're considered and you're like
• 1:00:52
  in recruiting, they say, well, he's a two, he's a three,
• 1:00:53
  he's a four, he's a five. That's a point guard. You're
• 1:00:55
  an external guy, is that correct? In the New world A D lingo
• 1:01:00
  my background, I mean I had a unique background because I was a D
• 1:01:06
  from the start. So I've only ever really had two jobs ad athletic director
• 1:01:09
  or deputy athletic director, second command. Like, I didn't work my way
• 1:01:14
  up through that. I've worked my way up the levels, not through all
• 1:01:16
  the positions, but um, you know, when you're the a D at
• 1:01:20
  a D two like you are the primary fundraiser, you are, So there
• 1:01:23
  was experience in background there and then both Memphis and Missouri I oversaw on a
• 1:01:30
  day to day basis the external side of the department. So our fundraising units,
• 1:01:34
  are marketing units, are media relations units, ticketing, all of those
• 1:01:38
  things. So definitely that would be you're a business that's my background. You're
• 1:01:44
  a business guy. State. Yes, it been. This is way off
• 1:01:45
  topic, which is stunner shocks. But I mean you were, you were
• 1:01:50
  in North Texas. I have some interest because my son went to North Texas.
• 1:01:52
  I've been there many times, been to ball games there is that they
• 1:01:55
  have the wonderful stadium, football stadium, Yes, thirty miles from UM Dallas
• 1:02:00
  Fort Worth. Shouldn't they be better in football? Yeah? Shouldn't you be
• 1:02:05
  better football? I mean they were they were at one time really years ago.
• 1:02:10
  Yeah, no, so, UM North Texas an interest was very good
• 1:02:15
  there. Yeah, he was good. I mean we have two back to
• 1:02:19
  back with back to back nine win seasons while I was there. But I
• 1:02:23
  mean I think it should be UM and and and consistently preach this. I
• 1:02:29
  did not run from it UM a UCF Memphis SMU type program. Now.
• 1:02:36
  The difference is for many many years there was no commitment. It was not
• 1:02:39
  in a big deal. I mean they're they're a bad huge visual and performing
• 1:02:44
  arts yea, you know school commuter folks. Well, I mean there music
• 1:02:49
  alarms and we talked about this a little bit. Um Pat Boone, uh
• 1:02:53
  Meat Loaf, Don Henley, Norah Jones, Christian rapper, Eli Young Band
• 1:03:00
  young country bandits out now, so they have a very an incredible music school.
• 1:03:07
  But um so there was a period where they weren't FBS. They actually
• 1:03:10
  took their program and this was like in the nineties back down to FCS.
• 1:03:15
  So that tells you how important athletics was there. That was almost unprecedented.
• 1:03:20
  So we had just really the renewed commitment to athletics has only been in the
• 1:03:24
  last ten years, and we had seen probably the best the five years I
• 1:03:30
  was there, from a win percentage standpoint, all sports aggregated was by far
• 1:03:36
  the best five year period ever and it's only going to get better because they're
• 1:03:39
  they're actually investing in it. The institution is, but so are the alarms.
• 1:03:44
  I mean, it actually matters and cares to him. So I do
• 1:03:45
  think if it was a stock, you would want to buy it because they're
• 1:03:49
  going to be very successful. But historically, I said this when I come
• 1:03:52
  in, if all it took was a large student enrollment and a great location,
• 1:03:57
  infernal recruiting grounds, like we'd be kicking everybody's but you know, like
• 1:04:00
  so but you but you have to we went we were at the bottom and
• 1:04:03
  spending when we went in there, we had flipped that to where we were
• 1:04:06
  at the top, and we were seeing a lot of results from that.
• 1:04:10
  Yeah, because it's a great stadium and you got like what twenty twenty seven
• 1:04:13
  thousand student it's about thirty thousand in the stadium, forty five thousand students really
• 1:04:18
  massively, so and they're still growing because Texas is one of the few states
• 1:04:23
  it's like all these Eastern states, like the population is still growing in Texas.
• 1:04:28
  So we were up three to four percent. You usually here and roll.
• 1:04:30
  Everybody can get into ut and everybody can can afford to go to TCU,
• 1:04:33
  and so it's a good deal. It's a good bargain. And North
• 1:04:35
  Texas was was in that interesting spot where they were, um Carnegie Tier one,
• 1:04:41
  you know, a reputable research institution, but but still much like West
• 1:04:45
  Virginia, I mean, you're not impossible to get into. Right. So
• 1:04:49
  the North Texas folks, if they'd like to sponsor this episode, or the
• 1:04:54
  tourism folks who Hopy offended a number of episodes ago, if you remember that
• 1:04:58
  when he attacked he did Texas tourism, He did Texas and he didn't get
• 1:05:00
  them back. Yeah you did, because somebody wrote in and we're talking about
• 1:05:04
  the nice, you know, scenic areas in Texas, and you said,
• 1:05:09
  from West Virginia, we don't need to stop at scenic areas. You didn't
• 1:05:11
  want to go to one in Texas with your son because you said this is
• 1:05:14
  scenic here, you didn't need to go there. All I said was when
• 1:05:15
  my son took me to the quote unquote the scenic area of Austin, I
• 1:05:19
  said, no, that's like it does not compare it to the scenic areas
• 1:05:25
  in West Virginia. So, I mean, I'll say this for Hoppy is
• 1:05:27
  somebody who enjoyed living in in in Texas. Um the scenic part he's talking
• 1:05:32
  about, I'm gonna assume was it Texas hill country? Yes? Yes,
• 1:05:35
  And so that tells you it's it's hill country and it's not near as hilly
• 1:05:41
  is here. It's fine, it's not it's nice. I'm saying, but
• 1:05:44
  I didn't disagree with the assessment. I was just pointing out that he had
• 1:05:45
  attacked the whole industry. Maybe we could get them back. Sure, because
• 1:05:49
  of this clothing recommendation from this guys, this podcast has times rent, it's
• 1:05:57
  offended certain areas geographically. I may have content I may have offended a continent
• 1:06:03
  multiple times. We had a kid that committed here, who's a punter from
• 1:06:06
  Australia. At the last second he pulled out and didn't come. I may
• 1:06:11
  have attacked and may have said some things that perhaps were a little bit over
• 1:06:15
  the top, for example, like perhaps I hope we never get another Australian
• 1:06:18
  punter again. Shut it down, we don't need him. And then we
• 1:06:21
  got this kid and he was fantastic, and I complete he was fantastic,
• 1:06:27
  and I completely fixed that to the point where I think we've been invited to
• 1:06:30
  come over now. Yeah, the King fans of the show. Josh was
• 1:06:32
  on the show. He's very good. I don't know that you so much
• 1:06:35
  fixed it as you did extend the olive branch, and Josh was gracious enough
• 1:06:40
  to accept. On the spectrum of who's to credits for the repaired image,
• 1:06:45
  I think it was Josh more than you and somebody who's traveled the state with
• 1:06:51
  with Tony Um. I'm not sure enough people are aware of his of his
• 1:06:57
  indiscretions, because he's broadly loved and so ported across the States, because I'm
• 1:07:02
  one of them. That's because what it is, it's a. I guess
• 1:07:05
  you just developed a cute one liner that sticks no I and you know,
• 1:07:12
  yeah. So one of the things that thank you for that. So one
• 1:07:15
  of the things that did you know that this show created a beer? Did
• 1:07:18
  you know that's called it's called Kerchival. I've heard about that, so checked
• 1:07:25
  this out. So it's exploded and it's it came out sixth of January,
• 1:07:30
  but can't keep it into places. So the offshoot to this is that we
• 1:07:35
  have some folks down in Greenbrier County and you've been down there. You're almost
• 1:07:40
  part time resident. The way things have been going lately. You were down
• 1:07:42
  there for several four time visitor. So there's these folks in Rennick, West
• 1:07:46
  Virginia. It's called Mountain Table, and I went and visited there and they're
• 1:07:50
  doing great stuff with coffee and Nadine is the roaster and she sent us this
• 1:07:58
  little note. Thanks so much for meeting with Alex and Eric. Whish I
• 1:08:01
  could have been there too. Were excited to work with you guys. We've
• 1:08:03
  done some testing, we have soaked testing, we have soaked our Peruvian beans.
• 1:08:11
  We have soaked our Peruvian beans in the Kerchivil for twenty four hours and
• 1:08:15
  then roasted the beans after they were soaked in Hoppies beer. We tried a
• 1:08:20
  few different roast levels. We think the light roast came out best because it
• 1:08:24
  showcases the cranberry and the camemeal notes in the coffee beans, plus the citrus
• 1:08:30
  and maltiness of the beer and sounds very complicated. It is it is.
• 1:08:35
  I mean, yes, so, Nadine, Nadine did this, I need
• 1:08:40
  to kind of bring some in I roast. Yes, I made the coffee.
• 1:08:44
  Here's one second. I thought we were but now no, No,
• 1:08:49
  here's what's stunning. Normally, when he brings the coffee in, it is
• 1:08:53
  only for himself. So thanks to your presence here, he actually brought enough
• 1:08:57
  for all of us to try to happen. I happened to be in the
• 1:09:01
  flight glasses. You see what this is. It's the outline of the state
• 1:09:04
  of West Virginia. It says Hoppy hour on it. And our folks at
• 1:09:10
  at Hope get in il money for no, he has not. And that's
• 1:09:14
  a great point. The folks at Barwood, Matt at Barrewood, Matt who's
• 1:09:17
  the owner of Barwood. He makes these unbelievable things and we can't got a
• 1:09:19
  good child show, you say. But anyway, so this is the kirch
• 1:09:23
  of al Peruvian means here, ren if you'd passed, take one pass down
• 1:09:28
  please, um if you would, so here it is the kirch of glass.
• 1:09:31
  No, these are real glasses. Hot, thet nice. Well,
• 1:09:33
  yeah, it's hot. What do you think it is? I mean,
• 1:09:35
  well, that's from the that's from the folks. Are the folks from Grant
• 1:09:39
  County. Remember I went out there and talk last year. They gave me
• 1:09:42
  that. That's reel. So look at that little deal here. So there's
• 1:09:45
  our Barwood made this for us. It's a flight, a flight thing with
• 1:09:48
  the state of West Virginia. Hunt it you guys ready, So here we
• 1:09:51
  go. How much did you pay for this? Zero? Okay? I
• 1:09:55
  mean that might be some some people might be this is hot, Well it's
• 1:09:59
  coffee. Would you want me to do? So? Here you go,
• 1:10:00
  so Peruvian being soaked and kerchival. I'd love to get your thoughts on the
• 1:10:05
  nadine roasted it. I know it's hot. Isn't that a unique taste?
• 1:10:13
  Very good? Isn't that good? Hoppy hoppy never pulls a punch. You'll
• 1:10:15
  let you know exactly what you think you're not a big fan. Excuse me,
• 1:10:19
  no, I you see what there's not money? I mean, I
• 1:10:25
  let me say several things. One is I appreciate what they're doing, and
• 1:10:28
  I like the fact that they are doing something artisan number one. Number two,
• 1:10:33
  Um, you know, I like coffee and I like beer. I
• 1:10:36
  don't I'm not crazy about the mixed taste, that's all, you know,
• 1:10:41
  That's all I'm not. I appreciate people doing innovative things. Probably not a
• 1:10:45
  fan, a senator. I'd like your thoughts on it. Yeah, that's
• 1:10:50
  not that's not bad. And you know me, like, I don't do
• 1:10:53
  coffee straight. I know you don't, right, I don't know. Right.
• 1:10:58
  That's Hoppy's belly. He's on this little scooter over there. He brings
• 1:11:00
  a stupid bell with him. I don't even Yeah, he used he had
• 1:11:08
  a bell. I'd be it's listen, he used to be. But he
• 1:11:11
  ring the bell when he push, when he pulls, when he wheels himself
• 1:11:15
  out of here, he'll ring his bell like someone mister Rogers like look walks
• 1:11:18
  around, which he just did right there. That's why we got the belt
• 1:11:20
  runs around here like quirky to clown. I mean it looks like quirky the
• 1:11:24
  clown of ringing a bell. Flow. I can't go now anyway, So
• 1:11:27
  here's what Here's what I think. Here's what I think. We'll go to
• 1:11:29
  Toney, go to Wren's. Got a Wren's got to be politically correct,
• 1:11:31
  probably, I mean, well, lord knows you weren't. But anyway,
• 1:11:34
  um, what you so? What do you think? Do you drink coffee
• 1:11:39
  regular? You know, I really don't. I'm not old enough to drink
• 1:11:43
  coffee, but I've tried. My wife loves coffee, okay, And what
• 1:11:48
  happens is in the winter I'll kind of get more and summer gets here here.
• 1:11:54
  You know, I can't do ice cock? Can you do something?
• 1:11:57
  Diet? Coke? Coke zero is something to get you. So I usually
• 1:12:00
  in the morning have a Bang energy drink. I know they're not a license
• 1:12:03
  sponsor here, No, you were? That was? Is that the powder
• 1:12:06
  stuff? You want to know? Then then in the afternoon I have a
• 1:12:09
  Celsius that's the powder. I take the little Celsius packet. I'm very routine
• 1:12:13
  driven, so I have a Gatorade zero zero sugar gad. I'm pretty open
• 1:12:19
  on flavor, but but orange and red whatever, the red fruit punch or
• 1:12:24
  probably my two favorites. So then Gayraade makes a ten grand protein packet.
• 1:12:29
  Put that in there. And Celsius, which they sell in cans, but
• 1:12:32
  they also make a little powder. You can get that on Amazon and put
• 1:12:35
  that in there. You can also get it at Kroger. I don't know
• 1:12:38
  if any of these people are sponsors. Big Gut caffeine in that though.
• 1:12:42
  Oh yeah, it's about three um. So the Celsius I usually do about
• 1:12:46
  one o'clock one thirty and uh, and then that that carries me celsius.
• 1:12:53
  So the bang is more of a quick release. I feel like the Celsius
• 1:12:56
  is a slower So when you get the quick does it make your hair tangle?
• 1:13:00
  Does your head kind of flutter a little bit? Until like you to
• 1:13:01
  get that? Like, that's kind of a personal question. It's a fairwell,
• 1:13:05
  friends, we'd rather deal with dung dung over there. You want my
• 1:13:09
  question? I'm just asked him of what's normal bedtime? I'm usually uh,
• 1:13:15
  a eleven o'clock laid down, try to be asleep by midnight. Guy,
• 1:13:20
  Okay, that afternoon shot of caffeine doesn't throw that off, no, but
• 1:13:24
  if it does I'll get up and have a little ben a drill peel and
• 1:13:28
  that'll that'll balance it back out. That helps to put him to sleep,
• 1:13:30
  or in case at night while he's sleeping, if he gets stung by a
• 1:13:33
  beat, Yeah, one of the little right now exactly, Hey, what
• 1:13:38
  is the deal with this air quality? Rank? You? I mean,
• 1:13:41
  I mean I've been getting up in the middle and I'd take an allergy pill
• 1:13:44
  just to get back to sleep. He's really last week he struggled allergies.
• 1:13:46
  He was this, he was all, blow, we're in this. Uh
• 1:13:50
  yeah, hey, Rent, there was a game here in the eighties we
• 1:13:54
  had forest fires in West Virginia. Hop you remember this, Yeah, absolutely
• 1:13:57
  yes, And the smoke ran from the southern West Virginia forest fires came up.
• 1:14:00
  We're playing a game from the press box down to the field. Literally
• 1:14:04
  it was difficult to see the numbers. That's how much smoke came through.
• 1:14:09
  It's amazing. And then in this thing in Quebec, it blows my mind
• 1:14:12
  that it came down this phone. It's like, well, it's a lot
• 1:14:15
  further. I mean I looked at the path today. I got an alert
• 1:14:17
  and it was a third of the country. Is that right, Yeah,
• 1:14:20
  that's amazing. So here's my deal on this coffee. Thank you, Nadine.
• 1:14:27
  Terrific job. So I'll be up too. I differ significantly with Hoppy
• 1:14:33
  on this, okay, so to me, So to me, I'm a
• 1:14:36
  big I am a big coffee guy, coffee snop. So this to me,
• 1:14:42
  what this is is it is a craft coffee. You know, we
• 1:14:45
  know about craft beers and so craft coffee, so you absolutely do get that
• 1:14:53
  taste of the alcohol and it also so to me it is a pleasant not
• 1:15:00
  every day use it, but like a unique different taste to me. I
• 1:15:05
  tell you what it could work for me is that I can get by with
• 1:15:09
  this at home. If my wife says, are you gonna start drinking?
• 1:15:12
  And I'm gonna say no, I'm just have some coffee. I'm gonna have
• 1:15:15
  six cups of coffee, or the way you're going it's Karen might say,
• 1:15:18
  Hoppy, would you like to mix this with your musa next tonight before you
• 1:15:23
  go to night night. I mean it might be one of those so perhaps
• 1:15:27
  I mean, Kirchivel, I say that, right, said Kirchevl. Yeah,
• 1:15:31
  so Hoppy makes all the money on that, he would have to split
• 1:15:34
  the money on this, I assume, so like he's incentivized to not like
• 1:15:40
  it. Fair point, there has been some movement perhaps saying and I don't
• 1:15:45
  know the folks, but well, I'm not even gonna bring it up because
• 1:15:46
  you can't make it fast enough. But I was gonna say, like Mounteer
• 1:15:50
  fans they go to go to the games, we can we sell craft beer
• 1:15:55
  at the stadium. What if they'd say, big long line for a big
• 1:15:58
  thing of kirchevel or gonna flight there right there. He doesn't make the call
• 1:16:01
  on what beer gets sold in. There's got other things he's trying to fix
• 1:16:05
  and ilk looking at this. I did yesterday. So yesterday we're in two
• 1:16:11
  vehicles. My wife is driving behind me, so occasionally I would call her
• 1:16:15
  and say, hey, you know, I just thought of something you should
• 1:16:16
  know now that now that you're here full time. So I did how many
• 1:16:20
  of those calls? I forgot to tell you this since we're crossing the state
• 1:16:28
  border, but I said, just so you know, when you ask a
• 1:16:30
  lot of people in West Virginia where they're from, they're gonna just take their
• 1:16:34
  hand up and basically flip you off and show you what part of the state
• 1:16:39
  they're from, and they usually are very gracious and apologizing for it. Yeah,
• 1:16:44
  but I said, I just want you to know, like that's not
• 1:16:46
  that nobody's trying to be offensive, Like that's just kind of a thing here.
• 1:16:49
  You also have to tune her into the thing where they're gonna give her
• 1:16:53
  counting. Yeah, yeah, where are you from? Here? We go
• 1:16:56
  right for Rali County, Jackson County, filling it don't start hamsure, hoppies,
• 1:17:00
  hoppies from the Eastern Panhandle. He's have you made it over there?
• 1:17:03
  He's way out there to Martinsburg. Yeah, were Martinsburg together and didn't Uh
• 1:17:10
  it's Harper's Ferry's over there somewhere. Yes, bingo, that would be an
• 1:17:14
  actually a good trip for the kids early on before school starts again. So
• 1:17:16
  Gettysburg is a hop, skip and a jump once you get into the Eastern
• 1:17:20
  Panhandle away all those Civil War battlefields. Um, that's not my cup of
• 1:17:26
  tea. Um, hoppy, that's your deal. You could probably all that
• 1:17:30
  stuff one on there. What you got? Oh there there's the bag that
• 1:17:32
  the coffee came in. Um, it's just the test bag. Of course,
• 1:17:36
  you know what she I appreciate somebody who puts all of their effort and
• 1:17:41
  resources into the product and just says, hey, packaging was testing. It's
• 1:17:45
  a test bag. She also and this is for the next episode, and
• 1:17:48
  I don't know when when we're gonna record next week. She also did they
• 1:17:51
  did a kirch. They did a kirch. They did a Three Guys blend,
• 1:17:56
  the Three Guys branded coffee. The name of that is three Beans Before
• 1:18:01
  the Day. See three Guys before the Game. Three Beans before the Day,
• 1:18:05
  mostly Colombian because it is our most approachable bean with a little bit of
• 1:18:12
  Sumatra and Honduras mixed in. It is a nice, robust roast that everyone
• 1:18:17
  will enjoy and maybe you will enjoy it too. Hoppy, Yeah, yeah,
• 1:18:20
  that was probably a little harsh in my judgment there. I mean,
• 1:18:25
  you know, Hoppy, this is what we say, and we've said this
• 1:18:27
  before, and here's the deal on Hoppy And I said he has the business
• 1:18:31
  acumen of a gnat. I mean, he just he is who he is.
• 1:18:36
  He is, he's a news journalist, and it just doesn't go away.
• 1:18:41
  Brad and I come from a different side of things. We're more of
• 1:18:44
  an entrepreneurial pro business trying to help the state of West Virginia grow. And
• 1:18:49
  Hoppy is who he is and I totally respect that because he is who he
• 1:18:53
  is. He doesn't pretend he's not he's somebody that he isn't. That's fair,
• 1:18:57
  right, fair point? Like I do feel like you're presentation could have
• 1:19:00
  been like the fact that your fingers had to be seared off holy glass,
• 1:19:05
  maybe that would have happened at the temperature you think. The Grant County people,
• 1:19:10
  that's the greatest ever invented. Great. No, seriously, when did
• 1:19:14
  you do that? When did you make that? When I left that house?
• 1:19:17
  Yeah, eleven o'clock. Dude, I'll put stuff in here. I
• 1:19:20
  don't have a fingerprint on my right thumb now I will. I will put
• 1:19:25
  stuff in here and go home at nighttime and pour it out. And it's
• 1:19:28
  still really good to go and approach it. So it keeps hot things hot
• 1:19:32
  and cold things cold. But how do it know that's that's exactly right.
• 1:19:39
  See that happens on the sea. Told you we'd go totally side definitely ran
• 1:19:43
  the gamut here. I'm really glad you came. I mean it took a
• 1:19:50
  I mean he he came to me and said, and when I say,
• 1:19:55
  you think, and he said absolutely, he knew it was a fun on
• 1:20:00
  podcast to be on other ones, I don't think there are as fun as
• 1:20:02
  us. This started. Will be six years old in August and over two
• 1:20:06
  million downloads to this podcast in the course of six years. So we're really
• 1:20:12
  happy and Hoppy is consistent on this program, and I think that's one of
• 1:20:17
  the big things as that is. And we've taken it on the road.
• 1:20:23
  We're going to take it on the road, probably head down to Greenborough County.
• 1:20:27
  As a matter of fact, before the summer's over, we're efforting some
• 1:20:30
  plans to go down to Greenborough County and we'll see if Hofey can give this
• 1:20:33
  skating criticism to Nadine's face when he's down there. Probably probably has some fences
• 1:20:38
  to mend on that deal there. I mean, she's a wonderful person.
• 1:20:42
  Guys Blend, I'll bring you back in. I have a feeling, yeah,
• 1:20:44
  next week I'll maybe the three guys blending and maybe maybe you could do
• 1:20:46
  that. I'll bring you back. We're not sure how we're going to get
• 1:20:48
  to Greenborough County when we go down there, but there is a chance that
• 1:20:53
  we might take a lou Wendelle Marine Sales pontoon in down there. It's a
• 1:20:57
  Lou Wendelle Marine Sales and Saint Albans. They sell family fun visit Lou Wendell
• 1:21:00
  Marine Sales and also could just toe one down to Somersville Lake stopped stopped down
• 1:21:04
  on the way down there. Beautiful spot. That's a great pontoon. You've
• 1:21:09
  been have you been? Not been to the lake? Now? Steve Antlin
• 1:21:12
  has a great place there. Now you've been there. I haven't, but
• 1:21:15
  he's invited me. So you're going to So when you so you guys came
• 1:21:17
  in from Huntington, so you didn't. But you've been over the New River
• 1:21:20
  bridge since you've been here. Yes, that's a while. That's a whole
• 1:21:24
  and the fact that that been you can you can tie off and walk under
• 1:21:28
  the bridge. You can? Would you do that? Oh? Yeah you
• 1:21:30
  would? Yeah. You only live once, bro. That might be it
• 1:21:33
  right there. You know when Dana, when Dana first, I don't exceed
• 1:21:36
  the weight limits, you know, like some of those zip lines. I'm
• 1:21:40
  over the weight limit. No glad When Dana. When Dana first came,
• 1:21:45
  I think it was his first summer here. He parachuted. No, he
• 1:21:49
  didn't he did. You remember when Dana blow that. Yeah, that was
• 1:21:53
  a big deal, a huge I don't know, you don't you have to
• 1:21:55
  find print of the contract. I don't know what your football coach jumping out
• 1:21:58
  of a plane. Yeah he did not. Now he didn't go like,
• 1:22:00
  he didn't jump from the bridge. But in Raleigh County area there I remember,
• 1:22:02
  Yeah he did that. Oh yeah, that was it was kind of
• 1:22:06
  wild. That was kind of what But but since that's been declared a national
• 1:22:11
  park, it exploded and the real estate has gone crazy down there. Obviously,
• 1:22:15
  it's a it's a really good thing. That's a really good thing.
• 1:22:17
  There's a lake near there, too, isn't there there's water, Yeah,
• 1:22:20
  there's what you know what you you know what you need to see that Becktel
• 1:22:24
  Summit is the is one of the world headquarters of the Boy Scouts and like
• 1:22:29
  they bring Becknel Summit, Yeah, what is it? What's Becktel Summit,
• 1:22:33
  World headquarters for the for the Boy Scouts. Yes, and that isn't that
• 1:22:38
  is an amazing, amazing place. The uh, you know, the uh,
• 1:22:45
  the different parts of the state, it's all beautiful, but the but
• 1:22:47
  the terrain is a little different. You know, Hey, there's one other
• 1:22:50
  thing I read that I that I think I want to do. Give it
• 1:22:55
  to me one of the Firewatch towers you can rent and stay the night.
• 1:23:00
  Oh. Now, West Virginia is one of the only places in the United
• 1:23:02
  States. Now it's like two cots. It's not real plush. And I
• 1:23:05
  understand understand the restrooms kind of stuff where it falls and falls down at the
• 1:23:11
  bottom. So you know, he might be taking a bucket up there or
• 1:23:14
  something. I don't know, but it would be neat No. I looked
• 1:23:16
  this up Yester yesterday because I somehow I had gotten a targeted ad or whatever.
• 1:23:23
  But we need to you need to put the research crew that you need
• 1:23:27
  to google firehouse. Here's the thing about this show. We you would be
• 1:23:32
  at coming in here Cole days the ingenuity of West Virginians, Like we'll bring
• 1:23:39
  up a topic on this thing. Like he had a lawnmower situation. He
• 1:23:43
  had lawnmower situation wouldn't work jout of the two guys. It eventually became a
• 1:23:47
  difficult problem to solve. Two guys came to two guys came to his house,
• 1:23:50
  fixed it and explained to him the intricacies of why that lawnmower wasn't working.
• 1:23:56
  It was very difficult. By the way, on the next episode,
• 1:23:58
  battery was dead. So that's that's where we had to get the next episode.
• 1:24:00
  We have talked about that because I've had successful lawn milling. Have you
• 1:24:03
  been knowing it? Jason and John, my whole crew at NAPA thanks to
• 1:24:09
  the am towers, Great Paris. Eric Berthasell got us back on the road
• 1:24:12
  there, Hoppy got us got up there fast. Sleep in the clouds at
• 1:24:15
  West Virginia's Thorny Mountain fire Turny Mountain, that's what counties that, hop Uh,
• 1:24:20
  where is it near? Where would that be out? I don't know
• 1:24:25
  where Thorny Mountain is east let me chick. I wish our crew probably would
• 1:24:30
  have done a better job. There's a picture. Oh there it is?
• 1:24:31
  Okay, how about that? Rent? Hey, I just saw this too,
• 1:24:33
  Rent, I must have got the same target that I just saw this
• 1:24:36
  yesterday, so you can there's a couple of cots up there, Coconds County
• 1:24:42
  are figured. I thought it would be like you gotta crawl, you gotta
• 1:24:45
  walk upstairs the stairs at the bottom of the stairs, and I don't think
• 1:24:49
  it's plowed. I think. I'll tell you what if I if I stay
• 1:24:54
  there and I gotta use a bathroom, I'll tell you where I'm going.
• 1:24:57
  Well, I knew I knew a guy. I knew a guy that was
• 1:25:02
  here, and I said, what are you looking for? New? Look
• 1:25:05
  at that? Oh that's doable. That's sweet. Oh that would be awesome.
• 1:25:11
  Now when I was reading it, books up about a year in advance.
• 1:25:14
  Really, yeah, we get in there, a little bit of oh
• 1:25:15
  we know the governor anyway we go. That's so neat. I never knew
• 1:25:20
  about that. Thanks for bringing that up. Maybe they could become a sponsor.
• 1:25:24
  Here are three guys five years. Sure, it would kind be like
• 1:25:28
  football scheduling ten years. Roll in here and educate. No, I like
• 1:25:31
  West Virginians on West Virginia. Yeah, well done, like a the ton.
• 1:25:35
  It's good. Top of it all right? Well, they can get
• 1:25:38
  a bell ring, but can be from the congregation. Get a hobby.
• 1:25:44
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  in Saint Albans. Look at that pont tune right there for those of you
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• 1:26:36
  out of the lift out of that did you yeah? Yeah? Maybe if
• 1:26:41
  you're writing like three commentaries to I think it's a light roast which has more
• 1:26:44
  caffeine. All right? Thanks to our producer Taylor Tyler, County Kennedy and
• 1:26:48
  Jumping Jack Carlson, we'll be out n Thanks so much for being with us.
• 1:26:51
  We do appreciate this. Thanks for having Do you think this is a
• 1:26:55
  one and done or do you think this you could maybe come back like a
• 1:26:58
  down the road, maybe a year. Very noncommittal. It's very noncommittal there.
• 1:27:05
  It's over three guys before the game, CEO,