The Matt Thomas Show with Ross - Chris Pezman Of UH On Athletes Returning To Campus

Episode Date: June 4, 2020

Chris Pezman, Vice President of Intercollegiate Athletics at UH On Athletes Returning To Campus

Real Texans talk H-Town sports all day. On Sports Talk 790? No other radio station said on my pre-pit. Home of your rockets, your Astros, and your talk. 133 on 790. The Matt Thomas show continues. We have a visitor with us now. Our good friend, Chris Pezman.

Vice President, Intercollegiate Athletics, at the University of Houston for a few minutes. Pez, good to hear voice. Is it good to have young men on the campus working out right now? I'm assuming the answer to that is yes. Yes. Short answer is yes. It's great to see our kids back.

Football and men's and women's basketball and just seeing the smiles on their faces as they get back and getting to see each other again. We've been missing that for the last two and a half three months. And obviously, you along other campuses across the country are going through new protocols and how to keep things clean and organized. and socially distance and on that. Is there a guy that you guys went to?

I mean, is there a group of colleges that said, all right, we got our trainers together. We got with our local elected officials. And what kind of protocol? How did you, what kind of rules of sets are you guys following right now? That's a, there's a short answer or long answer is yes. Yeah, we have a medical working group within the conference that's really focused on return to play in the fall because the conference is so spread.

out and every, you know, and it's, you know, the country in collegiate athletics, every area is dealing with a different set of inputs, you know, whether they're in a hot zone or not, infection rates are higher or lower, their access to PPE. Everybody's, you know, as you come back to, to bring your kids back for voluntary activities, we've allowed it as a conference to allow each institution to make their own decisions. We're obviously sharing best practices because, you know, everybody's trying to figure this out together. And we're very, very fortunate, obviously, being here in Houston with the medical community here that has been incredibly supportive of us with sharing, you know, best practices and the best way to combat this in bringing our kids back. So essentially, are you back to normal summer rules where I think sometimes coaches can be there, some can? Is there anything different than, say, a year ago when kids were doing off-season workouts? Well, right now, so as of today, yes, we're in the voluntary window. So it's voluntary activities.

It's not mandatory. Coaches are not allowed to be out there and be present during workouts, football and basketball. This is kids coming in on their own to get better. Strength coaches are absolutely allowed to be there as well as our medical staff to support. our student athletes. But it's, the calendar's different, particularly with recruiting. Normally you'd have a lot of camps going on now and in July as, you know, you bring in prospect age kids and youth camps.

But those have just, you know, camp, everybody's out of the camp business right now across the country. So that's really the biggest difference is that young and the kids that want to go show how good they are to coaches can't do so. You're also not getting nine-year-olds on your campus to hit volleyball and that kind of thing. So that's the biggest difference from today than a year ago, right? Yes, yes. But how often you talk to them?

I mean, are you able to get in there and have good conversations, or do you kind of let them be, at least for the next couple weeks or so? Well, I went over and watched football workout. And what's today? I don't know, Thursday, Monday, Tuesday. Just I wanted to see how our social distancing was working during our workouts. And, you know, the kids were in the middle of workouts. So I didn't get a chance to talk to them.

Yeah. I really look forward to actually doing much more of that over the next week, week and a half. And being engaged with them on a personal basis. You know, we've been doing Zoom meetings. And you just, you know, you just lose that. connectivity when you're doing it through electronics as opposed to actually seeing somebody face to face, but I really

look forward to seeing our kids. You know, you see them when they're coming in the building, but we're all trying to keep our space so we, when you were social distancing in the right way, so we can keep doing what we just started. Well, I'm glad that you're always 20 miles of May for me. It makes me very comfortable to knowing this as far as you are for me.

Go ahead. Do you want to take a shot? You're just going to say it goes both ways. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We'll deal with that later. Chris Pezeman and Vice President and Intercollegiate Athletics with us here on the University of Houston from the Matt on the Matt Thomas show. Chris, we didn't explain to the audience. You've got a tremendous logistical background as part of who you became and now the athletic director. So you have dealt with schedules.

You have dealt with stadiums. You have dealt with all sorts of things. As Governor Abbott has expanded from 25 to 50 percent this year, and I know that you knew this was coming, what have you told your operations? What have you told your ticket staff? Are that still kind of still TBA at this point about what you're planning if you are going to start the season on time this year? Yeah, great question. First and foremost, we're planning on the season starting a schedule. It's, you know, you prepare for the worst and hope for the best.

But in all sincerity, you know, we've got almost three months until we start football season. And the way things are changing so much. and literally hour by hour, day by day, and the improvements that are being made with medicine and science as we deal with the pandemic, I expect we're going to be able to play. As it relates to hosting fans in the stadium and operating our games,

really it's the same attitude. Who thought 30 days ago we'd be in a spot where we could bring our kids back on campus and work out or even think that we would be at, you know, we were assuming, you know, zero fans. Then we went to 25%. Now we're looking at 50%. And that's all just changed in the last 30 days.

So I would expect, and what I've told our operation staff is, you know, look, we're going to, we're going to prepare on 25% and 50% capacities as far as building out, you know, our staffing plans and how we're going to social distance and be able to bring our fans into the stadium. And really, once you get over 50%, you're out. 100% capacity because there's what's the difference between 50 and 75 and 100. Right. The social distancing aspects for us in the stadium, if it was at 25% or 40,000 seat stadium, we're going to have less than 5,000 people in the building.

And at 50%, you know, it becomes a lot more just, it becomes a lot more regular. There are things that we're, you know, you have to focus on for us, our most densely populated areas, which is our premium sections, club and suites, our student seating section. The rest of the stadium, we can figure out the capacities as we work to spread people out. And you just really look at choke points, entry and egress points, restrooms and concessions, and everything else, you kind of will figure it out. What do you think to bigger schools in terms of like the Alabama's? I use the SEC because yesterday I was talking, telling the audience about the halacious payouts

that they're paying in the next five years, like Ken State. it's going to get a million nine to play, Auburn, and Alabama pays a lot of money, A&M's going to pay it. How do you think those things are going to work out of? Do you think that can schools, and if you, if you don't want to speak out of turn, I totally understand it. But do you can, are there little rules that can say, hey, if we're not going to have 85,000 people in our stadium, we can't pay what we want to pay, or do you think those deals are like solid, they're locked in, or maybe we need to push the game back two or three years? Where do you think those big payout games are going to ultimately be affected by this? Yeah, we call those guaranteed games where you're basically being bought or there's such a large guarantee that is being exchanged. I think the guarantees are pretty much locked in. You know, it may affect people looking ahead, but shoot, Matt, football schedules are locked in so far in advance.

And the economics of them are so significant. If you're a, let's say, a smaller G5 school, and you may subsist on playing two guaranteed games or one guaranteed game a year. And if you don't have the ability to do that, it's detrimental significantly to your budget. What's really going to be interesting as we talk about this is we get into the fall is as a league, we'll have a set of protocols for testing and for play. player safety as it relates to the virus and testing protocols. And so I know when I go to Temple or to South Florida or wherever we go this year within our league, there'll be consistency in the way that we apply that. What we're talking about now as college football is when we go to Washington State or we go to

BYU this next year, how do those institutions know that we're doing what needs to be done when we go there or vice versa or when we bring teams in here. That's the next hurdle that I think everybody's going to be focused on over the next 30, 60 days that we'll try to solve before we get into fall camp, which starts basically the first of August. How fluid are those conversations with your non-conference teams and then the ones in the league? Because as you said, the American is so spread out that certain parts of the conference are being affected by COVID greater than others. Yeah, I've already talked to Pat Chung at Washington State, Tom Homo, BYU. you, they both, you know, they're both in a spot where they feel comfortable. Everybody's playing, we're playing on playing the game.

Within the league, there's nobody that's raised a hand yet that said that they have concerns about playing the season. So we're expecting to play. And we just concluded our league athletic directors annual meetings last week and with our medical task force and to kind of expand on that. So every institution has a medical representative. part of this working group. And it's interesting because part of our group obviously is the Naval Academy, which falls under Department of Defense. So there's standards that we're talking about that are

really at the highest level as we try to tackle what our conference-wide testing protocols will be when we get into the fall. Lastly, with the basketball returning and going into the fall for the first time and forever. Baseball, if it comes back, is going to be doing that. You've got a lot of television partners, but they're all going to be playing sports at the same time. Have you gotten any indication from ESPN, I'm not saying just University of Houston, but really all games around the country? Could there be some shifting of weeks and or days of the week for games, including U of H, depending on how busy and how networks are available for broadcasting of games? Yeah, specifically for us with football, our dates are locked. I'm not.

aware of any requests to move dates that have come up. Because what it creates, you know, we were very intentional with our football schedule this year. I think everybody remembers last year, we had a, you know, it was a lot of games in a very short amount of period. I don't want to exactly say what it was because I can't remember. Right. Three games and X number of days, four games in X number of days.

This year, we took the opposite approach. Like, we're playing Rice on Thursday night before Labor Day. The benefit of that is that allows us two extra days before we, We play four games the next number of days. This year we took the opposite approach. Like we're playing Rice on Thursday night before Labor Day. The benefit of that is that allows us two extra days before we play our next opponent. And the same thing because then we go to Washington State, which is a long trip.

And then the same thing when we go to BYU, that game's on a Friday before we go back. And I want to say we play Memphis when we come back from that trip. We worked with the league and with our ESPN to make sure that we had extra days. so we could have more time given the time zones that we're flipping and the amount of travel that we're doing. The ESPN and all of college football that are partners with ESPN as far as those leaves, they announced last week that they're delaying the start times as far as that selection. But as far as flexing days and anything like that,

I'm not aware of any of those conversations. Well, all I know is that I cannot wait for you to buy me the largest stake available in Pullman, Washington, coming in September, so very much looking forward to that. It will be at the stake... I don't even think they have a State 48. It'll be, you know, it won't be a really big selection of places to go, but I look forward to being there with you. Good, and as long as you bring the credit car, we're all good.

Pez, thanks to the time, as always, and we'll talk with you soon. Thanks for having me on, Matt. I appreciate you, and I hope you and your family are doing well, and thanks for everybody listening and Go Goo. You got it. Couldn't have said it better myself. Chris Pezman, Vice President, Intercollegiate, Athletics, joining us here. on the Matt Thomas show.

146 is our time. The big headline of the day. The NBA is returning more details on that. When we resume, after a message here for Cromberg's flags and flagpoles, another folks at Crombergs have a great selection of college and pro team flags. If you are looking for something to represent your favorite college or pro team, think about Cromberg flags and flagpoles. Really a great place to go for any flags, state flags, U.S. flags,

all their flags, all their banners are heavyweight, they're durable, 100% nylon are polyester and they are finished with a heavy-duty stitching for longest durability. So if you want your flag or your banner to really stand out, whether it be for school or your place of business, think about Cromberg's flags and flag poles. They can also handle the installation of custom banners of all types and sizes for both interior and exterior use. So to support that favored team or your business or your school, you simply call 713-661-922. Ron and his team have been doing this for many decades.

family owned and operated, great people to do business with, with a reliable company that's been better business bureau, highly honored for many, many decades. 713661, 922, 713661, 922, or you can visit Cronberg's Flags and Flagpoles.com. That's KRON, B, E RGS, G.S. Cronberg's Flags and Flagpoles.com.