Emery Live at the CWS

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Where I am today is I amjust outside of the Hilton downtown, one
of my favorite places. I havea lot of personal joy coming back to
the Hilton, as anyone would.It's really my first home in Omaha.
I spent five weeks the first fiveweeks I was working in Omaha last year
living in that hotel. So anytimeI can come back, I really am

(00:20):
excited and get a chance to chatwith some people and catch up with them.
At the same time. When Ifirst got here a year ago,
I noticed this giant white tent.This giant white tent was just hanging out
and it looked like there were alot of people having great fun in there.
It's like, Man, what aparty. I wonder what the heck's
going on in there. Well,here I am nih one year later inside

(00:43):
said white tent, broadcasting on myfavorite radio station, eleven tin KFAB with
all of the awesome information happening andthe action happening inside this tent. Helping
me every bit. Along the wayis my friend Mary Nepple, and Mary's
with me here at the desk.This is the Blur Events tent. We
talked to Stacy Lennard's from Blur,a couple of times about her various events.

(01:07):
But this is like, this isthe King and Mary. Are you
you're Nebraska person, You're from Nebraska, born and raised in Omaha, so
you you know what this is allabout. Oh yeah, back to OLDI
Roy the Rosenblat days. This isCWS is the place to be during these
two weeks during the summer, nomatter what. Well as somebody who's you
know, you're a younger adult.You get into a little wonderland like this

(01:32):
this Blur Events tent and I'm lookinglike like, help me describe here.
I got a hammock there. Idid a video on the hammock earlier,
which you can find on my socialmedia account. They got a bunch of
like beach looking chairs that you canjust hang out on. Yeah. Oh
nice little lounge chairs. Yeah yeah, lounge chairs, and like plenty of
screens with the game on and we'llget to the game in a second.

(01:53):
We got a hot tub pete,Like there are like a half dozen people.
They're just hanging in the hot tubwith their feet in the in the
cool water. Yeah, we've gotwe've got eight set we got four sets
of feet in that pool right now. I mean like anybody can just go
do that. You just go inthere. And I'm a hot tub guy,

(02:15):
but you couldn't be in a hottub in this temperature. So they've
made it a cool tub and nowand it's just like you can you can
hang out and cool off with yourfeet. I saw yesterday or a couple
of days ago when they had thefollow Blur events on social media, like
I just took off all of hisclosest up to his shorts and he just
was sitting in there. Oh,I saw kids swimming in it on Friday,

(02:38):
Okay, Like I didn't know thatit was that kind of party.
We have some bags. Are youbags or corn hole? Is it?
Is it? Bag? Sorry?It's bags to me. Uh bag set.
You have a bunch of reclining chairs, a bunch of comfy sofas,
high top tables, a full bar, tons of food. And my understanding

(03:02):
is based on the ticket that youbuy when you come in, you're gonna
have the opportunity to just enjoy allof this without any extra cost. Yeah,
you get your drink tickets and youget your free food, free pop.
Come in here. You get toenjoy some nice misters, some fans
and yeah, yeah, mister isa good one. Yeah, like pretty
consistently able to stay pretty cool inhere thanks to the fans and the misters

(03:24):
that they have throughout this place,even though today is not nearly as bad
as it was yesterday. Yesterday wasa sauna. But you can stay cool
in here and you're hiding, Imean you're in the shade. Yeah.
So if there was any and theydo that, it's through the rest of
the series. Right, the twentysecond is the last day, I believe,
Yeah, I believe. So,So there you go. All right,
so uh through into the weekend.Uh, you can just come on

(03:46):
down. You don't have you canbuy tickets online, but yeah, you
can buy tickets online or at thedoor as well. Yeah, at the
door. They have the price pointsat the door. Uh yeah, obviously,
Like it costs a little money toget in here, but once you
get in, I mean you're in. Oh yeah, you get you can
get in all day long. It'stotally worth it. I mean I just
kind of wish I could do thisall day every day, Like, hey,

(04:09):
when this thing's down here, canI just do my show? Right?
You know what I mean? It'sjust like, let's hang out let's
let's meet some people. And there'splenty of space right now because there is
a game going on. I'm surethat once that game starts to wrap up
or people that are coming for thelater game start rolling in here and we
get, you know, kind ofafter work hours, we're gonna find ourselves
a bigger crowd wandering in here.But I want to see you in here

(04:29):
too, So all you gotta dois come down. We are located very
very perfectly. I mean like,I don't know if you could be better
positioned. We're along twelfth and whatis this street that we're on cast?
So we're on twelfth and casts,And what we're doing here as we talk
on the radio is we're we're sittinghere facing the stadium. What a five
minute walk from the stadium at atmost if not yeah, at most where

(04:54):
it's a five minute walk from thestadium. And we were next to the
hotel. We're near a ton ofdifferent spots, including down in there with
the ballpark village right across the waykitty corner from where we're sitting right now.
You have all the amenities you possiblyneed, great bathroom set up,
they have an awesome drink bar.You have the ability to get alcohol in

(05:14):
here based on the ticket that youbuy when you come in. They have
food they serve for each meal,which you get when you're in here too.
It's just an incredible vibe, incredibleatmosphere. We're gonna try to talk
to as many people as we canthroughout the show. We're gonna continue to
have the fun with you. Thirdinning, wrapping up Florida and North Carolina
State. Florida a four to threelead, still early in this one.
This is an elimination game. Loserof this game is out of the tournament.

(05:38):
Winner gets to live to see anotherday. This is day four of
the College World Series. A littlebit later on today, the nightcap is
gonna be a good one. Kentuckyand they're made in voyage up here to
Almaha for the College World Series.They're taking on Texas A and M,
who, by my count, I'mnot sure based on the Rocos shop board,

(06:00):
which you know is a good indicatorat least the last couple of years
of like how many fans from eachteam there are going in there and buying
those jello shots. But I wouldbet Texas A and M based on the
just amount of people. I'm seeingthey are very close, if not aligned
with Tennessee and the amount of fansthat they have here. So that's just
gonna be a wild and rowdy atmosphereand the winner of that game is going

(06:23):
to definitely be in prime position topotentially get to the finals coming up here
in a few days. So alot of great action happening in the College
World Series. We will continue tokeep you updated not only on the score
of the game, but also allthe happenings inside this Blur Events tent,
which we are super pumped to bebroadcasting from here this afternoon. Mary's gonna
stay with me throughout the show aswell. Can't wait to chat more with

(06:45):
her. We're gonna talk to StaceyLenards, of course, Stacey is in
charge of this whole thing. BlurEvents is her baby, if you will,
and I mean, it's just becomethe premiere party throwing group and company
in Nebraska. You find them atthe Nebraska Tailgate Events. We were at
SIP Nebraska, my wife and Iearlier in the spring. What an incredible
event that was. Everything that Staceythrows with Blur Events and her entire team

(07:11):
has just been fantastic, so we'rereally excited for that as well. We'll
continue to keep you updated as mentionedas well with some news. There's not
a whole lot of breaking stuff thatwe need to touch on today, but
as time goes on, we'll sprinklea little bit of that stuff in there
as well. But we're gonna keepit light in fun today while we're here
at the Blur Events Tent in frontof the Hilton Downtown right across the way

(07:32):
from the College World Series and CharlesSchwap feel it is two seventeen when we
come back, plenty more on theway. We thank you so much for
listening. Emory Songer with you onNews Radio eleven ten KFAB and Maurice song
on News Radio eleven ten Kfab debatenot too far into the future, ten
days away. Hard to believe.You're gonna wrap up the College World Series,

(07:53):
have a couple of days to takea deep breath, and then we
got that political story going on,and we'll keep you updated on that.
We're broadcasting live Emery Songer here withyou from Blur Events Tent down here in
front of the Hilton Downtown, Omahaof short walk to Charles schwab Field and
the College World Series which currently isgoing on NC State in Florida battling it

(08:18):
out right now in the top ofthe fourth inning, Florida three Florida with
a one run lead right now,and we're gonna keep it fairly light.
I did want to say this thoughthere was a poll that was run.
You were speaking a little bit ofnews in throughout the show today and in
between all the great people who aregonna talk to while we're here. But

(08:39):
one of the things, one ofthe interesting things that popped up today this
morning was the bi annual. Isthat bi annual probably not by Anniels like
every other year, twice a year, let's just say that twice a year,
the Des Moines Register and media comedo what they call the Iowa Poll,
and it's just like pulling people onthe politics in the country and their

(09:01):
thought on what is going on inthat regard. And I guess my initial
reaction is I'm not surprised based onthe numbers that were showed up, and
the numbers show that Donald Trump hasa sizeable lead. Still that lead is
fifty to thirty three percent. Wedon't expect Iowa to be close, but

(09:22):
again, I'm less interested in thatand more interested in what people think about
the actual issues. The issues themselves, we know what they are. We're
not going to try to reinvent thewheel here on trying to tell people what
is or isn't important, even thoughboth political parties are going to try the
best they can't to do that.RFK Junior just at nine percent in Iowa

(09:45):
based on this poll. It wasover eight hundred people that were asked this
question, and I think that numberwould be higher if he was given a
level playing field in the platform allowedhim. But we know that the two
political parties have a joint monopoly onpolitics in this country. And even if
there is somebody like an RFK Juniorseems to be a pretty realistic candidate,
not necessarily to win, but forpeople to want to support based on his

(10:09):
platforms and his views. That's oneof the things that makes him an interesting
third party candidate. And the factthat he's not running like libertarian, he's
not running Green Party or they didn'tmake up a third political party for him
to run in, or like theno labels thing. He's just an independent,
and that word independent, I thinkgoes quite a long ways to the

(10:31):
people who are trying to vote thataren't big fans of the Biden and Trump
thing in that rematch. And ifthat's the case, then you would like
to see him have the same kindof platforms to speak and talk to people.
That's just not going to be affordedto him because the two political parties
are protective of their positionings and thenetwork knows that he's not going to be

(10:54):
the ratings bringer. If they reallycared about America, that's what they would
do. Now, again, I'mnot going to try to say that he
has any chance to win, butI think he would be able to grow
if Americans were given a fair shaketo hear what he has to say.
But the rules have changed based onwhat they generally are, and the fact
that it's an earlier debate prevents aguy like RFK from getting on enough state

(11:16):
ballots to complete whatever rules or regulationsor guidelines that are necessary based on what
CNN and the two political parties kindof came up with. That's just part
of the deal. Now, ifyou're looking at the approval ratings as far
as Iowa goes, and again I'musing Iowa as a catalyst here, Nebraska
has its own various things, butNebraska and Iowa politically speaking, are very

(11:39):
similar. Des Moines and Ohaha arealso very similar. This obviously, eight
hundred something people isn't enough to trulyget a grasp on all of Iowa,
but you usually get a pretty goodidea, and most of the Iowa polls
in the past have been pretty interestingand accurate based on what the election that

(12:00):
year generally are going to see.As far as the approval rating of Joe
Biden, when he was initially electedand got through his first year in office,
his approval rate, because you know, you're still kind of in a
honeymoon phase, it was about equal. It was about forty seven forty six

(12:20):
ish percent between the two and thenthe rest of the people in the poll
answered not sure. The margin oferror is about three and a half percentage
points, so that's really a deadheat. It could go either way based
on the information. But by Septembertwenty twenty one, as inflation really popped
off in the summer of twenty twentyone, everybody realized that it was the

(12:41):
administration and the lack of interest thatthey seem to have for the middle class
of America. As they kept sendinga stipends without recognizing what that could potentially
do to the rest of the economy. And that's exactly what ended up happening.
And we're still paying for it now, not just in the energy costs.
It's obviously, but it's kind ofa different issue based on the lack

(13:03):
of interest in drilling and you know, taking care of our own fossil fuel
resources in this country. You goahead and look though, within six months,
as far as the Iowa poll wasconcerned, that Iowa's just decided that
they were no longer interested in Biden, and he went from nearly fifty to
fifty down to about thirty percent approvalrating, and he has dipped now to

(13:24):
the lowest it has been to abouttwenty six twenty seven percent or so,
give or take a few percentage points. Of course, if you're a Republican,
you've always disapproved of what he wasdoing. But this is my theory.
After a year, no matter whatthe president is or isn't doing,
the independent voters and these are thevoters that I have. You know,
whether it's fully accurate, it's moreof a generalization, but I think it's

(13:48):
generally correct. Most independent voters justdon't have enough strong takes on topics to
fully align with either the Democrats orthe Republicans. Most of the people that
our registered Democrats or Republicans are upon the news a little bit more frequently
than we'll say the independent voters are. Not that they're all uninformed, but
they generally are not trying to stayin the political news cycle through the entire

(14:11):
year like we do. So youhave to understand that no matter who's in
office, they're going to get sickof them, and the opposing networks and
the opposing media outlets that generally areon the other side of the aisle are
going to have better ratings when theirsite is in is not in power,
because they have a chance to talkto their people and spread all this stuff

(14:33):
about how bad things are getting.Now are things bad? Sure, they're
not great in terms of our economy. They're not great in terms of immigration.
Obviously it's a little bit late totry to resolve it, like Biden
is doing an employ just a fewmonths ahead of an election, just him
trying to get votes, and ofcourse you have these Ukraine and Israel things
going on. You have to worryabout all of this stuff is happening,

(14:58):
and while it's happening, you haveto understand that every single thing is going
to be painted in a negative lightno matter who's in power. The liberal
media did it to Trump when hewas in office. The conservative media was
able to do it at the endof the Obama administration, and really did
it to Hillary Clinton leading up intothe twenty sixteen election. Got a lot
of independent voters in these swing statesto vote Republican. That's just the way

(15:18):
that it was. I'm not sayingthat that's going to happen again, but
generally speaking, the independent voters aregoing away from the side that's in power
because they just it's so much easierto be upset and angry with something that
it is to feel like anything goodis happening. And that's the way that
they have felt since Reagan, andthey probably but before Reagan, it was
a long time before that that youhad somebody that had universal, generally universal

(15:43):
perspective as far as approval rates.Now, some of the issues are really
interesting. Later on in the hour, I'll go ahead and talk a little
bit about what I learned from thisIowa poll, specifically about what issues are
kind of sticking out a little bitmore than the others. We'll do that
and plenty more here from the BlurEvents tent down here at the beautiful Hilton

(16:03):
Downtown across the way from the CollegeWorld series. Emery Songer with you,
having a lot of fun with youhere on a Monday on news radio eleven
ten kfab and are you so.We are sitting here live just outside the
downtown Hilton Hotel, which is wherethe Blur Events white tent is. It's
a giant white tint so many coolthings, so many cool things that I
couldn't even tell you. So Ibrought my buddy McCray Mashka. He's the

(16:26):
marketing manager with Blur Events. He'ssitting here on the table with us.
And McCray, first of all,welcome to the show, and thanks for
sitting down with us today. Thankyou very much, Thanks for having me.
This is awesome. Okay, So, can I ask about your name?
First? Yeah, go ahead,McCray, Mashka. Now you told
me you're a Nebraska guy, so, and we'll talk about that in a
second. But McCray like, okay, so, is there a history of

(16:49):
the name. There no history ofthe name, not a family name.
Just parents said they found it inthe baby book. So I have an
older sister named Mackenzie, and McCraykind of stuck with it. So macamac
Yeah, we're going with it,I hear you. And then Mashka is
that like Polish? Mashka is Polish? Yeah, Polish and German? Yep,
Hey, I got that all right. So mcray Moshka marketing manager with

(17:14):
Blur Events. You're a Nebraska guy. You live in Lincoln, you said,
and you work here with Blur.You're come into this tent. It's
like a Blur It's just a completelydifferent thing. How do you describe what's
going on in this tent today?So, yeah, I'm with I'm here
with Blur Events. I work forBlur Events. I've been working here at
Blur for the last two years.This is going on my third here.

(17:37):
And throughout the year we do tailgates. We do wine, beer and spirits
festivals. Our wine beer and Spiritsfestivals called SIP Nebraska. I was there.
I highly recommend to anyone, justa great time, bringing a bunch
of local wineries, breweries and distilleriesfrom all around the state and bringing you
know, just all into one spot, so everybody can try out different beverages,

(18:00):
all local as well as a footballtailgate and Lincoln for every home Nebraska
football game and then the College WorldSeries. So we're here for all ten
days when games are being played.We're entertaining clients, we're entertaining the public
whoever wants to buy it. Wedo all inclusive tickets a little bit different
from most of the bars here inOmaha. Yeah, so, yeah,

(18:21):
describe that how that works. Andyou do have like levels depending on what
people are kind of interested in whenthey get in here. Correct, So
every day it's an all access,all inclusive. There's three different ticket packages.
There's a non alcoholic package. There'sthe basic package, which involves lunch
buffet, dinner buffet as well asbeer and wine until midnight when we close

(18:45):
ten thirty to midnight. You haveten thirty am to midnight every single day.
So and then the top package isthe all access package that includes beer,
wine and mixed drinks all day long. Hey, you know what,
it's an easy way to just notwork about anything. Your budget's taken care
of. When you walk into theBlurts and we're speaking with McCray, moshca
with Blur events here. Okay,so we're talking about the atmosphere and putting

(19:08):
this thing together. You said you'vebeen here a couple of years. I
know she's been a Stacey Lenners who'sin charge of Blur. She has talked
to us on the radio before,and you know she's done the stuff like
this for a while. You cantell with the setup. But you talk
about the buffets, and you talkabout the drinks, but there's us Mortgesborg
of other things that people can enjoythat they just aren't gonna get anywhere else

(19:29):
when they're downtown for the college Worldtier correct. So we have we currently
have eighteen flat screen TVs up rightnow showing games. The US Open was
on this last weekend. We wereshowing that, just anything that's on TV,
So eighteen flat screen TVs. Wehave music DJ music all day long
as well as the big hit.We have an ice bath tub. Not

(19:52):
a lot of people have an icebath tub. It catches everybody's eye and
brings them to the front desk tosee me. Yeah, you walk in
and you're just like what going onin there? And it's just dudes and
women able to come and hang out, get their feet and legs a little
wet and cool them off with thesehot summer temperatures. I mean, what
a genius idea. Yeah, soabout every every hour, we'll we'll bring
some ice sober and put it intoit's a hot tub that we make into

(20:15):
a cold tub. So it's prettyluxurious. That is so super cool.
All right. So h McCrae,I I have to ask your experience,
your young guy, how does ayoung guy like you get yourself lined up
to be the marketing manager at sucha cool gig hanging out at Blur events
all year long? So I,uh, I guess recently graduate graduated college.

(20:41):
So right when I graduated college Ifound out about Blur. Is that
Nebraska. I went to the Universityof Nebraska sports meeting communications major. I
found out about Blur. I'm wannLet's see, I was looking into hospitality.
I'm a hospitality minor, okay,and so I wanted to combine sports
and hospitality together. I've found Blurevents in Link, Nebraska that literally does

(21:03):
that. They combine sports and hospitalitytogether, and it's the perfect fit for
me. I love getting to talkto people, meet new clients, meet
new people. Every event's different,So it just keeps me going. Well,
I can tell you this, thesetup is so incredible, but I'm
sure being in hospitality, you knowthere's gonna be some issues and some interesting

(21:26):
challenges along the way, and everyevent, even though you know kind of
what you're getting into, every dayat your job is going to be just
a little bit different than the lastday was. What are a couple of
stories that you're just like those thosewere some crazy days, Like do you
have a couple of things that kindof stand out when you tell me when
you think about, Man, thatwasn't the easiest day, or that wasn't
the easiest thing to accomplish. It'sinteresting to see the ticket types. A

(21:51):
lot of a lot of companies cometo us to entertain their clients, their
and their employees. So you wouldthink that that first weekend, that Friday,
Saturday and Sunday would be the craziestbusiest days of the whole entire tournament.
Now it's it's Monday, Tuesday,Wednesday. Really, these these next
couple of days are gonna be prettyuh, pretty good for us. We're
gonna have lots of people in here. It's gonna be fun it's gonna entertain

(22:14):
them, and we'll keep them going, keep there. They ain't gonna leave
thirsty, that's for sure. Iwonder that because this is such a classy
setup that you're not gonna generally runinto like if you wanted to be around
the action and the party but kindof avoid the you know the I hate
to generalize. And you're a youngguy too, so hopefully you don't take

(22:36):
this the wrong way. But Iwas like you at one point, I
was like these young cats at onepoint where I would you know, uh,
I wouldn't buy, but I neededto be in like those sticky floor
bars. I call them sticky floorbars, right, you know, it's
like, yeah, it's a youknow, it's a little shoulder rubbing going
on. You know, people maybemixing it up a little bit here.
You're not gonna run into that.Based on the setup and based on the

(23:00):
kind of amenities that are available.These are responsible people that want to have
a good time, but they're notgenerally your troublemaking type. Right. Absolutely.
We're about a block and a halffrom the from the baseball field,
so just good enough distance, closeenough, just far enough away that you're
not gonna be shoulder to shoulder allthe time. We set up this tent,

(23:21):
we carpet it, we lay flooringdown, we carpet over the top.
It's a carpeted space, couches,chairs, different types of seating.
It's just we try to make ita little bit higher end. And I
hope we're kind of doing that herethough. You absolutely are. We talking
to McCray. Mashka, Okay,so blur events. The calendar is obviously
this is a big one. Youtalk about the home games and Lincoln.

(23:42):
This is a similar setup to whatyou guys do down there. Our Lincoln
tailgate is actually the same thing.About two blocks away from Memorial Stadium.
We're under the bridge when you're walkingtowards downtown ninth right under the Ninth Street
Viaduct, so we're right under there. We have a gated space. It's
more concrete, it's more fun.It's a game day environment. This one's

(24:04):
a little bit more higher end.But when you go to a football game,
you're getting the best deal there.Yeah, you're you're definitely wanting to.
You get a little jacked up beforeand during the game in a lot
of cases, I'm sure. Andthen of course Uh, the cit in
Nebraska thing you talked about that onethat that was such a cool idea.
That is such a cool idea.I love how it was laid out.

(24:26):
I love that all these breweries andwineries and distilleries are all within the same
kind of space and no matter whatyour interest are, like you could enjoy
yourself live music and everything, andyou have all that kind of wrapped up
in here in a lot of ways. So for somebody who's from Nebraska and
you're get to be a part ofsomething like this and you know the College

(24:48):
World Series, being a Nebraska guy, how would you best describe from you
know, a sport like a youngsports fan who lives here kind of vibe
and what the College World Series isand compare it to like some of the
other big sporting events throughout the yearthat rotate their locations throughout like the Super
Bowl and the Final Four. We'vewe've thought about doing March Madness. We

(25:12):
thought about bringing a March Madness tailgatewhen they come to Omaha. We're in
it. That's not every year,so then it makes it tough for the
College World Series. We're in Omahaevery year. We can plan it out.
We can make it as good aswe can. Omaha is just,
uh, it's the perfect place forthe College World Series. Really, It's
it's not big city, it's notsmall town. You're you're right in the

(25:34):
middle, and I think there's justenough for everybody to do enough entertainment.
Different options like like are all inclusiveevent compared to the Mattress Factory and you
know Rocos doing jello shots. It'sit's just all combined together. It's the
perfect fit for Omaha and the CollegeWorld Series. Being here, you can
find literally whatever you're looking for,well kind of whatever kind of vibe you

(25:56):
want. It's within a two blockradius of the baseball It's such a good
point. H McCray, this isgreat. Thanks for hopping on. I
know you were a little like aboutgetting on the radio today, but you
did a great job. Did Itake it easy on you? Yeah?
I appreciate it. I'm comfortable now. All right, Well, hey,
I might have you back on lateron. We got a long show,
all right, all right, I'llbe here, all right, McCray.

(26:18):
Moskey, he's a marketing manager withBlow Events. We're in the Blur Events
tent. What you want to dois you want to come down here,
big white tent. If you wantto have a great time tonight or any
night that they're playing games over theCollege World Series the rest of the week,
you're gonna want to get down here. This is the place to be.
I'm here until six. If youwant to come tonight, you can
come see me, can come sayhey, I'm easy to find. We'll
continue to have the fun for youhere. So stick around on news Radio
eleven ten KFAB. On news Radioeleven ten KFAB. And it's a Monday

(26:45):
in Paradise. I say that becauseI'm at the College World Series. But
not only am I at the CollegeWorld Series. I'm on Paradise within Paradise
at the Blur Events tent right infront of the Hilton Downtown. Now I
love the Hilton Downtown. You know, the Hilton Downtown is an awesome place
because I caster from there as well, and I absolutely love it. But
this tent is taking hospitality in sportsto a new level. And hopefully I

(27:07):
get the chance to see you beforesix o'clock when you come down here and
want to party it up down atthe College World Series. Of course,
we're gonna be talking about the CollegeWorld Series and of course there's a game
going on right now between Florida andNC State or into the seventh inning and
still five to four Florida with aone run lead right now. Another good
competitive game here. But baseball isa heck of a sport. And I
tell you what, baseball you needa lot of good things when you play
baseball. You need to have agood glove. You need to have a

(27:32):
glove that you've broken in. Youneed to have good baseballs. You want
to, you know, be playingwith good baseballs. But the one thing
that some people just can't get right, and I could never get it right
is finding a really good baseball bat. And a couple of gents that are
working on the bat. Thing fornot just us here in the College World
Series area, but for everybody whoplays baseball in and around the United States

(27:53):
and beyond, is my friend JeffEvans, and we're joined by Tanner as
well. And first off, Jeff, thanks so much for stopping by and
being a part of our show today. Thank you so much for having us.
Okay, I'm looking at this beautifulbat. It's called the Tank.
You're wearing a shirt that says soldier, you told me this bat is called
the Soldier tank. I it's abeautiful looking bat. It's a metal bat

(28:17):
the BB Corps it says official MetalBat of Perfect Game, which is about
as good a high level in amateurbaseball you're going to find in the United
States. How do you get intometal bat making? Like? Like,
how how did like We'll talk aboutthe bat in a second, but for
you personally, like when did youlike, you know what, let's make
a bat? Yeah? Well,so, Soldier Sports have been around for
about seven years and we've had mouthguards, lip protectors, backplate advisors, and

(28:41):
about two and a half years ago, my son Tanner and I set out
to create, you know, thebest possible BBCREP bat. And I wanted
to do that for him, togive him the best possible tool to use.
It was. It was quite aquite a wonderful project that he and
I just got to get together andhit and he would tell the number one
rule was he wasn't allowed to sayanything good about it. He needed to

(29:03):
just tell me, continue to tellme what was bad about it until we
finally got to a place where youknow, there may be there wasn't so
much bad about it, Okay,Tanner for you when you guys have decided
to do this. I'm sure it'sit's a fun idea and everything, but
what was from your perspective? Whatabout the bats you were using before made
you feel like we could make somethingthat was better than the stuff I was

(29:23):
finding on the market right now?I felt like, so the heavier it
got, the less the more jewsI had. But then there wasn't really
a light bat that had a lotof juice. So I really needed a
light back because I was a smallerguy, but I needed to have the
same juice that I had as theheavier bet. Okay, now see that
makes a lot of sense to me. I'm a guy. I'm not a
super muscular guy. I was supersmall going through school. It's a lot

(29:45):
harder to find a bat that Icould swing and feel good swinging while also
being able to find gaps and beable to hit the ball hard. So
what's the first step, Jeff,Like, how do you even start making
a bat? Because you know awould beat at least I know it's worked
with, you know wood, there'sa tree. How do you start because
there's so much in regulations with thesewith these metal bats these days, how

(30:07):
do you even get started. Yeah, So the very first thing we had
to do is we had to figureout what alloy we were gonna use and
the different metals and there's so manydifferent types of it. So the very
first bat that we got back wasterrible and it was I mean, he
swung it and he's like it hadno juice and it was super heavy.
So two or three after that wegot a little bit closer with the right
alloy and then continue down that pathfitting out some of the walls and just

(30:32):
and making sure that you know,this alloy that we chose was you know,
the very very very very best thatwe could you know, run right
up to the limits. Uh,we're speaking with Jeff and Tanner. Therewith
Soldier Sports Soldier Tank is the batthat we're looking at right now and talking
about because it's kind of changing thegame in metal bats in America. Tanner,
I guess, uh, explain tomy listeners out here who have probably

(30:53):
haven't you know, swung a metalbat at least in recent years, what's
the feeling that you're kind of lookingfor or when you're swinging that bat,
and what's the result that you're howdo you know that you're getting the pop
that you want plus the field thatyou have. Yeah, so you want
to really light swinging bat that hasa huge sweet spot and that just has
a bunch of juice trampoline off thebat, and I mean, yeah,

(31:18):
yeah, the trampolin effect. That'sa good way to put it, right,
Because a metal bat. And they'vechanged the rules a lot with these
metal bats over the years, becausewhen I was growing up, there was
I mean, you could get someof that stuff that you could get that
thing to go like one hundred andtwenty off the bat if you hit it
and swung it hard enough. Theyhad to like back those things off a
little bit. But you build thebat, you get the bat figured out,
put it in the hands of someother people, see what they think

(31:40):
after you guys kind of are happywith the situation that you have. And
how did you know that you wereonto something? Yeah, we sure did
it. We had We had tonsof kids hit it. A lot of
his friends got to hit it too, and so it wasn't you know,
anybody that invents anything kind of believesthat they've got, you know, a
really good product. And so wewanted everybody to try this bat out.
And one of the neat things isis after we had after we you know,
we had it where we wanted toget it. We had it tested.

(32:02):
Uh, there's a point five zerolimit and we butted up right to
a point four nine nine of thepoint five zero B core scale. So
you can't get hotter. And thenso we have something right, and then
he starts hitting it in tournaments andthen next thing you know, there's there's
there's two guys in the lineup,then there's three. Then they start handing
the thing all the way down atone of these tournaments, and then you

(32:22):
started to see it spiderweb throughout theUnited States last year. It was,
Uh, it was something that wasit was just amazing. It was awesome
that you know that he and Ifather son created, and we created like
I knew that other dads would wantit. You know, if if they
saw this elite bat, the jewscome off. You know that he swung

(32:42):
it. You're you're seeing dozens anddozens of families at these tournaments, and
I'm sure it's not it. Itdoesn't get past a lot of these guys
that they're passing that bat around anawful lot and and they're getting some offense
out of that. I wonder whatthey got here. So Tanner, what
was the next step for you,right like, were you actively recruiting some
people to try this bat out?Yeah? I would tell everybody that was
super good, and I mean someof them didn't believe me at first,

(33:06):
but once they picked it up,they, i mean, they all really
liked it. So the results kindof spoke for themselves at that point.
Speaking with Tanner and Jeff pier Evans, they are with UH Soldier Sports.
The Soldier Tank is the bat thatis sitting here. What's the difference between
the two that I'm looking at rightnow, Jeff? So the one the
pink and the blue one here isthe BB Core and the multicolor one is

(33:27):
the Youth Tank that we just dropped. So it's a it's the Youth one.
It's U Triple Essay, U TripleEssay certified, and it's for you
know, for kids three to fifteen. And that came out on June eleventh,
and we had we did a presale for not it wasn an apprecial.
It was a launch at twelve ohone on the eleventh, and at
twelve oh one it broke our sightfor until twelve thirty three, and it

(33:49):
was it was unbelievable. And thenat twelve thirty three it was just ding
ding ding ding ding ding ding ding. It was for for quite a while
and then picked up back again atlike five thirty in the morning. This
is such a great American entrepreneur story, right, And you talk about you
you had, you know, beeninvolved in some other products and you know,
being selling them, but a batis just such a different undertaking.
So Tanner, where are you guysfrom, Like, where do you guys
come from? Omaha? So Omahaexactly. And here's my point, the

(34:15):
baseball culture that's here, but alsothe family culture that I think is in
Omaha and the spirit of trying todo this how far it's the farthest away
that you know that you guys havesent a bat. You guys know it's
every state, everywhere, all overthe place. I mean there's kids literally,
I mean Dick Sporting Goods has themeverywhere, Shields and all the big

(34:37):
stores carried the tank. Is notthe craziest thing ever, right, Like
it's it's really fun. I've beeninventing, patenting, bringing sports products to
market since for about twenty years andthis is absolutely the most special thing.
And it's the most special thing aswell, Like it's the best product,
but it was the best to beable to do this with my son.
Okay, So where we at levelwise in baseball? Tanner, I'm gonna

(35:00):
be a junior and we're at MillerNorth, Miller North. Okay, So
you still got a couple of highschool seasons ahead of you and then you
know, maybe some college seasons aheadof you, you know what I mean,
Like, you know there's a prettybig baseball diamond right over yonder the
town. Yeah, there's a coupleof good ones in town, but the

(35:20):
one, like in eyesight over hereis is a pretty big one. I
don't want to predict the future,but you're here, you've been. I'm
obviously the College Old Series isn't likea super new like a new thing for
you guys, But like, isthere a moment in your brain ever to
be like I want to see thisbat in that field with that guy holding
it at the plate? Like howhow big of a deal do you think

(35:45):
that would be for you? Ifthat's in your future, that would be
pretty special. I mean, thatwould be a dream come true. So
I don't want to rush college oranything on you. I'm just like thinking
ahead, dadd here is like,hey, we got a couple of high
school seasons we got to worry about. Here, Jeff, how can people
find Soldier Sports, the Soldier Tankand everything thing that you guys are doing.
Where's the easiest way that people canfind you and follow you? So

(36:07):
it's a Soldier Sports dot com onexcuse me, Soldier Sports dot us website,
and then Soldier Sports dot us onInstagram, and then I mean you
can find it in just about everysingle sporting good store in America. And
if not, tell those guys theybetter get it in because you need it.
Yeah. And uh, you knowwhat Omaha You're talking about, local
family owned company that is going crazyall over the United States and the sport

(36:31):
of Omaha. I mean, like, all due respect to things like swimming
and curling and basketball and all thatjazz, but in Omaha, Nebraska,
this is a baseball town. Theseguys have made a baseball company and here
we are celebrating this incredible bat thatthey have made that is going all over
the country. The Soldier Tank,Soldiersports dot Us. That's the way to
do it. Yeah, that's probablythe best or your locals or shields right

(36:53):
here in town or or Dixon,anywhere any state. Jeff Tanner, this
is awesome. I really appreciate youguys stopping by. Thanks for bringing the
bat for us to take a lookat, and good luck. Hopefully in
next year when we're doing this show, we can say hi again and see
what else you got up your sleep. Thank you so much for having us,
for having us. Hey, absolutely, how about that? That is

(37:13):
exactly what we're looking for. Threeeighteen is the time, Emery Soccer here
with you. I'm at the BlurEvents tent down here at the College World
Series. I want to see you. I'm here till six. If you
want to come, say hi.Feel free. They have the ability to
buy tickets, and when you buya ticket and you come in here,
you're gonna be addicted to the experience. I can't wait to see you here.
More on the way when we returnright here on news Radio eleven ten
kfab Emery Songer. An elimination gamehappening down here at the College World Series.

(37:36):
I'm at the Blur Events tent,looking at all the big crowd,
enjoying all the atmosphere a little bitmore people kind of filling up this area,
and we are through seven now.The bottom of the seventh just finishes
Florida clinging to a five to fourlead over in C State, an elimination
game right now, loser is doneout of the turning in. C State

(37:58):
is a team that I was rootingfor throughout this tournament, and I really
hope they don't go to and out. Let's you know, lose the first
two games that are eliminated the reasonthat they are, and I think a
lot of people who follow college baseballthey would be cheering for them. And
this is why in twenty twenty one, college baseball was just kind of slowly,

(38:19):
much like the rest of college sports, getting back into the rhythm of
things. But there were super stricttesting policies when it came to sporting events,
and even though the College World Serieswas attempting to operate like a two
week bubble essentially so during COVID thatthere wouldn't be people with COVID they obviously,

(38:45):
I've made my thoughts on a lotof this stuff clear. It was
a complete overreach by so many people, and I understand that COVID wasn't great
and I understand that it infected alot of people, and I understand that
that wasn't great for a lot ofpeople, but for college athletes and athletes
in general specifically to be to havethat happen to them, right and knowing

(39:07):
that it was incredibly unlikely for themto be in rough shape as far as
COVID is concerned, much like othercolds. Again I'm generalizing that's a dangerous
thing to do, but NC Statetested positively. It had just like a
couple of guys test positive, andby the rules of the time that basically

(39:30):
they didn't want them to any theirteam anywhere near the ball field. And
they were eliminated from the College WorldSeries in twenty twenty one because not of
losing baseball games, but because therules at the time stated if you had
a COVID outbreak with multiple people,you were unlikely to be they wouldn't or

(39:52):
they weren't going to allow you totake part in a game and be around
another team and other people. Soit's really unfortunate hopeful for redemption for them
not to you know, say anythingbad about our you know, Florida Gators
who make pretty regular trips here tothe College World Series and to n CAA
tournament events everywhere. They're a good, good fan base, great crowd.

(40:14):
They're the one unseeded team that madeit to the College World Series this year.
That that to me is great inand of itself for them, even
if they eliminated Nebraska by hitting Nebraskaa couple of times and defeating them twice
in the regional to eliminate the Huskersand in their season at the same time,

(40:37):
though, I just think n CState's story there are still a few
players from that twenty twenty one team, the same coaching staff that are back
Tomah for the first time since thatunfortunate event three years ago, and I
was I'm hopeful still they maybe cancome back in this game, win this
game, make a little bit moreof a deeper run, and have a
shot maybe it making the finals.But first things first, you gotta come

(40:59):
back from a one run deficit.It's five to four Florida with the lead,
and they're batting in the top ofthe eighth inning right now. Also,
tonight's game is going to be anothergood one here at the College World
Series winners bracket matchup Kentucky number twoseed, but they're in the College World
Series for the first time in theirschool's history, which is hard to believe.

(41:20):
They were the only SEC in SoutheasternConference school that haven't not made it
to Omaha yet until this year.They're here is the two seed and they're
playing Texas A and M, whohas about his rabid and larger fan base
here in Omaha. They're the threeseed. If I had to give you
a little prediction on what's going tohappen tonight, Tennessee, the one seed
was able to defeat North Carolina inthe Winter's Bracket on the other side of

(41:42):
the bracket, so they're two andzero. They're in great shape to make
it into the weekend and the finals. But for this particular game, Texas
A and M is missing one oftheir better pitchers and is missing their star
centerfielder who's a top five prospect inthe Major League Baseball Draft. Kentucky,
by all accounts, they have seeminglykind of that Cinderella slipper, if you

(42:07):
will. I know, it's hardto talk about that, considering it's a
big school, considering that the twoseed, but there's something about Kentucky this
year that in this sport that alot of people just kind of counting them
out. They've never been here before, and they've never had an opportunity to
make it this deep into the nTAA Baseball tournament before. So I think
that they are poised to make thattrip. I think they're poised to make

(42:30):
that happen, and we'll have tosee exactly how it goes down. Six
o'clock is the schedule first pitch time. In the way that this first game
is moving, should be in goodshape to achieve that star time. They
are in the eighth inning already,and they're only just over two and hours
and fifteen minutes into the game that'sgoing on right now between enc State and
Florida. My name is Emery Songer. We got plenty more action coming from

(42:51):
this particular area. Yes, weare sitting here as a Blur party's event
in this big white tent next tothe Hilton Downtown and we are just a
stone's throwaway from the College World Seriesin Charles schwab Field. We hope to
see you here, but we're gonnabe bringing the fun for you as the
day goes on right here on newsRadio eleven to ten KFAB. It sounds

(43:12):
a little different it's because it is. I am sitting inside the Blur Events
tent outside the Hilton Downtown, justacross the way from Charles schwab Field,
Olmaha, where the College l Seriesis going on, really fun atmosphere.
There's a game going on right now. It's an elimination game. Lose and
you're out. It is five tofour Florida leading, and NC State is
at the plate looking to try tohave an opportunity to leave, tie the

(43:35):
game and potentially take the lead.Later tonight though, the Kentucky Wildcats,
ranked second in the nation taking onTexas A and M should be a fantastic
atmosphere, an all SEC matchup.And I've been able to find my friend.
His name is Rob Buckman. Robis wearing Kentucky gear, and you
know, as one does, it'slike, you know what I'm gonna see
if Frob wants to get on theshow today. So Rob sitting next to

(43:57):
us here at the KFA B table. First of all, Rob, thanks
for doing this, appreciate you absolutelythanks for having me. Where are you
from, like when part of northernKentucky? So we're about ten miles south
of Cincinnati. Okay, all right, So I mean you're on the border.
We're on the border, but inKentucky. So how far away from
Lexington? About eighty miles? Okay, all right, so like an hour

(44:17):
and a half or so. Yep, yep, all right, so you're
we're in the Kentucky gear. Thisis a new trip for you guys.
It definitely is. We have ouryoungest son is going to be a senior
at University of Kentucky. Nice kindof I've been watching the College World Series
since probably nineteen eighty two when itwas a Rosenblatt. Yeah, so yeah,

(44:38):
yeah, kind of like a dreamtrip for all of us, and
we're excited to be here and excitedthat you're on the Wildcats. So I
try to explain this. It's toughfor people, I think, to their
brains if they're not like really followingcollege baseball on a year to year basis
and like putting it together, becauseyou know, it's hard to find a

(44:59):
lot of good college base on televisionthroughout the year. Basketball the storylines are
a whole season long. You havemonths to build those up, and you
see Kentucky and like, oh,of course it's Kentucky, right, Not
like that in baseball. Like yousaid, this is the first time this
has happened for you guys to makeit here. So what was the straw

(45:19):
that stirred the drink this time aroundto make not only you guys getting a
chance to make this trip, butyou've been really good all season rank second
in the country. They have been. The SEC is constantly strong. We
know that Nick Manngeon the head coach. He's brought a culture to the University
of Kentucky that that that the peopleare are just really getting into, really

(45:40):
loving, and then the players are, Hey, it's just an exciting brand
of baseball. They don't have allthe home runs that everybody has, even
though they hit three the other night. They play a little bit small ball.
They play you know, they'll they'llbunt, they'll hit and run.
They like to on the bases veryaggressive. So it's just a fun brand

(46:04):
of baseball. I sit here asa baseball guy. Baseball is I'm a
sports guy, but baseball is reallymy sport. I just love the beauty
of it. I was at bothof the games yesterday and I just I
always just love watching baseball in personbecause you really get an appreciation for everything
that's happening. At once. Butculture is so important, especially in college
baseball, because you do see somany teams over and over and over again

(46:28):
here Tennessee's regulars. You look atFlorida State, They've made it like twenty
twenty five times something like that.I mean, it's Florida was here last
year. Right. For some schools, it's really fun to see the Oral
Roberts type schools that come here.But you don't usually associate like the newbie,
underdog kind of style associated with aschool like Kentucky. Is that a

(46:50):
weird dichotomy for you as a personwho kind of follows baseball and also being
associated with a school that's incredibly successfulin other sports? You know, I
don't know. The football program hasreally come along in the last ten years.
As a former I played college baseballback in the late eighties early nineties.
Oh okay, it was always adream to be here coach high school

(47:14):
baseball, coach summer baseball. Sothis is really didn't coach summer baseball this
year, So this is really thefirst opportunity that me and some of my
family have had to come out hereand see this. As far as the
University of Kentucky, Yeah, Idon't know. I think baseball is such
a culture sport, so it canchange from year to year, as all

(47:38):
college sports do. It depends on, you know, the kids you bring
in, and I think I thinkthe head coach has done just a fantastic
job and they're following his lead.We're talking to Rob Buckman, he is
a Kentucky fan, and they havetheir game six o'clock start time tonight.

(47:58):
I'll ask about your experience here ina second, but take me through the
emotions seeing them take the field atCharles Schwap Field the other night, because
you told me you were at thegame, first game ever in the College
World Series for the Kentucky Wildcats.What's the emotions going through your mind being
a guy from Kentucky, knowing thatyou have such strong ties to the state,

(48:21):
to the school, and this isone of the last true benchmark sports
that they haven't achieved that high honorof being actually in the championship. Were
just going through your mind there?Yeah, very cool. We went to
the super Regional game on Sunday nightthat got over like one o'clock in the
morning, and you know, wedidn't actually make a decision to come out

(48:45):
here until Monday. Okay, sowe booked everything up on Monday, came
out here. So Saturday was justI mean, just just entering the stadium
here at Charles schwap almost said Rosenblatt, Charles swap Field, But it was
just what what a cool experience.And if you're a baseball fan around the
world, around the United States,it is a bucket list thing that,

(49:07):
I mean, you have to doif you have if you have young kids,
if you have old kids, bringthem here. It is so cool
haven having the University of Kentucky here, You know that, that's just that's
awesome. Where we're dug deep inKentucky. My my wife's whole family is
from Kentucky. And although they're spreadout across the country, they they all

(49:28):
bleed blue. Well, bleeding blueis something that is a lot. It's
been a lot easier to do inbasketball and even sometimes in football than it
has been for the baseball program.And here they are playing tonight in another
game. If they win tonight,they're in great shape to make deep into
the weekend. Uh have you howlong have you booked out? Like,
how how's that going? You haven'tmade that decision yet? You got to

(49:49):
see how things go. We're bookedout till tomorrow. We'll see how you
were. You might have to be. It could be hard to leave,
hard to leave. And I meanif you leave and watch them lose,
I mean you're gonna feel responsible.Wrong. Yeah, I don't know that
one may end up on my wife. But that's a lot of pressure.
Man. We're here. I mean, we're committed, we're having a great

(50:13):
time. Well, Rob, yousaid you were with part of your family.
You've been to Omaha before. Ithas never been to Omaha. My
wife's aunt is from they lived here. Okay, Okay, so she's familiar
with Omaha. She is you've neverbeen though, Okay, So we're speaking
with Rob Buckman. He's a Kentuckyfan from Kentucky. He's from northern Kentucky,
making his first trip now to Omaha'swhile you're learning, what are the

(50:35):
vibes? I mean, you know, I always love I moved to Omaha
just last year, but I've livedin the Midwest nearby. I've been to
Omaha several times before I moved here, and I knew what I was getting
into. Alma is a very interestingplace for somebody who's never been because it's
kind of like that perfect middle groundbetween kind of a small place or a
small college town and then of courseyou're you're big metropolitan areas. What are

(50:55):
the vibes you and your family haveand what do you think of the town
so far? So we we weretalking about that in the multiple ubers that
we've we've had on the way here. They the people here have been nothing
but welcoming. I mean it hasbeen a plus. The town itself super

(51:19):
impressed, super impressed. Uh wecome in Cincinnati is ten miles north.
You know that's a kind of abig small town. Yeah. Yeah,
and and Omahall has that has thatfeel. But everybody's just been so welcoming
and even the the opposing fans.Baseball is a little bit different than if
you're going to a basketball game ora football game. It seems that it's

(51:39):
a little more uh not not intense, but the baseball fans all seem to
get along and you know, welcomeeach other. So it's been even the
even the teams that aren't here,just the fan base, the fan bases
have have just been very welcoming tous no matter where we've been. Yeah,
it's funny I've seen so many LSUfans here and they didn't even make

(52:02):
Yeah, they didn't even make thetrip, right, but they know Almaha
very well as well. Uh whathave you gotten a chance to do?
I mean, you played two daysago, you played tonight, and obviously
you're here hanging out in the inthe blur of instent with us. But
uh, you know, we werehere here, we haven't done a lot.
Everybody said, we have to goto the zoo. Well, yeah,
so if we when we win tonight, we'll extend that trip. Maybe

(52:25):
in uh head head to the zoo. I mean, come on, it's
the best zoo in America. AndCincinnati's got a great zoo too. I
don't want to I don't want tosay anything bad about Cincinnati Zoo, but
the side. Have you been intoCincinnati Zoo? Oh? Yeah, yeah,
it's great place, right. Yeah. We have three times the amount
of like area, like space,that's what sounds like. Yeah, it's
so we have like just an incredibleeclectic group of animals but also just a

(52:51):
ton of space for them to wanderaround. It's just such a cool place.
You guys are still in the tournamenteven if you lose, tonight.
I mean, I don't know.I hate to put this pressure on you
on the air with you know what, but tens of thousands of people listening
around the Omaha area. But Rob, you can't go home after the night
is waiting for you tomorrow. Ihear you, I hear you. No,
No, We've enjoyed our stay herewatching baseball. We went to we

(53:15):
went to the Florida State Virginia gameyesterday afternoon. Okay, were you under
something or were you out in thesun because I was out in the hourield.
We were on in the sun,we were out in left field.
It was a tough one, man, it was. It was about the
seventh inning we went up. Wewent up under like Section one twenty three.

(53:36):
Got sha a little bit? Yeah, yeah, but yeah, I
mean, we we all love baseball, and it's it's been a blast.
Whether we stay, you know,it's gonna be hard leaving the two and
oh, well, if you're twoand oh, the odds of making the
weekend finals they go up significantly,right, and you're the number two ranked

(53:58):
team in the country, right,and the teams that are around you in
the rankings, say, the teamyou play tonight Texas A and M and
the Tennessee volunteers who are number one. But evans Wille got a game off
of those guys. That's right,That's right. You know, I'm not
trying to pressure at all here,and I know that you know it costs
money to stay where you don't live. But I just it could be a
special week for the U Wildcat.You're putting pressure on me, and you

(54:22):
know it would it would be Itwould be like eight hundred times more effective
if the wife was standing over herelistening to the time. That's right,
it's just eyeballing right now. SoI don't know. Hey, I don't
want to pressure. Here's the deal. What do you got tonight? You
know A and M. You've seenA and M. A and M is
a good team. Hey, absolutely, What do you think happens tonight with
two teams that are very familiar witheach other? You know what? I

(54:43):
do like? I do like thatthe wind is blowing in. Uh.
It just it adds to that smallball effect that Kentucky has. So I
think it's gonna be, you know, one run game either way, low
scoring five, four, four tothree. But I see I wouldn't mind

(55:06):
another walk off. That's pretty exciting. But what a game that was.
That was unbelievable. Yeah, really, A and M. They finished their
game up at like two am onSaturday night, did Yeah, so,
I'm sure yesterday they were just likehanging around in the hotel and staying in
bedroll. It's gonna be awesome.Enjoy yourself. Rob, It's been a
pleasure meeting you. Welcome to Omaha. Hopefully the Wildcats continue this awesome run

(55:27):
that you guys have been on,and hopefully when I'm bouncing around downtown here
in the next couple of days,I see you and the fam still bopping
around too. Absolutely, Gokats andthanks for having me. That's Rob Buckman,
Northern Kentucky native cheering on the Wildcatstonight. Always fun to hear from
somebody wh's never been to town before. Hey, we're gonna come back three
forty nine. Wrap up this hourfor you life from the Blurre Events tent
in front of the Hilton Downtown rightnext to the College World Series right here

(55:51):
on news Radio eleven ten KFAB andMaurice on On on news Radio eleven ten
KFAB. What a game going onright now between Florida and n C State
bottom nine, still a one runlead for Florida n C State playing for
their lives. Right now. Iam joined here at the booth by somebody
who's been very helpful helping me getall my stuff put together. Mary Nipple

(56:15):
is joining me. Mary. Thankfirst of all, thank you for all
your help. I have noticed.I know the listeners can't see you here,
but the reason we are on theair is because of Mary and her
efforts. So I appreciate that.Of course, of course you're you're making
You're making sure I'm fully hydrated andhelping me with my organization of the show

(56:35):
and making sure my timing's right.And I really appreciate that. Of course
he can't. Rob can't leave afterno, No, of course not.
I was. He was sitting thereacting like he was gonna leave tomorrow.
Whether they he doesn't want to commit, but come on now, I mean,
I wouldn't if my A team washere and for the first time and
they were what they've won their boththrough game so far. Well they play,

(56:59):
they won the first one. Ifthey win, yeah, but they're
not eliminated. So I think thathe should say he should go take a
trip to the zoo. He's gotto do that. I mean, come
on, you can't be in Omahaand not do the zoo, especially he's
been here for three days already.Yeah, you know, and then you
can throw it on top as Floridahas just completed the final out in c

(57:19):
State is eliminated with a two andout. I feel bad for them because
they were they were the team thatgot eliminated because they caught COVID nineteen like
a few of their players had COVIDduring the College World Series three years ago,
which was just a real bummer forthem. But anyway, Florida keeps
their season alive. In Sea Stateis finished, they join Virginia as the
first two teams to be eliminated fromthis year CWS. Kentucky's never been here

(57:43):
before ever, right, And Iknow that's crazy to say, but they've
literally never been here before. Youcan't leave on them and then watch that
on television. Win the national title, No, not at all, because
that's possible, Like it's it's apossibility for you. It is totally possible.
Them being second seed over all inthe nation, they have a pretty
good chance of winning the whole thing. And you don't want to be the

(58:05):
guy that came here from northern Kentuckyand just left midweek and liked to watch
it home. Yeah, I'm like, I'm like this, though, I
am. I'm very much a don'tleave the game early if I have any
vested interest, Like even if myteam's losing by thirty points in basketball,
or in football, or even inbaseball they're down by ten runs, I'm
generally not the guy that's gonna leaveearly. Oh really, wow, good

(58:27):
for you. I would be outof there. This is all waste my
time. I am leaving. Ibut that's my thing. Is I just
I'm too much. I have thisI have this thing in my brain that
I don't want to miss a comebackif it happens. I don't want to
miss like a great play or something, you know what I mean. I
mean, I guess, I guess. But I spent this money to show

(58:51):
up to the game. The leastI could do is stay at the end
of the game. All right,all right, I see. I sometimes
I just don't want to get tobutt hurt. So I just I just
have to off. This is nota positive experience for me. I gotta
get out of here, exactly.Mary I appreciates you for doing what you
do. Thanks for joining us here. Hey, four o'clock hours coming up.
I'm live from the blur of instantdown here downtown Omaha in front of
the Hilton right across the street fromCharles Schwatfield, Omaha. The College World

(59:12):
Series. Stick around. We're gonnahave plenty more fun on the way and
we'll keep it rolling for you hereon News READYO eleven ten kfab What a
day to be at the College WorldSeries. You heard the temperature there actually
feels great. Sun has been behindthe clouds for the most part throughout the
entire afternoon since we've been here,and you want to throw in the fact
that he has some great baseball goingon. Another fantastic one run game.

(59:37):
Florida defeats n C State five tofour. Unseated Florida stays alive. They
are going to be able to playanother elimination game. Every game is a
winner go home for them the restof the way for the most part,
unless they were to make the finals. As far as NC State goes,
Mary Nepple's joining me, Mary.They gave him ten minutes before the flag

(59:59):
came down. Just started getting coldat that point before we saw them lower
the NC State flag over by theold match. Yeah, old Matt.
So are you familiar with that place? You seem to know quite a bit
more about it than I do.I spent some hours there before. Okay,
So, and they run the theyrun the big like they're in charge
of the big tent over there kittycorner from where we are. We're at

(01:00:20):
the blur of inctent, by theway, the big white blur of inctint
inside the ballpark village. There isa ton of other stuff in there,
and just outside the big white tentover yonder they have the American flag standing
tall and then just lower than thoseare the eight flag poles that have the
eight teams names on them. Virginialost yesterday afternoon, so they finished up.
That was the end for them,and NC State finished And you and

(01:00:44):
I looked at each other and said, how long is it going to take
before that flag comes down? Theanswer was ten minutes. I knew it
was gonna be pretty immediate. Itwas sad because the game was getting out,
all the fans are watching their flagget lower, and like you could
have at least maybe waiting for them. Yeah, come on, man,
that's tough. It's a great game. Though yesterday's two games are the only

(01:01:05):
two games that weren't super duper competitive. They we've taken a lot of real
drama into the ninth inning, andall of the other five games we played
seven games so far in the CollegeWorld Series, five of the seven have
either been walkoffs or a one rungame into the ninth inning. It's just
been really, really fun to watchsuch great competitive baseball here in Omaha.

(01:01:27):
But two teams have bit the Dutch, Virginia and NC State, two of
the ACC representatives now so it wasa fair split. Four SEC teams,
four ACC teams. Well, twoof the four ACC teams are already out,
so it's up to Florida State NorthCarolina who Florida State still hanging on.
They are, They lost the Theylost the first game two, so

(01:01:52):
they're up against elimination. North Carolinalost their second game. They won their
first game, lost the second gametwo Tennessee last night, which Tennessee played
a fantastic ballgame. They definitely lookto me like the best team here.
But we'll see the game tonight,which is going to start in roughly an
hour and fifty one minutes over thereat Charles schwab Field, Omaha is going

(01:02:14):
to involve number two ranked Kentucky,number three ranked at Texas A and m
going to be an sec showdown inthat one. They're can only be one
champion at the end of the day. It's going to be a lot of
fun to see how it plays outthe rest of the way. And we'll
be keeping you going on that aswell. Another thing that heard in the
news. We didn't make a wholelot of attention to this, but Adrian

(01:02:35):
Martinez, the former Husker. Imean, there was a lot of hype
around Adrian Martinez while he was aplayer in those Husker teams, but by
about the third or fourth week,the hype had died out because people recognize
that Nebraska and this is Scott Frostyor Nebraska, and Nebraska wasn't gonna be
the team that everybody kind of hopedthat they would be when they would try

(01:02:57):
to be returning to national relevance.Mary Martinez I think has a lot of
fans here in Nebraska. He's gotan awful lot of fans that are,
you know, trying to follow hisexploits on the professional level. But how
about leading the Birmingham Stallions to theUnited Football League championship his first year.
The United Football Leagu's a thing.The XFL and the USFL, two spring

(01:03:20):
leagues from the last couple of years, emerged made an eight team league made
up of the teams on both sides, and the Birmingham Stallions won their way
to the championship in the first yearof the United Football League and their quarterback
all season was Adrian Martinez. Hewon the MVP of the league during the

(01:03:40):
regular season. He won the regularthe MVP of the championship game over this
weekend as well. So how aboutthat for a little bit of Husker flavor
to I know he didn't finish hiscareer in the with the inn on the
helmet, but I can tell youthat this is certainly one of those things
for if you're a Husker fan,you're looking for any and every opportunity to

(01:04:04):
look at, you know, positives, look at you know, the opportunities
that some may have to celebrate that, you know, a corn Husker somewhere.
There's a lot of good corn Huskerprofessional football players, but Adrian Martinez,
I think you know from an erathat not a lot of people are
gonna have a lot of great positivememories about uh going and winning in the

(01:04:27):
MVP in the regular season, alsoof the championship game in the UFL.
Pretty cool stuff there, and congratsto him and to Nebraska fans who watched
him and followed that as well.And I want to shout out my friends
at I want to shout out tomy friends in Iowa. Iowa Speedway had
their first NASCAR Cup Series rais andit, by all accounts, was an
absolute joy to watch. Not onlywas that an awesome race, but they

(01:04:53):
sold it out. Every seat thatthey had in the building and around the
track, even the temporary ones completelyfull. All the said amazing and excellent
things going on throughout the entire weekind there, and like I said,
the racing itself was great. Theyfully expect that to be another race that
they can put back on the calendar. So that's gonna be fun, gonna

(01:05:14):
be super exciting. I don't knowif it's gonna be Father's Day Week next
week or next year if they attemptto bring the Iowa Speedway race back into
the schedule again. They have takendeposits for that. That doesn't necessarily mean
that NASCAR is going to put itback on the schedule next year. There
are some races that they have kindof flowing year to year contracts. They
have dates race dates. They havethirty six dates on the calendar, and

(01:05:35):
those thirty six they kind of piecedtogether based on what guaranteed dates they have
for different tracks and also some ofthe open spots that they may have for
tracks that they currently aren't running atactively. And that's how Iowa got onto
the schedule here to begin with thisyear. But it was a great race.
Congratulations to everybody over there, andif anybody in the Omaha area had

(01:05:56):
some fun doing that, that wasa fantastic time. You'll have to let
me know through my email Emri atkfab dot com. A little trickier to
take calls today, but we appreciateyou for being a part of the show
and listening to us today. Otherthing too, before we hit our first
break here in the four o'clock hourthat I wanted to mention was the US
Opening Golf. I watched a lotof this as it was coming down to

(01:06:17):
the wire on Saturday and Sunday,but what a fantastic turnaround personality wise for
two times now United States Open ChampionBryson to Shambo, Rice and to Shambo,
and this is a lesson in thehuman race. I think from my
perspective, Rison to Shamba was maybeone of the more dislikable people or unlikable

(01:06:44):
people that I've ever thought about watchingin any professional sport, whether that was
golf, whether it's a team sportlike baseball, basketball, football, There's
not a whole lot of people moreunlikable than him. It felt like he
had roid rage at some points,like just high testosterone. Guy didn't know
how to handle himself, didn't likeinteracting with the fans. Every time he

(01:07:08):
would interact with the fans, itwould feel either force it was positive,
if it was negative. That wasn'tsurprising because generally he was saying, why
do you have to talk to melike that? Or he'd be like questioning
them about, you know, theway that they would be approaching him,
or things like that. It's alwaysjust a weird vibe with this guy.
He goes to the Live Golf Tour, which was controversial in its own right,

(01:07:28):
that of course has a lot ofSaudi Arabian money that is funding that
thing, and he, along withmany other golfers took the guaranteed money of
the Live Golf Tour, and forviewers or fans of the traditional version of
golf, it just it's not thesame. There's no cuts, it's shotgun
start, it's three rounds. Guysthat were in shorts, they're playing loud
music throughout the event. It's veryhappy Gilmour style and not necessarily that traditional

(01:07:53):
golf. But the money that wasin it. Guys like Bryson de Shambo
says, yeah, I'll take anine figure payout, you know, gonna
give me, you know, onehundred million, two hundred million dollars guaranteed
money to play golf for your tour. I'm fine not playing on the PGA
Tour anymore. Uh, there aresome bad things with that. But he's
still eligible along with the other guyswho have won majors before, to be
in the Masters, to be inthe PGA Championship, to be in the

(01:08:15):
US Open, to be in theBritish Open. And what I saw at
the PGA Tour Championship a couple ofweeks ago, Rice and to Shambo looked
like a different guy. I could. It was weird. Like a year
ago, I was like man,this guy is so unlikable. I just
dislike him in every way. He'sa he he acts like a meathead.
That's like the best way I canput it, just that Jocko meathead that
he is. Just he's so unrelatable, and he's such a scientific golfer.

(01:08:42):
There's just nothing about him that's relatable. So basically what ends up happening is
I kind of fall for him alittle bit. During the PGA Championship,
he finish his second and is sogracious in defeat. I was like that,
that is weird for Price and toShambo. And what ends up happening
after that is he he comes tothe US Open, is in contention and

(01:09:05):
he's high fiving the fans. He'she's hugging the fans, he's signing autographs.
Two three hours after his rounds arefinishing, he's still in contention.
He's talking to the fans like anormal human being while he's approaching the tee
on the final round of the USOpen. It makes no sense. Golfers
do not act like this. It'slike, man, what happened to this

(01:09:25):
guy? He seems so much moremature and like such a good person.
I just I wonder what happened andwhat ends up happening, is he wins
in dramatic fashion. He wins thetournament, but not only that, he
wins a ton of fans. Ifyou go on social media and look up
Bryson to Shambeau stuff, it's ofcourse about some of the golf that he
played in the incredible bunker shot thathe made on eighteen to go up and

(01:09:47):
down on the green and end upwinning that tournament in his second major,
But it's really about him treating thefan. He won the trophy, He's
got the US Open. He's carryingit the trophy around and he literally walked
to every fan around the eighteenth afterhe got the trophy so they all could
touch it. He stayed, Hesigned all the autographs for anybody, all
the kids that were staying. Theguy just took care of everybody over the

(01:10:10):
weekend. It was just such adifferent person than I ever thought Bryson to
Shambeau was. So if it's likeRocky Balboa said at the end of Rocky
for you defeats Drago, the Russianpeople all of a sudden are cheering for
Rocky and not the Russian very strangelikely would never happen in real life,
but he says, I realized thatif I could change and you could change,

(01:10:32):
that maybe everybody could change. Andthat's kind of how I felt watching
Bryson this week. I was like, you know what, as much as
we feel like our personalities are whothey are, that doesn't mean we don't
have to ever, you know,stop trying to be a better version of
ourselves. And whatever Bryson de Shambeauhas done in the last couple of months
to rewrite his image to people likeme, I need to take some notes

(01:10:57):
for myself, because there's certainly thingsabout me that I wish I could change
for the better. And I'm definitelygoing to be looking to do that in
the coming weeks, months, years, for the rest of my life,
trying to be a better version ofmyself. And He's going to be an
example of one of the reasons whyI know that that's possible, because he
was able to do it, andnot only do it, but he was
able to do it in front ofall of these cameras and an international audience

(01:11:19):
that all of a sudden feels likeBryce and the Shamba is one of the
good guys, what a change inwhat a turn of events. Four eighteen,
Emory Songer here with you. I'mlive at the Blur of Intent down
here at the College World Series,and I'm going to continue to talk about
some of the awesome things that arehappening in this tent and around the tent,
but also things that are happening atthe College World Series, including getting
you set for that night game tonightsix pm Star Time between Kentucky and Texas

(01:11:41):
A. And m all that onthe way on news Radio eleven ten KFAB.
Emery Sunger on news Radio eleven tenKFAB. A lot of fun stuff
happening in and around the downtown area. You know how I know that is
because I'm sitting in the downtown areaBlur Event tent right down next to the
Hilton, just across the way fromthe parking lot and Charles Schwallfield, Omaha,

(01:12:01):
where the College Old Series it's happening. Mary Nepple is sitting next to
me, and Mary, uh,this is not just good baseball, not
just an awesome time in the tent, but especially outside the tent, some
really high quality people watching opportunities downhere. Yeah, people are coming out
of the stadium and hoards. There'sjust so many people down here, but

(01:12:23):
it's so great for Omaha especially.I love seeing all the people walking the
streets. People for the first time, their first time in Omaha. We're
telling us about how much I loveit. I'm really loving it. Yeah,
how about that? You know what. That's the thing about having this
event every year is there's always gonnabe people every single year, even the
school's been here a lot, there'sgonna be fans that haven't actually made the
trip before. So to be ableto talk to people that are enjoying Omaha

(01:12:45):
for the first time, we werespoiled rotten in this way because you don't
actually ever know which eight schools isgoing to be and even if it's some
regulars that are going to be here, it's a completely different vibe based on
which fans decide that they're gonna comeup here and LSU. Like I know,
people told me a lot of LSUfans just book the trip no matter

(01:13:08):
what. I love LSU fans,I'm not really impartial to it, but
like, I don't know, they'vealways just been so nice. So many
of them come up no matter what, especially last year when they won the
whole thing. But I mean theyjust they they show up no matter who's
playing, and it's they're awesome.They're always so nice and they never had

(01:13:29):
a problem with anyone. They don'tcancel the plans like, oh, we
didn't make Omaha this year. Iguess we're still gonna go though. No,
they're baseball fans. Yeah, they'rell come, and they're wearing the
LSU here. Still, they don'tcare. They're they're just down here.
They're they're wanting to watch the baseballat hangout. They know it's a big
party over here. There's in thisBlur event sint there's at least a couple
of like three or four people groupswearing that purple and gold of the LSU

(01:13:51):
Tigers. So it's really easy toget in here. We'll talk more about
Blur Events and what they do andalso this particular tent. But if you
do want to come down here anytimethat the games are happening throughout the rest
of the week, this is goingto be open and available. All you
gotta do is you go there.I mean, you can go online to
Blur Events website if you just searchBlur Events in your Google machine you're gonna

(01:14:14):
pop up with all the information.But you go to Blur Events in their
website, which is blow events dotcom, you'll have a chance to buy
tickets there. You can also buytickets at the door. They have a
bunch of different levels and options.And it is a little bit more expensive
to get into this tent than itis to just kind of bop around into
some of the bars downtown. Butthey're like when you get to night time,
there's gonna be covers everywhere, sothat's not unusual. The awesome thing

(01:14:39):
about here is it's all inclusive.So whatever you want to drink, whatever
you want to eat, all that'sup as long as it's here, you'll
have a chance to enjoy it onceyou buy that ticket and get that wristband
up there at the front gate.And I mean, this is just such
a unique way to celebrate and enjoya party like this. It's to come
to a place like this where youdon't have to worry about any of that
stuff. And what did he say, eighteen times divisions that have the stuff

(01:15:00):
on it. Oh, probably,I would say, yeah, at least
yeah, probably eighteen or so.So I mean there's all sorts of stuff
and tonight as different sporting events aregoing on, they won't just have the
baseball games, They're gonna have otherevents going on. They have a DJ
playing music, and that hot tubwhich has cold water in it for people
to dunk their feet into and justlike help cool down with all these lounge

(01:15:24):
chairs. There's a hammock over here, you can play beer pong. They
have comfy sofas. This is justan insane setup, like like Blur Events
just outdoes themselves at every turn.Just an incredible setup here, and we'll
continue to talk about all the differentthings that they do in all the different
ways that they kind of change thegame in terms of hospitality and sporting events

(01:15:46):
for tailgates and things of this nature. So we're excited to be here.
We're really happy that you're with usas we continue our broadcast live from the
action down here at the Blur Eventsjust outside the downtown Hilton and right across
the street from Charles Schwabfield Omaha andthe College World Series. We are counting
down the minutes the next hour anda half or so before the last game

(01:16:10):
of the day starts. That isTexas A and M taking on Kentucky six
pm scheduled start time for that one. And the fans of not just those
schools, but some of the schoolsthey just finished up. And there's some
Tennessee fans that are joining the party. They don't even play today. That
tells you that's a College World Series, right. Hey, they're a party
going on. I'm gonna be there. Yeah, especially the Southern States,

(01:16:30):
they know how to party. Theyhave fun. They made the trip not
to sit in the hotel. Theymade the trip to come down here and
enjoy the people. Four twenty eighththe time we'll come back, we'll have
plenty more for you. Having alot of fun down here at the College
World Series and the Blur Evince Tent, big white tent down here by the
Hilton. Keep it with us righthere on news radio eleven to in KFAB
the truth and everything important in Omahaand beyond. Emery Sunger on News Radio

(01:16:56):
eleven ten KFAB. As far asthis week is concerned, it is College
World Series week, baby, andthat's where we are. We are in
the Blur Events Tent down here infront of the Hilton Hotel downtown Omaha,
right across the way from the CollegeWorld Series taking place not just in the
ballpark village, but of course inCharles Schwattfield, Omaha. Talking a lot

(01:17:17):
of fun, a lot of thingsthat are going on, a lot of
cool things that are happening in andaround town in regards to this particular event,
but I'm not sure there's a cooler, more fun spot that is taking
people in and allowing you to enjoysuch a unique environment than this particular one
inside this Blur Events tamp And we'lltalk momentarily about all of that stuff hopefully

(01:17:41):
in the next couple of minutes.Really appreciate everybody for their hospitality with us
as well. Also wanted to giveyou an update as we talked about on
a variety of topics earlier in theshow. In the first hour, kind
of mentioned the new Iowa poll thatcame out. I don't want to talk
too much about politics while we're downhere having fun, but and Iowa pull
I did mention that I would speaka little bit about the issues that were

(01:18:04):
discussed, and inflation and immigration werethe two that people feel like Joe Biden
is feeling the most in that Iowapoll, while fifty percent to thirty two
percent, Donald Trump has the leadin that poll right now, as far
as the Iowa people are concerned,now, I mentioned that obviously I think
Nebraska and Iowa are very similar,even down to the fact that Iowa has

(01:18:25):
one more liberal metropolitan area in DesMoines, whereas obviously Nebraska it is the
Omaha area. But it is Ithink interesting to see that the lead is
that large. It doesn't matter howmuch the presidents win in terms of their
districts or anything like that. Nebraskais a little bit kind of weird because
of the Omaha district is separated fromthe rest of Nebraska, and that very

(01:18:50):
well could end up being a majorfactor that one electoral vote going one way
or the other could make a bigdifference considering how close this race could end
up being state by state. Butyou know, it's just a matter of
even if it's fifty to forty ninepercent, fifty one to forty nine percent
are obviously throwing your third party candidateshere and there, there's going to be
that opportunity, I think for alot of people to see how different the

(01:19:13):
rural American countries or sorry, statesand counties view things versus the way that
the big, urban, highly populatedcoastal states feel about things even if they
count for you know, Iowa,he could win by one point, he
could win by fifty points, andit's still just going to be the six
electoral College votes that Iowa has rightnow, and then you know, same

(01:19:34):
for the way the Nebraska operates aswell, except for the Omaha district kind
of sitting by itself there. Butsomething to keep in mind as we move
forward here as well. Also,I did want to mention that fifty to
thirty two percent, you'll be like, hey, where's the other eighteen percent?
Well, nine of those eighteen percentare going to RFK Junior, who
we don't anticipate being a part ofthe debate next Thursday. On top of

(01:19:56):
that, some other third party candidatesin some people still say I have haven't
made up my mind yet, soI'm not going to worry about making up
my mind until time that the timecomes and things get a little bit closer.
But as far as all these people, this is you know, close
to eight hundred people plus or minusthree and a half percent in the percentage
point. So Trump solidly ahead inthe state of Iowa. And that's not

(01:20:17):
really a surprise considering how conservative Iowa'spolitics have become over the last i would
say fifteen years or so, sincethe Czech Culver governorship that didn't go so
well for Iowa the Iowa people.And then the way that the Republicans have
been able to have a stranglehold notonly on the governorship and the executive branch,
but also pretty much every other majoroffice around the state except for a

(01:20:38):
few random districts in the legislature.It is a four to forty. We're
gonna step aside. We're good tocome back. A lot more on Blur
Events, a lot more on thistent that I'm sitting in this afternoon,
the Blur Events tent, beautiful,big white tent, eighteen televisions, and
a ton of other amenities we'll talkabout momentarily right next to the Hilton Downtown
here at the College World Series that'son the way right here on news radio
eleven to ten KFAB about an hour. We're in seventeen minutes from now.

(01:21:00):
First pitch is about to happen forthe late game tonight, which is gonna
be Kentucky, Texas A and Mand all SEC matchup in the winners bracket.
Super gonna be fun. Can Iwait for it. A lot of
activity around here, but this doesn'thappen without the best hotel in town.
And I say that because I knowfirsthand. I lived there for five weeks
last summer. The Hilton Downtown isthe coolest place that anyone could stay for

(01:21:25):
a day or for five weeks frompersonal experience and joining us from the Hilton
is their director of Food and Beverage, Zach Dimmitt. Zach, first of
all, thanks for stopping on byhere in the middle of this giant party
we're throwing here. Yeah, thankyou so much for having me. This
is an amazing event, and theBlur Tent is a must see if you're
down in the area. I thinkeverybody should stop buy and check it out.

(01:21:46):
They have these amazing fans that arelike misters. They have amazing packages
that are all inclusive. You canstop down and all you can eat,
all you can drink, live music, The games are on if you want
to hang out instead of going tothe game, it's a one stop shot.
Hey. All inclusive too, whichis just an insane idea. I
didn't think that that's the kind ofthing you could do at this level.
You're thinking like I got to goto Cancun and go to a resort.

(01:22:09):
If I'm gonna like have an allinclusive experience, That's what this is for.
And it's such a great idea.People can go get drinks, different
beverages, and the food is here. Now we're outside the Hilton. I
have to ask, is this isin your front yard here? So are
you in charge of the food andbeverage over here. So this is a
great partnership that we have with BlurEvents. They have an outside caterer I

(01:22:30):
believe it's Abrams, and they doan amazing job. They've had a long
standing partnership. But don't be confused. We are very busy and active inside
with our own catering and events.We have two amazing patios. One of
them is activated now with a groupof about one hundred people and the lobby.
The lobby is live right now withlive music team send off and people

(01:22:51):
are pregaming and really enjoying their timein the air conditioning. Yeah. So
I was here yesterday yesterday afternoon asauna. It was like ninety six degrees
out. The sun was just blastingon all of us. I was sitting
in the outfield just eating it up. I was like, Okay, a
lot of good vitamin D here.I need to go cool off. My
buddy was in town for the firsttime since I moved here, and I

(01:23:13):
was like, We're gonna go sitin a Hilton for a little bit and
just hang out, watch the restof the game in there and have a
little bit of food, have somedrinks. It's a full blown restaurant in
there. You guys have a realrestaurant in there too. You have so
many different things that I wouldn't associatewith the hotel. Like if you walked
into your lobbyy, like you said, it is a hotel, but I

(01:23:34):
wouldn't immediately think, oh, thishotel because I see a coffee shop,
and then I see the stage herearea there where you have the music playing,
and then you have this bar area, and then you have the restaurant.
So try to paint the picture forme. I know we're on radio,
so people are just like, itjust sounds like you're going into like
a mall. It's not. Itdoesn't look like a mall, but it

(01:23:55):
feels like you have so many differentthings. Even if you don't stay at
the hotel, that you can comeand enjoy down the hill. Can you
paint the picture of some of thestuff that is available for people regardless of
what they're kind of looking for whenthey're downtown. Yeah. When you walk
in the front door of the hotel, the first thing you see is this
really large, expansive horseshoe shaped bar. It's a big square in the middle
of the lobby and amazing site linesall the way through. If your friend's

(01:24:17):
over on the other side of thelobby, you can see them say Hey,
Bill, how you doing and stopover at the bar and grab a
bucket of Coors lights on the waythrough, or one of our famous Omaha
old fashions. If you don't godirectly to the bar and turn immediately left.
As soon as you walk in thedoor, you can see Corner Market,
which is our grab and go.You know, we are a partner
of we probably Brusto. We offerStarbucks coffee, over one hundred ready to

(01:24:41):
drink and over one hundred and fiftyready to eat items. We've partnered with
Godfather's Pizza and their pizza to goprogram, so you have a fresh pizza
in four and a half minutes,which is really really exciting. And then
you walk over to the lobby wherethere's a live music you're enjoying a drink,
and then over in the corners thisamazing new restaurant called Nick's Quorum,
a bar and modern supper club whichhas only been open for ninety days now,

(01:25:03):
and you know, it's incredible.We're doing brunch seven days a week,
chicken and waffles, prime rib,omelet, prime Rib, Chili,
a Wagoo blended burger that's proprietary justfor that restaurant. Concept dinner service during
the World series seven days a weekfrom five to nine thirty amazing prime Rib.

(01:25:24):
We're partnering with Omaha Steaks. Wehave a custom cart that comes to
the table. When somebody orders primeRib. It's either chef or myself or
the restaurant manager. They open thisbeautiful cart and right there in front of
you is the prime rib. Weput a plate up, we carve it
to order, We put azu overthe top of it with a little fresh
our little Maldon sea salt and serveit to you with creamy and or raw

(01:25:46):
horse radish. Really really exciting concept. Broasted chicken, panciered trout, and
then supper clubs. You know,harken back to Wisconsin in the Prohibition era,
and if you go to Wisconsin andyou order an old fashion, the
only way you're getting an old fashionis with brandy. And we have connected
that lineage in nick Korum and we'redoing a brown sugar brandy old Fashion with

(01:26:12):
a local brandy from Brickway, ourpartners at Brickway, just downtown on Jackson
Street. And it's hands down thebest old fashion in town. My mouth
is watering. My mouth is wateringto an extent that I am now uncomfortable
with. I'm going to have togo in the next commercial break and grab
some grub from inside Nick's Korum.We're talking to Zach Diimit. He's the
director of food and Beverage at theHilton Downtown. Here. We're sitting in

(01:26:35):
the blur of instent here, abig party going on, air conditioning,
all that stuff available down there inthe Hilton. But I have to ask,
you know, as somebody who istaking full advantage of a lot of
the great amenities that the lobby,the bar, the food area has to
offer in that hotel, this issuch an it feels like such an inclusive

(01:26:56):
thing for anybody who's doing stuff downtown. You guys have to be slammed whenever
anything like this is going on,or anything at the arena is going on,
because you are the first thing peoplesee when they're walking out of these
places, right, we certainly are. And you know, our lobby is
very large and because of the activationthat we do. You know, you
walk through to cool off and yousee a friend and you hang out,
and next thing you know, it'sshoulder to shoulder for three four hours in

(01:27:17):
the lobby and people are clamoring toget a drink. They're singing the song
to you know, Garth Brooks orwhoever. You know, whoever are our
musicians playing to. And yeah,the hotel has been very active and keeping
us, keeping us running. Butwe love we love it. Yeah,
so guy like you can I aska personal question, how does one get

(01:27:38):
into being the food and beverage directorat such an awesome place that isn't like
you're not at a restaurant theoretically,right, Like people aren't thinking the Hilton
is a restaurant, even though it'sgot a restaurant in it. It's but
it's just such a forward thinking,kind of do it all place for the
people who are either staying there thepeople that are bopping around downtown during the

(01:27:58):
evening or like you said, evenin the afternoon with your bunch programs and
stuff. How do you get intothis kind of business and how do you
end up at a place like thatHilton? Well, you know, I
actually opened a double tree by Hiltonand cedar Rap It's many many years ago.
Oh, Cedar Rapp is Eastern Iowa, represent Yes, Yes, and
cross Pass with a gentleman named Robert. He's our hotel general manager, Robert

(01:28:21):
Saban and he was a director offood and beverage at the time, and
I was a restaurant manager and Ihad an opportunity to learn a lot from
him, and that hotel had anarena and convention center attached, and we
had the pleasure of opening that hoteltogether for a couple of weeks, and
then he went back to his homeproperty. And ten years later, here

(01:28:41):
I am. We were able tocross pass again, and I kind of
took a fun upward trajectory to getto larger hotels doing you know, reconcepting
and renovation and making you know,food and beverage relevant in hotels again.
And I was able to cross passwith Robert and it beat in Omaha.
The right time, in the rightplace, the right place, right time

(01:29:02):
is exactly how it works a lotof the time. And this not in
just your industry, in any industry, and Omaha just a cool place,
especially when you're here at the CollegeWorld Series. We're speaking with Zach Dimmitt.
He's the director of food and Beveragehere at the Hilton Downtown. So
you talk about it College World Series. Is this the busiest that you're gonna
be all year? I know thatyou guys have a couple of teams I

(01:29:23):
think that are staying over there.And how does it work? Because last
year I was there staying and Ijust got there and I found out that
LSU was in there, and Ifound that out because all the fans came
in there after they won the nationalchampionship. Was like, what is going
on? I found out all theteam was staying here. So what's it
like to be in that place intrying to keep up with everything when you

(01:29:43):
got eight very hungry fan bases thatare in this area. Yeah, it
is electric. I will tell you. When there's a sendoff happening and the
chance going you know, being inthe World series is one thing. But
seeing the friends and the family andeverybody who's traveled to Omaha for such a
monumental occasion. You know, yourspine tingles a little bit and your hair
stands on end when the crew andthe crowd is cheering and the pet bands

(01:30:05):
playing. But it's just head down, trying to make, you know,
everybody feel at home, being hospitable, and serving drinks as fast as you
can, because they're gonna drink itfaster than you can serve it. You
know that that is a great key. So the Hill intowntown, you can't
miss it. I mean, it'sthe most beautiful hotel down here. It's
right across the street from the parkinglot for Tall Schwap Field Omaha and of

(01:30:25):
course for the arena Chi Heal CenterAlmaha. Zak demmit, it's gonna be
the guy that has organized the wholething for you. Whether you're eating,
you're drinking, and you're hanging out, you're having a good time in that
lobby, Zach, I have tothank you for stopping by. You're wearing
the whole get up here. Ican't imagine you're gonna be outside for very
long after this it's a little warmin the jacket. I may head back

(01:30:45):
inside to that air conditioned lobby,but it's always great to catch up.
So thanks so much for having me, Thanks so much for coming by.
That's awesome. Zach Dimmitt, directorof Food and Beverage at the Hilton Downtown.
As we wrap up this hour,did want to let every already know
and just remind you that this ishappening all week long. This Blur Events
tent that I'm sitting in right now. The Blur Events Tent available. You

(01:31:08):
can buy the tickets online at Blurevents dot com. You can also just
stop on buy. You might behanging out to the Hilton. You might
be like, I need to eatat Nick Skorum, I need to grab
a couple of cocktails there. Wellyou can do that and then after that,
if you're not sure, you wantto get tickets to the game,
and I want to do Ballpark Villagetoday. I want a little classier,
a little bit more uppity kind of. I say uppity in a very good
way. Not an uppity is likenobody you can't get in here. We're

(01:31:30):
gatekeeping. Everybody can be a partof this experience that we have here.
In the Blur of Ents tent.All you got to do is make sure
that you come and do it rightnow, have a great time, not
just tonight, but every night thatthere are games going on over at Charles
Schwap Field. You will have theopportunity to get one of these tickets and
wristbands and have this all inclusive eventhere at Blur Events. Well, you're
scheduled to talk to the person whoruns Blur Events, Stacy Leonard is going

(01:31:50):
to be joining us at the topof the five o'clock hour, and we
can't wait to chat with her aboutthat. We'll also be talking hopefully to
a couple more fans as they getready for tonight's game between can and Texas
A and M. Earlier today,Florida eliminated North Carolina State State alive NC
State out of the tournament. Nowthey joined Virginia as the first two teams
eliminated. But we'll keep you updateon all the happenings down here into the

(01:32:11):
five o'clock hour live and look ElimrieSaga right here on Who's Radio Elevinton kfab
underneath this giant white tent that yousee outside the Hilton Downtown as part of
the College World Series festivities. Thesecond game of the day is going to
be taking place about an hour fromnow, as Texas A and M and
Kentucky battle it out in an allSEC showdown. And you know what,
it's not just fun to watch thebaseball. It's fun to party. It's

(01:32:33):
fun to be around the people.And there isn't a better place to enjoy
that than right here, sitting hereunderneath this big white tent with the Blur
Events logo on it. And BlurEvents means one thing. Stacey Leonards has
something to do with this, andshe is joining us here on the show
here to start the five o'clock hour. First of all, how busy has

(01:32:54):
this first four days of the CollegeWorld Series been for you at this point?
Well, thank you Emory for havingme. It's been busy, it's
been fun. It's our favorite timeof the year. I guess so many
interesting people. Yeah, And Italked to you last year in the winters,
you know, like you kind ofget in your calendar put together,
since we talked about sitting Nebraska awesometime. It was such a good time.

(01:33:16):
And then I saw you there andI said hey, and you said,
uh yeah, I basically get donewith this and we are thinking Collegeable
Series and I'm like, oh,yeah, that's in like a month.
And here we are. We're sittinghere for people who haven't been in this
tent or haven't had a chance towalk past and look inside. Give me
your top three things in here,because there's about one hundred things we could
talk about. What are the topthree things that you think people are going

(01:33:39):
to be interested to know about insidethis tent you got here? That is
a big question. It's like yourchildren, how do you pick like the
Yeah, come on, I thinknumber one is just the energy and the
environment of everybody in the area.We've got different different fans from different teams,
different local groups, individuals. Infact, we have like eighteen TVs.

(01:34:00):
A lot of people stay here andwatch the games. It's fun to
go to the game too. Peoplecome come back and forth and all the
different fun atmosphere of the games.The cold tub back tossed just all sorts
of different things to the cold tub. All right, you got to tell
me about the cold tub. It'ssitting right there and people have had their
feet in that thing all day.It is a hit. And you got

(01:34:23):
towels there for people to dry off. It feels like it's ninety five degrees
out with the humidity, but it'sreally not as bad as it was yesterday.
If I was here yesterday, Iwould have just taken all of my
clothes off except my shorts and justsat in there all day. What's the
inspiration for something like a cold tubunder this tank? You know, we've
been doing this since twenty eleven,since they built the stadium, and that

(01:34:45):
was one of the first things weever had and it's just been a hit
and we just we've been replaced acouple of times, but it's the fact
of yeah, just sitting under coolingoff, staying for the day, chilling
out. And we have had peoplejust hop all the really cool off.
That's pretty funny. It's all yoursocial media. There was a guy just
the other night when the rains werecovered the kind of yep yep. We

(01:35:08):
added ice and just you know,kept him cool. Yeah. I love
it. I love it. Iwas speaking of Stacy Letter. She is
in charge of Blur Events, whothrew this giant party. Eighteen TVs.
Eighteen TVs. We have eighteen TVs. We do? You got the games?
On, but you have other thingson tonight. There's gonna be the
NBA Finals gonna be going on,and you're gonna gonna have some TVs that

(01:35:29):
people can watch. That I see. You got different channels with like different
things. So it's not even justa one stop chop college World Series.
It's just like a giant pop upsports bar with a cool tub and a
bunch of lounge chairs and hammocks andgames. Is that. I can't even
describe it in one good sentence.There's just too much going on. How
do you like? Your website doesa good job, But how do you

(01:35:50):
like if somebody comes and asks,like, what's blur events? Do?
Like, how do you describe thisto them? We just that's a good
question. Just prety memorable experiences.We love just and people have a great
time and offering a lot of differentthings to keep them here and keep them
entertaining their clients or their guests ortheir employees or their friends. And yeah,
out the TV's We've got golf onright now, We've had soccer last

(01:36:12):
night. I saw some classic footballNebraska football games on, so we're playing
different things. Yeah, plus thebaseball games of course, the baseball game's
got to be on there too,now, Stacey, the the tent is
one thing. The atmosphere is anotheryear in front of the hilt, and
you're in this like premier spot.Can I ask about how long it takes
to get this thing ready to go? How many? How many days are

(01:36:34):
you here? Good question. Weactually moved up so most of our teams
from Lincoln. We started setting upMay twenty seconds. Wow, mate,
We have been living up here inOmas for three a little over three weeks
by the time we opened. Bythe time the event is over and we
tear it all down, we'll behome by July first. So it's going

(01:36:54):
to take another full week to kindof finish things up here. Yeah,
it's almost six weeks and it's alot of time. But we have awesome
team and we've had fun along theway. So, yeah, your team's
awesome and you could tell that they'reenjoying their jobs because they're really like easy
to talk to you walk in.Like some people in hospitality, it's have
to find good people because they getto deal with the good and the bad.
There's like there's plenty of bad stuffthat happens in your industry. How

(01:37:17):
did you like how do you describekind of your variation of hospitality that you've
created and how you've been able tofind such great people that fit the vibe
that you're looking for. You know, it's it starts with just day to
day. You know, during setup, we give ourselves plenty of time to
set up, so we work everyday seven to four during setup and take
the evenings off. However, becausewe are so efficient and we've become more

(01:37:42):
efficient, there were days we leftat noon and went to the in Ebrasca
baseball game. One day we wentto the zoo. You know, just
keeping just keeping us all in checkand having a good time along the way
really helps and our whole crew.Yeah, we're very lucky. Everybody just
loves people and just know, Ithink it's just creating that atmosphere in the
you know, behind the scenes andthe staff area. Just keeping everybody having

(01:38:05):
a good time back there makes themhappen when they come out here. We're
speaking with Stacy Leonards. She's incharge at Blur Events, Blur Events,
Big whitesan outside the Hilton down here, the College World Series. So the
next question is one about the logisticsof the College World Series. Itself,
because I know there are a lotof businesses in town, and since you've

(01:38:29):
done this, I think you probablyhave a good experience with this as well.
A lot of people cheer for LSU. A lot of people are cheering
for certain big schools to make it. We kind of have or four big
schools from two different conferences, soeight big schools that are nationally well known.
But do you find yourself like,is there a certain school Maybe LSU's
might be an obvious answer, butare there certain schools that you've seen their

(01:38:51):
fans and they just are a differentlevel than maybe some of the other fans
that you see kind of come throughhere. Oh gosh, Yeah, they're
all they're all a little unique.We entertained a lot of LSU fans last
year. They are just so fun. They're riot. There's a few handfuls
in here still, I know,and so it's fun because every year we

(01:39:15):
see all source of fan base inhere, and you know, we're excited
this year. We're working with Tennesseepretty close. If they make it here
towards the end, we're going tobe have a nice big party under the
White tent. We love it.Yeah, it's going to turn orange.
So anyways, Yeah, we loveall the fans every year, it's just
a different mix. And yeah,some really bring the party. So Sacey
people are listening to this and theyknow that they're like, if they haven't

(01:39:39):
made it down here or they haven'tseen any of your events, that they're
definitely missing the party. How canthey learn more so they can get to
one of these parties, including thisone the rest of the week. Yeah,
sure, Yeah, theyn go toour website Blur Events dot com and
on there you can go to ourtailgate tab and we have both our Lincoln
tailgates on there as well as theOmaha tail Heat and go on there and
you can buy tickets for the remainingduration there were, or our phone numbers

(01:40:03):
on there and can give me acall as well if you want to book
a group and you're on social media. You do a great job on social
media. Very easy to find BlurEvents. It doesn't get it easier than
that, I don't think, right. It's Blur Events dot Com is the
website correct, And you can buytickets at the Dwarf too, Yes,
buy tickets if you're just like wantingto walk around downtown. You guys don't
like. It's pretty full in here, and I'm sure it's going to remain

(01:40:25):
kind of full. But it's notlike shoulder to shoulder full. It's not
like people are cramping each other's stylehere at all. Right, No,
every day's a little different. Yeah, that is about the perfect crowd right
now. No, I mean,we've got a lot of seating, a
lot of places to sit, youknow, entertain walk around. How did
the rain, by the way gothe other night? Because I was on
the other side of the ball fieldand just like the bars in the doors,

(01:40:45):
to the bars and the lines toget into the bars of the door.
I was just like, this isprobably the nightmare for most of these
places. How how was your experience? You know, we love it.
Through the years, we've we've experienceda handful of rain delays and cancelations a
lot of time as people leave andthen they just pack it, they just
come back in. And everybody wantedto get out of the rain. So
it was a big old party inhere. We had. We had quite

(01:41:08):
a few folks in here. Itwas a good time. We're telling everybody,
hey, you know, if there'sa tornado or anything, you know,
we've got shelter to go in place, and we definitely let them know
that, but it didn't really affectthe party. They're just like, Yeah,
we're's gonna keep on hanging out untilyou tell us to leave. So
that's a good time. That's whatI do. You have an awesome job.
You've done a lot of great workover the years building this thing.
And I was talking to your guyMcCrae earlier in the show, and he's

(01:41:31):
a great dude. You can telljust the way he talks is just like,
this is the perfect mix between sports, community, hospitality and all that
stuff, and you've hit such anawesome balance. We are so happy to
be here, so happy to havea chance this week to broadcast from the
College World Series in your tent.So thanks so much for having us and
thanks for what you guys do.We really appreciate it. We appreciate you

(01:41:53):
very much and appreciate the interview.So hey, anytime you tell me we'll
talk again, all right, soundgood? Hey, footballs What I don't
want to I don't want to.I don't I don't want to get your
mind wandering too far. Yeah yougot you got a busy the rest of
the week that you have to worryabout. Then we'll talk football. Right.
That sounds great? Okay? Thatis Stacy Leonard's She is in charge
of Blur Events Blur Events dot Com. Get down here enjoy it at some

(01:42:15):
point. If you can't tonight,Okay, there's games happening over at Charles
Schrowfield, Omaha. This tent isgoing to be open until the twenty second.
You're gonna want to come down hereand enjoy at least one night and
enjoy the College World Series in away you just can't anywhere else. So
come down here and say hey toStacy and the Blur Gang five seventeen will
come back plenty more for you herelive from the College World Series on news
Radio eleven ten kfab. Holy cow, how fun is it to be here

(01:42:39):
in downtown Omaha during the College WorldSeries. The answer is it is as
fun as you want it to be. Blur Event's doing it right. I
mean the Blur Events tent, thebig White tent outside the Hilton. Hilton
Hotel is obviously an amazing place.We always talk about how awesome that is,
but this tent is just so socool and I want you to come
and see it. Obviously, you'regonna want to check the pricing. You

(01:43:00):
gotta have tickets to get in here. You just can't wander in. You
can wander in, you just buytickets at the door. But super accessible,
super friendly. And if you liketo play beer pong or bags,
you like to play, you know, sit on a hammock, you like
to you know, sit over hereon a big, comfy soft sofa,
and you talk about just enjoying watchingthe game in a way you just can't

(01:43:21):
anywhere else. This is the placeto be. So blurevents dot com for
the information. They're here to thetwenty second little caveat the caveat is on
Thursday. They are not gonna beopen over here, so you're gonna the
sooner to come better. There isno scheduled game on Thursday, so you
gotta make sure to come here TuesdayWednesday. If you can't come tonight,

(01:43:44):
obviously, Tuesday Wednesday and then thisweekend is gonna be pretty crazy if Tennessee
is involved. Like she said,Tennessee fans are planning a full takeover of
this tent. So if you're nota Tennessee fan, you might need to
become one. Pretty quickly to finda way into that party. But this
is such an awesome thing and I'mreally excited to be here and I'm so
happy that she was here and enjoyingthe company that we keep, which is

(01:44:08):
one of the cool things about livingin the Midwest and in Omaha. You
guys know that the more awesome peoplethat you meet, the more you get
connected to and everything kind of connectsback to where it came from. And
it's all very family oriented, veryyou know, rooted in in you know,
good morality for the most part,and super exciting for us to enjoy

(01:44:30):
that. So as we continue onhere, five point twenty three or so,
wanted to mention a couple of otherthings that are completely unrelated to the
College World series. Just keeping youposted on a few different things. And
the first thing is a Nebraska localthing. Is you've kind of heard of
the news the time frame for whenthe special session for the unicameral and the

(01:44:53):
state Senators have to go back toLincoln. Governor Pillen basically said, cleared
off your schedule between July twenty sixthand August fifteenth. His quote was,
we have the people's work to do, so whether or not I suppose the

(01:45:15):
biggest question is going to be ifanything is actually going to take place or
happened there. I don't know aboutyou, but taxes in general here I
was warned before I moved to Omaha. I moved into it. I bought
a house in the middle of thesummer, after I had already started working
at KFAB. I looked, Ilooked in and I looked in the valuation

(01:45:45):
book when we first got here,and tried to like get a vibe from
a lot of other people as towhat to expect, and they said,
if you really want to save moneyon taxes, you don't want to live
in Omah. You should live across the river and Council Bluffs. Well,
me being the person that I amin wanting to excitingly live and enjoy

(01:46:09):
what this fine city has to offer, that just wasn't something I was interested
in. I was willing to paya little bit more to have a better
time and paying for it indeed iswhat I am doing. I still love
to live in Omaha, I stilllove what Omaha has to offer. But
I would be lying to you ifthe number one thing that I would fix
about this place is the property taxes, property taxes, for me, are

(01:46:30):
a thing that should be a fixableproblem for the people of this state and
for the people of our community.And it sounds like Governor Pillin based on
the plans that we've heard him outlinein a variety of ways, or the
ways that he has tried to proposeadjustments to the way that we are doing
things here in this state and inOmaha specifically to try to allow trying to

(01:46:55):
allow this thing to get a littlebit more affordable for the everyman or woman
and the families of you know,four or five people. And my fingers
are crossed because, much like therest of you, I probably got evaluation
letter in the mail. That valuationletter. I didn't like what I saw.

(01:47:19):
I mean, how does my propertygo up in value by sixty thousand
dollars in a year. I justbought this thing. I just bought it.
I didn't do anything to it.You're telling me, my And again,
I know that there are appeal processes, and I've talked to some of
our neighbors and they didn't like theirseither, And I'm sure there's gonna be
a bombardment of our state government totry to, you know, deal with

(01:47:42):
this stuff. Easiest way to takecare of this is to try to make
the taxes more affordable for the middleclass of this state. This is a
middle class driven state that is fullof agriculture, and to tax people of
the way we're being taxed on justour property taxes. And we know what
the narrative is in so many waysfrom a lot of people, and they're
not wrong. It's not true freedomthat you have when the government is telling
you what you can and you can'tdo with your money just for a living

(01:48:03):
on the property that you bought.It is a mess, isn't it.
Like when you talk about it likethat, that's a thing that really shouldn't
be happening. Unfortunately, that's justnot the world that we live in.
I'm not the kind of person that'sgoing to be causing a ruckus when that's
been the rules for as long aspossible. But I am going to say
on a point blank level that somethingneeds to be done. There should be

(01:48:24):
a solutions that our government in thisstate can get to. And if that
special session happened sometime between the veryend of July and early August, I
want to make sure we're going tobe covering every single angle of that,
because I think that's way more importantthan most of what is going to be
talked about on the national front forthe presidential election coming up. As much
as that is important, and Iknow it is, and we're going to
be covering it a heck the debatenext week, you know, even though

(01:48:45):
I'm skeptical as to how much recksyou're gonna learn on, it could be
a very entertaining spectacle. We're goingto have our own kfab watch party for
that next Thursday. But at thesame time, I think the most important
thing in local politics that's going tobe discussed is trying to figure out how
are state legislature, our state governmentin the unic cameral, our governor,
and our local locally elected officials,how each and every one of them working

(01:49:09):
on this particular topic this platform aswe try really hard to make things a
little bit easier for the guy nextdoor, for the guy down the street,
for us, how much do theycare about us? We're going to
find out in a couple of monthswhen that special session gets lined up.
Right now, it's five twenty seven, A back to the fun stuff.

(01:49:30):
We're gonna come back live from theblur events tent outside the Hilton Downtown at
the College World Series. It's beenan epic afternoon, so excited, so
happy to be here. We aregoing to talk, hopefully. I'm gonna
try to find a fan of ateam I haven't talked to yet and talk
to them. So stick around.We're going to get to that here momentarily.
To stick on the station. Donot touch that dial. You're listening

(01:49:51):
to Emory Songer Live with You onNews Radio eleven ten kfab. Emery Sunger
on news Radio eleven ten kfab.The Blur, Evince Tant the Big White
Tan outside of the Hilton Omaha,right downtown, right across the way from
the College World Series at Charles Schwatfield, Omaha. I told you I was
gonna try to find a Texas Aand M fan. I was able to

(01:50:13):
succeed in that. I gotta gethim out of here quick though, because
I know he's got somewhere to bein about oh gosh, twenty five minutes.
Greg Kuter maa Kuter Nah, Sorry, I messed up. Cuter naw
couter Nah. You told me Iwas gonna mess it up, and I
said, no, I got it. I got it. And I start
and I mess it up hilarious.But you're from Texas, my man,
and thanks for jumping on the showwith us. Thank you for asking me.

(01:50:35):
It's gonna be a great time,all right. So got it for
first question? Texas. You guys, you were telling me off the air
that you came up on Saturday andyou were greeted by severe thunderstorm warnings in
the area. What did you guysdo while you were killing time before you
made that ten pm first pitch onSaturday night? Well, luckily, my

(01:50:56):
wife had to go to a restroom, so we were waiting at the gate
and then they saided delay, Wellwe're waiting again. She goes, I'm
going to the restroom. She wentover to the home with suitets found us
a sweet table there, fortunately,and so we sat in the home with
sweets lobby waited it out with fivefriends, and we actually got a lucky
spot because everybody else was standing outsideor in the lobby. I was in
that vicinity just outside. I wasn'tplanning on going to the game, especially

(01:51:19):
after I knew what the weather wasgoing to do. The lines to get
into the bars over there were solong. I bet there were a ton
of people that didn't make it incidanywhere. We got very lucky to find
a spot too. The game wasan exciting one though, at like two
am in the morning. You hada home run robbery and able to survive,
get yourself one to zero and getinto the winner's bracket. Text A

(01:51:41):
and M Baseball, You guys makea habit of winning this time of the
year. What'd you think of thatfirst game here in Omaha. Well,
you know, things happening for acertain reason. You know, Montgomery got
hurt in the regionals. Allat ofthe let our center fielder is six'
six moved a right field which robbeda home run. So I doesn't having
sixty six up there against that wall. Ye don't know if Brandon would have
got that. Brandon's a big timeMLB draft early draft pick, and you

(01:52:04):
know he's not as tall as Lavallette, so I don't know if he'd have
got it. But lava Lette gotthat ball and he's a normal center fielder,
so huge play rout there. Andthen of course, so we have
the closure that's NonStop. But soit was a really nice win for us.
We're speaking with Greg Kuderna from TexasTexas. A and m Aggie's here.
You guys have a couple of thingsthat I find to be fascinating.

(01:52:26):
I watched the Super Regionals, Iwatched I watched a lot of college baseball,
especially the time of the year.But the bubbles. The bubbles are
awesome. Every time a run scores. When you guys are down there at
College Station, everybody's got these bubbleguns and there's just bubbles all over the
stadium all of a sudden. Doyou know where that came from? I
don't know where it came from.It actually started out I actually I'm pretty

(01:52:47):
sure it started in the A andM dugout first. You know, everybody
has like I just saw the gameearlier that had the hockey hockey handwin and
the hockey puff hockey stick, andso everybody has a little deal. And
Aggie started with the bubbles, andthe dugapp with the run when we score
a run. And now if yougo to A and M game and the
Super Regions, you saw it.You know, it was like a massive

(01:53:09):
amount. It looks like it's rainingbubbles. Now. Unfortunately, the CWS,
you know, we have a baggagecontrol and so at A and M
they don't control the bubble machines,of course, and so it's a little
bit different. So I kind ofmissed the bubble machines at the College rule
Series. Yeah, you don't havethat, but that doesn't mean you can't
cheer in chance. And one ofthe most awesome notable chants in college sports,

(01:53:33):
not even just college baseball, collegesports, it's the ball five chant.
So can you tell my listeners herein the Omaha area what the ball
five chant is? Well, ifany pitcher throws straight four straight balls,
we go into ball five count andwe continue that ball five count to ball
six, ball seven. I've actuallyseen a ball eleven before and it's really

(01:53:55):
when a pictures in struggling and itbecomes a mental game for him. It's
a big h We called it twelfthman because we're eleven, you know,
the aggies with who we are inour tradition, we call it twelfth man
side. So it's a big factorin in the in the on the home
field advantage when we're there and soh here you're here, it not as
much as a home at our home. Well, so you guys, in

(01:54:17):
the super Regional, the ball fivechant became ball six Ball seven and I
was watching it and you can justsee the sweat beads on the head of
the pitcher because he knows. NowI'm in trouble because and I know they
call time. They're trying to slowthings down. They wanted the fans to
like disengage. It doesn't work becauseyou guys just get more and more engaged.

(01:54:38):
What is it about the culture ofA and M baseball that makes it
so special and a different experience thanyou guys. You guys obviously have great
football tradition and a solid basketball teamseveral years as well, But there's just
something about that baseball tradition that isvery unique to not just your school,
but to the entire country. Yeah, I think I think that you know,
those kind of cheers and the studentbody at ANIAN is unique among most

(01:55:00):
student bodies, And if you goto a M baseball game, you'll see
that the student body is totally intoit. You know, That's one thing
I will say that we miss itthe College World Series is our student body
section that that creates all that excitement. One thing that bab people don't notice
here that we do ball five,but at a home game, if if
they put a new picture in they'regonna start calling out his first name and

(01:55:25):
just wear his first name out.So that's the start of ball five actually,
because now he's like, you know, if it's if it's Jamie,
they're gonna go Jamie Jamie, andthey're gonna wear him out until you know,
and then he starts throwing ball five'sYeah, it's a super Erarsuk Greg
Kuterna from Texas. He's cheering onA and M today. Uh, the
aggie is one to zero in theWinter's bracket. Won't be eliminated one way

(01:55:47):
or the other tonight. Is thisyour first time to Omaha? You guys
come up here before? This ismy fifth time. I came into last
year Rosenblatt Stadium. Make sure Igot that in and I was with a
T shoe, a big my falllaws was a big T shoe booster actually,
and then we brought him up herefor this last year Rosen Black when

(01:56:09):
Tsue made it, and we've beencoming back every since five years time now.
So you must like Omaha. Welove No, we don't like Omaha.
We love omahall. This is likeour We just love coming here.
It's so much fun. Well,we love to hear that. What are
some of the favorite things that youdo when you're not watching the baseball games?
You know, obviously, the food'sgood here, the drink's good here,
obviously, And we've done a littlebit of everything. We've done some

(01:56:30):
museums. You know, we gotto rain out one year and we went
to the Airport Museum. We've donethe Zoo Park. We did the Children's
Home Boystown Boystown one year because youknow, we just had time. So
we've done a little bit of everything. This year, we kind of like,
okay, what we're gonna do becausewe've been here five times and so
we kind of had a just wejust kind of chilled and walked the city
a little bit. Uh So,it's just is just the people here.

(01:56:54):
I always tell people, why whydo you like so Omaha so much?
I said, the people are thegreatest. Every server, every hotel person,
every restaurant person, everybody on thestreet is just friendly. So it's
a great city. You know.I don't see Omaha ever losing this contract.
Well I hope no. We gotten more years on it and hopefully
they built this beautiful stadium in aperfect spot. Hopefully we just keep adding

(01:57:15):
on to it and making it thebig deal that it is. I have
to ask, great before I getyou out of here, what do you
think happens tonight? You got Kentuckyis not a new opponent or a new
school, but in baseball, they'venever made it this far, they've never
made it the College World Series.A little bit of magic going on for
them. What do you think happenstonight? You're gonna quell that a little
bit. Well, you know,it's crazy because it's a Southeast Conference,

(01:57:35):
but we're a West Coast west sideeast side and it's one of the teams
on the east side that we didnot We did not play, and so
we you know, we have notseen each other all year. We know,
we played Georgia, we played someother teams on the other side,
but we did not play Kentucky.So this is our first matchup. We
played Florida, which we had toplay early in the matchup, and they
actually beat us two o three.But this is a que unique one for

(01:58:00):
But I think we're ready for thisgame. We're playing really well. It's
we got we got a lot ofarms left, so it's gonna be a
it's gonna be a good game.It's gonna be gooding well, Greg Cooter
not thank you so much for beingon the show. Thanks for stopping by.
Go have yourself some fun, enjoythe rest of the weekend. O.
But I'm sure we're gonna be seeingyou bopping around town either tonight,
the rest of this week, orthe next time Texanyam makes it back to
Omaha, because it probably won't bevery long before we see you again.

(01:58:23):
All right, thank you, Kfab, thank you, Hey, no,
really appreciate. Greg is from Texasand he's hearing those aggis on and we're
gonna wrap up our show live fromthe Blur Events tent down here next to
the Hilton Downtown at the College WorldSeries next on news Radio Elevenson KFAB on
a magical Monday, right across fromwhere the late game is about oh ten
minutes away from starting across the streetat Charles Swatfield, Amoha the College World

(01:58:45):
Series. Mary Nepple is joining me, and Mary, thanks for all of
your hard work today. Thank youso much for all that you do behind
the scenes to help us out hereon the station. It's been a fun
show, a lot of a lotof cool people. We've gotten to talk
to. Yeah, it's been superfun. I love to CWS. I
love to be here, and it'sjust absolute awesome environment out here at the
Blur tailgate. Yeah, I meanthe cool, the cool what I say

(01:59:10):
cold tub? Is that what theycall cold tub? The cold tub so
people can cool off. You gotall the lounge shares, the games that
you can play, You have thehammocks and the sofas and everything like that.
And uh, I don't know,like this is just a way that
you can enjoy it and there's justreally not another place like this that you
can enjoy and still be a partof the party. How do you enjoy

(01:59:31):
college worlds here? You're a youngperson, right, I mean if you
would pretty young, get a littlepersonal on your hair, like, you
know what kind of party and doyou like to do it down here?
No? Usually I me and myfriends head over to the mat for a
beer garden. But I don't know, I think I might be able to
talk them into coming over to theBlur tailgate this year. You know,
we will have jobs now, fulltime jobs. Oh you're making that money?

(01:59:53):
Yeah, yeah, I think wecan maybe afford it this. Hey,
you know what you spend like youcan go over there, and this
is all I'm saying, right,I don't want to be that guy,
right, and I don't have theprices in front of me. For the
Blur, there's like different levels dependingon what you're interested alcohol, non alcohol,
nixed strains, food, all thatstuff, different levels. You can

(02:00:13):
go to Blur events dot com,you can find out that information online,
or you can just wander around downtown. If it's something you think you might
want to do, just stop bythe tent. It's an awesome place.
But I will say this straight up. You go over there and you buy
enough tall boys or mixed drinks,you're gonna be spending one hundred dollars.
Oh but like by yourself in afew hours. I mean, if you're

(02:00:35):
really having having a good time betweenfood and beverage, well then also after
eight pm, it's a think atwenty dollars cover, yeah, and you
could stop, where as a fortyYeah, it depends on where you go,
but they're not same thirty forty dollarscovers. Yeah, you know,
you know what, Or you couldjust come over here and hey, one
time price and have all the drinksthat you want, all the food that
you want and have fun playing thesegames and everything, and also have a

(02:00:56):
little extra space to maneuver because thethe I'm gonna use the word I used,
the djons, the degenerates that youknow, Uh, I try to
avoid. Now I'm not quite asyoung as you are. I try to
not that you're a degenerate, butyou know yet I try to say,
calm, yeah, yeah, Iget the degenerates. They're there, they

(02:01:17):
are out and about, especially duringthis kind of weeks, you know,
find find ways to keep my distancefrom them, you know, go to
the beer garden in the afternoon,not at night. You know that.
Yeah, Yeah, And I usuallytry to leave the beer garden at a
reasonable hour only because more degenerates lineup. In fact, they're around the
corner, usually by nine long degenerateline into the beer garden. But but

(02:01:40):
it's a great time, and Ican't wait for what's gonna end up happening
here, uh in the next fewdays at the CWS night game tonight Texas
A and M and Kentucky. Gonnabe fun and uh, we're gonna see
what happens there. We're going touh continue to broadcast this tomorrow, Scott,
Uh, I'd leave tomorrow. Iwill be with moonby Cat Kat Country

(02:02:04):
Station, our sister station, Cat'sgoing to be down here. Scott Morhees,
I think is going to be hereat some point during the week.
We're all kind of tagging in takingturns, having some fun here during the
College World Series, and we can'twait to do that as well with you.
So we appreciate you for being apart of our show and for listening
to us throughout this entire situation downhere. The Blur Events Tent, by

(02:02:25):
the way, not open on Thursday. There's no scheduled games for Thursday,
so they're not open there. Andthen obviously into the weekend, they said
Tennessee makes a deep run. Tennesseefans have already said they're gonna take this
thing over. That doesn't mean youcan't try to come, but you definitely
might want to at least pretend tobe a Tennessee Fana. Orange. Yeah,
if that's going to be a takingplace, But we'll see if Tennessee
can make it. Obviously, theygot up to a great start the two
and zero and uh, barring somesort of strange happenings the next couple of

(02:02:48):
days, they are in great shapeto try to make it to the finals
and get a national championship. Butthere's six teams left. Only Virginia and
NC State have been eliminated, andof course we're going to be continuing to
let everything happened organically on a gameby game basis until then. Big thanks
to all of our guests. Wehad so much fun today. McCrae Mashka,

(02:03:09):
who's the marketing manager at Blur Events, Zach Dimmitt who is the director
of food and Beverage at the Hiltonright next to us. We love to
talk to Stacy Leonards as always fromBlur Events, Greg Kodna from Texas representing
A and m Rob Buckman from Kentuckytalking Kentucky Wildcat Baseball. All of them
for joining us, and Mary,thank you so much for all you thinks.
Thanks for having me. Appreciate it. Big shout out to Heath as

(02:03:30):
well. Heath pitched him for helpingget us set up today. My name
is every songer for Roger back inthe station. We really appreciate it.
I'll see you at two o'clock tomorrowand we'll be hanging out with you right
here on news Radio elevenson KFAB