← Youth Inc. with Greg Olsen
Youth Inc. with Greg Olsen
Adrian Wojnarowski on The Changing College Basketball Landscape & Life After ESPN
00:37:39
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- [00:00]
A
Make sure you subscribe to both our YouTube channel and our RSS feed for all future conversations here at you think. What's up, everybody? Welcome back. Here on youthink today, we've got a really fun conversation. A man who has now pulled off a significant career pivot entering the world of college athletics. A man that needs very little introduction. Adrian Wojanowski, the man known as Woj. Woj Bombs. We all follow him. We all love him. We. Well, man, I can't thank you enough for joining us. I think your perspective on the youth sports landscape is one that we had to have here on Youth Inc. So I appreciate your time, Greg.
- [00:37]
B
It's an honor to be here with you. And long before I was covering the NBA and basketball, I was covering the Olson family in North Jersey. Right.
- [00:46]
A
Which is probably. That was probably the highlight of your career. Right.
- [00:52]
B
Covering high school football, which almost everybody in our business sort of starts as a high school writer and moves up.
- [00:58]
A
Yep.
- [00:59]
B
Learning to cover a high school football game on Friday night when it's raining. There's three different kids who wear number 32. One's on JV1, plays defensive back. They use one on offense. You got to keep your stats back. Then you had to go to something called a pay phone to call in your story. So you, you learn the craft. But those are great memories for me. And your family, you know, has a special place. Your dad, one of the all time great coaches in New Jersey history. And you know, you and your brother had obviously a huge impact both locally in Jersey but nationally when you guys were running through, you know, a big part of why I came back to Bonaventure and made, you know, I guess a fairly significant career transition at now 56 years old was Bonaventure transformed my life. I was the first in my family to go to college. My dad worked in a factory. My brother's an automobile mechanic. There was nothing about my background that suggested that I could have the path I had, except just a love of reading and writing and of telling stories. And Bonaventure was a place that gave me a tremendous amount of confidence and belief in myself and helped me learn a craft. And, and you know, almost every good thing that's come from my life. Meeting my wife Amy here, her family, many of them went to Bonaventure. My brother in law played hoop here. It's a special place. And I still think for young people it can be a transformational place. And so when I'm out recruiting and we're recruiting and finding young people who we think would benefit from our environment, which is small, close knit, remote, no distractions, in a place that's going to care about you, you know, well beyond your career. And so that's what's really moved me to be back here. And so for us, that's still college athletics. I understand it's big business and we've got to compete in that realm where we have to look at ourselves as a business. And I've got a payroll and, you know, we've got to financially figure out, you know, how can we be a competitive team with some of the limitations we have. But it doesn't change the fact that we're here to help transform the life of young people along with being able to win games.
- [03:22]
A
So give us an idea. Right. Everyone hears nil. They now hear with the new house ruling about revenue sharing. And you mentioned you have a payroll. Like, give us an idea. Maybe not like specifically to St. Bonaventure, but just across the country at college athletics, all, you know, people that are doing the exact same thing you are, managing what that looks like. Give our listeners a little bit more insight into what exactly all of that means. I think we all hear those words thrown around. I'm not sure everyone really understands the difference between NIL revenue sharing, you know, scholarship, expansion. Like what? Explain all of that to us.
- [04:01]
B
You know, what revenue sharing is, is the ability of the school, you know, to take their TV revenue, ticket revenue all the ways. High major schools especially, bring in money and disperse that to their athletes in any number of sports, football, basketball and beyond. But there's also nil, which is name, image and likeness, where you can, outside of that, do marketing deals, do endorsement deals. You know, one of our players, Joe Grahovic, has an NIL deal with WWE with fanatics, you know, that's outside of revenue sharing. And so there's been essentially a salary cap put into place of around $21 million that schools are able to exceed by finding again, nil deals. Outside of that, among the high major football Schools, the Power 4, you know, add in the Big east for basketball, you know, those payrolls are in basketball, north of 10 million, north of 15 million. Football. I mean, you know, Greg, there's payrolls, 30, $35 million that you can go beyond the cap. There was an ability to before this house settlement and the rule changed to pay money ahead on this year and future classes. But I do think there'll be some coming back down to earth on some of that money. But for a school like Bonaventure, you Know, our revenue streams are limited and so we've got to really raise the money that. And so I spend a lot of my time as GM at Saint Bonaventure in fundraising, finding business partnerships that can help us build kind of sustainable money donors and then marketing deals that I can do around, you know, me that allow that I share and give the money to our program. But there's no question it's been professionalized. And you know, for a very long time, college athletes did not share in unbelievable revenues from schools. At least they weren't sharing in a legal way. We know that there were players who were paid, but. But it also put players and families in situations where, you know, they got it caught up in controversies that were the doing of the schools because the rules just didn't allow. You know, Greg, you played in, you played in sold out NFL stadiums where everybody's making a lot of money. We know what the NFL player salary is. But you've also played in massive college stadiums on network TV at a time when you were getting room, book and tuition. Yet your coach on the sideline was making millions, the administrators were making millions. The school was building buildings on campus from that revenue off of, you know, let's say high major football players who were risking injury, who didn't have great insurance protection and who many times were cast aside without meaningful degrees. And I do think it is a good change, long overdue change. And I think the hope now is that we can create an environment where lots of schools can compete and this isn't headed for just 40 or 50 or 60 schools that can compete and everybody else is left by the wayside. I think that's the challenge for the NCAA now.
- [07:25]
A
Yeah, it seems like the guardrails now are the next step. Right. Because in theory, should the players participate in the upside, I think everyone could make a meaningful argument. I don't know how many people would debate that they should get nothing. I think now, like anything, it's been such an overcorrection for so long. The NCAA fought it and fought it and instead of making meaningful change and a little bit more incremental change that I think would have satisfied people, they've lost complete control now. The pendulum has swung so far. You do think at some time there is a little bit of a regression back to a middle ground because it just seems the way it's going, it seems like this is a rocket ship that how do we ever pull it back?
- [08:06]
B
I think it's going to look more like, let's say, you know, I'M not as clear on the NFL salary structure. I know there's a lot of non guaranteed money, but in the NBA you look at and I do this with our payroll and I actually superimpose based on what our number is. Obviously, you know, st bottom interest payroll is much lower than say the Denver Nuggets. But what I do is I take their best players. Everybody's a percentage of your salary cap. And so what I try to do is look at our roster as a percentage of a salary cap. What I think you're going to see probably change a little bit in college, at least in college basketball, college football, they might view it differently. The star players are still going to get paid really, really well, just like they do in the NBA. I think you might see a tapering back of the role players. I think you've seen tremendous salaries for players who weren't necessarily impact players. You've seen that in the NBA and the pros and you know, even in the NFL the guaranteed money goes to the quarterbacks to, you know, the star of stars. Right? The people who are seen as the biggest difference makers. I think that's what is what you're going to see, Greg, is they'll continue to pay the star players, but we may see a progression of maybe the role players pay coming down.
- [09:29]
A
This episode of you think is brought to you by Players Health, a company that believes youth athletes deserve the safest and the most accessible environments possible to play the sports they love. To break this down, I spoke with Tyre Burks, Players Health's founder and CEO, to hear the mission and principles of Players Health firsthand. We have a really special guest, the founder of Players Health, Tyre Burks. Tyre, thanks for joining us here on you think. I'd love to just hear a little bit about your background, a little bit about starting and founding of Players Health and really just why you saw whole in the youth sports kind of world that you thought needed to be filled and it is being filled by your work with your team at Players Health.
- [10:12]
C
My background and where I grew up, the environment that I grew up in played a huge part of me creating Players Health. I grew up in the south side of Chicago. Sports truly saved my life and when I say that like I had an opportunity to choose two paths, either it was the streets or sports. And fortunately enough I chose sports. I was invited to come out to a youth football practice. I showed up early and I stayed late and it kept me out of the streets. And so there's been two things that I've been Obsessed with, you know, the past. Call it 15 years of my. Call it professional career. As I've been, I've been focused on safety and I've been focused on sports. Like, I've just been obsessed with those things. I know what it feels like to grow up in an environment where safety is a luxury and sports was a safe place for me through that experience. I had all these injuries growing up. I had. I got three bulging discs in my neck. I ended up tearing my hamstrings, broken fingers, ligaments, you know, just playing sports and. And playing football. We didn't have athletic trainers. Growing up with a school I went to, and then until I went to the college level, I really didn't understand policies and protocols around how these things were managed. And so when I look back over my career, I ended up playing in the Canadian Football League for a couple years, and I decided to hang it up. I started to reflect on my career and go, hey, Happy's injuries would have been managed a lot better when I was younger. Like, who knows what would have happened, but maybe I would have played a lot longer. And so I started to look at the impact that I wanted to make in my life and also in the world. And sports was such a huge. Played a huge role in my life, so I wanted to give back to it. And players helping was my way of going about doing that. And so our mission has been the same mission since day one, which is how do we create the safest environment for an athlete to play the sport that they love? I think this is something that the world needs for our youth. And so we've been focused on leaning into creating those safe spaces here at.
- [12:00]
A
You think we want to bring value to you, the parents, coaches, the athletes listening in everything that we do. Check out players health today and let them know Youth Inc. Sent you. Now back to the episode. Okay, so let's take it the next next step, right? We're talking about the structure now. Let's dive into the young athletes that you guys are actively courting, recruiting. Let's put nil aside for a second as a way to get these players to come onto campus. Right? I want to talk a little bit about what you and your staff are seeing when you're laying out these targets, right? These recruiting groups you're hosting, you know, recruiting weekends, and you're. And you're putting out this wide net to find the right type of person to come to Saint Bonaventure to be a student athlete. Like, what are you guys seeing? Boots on the ground. From when you first started covering high school athletics a million years ago, when I was growing up to now. Are the athletes different? Are they the same? Are there priorities like, give me a compare and contrast over the years in your experience, and especially now that you're, like, living in the weeds of it, how are these high school kids being prepared to play competitive athletics at the college level?
- [13:09]
B
It's a great question, Greg. And I think it's, you know, it's young people. It's certainly not just athletes. It's young people. And I think, you know, your ability at this level to storytell and differentiate your program. We're not for everybody at St. Bonaventure. We, you know, I tell guys all the time, if, you know, this is a place where you care about your education and going to class and you care about being in the gym and getting better. We don't really have the third thing. We don't have the beach. We don't have 12 months of sun. We don't have a big city around us. And that's not for everybody. There's kids who want that. But our goal is to find, you know, 10 or 12 guys somewhere on this planet. We've been recruiting the world and we know they're there and we helped to. We found them this year, certainly. And we have in the past who value our environment. And so. And you're also, Greg, looking for good partners with, whether it's a parent, whether it's agents. Virtually all, you know, many of our players already have representation. Our international players, you know, who've been playing in a club system have agents, the American players. Some are nil agents. What we want, what, what I think is important for us is to find people who want to be in the lives and represent these players for the next 12, 13, 14 years because they care about the growth and development. When I get on a phone with a player or a parent or an agent, and the first thing they say to me is, what can you pay in nil? It's probably going to be a quick conversation because to me, the way I try to approach it is let's figure out the fit first. Do we fit you? Do you fit us? Let's get to know each other and talk about what's important for you. And then when we feel like there's a fit, then let's figure out the money. And where I think the problems are is when you start with the money and then figure out the fit. Right? I haven't even talked to a young person yet. They haven't heard from us and an agent would ask me, well, what are you willing to pay him? I'm like, I haven't even gotten on the phone with him yet. I have no idea. And so that's how we have to approach it at a high major, where the revenue is different, you might approach it and in a different way. But I think young people still, they want an environment where they're going to be challenged, where they're going to be cared for, but not coddled, and where that all the mechanisms are there for them to put in the work, get better at the game, move toward a degree. This is a fun place to play college basketball. The whole university environment at Saint Bonaventure is built around basketball. This is a basketball town, a basketball conference in the Atlantic 10. And so you can, I think, pretty quickly figure out. And you've got to be prepared. You've got to do your homework on players. And the one thing that's helped me as a. My reporting background has helped me in this job is just like I would do a story on a young. A situation, a person. You don't just talk to one person, you're talking to a lot of people to get the whole picture and to understand not just the what, but the why and how they were raised and the challenges they may have faced and to really understand the people. And for me to be able to get intel from NBA teams and my relationships there, especially with the international players. You know, NBA teams, they do tremendous job of gathering intel, and I can complement mine with their. And so you're trying to the best of your ability, get a sense of how that person, how that young person is going to fit in your environment. And there's times where we really like a player in the last year, but we had questions whether they fit and they would thrive with us. And conversely, maybe somebody with a little less talent that we thought had tremendous work ethic, tremendous character and staying power. So much of it, Greg, now, is, are you willing to fight through adversity? And it's easy now to jump when things aren't easy. It's easy to say there's somewhere else I can transfer to, and players have free, free reign to do it. Do you have people when maybe they're not getting the minutes they want right away, and are they going to fight through that and get in the gym and work harder, or are they going to call their agent and say, let's start working on a new school for next year? Those are all things you have to take into consideration when you're recruiting and building, building your team well along those lines.
- [17:49]
A
And I'm fascinated because different in basketball than football, you guys are recruiting the globe. You do have perspectives of how these institutions and practices prepare kids for college in America. And then they do it very different overseas. They do it very different in other countries. Do you think we're doing a good job domestically? Let's just stick with America for a minute. Like, do you think we're doing a good job as these kids come up through middle school, high school and then on the verge of being recruited by the likes of yourselves and and million other schools? Do you think our institution of the youth sports landscape is doing a good job preparing these kids? Not just as the skill I think we've got down kids are more skilled at a younger age than at any other time. But do you think kids are coming into college as prepared, coming up through the systems that we've created as well as they were years ago?
- [18:43]
B
There are a lot of places where there's tremendous coaching preparation. And so the answer to that is yes. There's still a lot of instances where, and I'll give you an example, where we're talking to young people and describing to them, telling them they're a brand. Toothpaste is a brand. Detergent is a brand. You are a person and you have a reputation and your reputation is what, like how you treat people, what kind of teammate you are, how you work. And I think that if we just. I wish, I still think we could simplify it a little bit and not worry. Listen, the money will come and the rewards will come financially and other ways. When you put in the work, when you are reliable, when teams can count on you, when coaches know when you say you're going to be in the gym at 7am to to do the work, you're there. When you. When study halls at three in the afternoon, you're in there doing the work. All those things versus spending a lot of time talking about your earning power before you have one go to move that week, one before you have a move that our coach can call for you in a game, we're talking to you about how you're going to brand yourself. I think that's dangerous. I think we're getting. We're moving too fast with young people in those regards. We need financial literacy. We need to help players understand that the money they might be earning in NIL is not anywhere near reflective of what's going to be out there for them as professionals. This, for most young people, this is the most money they're ever going to make. And so yes, we need to be prepared for that. But it's harder on high school players now, Greg, because we're focused on in many cases older players. We want the portal, we want the 21, 22, 23 year old in the Atlantic 10. There's very few 18, 19 year olds who are going to come in day one and play a lot. You certainly see it at the high majors, but older is better in college sports now. And I do also see if I'm a young player now, go somewhere you can play. It may not be the name school that five years ago the top 100 or top 150 or top 350 kid would get a scholarship to. But the way to build a career in college athletics, I think this is true in any sport, is go somewhere you can be productive, you can show them you can impact, impact winning. And if you are productive even at the low major level, very quickly you're going to move up and be compensated for it. Don't be too caught up with I want the big name school because going somewhere and sitting on the bench and then having to move down a level makes it harder. But I do think overseas there is many cases more of a focus on the fundamentals. You know, I think so much with travel, basketball, our guys are spending so much time in root places and they're, they're flying all over the country, they're riding around in vans in a town, they're hanging around in hotel lobbies at very young ages to go compete when you know they can get that work in elsewhere and have time to be a kid, go swimming, have a part time job. I think we burned so much time around youth sports when I do think we could still localize it. You know, go have two hard hours of training, practice, maybe come back and if you're a basketball player, come back in the evening and do some shooting. But I look at some of these guys who are moving around the country, 12 hour van rides, planes connecting and all that lost time that to me they should be kids with and I, I worry about that for young people and it impacts, I think some of the burnout and some of the lack of love of it because I think it sucks some of the joy out of it. I think there could be a better balance of just regionalizing things a little better for guys.
- [22:42]
A
What's up guys? Do you want custom fanware like this cricket shirt for Charlotte Christian School? We've got premium apparel from your favorite brands. The best part about it is I don't have to just wear it to Charlotte Christian's events. I can wear it to golf, I can wear it to lunch. It's turned into my uniform. Go right now over to youth.in Sign up for our newsletter. It talks about our podcast for that week, our interview guests, all the breaking news across the landscape of youth sports. And you can win one piece of merch for your school by going to sign up today. And remember, it's not dot com, it's Youth Inc. Now back to our episode. So much of what you just said is so spot on and we work closely at our kids school here in town and obviously we're more involved with the football program but we go support my kids play baseball, they play basketball. My daughter runs track and field and plays girls basketball. So we're involved in all the different programs, not just football. But I spend more time intimately with the football kids as one of the coaches of the team and whatnot. And what you just said about the challenges of high school athletes is so important for families to understand. And I think the first around here, the first time that you don't get the offers you want, you don't think that it's the coach isn't doing a good job, the school is not doing a good job and I need to go to a different school I got to go to. The kids at that school get better offers than this school. And I try to convince these parents like you just don't understand the landscape here. Like here are the challenges your son or daughter are facing of why Notre Dame or whoever is not coming to recruit you. It's not the school. And what you just said is, is so true. It's the same in football. Old wins the third. The third year player that was a backup at Mississippi State, he can go to Auburn now and be a starting defensive tackle and play because he's for three years been in a program like, like that versus your 18 year old son who is probably two years away from playing in the SEC at the very fastest. So like that was not the case when I came out. When I came out you went to the best schools. The upper echelon of schools that offered you, you picked amongst them. You went there and said if it takes me one, two or three years to play, no problem, I'm in for the long haul. Like there are no the patience now doesn't exist in 12 year old baseball though. Woj, if your kid's not batting third playing shortstop on your 12 year old baseball team halfway through the season you're playing in a different uniform. We can't even forget high school, we can't get it done in middle school. So how do we ever expect them to do it when they get to you in college?
- [25:13]
B
It's so true and I think for a lot of families and the other thing too, and I'm sure you're seeing this Greg, is specialization. I think young people are specializing too soon. There's so much to be learned from playing multiple sports and in terms of leadership, in terms of honing different skill sets, I think that's important too that, that you don't have to become a 12 month a year athlete at 10 or 11 or 12 years old. Maybe once you get to high school you might start looking at that and you may not find what you're really good at and what you love without experimenting and finding that. And so I think that's certainly part of it. And burnout I think is such a part of, you know, guys have played in many cases so much travel, basketball so much, you want to keep it fresh and for them to love it. What I'm really interested to see what happens Greg, is especially players who are making a tremendous amount of money even at the mid major level, you know, role players who are making six figures, that is not their pro market. When they go to Europe and finish college, they might get an offer for 16, $17,000 a year in a country they've never heard of. And they're going to be the days of, you know, private charter flights, four or five star hotels, packed arenas, television. Now they're going to be in small gyms and the outskirts of medium sized European towns, long bus rides, very little money. Then you're going to find out who really loves to play because the letdown of that is going to be significant. And the other thing too, Greg, that I think, and I'm really working on that at St. Bonaventure is the mental health. Listen young people, it has never been scary to be a young person in this world for a lot of reasons. Take, take sports away from it and mental health and providing resources to young people I think has never been more important. But adding money into the equation, and you can see it already whether it's how do I handle the pressure of maybe being given a lot of money to play. You've been around both, Listen, you've lived it in the pro level, I've been around it, covering it. Money impacts much older people when they get a big contract and the public scrutiny that comes with that and the pressure, that's human nature. Now we're giving it to 18, 19, 21 year olds. How do they handle a big paycheck? How do they handle seeing somebody else is making more and you think you deserve it or the people around you are telling you you should be getting what he or she's getting. That creates stress or I'm not playing well. Are they going to cut my money for next year? Am I having to share a lot of my money with others around me? So I'm not putting this money away and it's not going to be for me. That creates a level of stress in so many ways. We have to really understand that the nil rev share landscape is impacting people in ways that we don't maybe even fully understand yet. And make sure that we've got the resources to help kids manage all that because it's a lot. And their families.
- [28:35]
A
Yeah, it's the cost of unintended consequences. Right. We all think showering people with money is the answer to a lot of problems and it certainly can change people's lives and it certainly can get people from disadvantaged backgrounds opportunities they otherwise wouldn't have. So it's not that. Not the root of the evil. But in so many cases we had a hard time getting, you know, I just think back to when I came into league after College. I was 22 when I got drafted and you get your first check. I was 22 and had no idea what I was doing. And the decisions I made at 22 and 23 are vastly different than now I make at 40. But I had to learn that through the hard way. Could you imagine if you expedited that now for a lot of these kids, it's happening a full four year cycle earlier. I'm a high school senior having a, having a coach sit in my office, sit in my family room and tell me they're going to pay me $2 million. As a high school senior who's just getting ready to go to his prom, like I can't even put myself in position to understand what that looks like. If you would have given me 50 grand in college, my head would have popped off. So I do think there are the unintended consequences that have started to play out here that we've got to, we've got to figure out. I want to shift a little bit, woj, to a really unique perspective that I think you have, maybe more so than most people, you intimately followed some of the greatest athletes in NBA history. I mean, name them, you covered them, you knew Them personally, you saw their habits, you saw behind the scenes, you knew what was going on. We all watched what we saw on tv. We saw the finished product. Can you identify a couple traits? And I'm sure you bring a lot of these insights to now, your time at Saint Bonaventure. But like, tell me about some of the traits that you thought were common across multiple personalities, different types of guys, but they all shared what that made them special.
- [30:26]
B
You know, work ethic is easy. I mean, that's an easy one to identify, right? The ability to keep working when you've had success, when you've gotten a big contract. I would say reliability. Are you reliable? Can the coach count on you? Can your teammates count on you? Can your community count on you to do what you say you're going to do and to honor what you're asked and required to do? The definition of professionalism, right, is doing what you're supposed to do when you don't feel like it. And that's so much of it. There's a story that I share with our players often. My first beat out of college in Waterbury, Connecticut was covering UConn basketball. And Ray Allen was an 18 year old freshman at UConn. Pretty prominent recruit, terrific shooter from day one. And here's what I remember about Ray. I would finish my. They would have practice, there was a pressure room there. You'd write your story after practice and you'd go home. And very often when I'd be packing up my bag to leave, I have to cut back through the gym. And I would see that young freshman guard back in the gym at night, working on his form. Shooting, which is you stand right, you know, halfway between the free throw line and the basket and you're just working on your form shooting. It's the simplest thing any shooter does. But for someone like Ray Allen, it was his routine day after day. So this is 18 year old Ray Allen. Fast forward 20 years. Ray Allen has had a Hall of Fame career. He's won it, won a championship in Boston All Star. He's 38 years old, he's back in Boston Garden with the Miami Heat. And I get to a Celtic Heat playoff game at 4 in the afternoon for probably a 7:38 o' clock start. There's one guy on the court, in the arena, It's Ray Allen. 20 years later now, the all time three point shooting king in NBA history broke Reggie Miller's mark and there he is, form shooting in the gym the same way I had last seen him doing it 20 years earlier as an 18 year old. And I just think that speaks to it. You go to the Golden State warriors facility on an off day to go in and there's Steph Curry alone doing tennis ball, ball handling drills at the height of his MVP championship level. It's an off day. Everybody else was out and you see Steph back in. And so you know, Greg, that the level of and that's the dude at the highest level. Steph and Ray are two, the greatest ever. But what separates the rest, there's so many talented guys who have skill, who, you know, you could put in a hat and say which are the one? And they're going to be. 90% of the guys are role players, right? And it gets back to again, professionalism, reliability, being a great teammate. And I think pro teams more than ever. And I know we are putting a tremendous premium on it. I want guys who bring energy and bring culture from other good organizations and other good teams. I want them to bring that culture to our team. Because every year, culture is not a thing. You just put up on signs in your building and you say, we have great culture. Culture is a thing you fight for every day. When you're around any organization, whether it's sports or non sports, culture is behavior, habits. And you're only as good as the habits that you have in the building in that given day. And I think about being around the spurs through that very long stretch with Tim Duncan, Manu Ginobili, Tony Parker. The culture was in the work and habits of those great players. They dictated it. And coaches are, never mind the general manager of a college team. The players are going to dictate the environment and the leadership within there. And so I would tell young people what's going to separate you is as simple as do people want you around. Like when you come around the corner and they see you, is there a smile on your face? Is there enthusiasm to greet your coach? Not just your coach, but the trainer, the student managers, the folks who are sweeping your gym. Because when you're a player, you want to be a pro or you want to be a college player. Understand, we're going to go ask questions of not just the people who were impactful in your life. Anybody can be polite to their coach or to the important people. How do you treat the people who can't help you? The people who swipe your meal card in the dining hall, how do you greet them? The equipment manager who stays up late at night to wash your sweaty clothes and your jersey and has it folded nicely on your seat, how you treat all those people in your life, never mind your teachers and your classmates. It plays a tremendous role in how desirable you are to to a team at the college level and certainly at the pro level.
- [35:46]
A
Before we get back into the episode, a quick reminder to follow us across all socials. We're posting daily content centered around youth sports. All right, let's hop back into it. That's so well said. And, Woj, as I thought, your perspective, not only what you're doing now, but just your time covering the sport from the high school level to the highest level in all competitive athletics. And now, obviously, boots on the ground, the work you're doing at Saint Bonaventure. I've watched many Saint Bonaventure games. We grew up going to games, you know, at Seton hall and kind of up in that area. And we've seen many Bonnie's games. So what you're doing, I commend. I love it. I'm jealous. Like, the idea of being in a program like that and the boots on the ground is so intriguing to me. So, man, I can't thank you enough for joining us here on youthink. Wish you guys nothing but success. And it's so good to see after all these years and see that you're doing well.
- [36:38]
B
Greg, it's an honor to be with you. It's been awesome to see what from being a player to being now one of the elite broadcasters and now in your role here, giving back to young people, to parents and giving them a lot of tools that they can use to navigate what's a complicated and difficult world. So. So thanks for letting me be a part of the podcast.
- [37:01]
A
Oh, appreciate you, man. Best of luck to you guys and hopefully see you again soon.
- [37:05]
B
Okay, Greg. Take care.
- [37:06]
A
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