The Matt Thomas Show with Ross - VP Of Intercollegiate Athletics Chris Pezman Discusses The Future Of College Athletics And College Football

Episode Date: April 7, 2020

This is the Matt Thomas Show. 101.1 on Sports Talk 790. It is the second hour of three. Coming up at 1.30, a great visit that Sean Salisbury had with Kirk Herbstreet of ESPN by college football. And maybe Kirk doing Monday night football. At 2 o'clock, another great alum of the University. Houston will be with us. Bill Worell in our series of people we miss hearing from the longtime

Rockets and Houston Sportscaster. Speaking of alums, our good friend Chris Pezman, Vice President Intercollegiate Athletics, joining us for the University of Houston here on Sports Talk 790. Pez, what's going on, friend? What do you say, Matt? Hey, you got Worel on. I'm impressed. I feel honored to be on your show today when you've got such a distinguished cast of entertainers and spokespeople. Yeah, frankly, you're dropping my all-time list here. So you're like 15th on the all-time U of H-List, but I don't want to push that along. So I feel sorry for you on that, but that's okay. Thank you for joining us, nonetheless.

Hey. No, I appreciate it. So what's it like? You've been doing a few Google hangouts with the kids talking to student athletes, obviously through phone and or text and or through Zoom. What's it like as an administrator with these kids that were ready to play softball, baseball, anything else in the spring counter, and all of a sudden, just because of this virus, it just went away immediately?

Yeah, you know, more than anything, I think it's, you know, there's a lot of questions they're asking that are really fair that, you know, and we just don't have the answers to yet. You know, how quick will we be back? You know, what's it going to look like when we come back? But, you know, for the most part, our kids have done an incredible job of managing this, our coaches or administrators or helping, you know, transition kids to taking classes online. You know, literally the university made that switch. during spring break, we delayed school coming back for about a week, and all of a sudden, you go from having in-person classes to your entire program academically is online. And then the other part is just making sure all of our student athletes are in a good place, mentally, physically, that we're able to take care of anybody that has a need for nutrition, you know, outreach, all those things. we're trying to fill those gaps as best we can, but it's hard when everybody's spread out literally all over the state and country. And how about, you know, working out, making sure they're doing the right things?

I mean, this is an important time for Dana's kids, for Calvin's kids, and maybe not so much because their season would have come to an end and maybe even hopefully maybe it would have been in Atlanta. But how are these athletes doing the right thing, especially when you've got, you know, spring football and then ultimately you've got training camp coming up in a couple of months? Yeah, so for all of our programs are what your strength, conditioning staff created virtual workouts for all the kids to perform. So it's kind of, you know, you do it. They created them with or without access to weights, and they got pretty creative how to use stuff around the house. There's some pretty cool videos out there that are kids that put together

showing their workouts. But the hard part, you know, as it is with anything, you can train so much at some point, it's, you know, You've got to we play sports, and sports typically involved being around or your teammates or opponents. And, you know, everybody's understood that that's on hold right now. And it's not easy. And anybody that tells you how soon we're going to be back from this or is making projections, I think, you know, I don't think anybody really knows. Chris, Pezman, the athletic director at the University of Houston with us here on Sports Talk 790.

Pez, we found out not too long ago that the spring athletes were able to come back and compete again. Had the logistics worked out on that for you in terms of what their scholarship is because you've got incoming freshmen that have also been promised some sort of scholarships. What are the logistics on that right now as we speak? Yeah, first and foremost, NCAA did absolutely the right thing. These student athletes, this was completely out of their control, and so they should not be punished whether a senior or freshman on losing a year of competition.

With that said, if all our seniors came back, we went in an analysis. I actually just got it yesterday. It'll cost us about a half million dollars in new money. So we're working through with our coaches or those in the spring that were affected. Some of these kids naturally are not going to come back.

They want to move on with their life and graduate. Some want to, you know, in some sports, whether it's golf or baseball, want to pursue, you know, being in professional leagues. So there'll be some reduction in that cost. We're working through trying to figure out, you know, what we can afford to be really honest with you. We're concerned with our revenue streams. You know, we took a pretty good hit with our instability distribution going down because the tournament wasn't played. and then you're looking at the fall and trying to forecast what, you know, our major revenue opportunities are with football and basketball, which represent the bulk of the financial streams that come into the athletic department, and what that could be and how that would affect our ability to provide for opportunities.

At the end of the day, the rule that the NCAA passed is, you know, we are not obligated to provide a scholarship to a senior that comes back. You know, and so, you know, to me, I think that they put the onus back on the schools to make that decision, which is fair. And so we're trying to understand, you know, what our real exposure is and what we can afford because, you know, right now, you know, projecting what I have to spend versus the revenues that we're anticipating or, you know, may not be there is pretty significant. So we're going to end up having to make some hard decisions sooner than later. So frankly, let's just be real honest here. if a softball player doesn't get the money or a tennis player or a female soccer player or a baseball player, it probably goes underneath the radar

right pass. But if it's a, if you, if this was to be extended to say basketball from this past season, a lot of kids would have said, well, I would have come back, but my scholarship wasn't there. Is there some truth to that that because these are not Olympic, these are not, these are Olympic sports, they don't carry the same sort of cachet to the pros that maybe some kids will have to accept it and move on and maybe won't have to face, you know, the schools wouldn't have to face any sort of public backlash because of that? No, I, you know, I think, you know, to be honest with you with social media, I think everybody's

voice carries pretty far, whether it's, you know, Olympic sport athlete or whether it's, you know, a revenue sport. And so, you know, that, it, I don't think that would be as much of an issue, but what's at stake here is, you know, football and basketball, which are fall in winter sports, we're not affected. It's the spring sports. So the scenario you played out isn't going to be equitable in this situation. But, you know, I mean, let's use tracking field, for example. Leroy and Carl believe that with the seniors coming back in the freshman after me,

and they literally will have one of the greatest 4 by 100 teams, you know, in the history of 4 by 100 teams, for college sports. And they said it, so I'm just parroting what they said. So, you know, does that impact your decision to bring back that senior track and field athlete that's on a partial scholarship or not? Is it competitive or is it somebody that is pursuing a degree? Part of that, what will factor into this is kids that are pursuing their first degree

versus a secondary degree, a second bachelor's or a master's degree, ensuring that our student athletes leave here with a degree and where people are in that process. So I think all those things are going to factor into how we try to attack this and take care of our student athletes as best we can. And it's no surprise that the college basketball players were not given an extra year because of what. I mean, was it ever seriously considered, do you think? I think it was discussed because of the tournament,

but they had completed the majority of their season. You know, for us, we lost one senior, Chris Harris. You know, I would have loved to make sure that Chris had gotten another opportunity to be in the NCAA tournament with us at the University of Houston. But, you know, I think at some point you kind of have to create a line and say, you know, if you've competed and finished your season, then, you know, we're moving on.

And so many teams were not going to be in the NCAA tournament and said you would have had to project, you know, whether a team or a senior would have been in the tournament and how would you take that into account and giving them any other year. I think probably the way that they interpreted it and apply the rule is the best possible and most consistent way to do it. All right. Now the $64,000 question about college football. And the one thing I brought up to my audience. and look, we're all just trying to think out a lot on this. How do you put 100 kids, because that's what college footballs are, 90, 100, whatever, with the staff, with the trainers, with the equipment, how do you put them in a safe area

where they can work out, they can have their own locker room, they can practice, they can have competition, and then mesh all these other people with these other schools are the same number. It feels like to me, Chris, and please correct me if I'm wrong, that there isn't a calendar for the 2020 season. because TDCU Stadium, with exception of the roughnecks, but 99% of college football facilities, the universities control the dates.

So if you said the college football season doesn't start until December the 15th or it doesn't start until January 15th, and you claim a national championship in April, you in theory could do that. How much flexibility do you think the NCAA, your conference and college football in general have in playing the 2020 college football season? Let me answer this a different way.

The financial stakes of not playing or repercussions of not playing a football season are so significant. There's going to be a way to do it and play it and do it responsibly. Obviously, we can't put, you know, put, you know, like you said, 110 student athletes on the field versus, you know, a traveling team coming in with, you know, 85 student athletes on the other side and risk getting anybody sick or putting them in jeopardy. So, you know, the timeline is going to reveal itself on what is feasible. You know, one of the things that I think that we've got to be careful of is not boxing ourselves in and not putting, oh, you've got to have two months to get ready to play a football season.

I don't, I think in this day and age, our student athletes, even though they're not with us right now, in college athletics in general, you're dealing with a lot of kids that, you know, are used to working out on a very regular basis. The acclimation period, let's use the state of Texas as an example, is probably more important here than it is, you know, in the southwest and southeast than it is probably other parts of the country because of the heat and humidity. And I'll use Texas high school football as an example. You know, I think they get 14 practices before they play a game. So I think, you know, whether it's 30 days or 60 days, I would try not to limit ourselves of how much time we have to or define a period that it has to be, you know, 60 days of preparation prior to season because I think we're used to doing it with less time.

I'd be honest with you, kids that are in high school and shoot when, you know, I mean, obviously everybody says back in the day, like when I came in, you show up and fall ball, which is the second week of August, and you're ready to play at the end of August. I think we can do that safely. But, you know, there's a lot of really smart people out there, obviously much smarter than me, that will help guide us to this process. So, we'll get those. Yeah, the reality, though, is, and I would sound this to the audience yesterday,

not only do, does a full Alabama stadium take care of the finances of the entire athletic department, a full LSU Stadium and hopefully a full TDCU Stadium. But frankly, there's a lot of schools that take paychecks to come play in those facilities. I mean, any middle American school is going to get maybe $900,000 to play the University of Michigan. That funds their program. I mean, no college football season, Pat, and I'm preaching the choir on this, would devastate everybody, not just the complete halves, but the ones that want to be a have that rely on playing those on the road games, those paycheck games to fund their athletic departments.

Yeah, and I would tell you, probably understated that most of those guaranteed games where people go to, you know, high-level

programs that have lots of money, those guarantees now are in excess of seven figures and that's pretty standard. Yeah, you're talking,

you know, 1.2 to 1.5 and sometimes close to $2 million for those guaranteed games, the department subsists off the

revenue that's generated from football and basketball. And the general ratio that is used is 80% football, 20% basketball. So if you don't have that 80% revenue stream that's associated with football, it gets dire very fast.

Now, look, I'll say this, you know, if we're not able to play, you know, we are dealing with much, much broader issues as a society with the state of the economy and what it would be like if we're not playing. But I am confident we're going to find a way through this and we'll be able to play the season, whether it's we push back a little bit or, you know, the idea of floating it out and playing spring as you alluded to, I think we all control our venues or access to them or the bulk of us do, so that's doable. I mean, if you could imagine playing football in the spring, I mean, you'd have NBA, college football, you know, major league baseball, the masters, all these

events going on at once, you know, if you're ever going to lay on the couch, that's the time to do it. It's true. I'm still pretty optimistic. We're going to find a way through to do this in the fall. I hope so. And I want you getting out that catch. I want you gaining all that weight back, all right? So be careful.

You know, I'm getting fat. That's for sure. And the scary part is I've got more hair on my face than I do my head. Same for me. Paz, good to hear your voice, my friend. Take care. So we'll talk to you soon. Matt, thanks for having me on.

I appreciate you. And everybody out there, make sure you wash your hands so we can get back to normal as fast as possible. I appreciate you. brother and go cooogues for sure thank you very much chris pesman vice president intercollegiate athletics here on the matt thomas show